Our Jakey at T-W-O!

First night in his big boy bed!

I just loved all of his ride-ons "parked". Oh, and the vacuum next to them! Soo Jake!

Well, I'm finally (a couple of weeks late!) getting in a post mainly for our own memory of what our Jake is up to at 2 years old! He has changed and grown so much in the past 4-5 months!

He is so sweet, funny, entertaining, smart and has a memory that continues to amaze us!

-He's wearing mostly 3T clothes, with a few 2T left. His shoes are mostly 9-10's right now. Hopefully he'll stay this size for a while b/c he was a size 8 for several months!

-He knows most of his colors, vehicles, wild animals, farm animals and can count to 10 on his own. We're working on the alphabet occasionally...it's Mommy's least favorite!

-He is potty trained (other than night time and the occasional #2) :) But wears his big boy underwear every day.

-He's sleeping in a big boy bed

-He knows who lives where and more directional things than some adults I know. :) When we pull into or pass by our friends and families neighborhoods he will say, "Papaw's home" or "Jax home."

-He uses please (pease) and thank you a lot-- and I just love it!

-He continues to sleep about 12 hours per night. This is the least amount he's slept since he was a few months old, but I know it's normal for toddlers to decrease their hours of sleeping at night time and during the day. His naps have dropped down to about 2.5-3 hours, on average. He does tell me he's going night-night and climb into his bed several times per day. Of course, he just rests for a minute and I make him get back up. He's still a very sound sleeper and never wakes up at all during the night or a nap, even when, you know-- the doorbell rings and the dogs bark like crazy! Amazing!

-He LOVES cars, trucks, tractors, buses, bikes, or anything at all with wheels. He's pretty good about identifying specific types such as dump trucks and motorcycles and helicopters. He, for some reason, still pronounces airplaine as, "airpa". We love it!

-His vocabulary is huge, we think there's pretty much not a word he doesn't know. He doesn't always string his sentences together correctly or fully, but he does use several words strung together.

-He's been singing "Happy Burday too _____ " a lot...like every day! I think him and lots of our friends and family have so many January birthdays that he thinks it's always a birth day for someone!

-He's very much into listing his family and friends when we're away from them. Whether he's laying in his bed waking up or playing with his pretend phone he's usually saying, " Papaw, Shadt, Rere (courtney), Mommy, Daddy, Lissa, Keke (Kinley), Jax, Jessa (Mrs. Jessica), Emi (Emily), Tay Tay (Taylor), Rachel, Jacob, Nico, Hawey (Haley), UnMatt (Uncle Matt), Bian (brian), Mickey (Nikki).....etc, etc he lists many more of our loved ones than this but he goes on and on for minutes listing everyone he loves ...it's so cute! But it usually does start w/Papaw. =)

-He's very mechanical and likes to plug things in, take things apart, lock doors, and "drive" - rolling up all windows and turning on lights and the radio and such.

- He LOVES to read books and insists on doing it several times a day. He points out every animal, house, tree, etc on every page after you finish reading the words. Both Jeremy and I love reading to him at this age because it's so interactive.

-His favorite food is probably french fries. Any time we drive past a fast food place, he says, "free-fries, free-fries!" It cracks me up, especially when I'm just turning in a red box! He really is such a good eater and loves lots of healthy foods- avacado, raisins, fruit of every kind, green beans, fish, brocolli, pickles, etc. He also loves sweets, just like his Daddy (and maybe Mommy, too ;) He eats a lot but does not eat it very quickly!

-He loves babies and points them out every where we go, usually saying, "Aww, baby! Hug!"

-He loves to wrestle, tackle daddy, do "supaman", "ashes, ashes" (ring around the rosies), and run laps around our living room.

-He likes to dress up and always takes Mommy by the hand into Daddy's closet and asks for Daddy's hats. =)

-He could live outside. After Dada, Mama, and dog, outside was one of his first words and he uses it several times a day. If he could camp outside to sleep I'm sure he would.

-He still does not like to sit still. Craft time and watching tv only last a couple of minutes still, he'd much rather be running around doing something or sleeping, nothing in between.

-He's still pretty mellow. The temper tantrums are pretty much non-existent. He does occasionally fuss but not very often. He doesn't seem to rebellious yet and usually plays so good by himself and minds his own business. I love that he entertains himself when I'm busy, but often comes and finds me to give me kisses and hugs or brings his toys to where I am and plays nicely.

Well, I'm sure I'll be the only one reading this in full, but I'm glad I finally sat down to finish it. :) We love our life being all about our sweet, silly, playful, adorable, little 2 year old!! We are so proud of how much he's growing and learning and can't wait to spend many more years with him! We are so blessed to experience the joy he brings!

*He has his well check in a week or two so I will for sure be posting his measurements later!*

Christmas Day - Magnolia and San Antonio!

this boy is so obsessed w/tractors! he loves his new tractors from Gran!

yucky shot of me, our family as we were loading up to head home


aunt Lissa and jakey!

"awww, huggh!" as Jake would say

fun grab bags (holes cut in tops of boxes with lots of fun things inside that you can only feel for, not see! love this tradition!

LOVE when he lays on the floor w/his feet like this!

he was using the pillow that keeps the cold drafts of air outside to "hit" people-- it was so cute. He's definitely all boy when it comes to finding anything to play with!

pound--pshhhh!! He loves noises after he pounds it!

too cute not to snap a pic. He'll sit EXACTLY like ____ (insert bigger kid/adult). Soo cute!

my folks!

Matt's top present on his pile was a VS bag...it was cologne =))

Haley and Beaux matching in their gray :) so cute!

We had a great Christmas! Jeremy had over a week of and we got to spend Christmas day in magnolia with my family and then headed to San Antonio for a few days. When we got home we had about 6 days left before he had to go back to work. What a nice "vacation" we got to spend playing all sorts of games with our family. It was a blast and it ended too soon!

Christmas Eve 2010-- a lil late!

The last picture we took late Christmas Eve, after Santa dropped by!!

Jeremy's granny Jimmy, parents, and brother and sister

As always, we spent Christmas Eve with the Worley side of the family. We had lots of fun having everyone together! We ate a meal, opened presents, had dessert and just hung out. It was a lot of fun! So glad we got some good shots of the family, too.

Jake's 2nd Bday Party!

The invite - custom made by my good friend Rachel over at www.sweetteapics.com

Sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies and goldfish





favors in the basket, drinks and the cake. Also a couple of pics of Jake from this past year.

Cars ball pit

Colors and transportation coloring pages

A glimpse of the room, with the race track in the back ground

The cake! Half white, half chocolate! Oh, and not ready on time, by the way. 2nd year in a row at two different bakeries for that to happen!

The "race track" that Lissa and Jen worked so hard on. It was totally all over the place a few minutes into the party, the kids pretty much went off-roading I guess you could say. A few families brought some ride-ons to add to the mix after I took this pic, which helped a lot!

Food tables and "jakey is two" banner I made out of cars/travel/transportation scrapbook paper and cardstock

driving play mat!

picture banner, in order of youngest pic to oldest pic

"road" table w/M&M's and gumball centerpieces

Some of his presents just before the party got started

Jake giving sweet baby Tate some love

Tate's big bro Noah...love him!

Matt, Jen, Lissa, Mom, Haley--don't know what we would've done without their help and hard work, along with Gran and Dad!

This lil driver was in heaven!!

Ha! The cones were everywhere!

Friends and Family! The best part of the party!

Cute pic of the ball pit. Hayes, Emily, Ayla and Yuri having a "ball"! Hehehe I'm such a nerd!

Jax, Clint, Lily and Kinley

Family!

blowing out his "2" candle

Papaw and Jake

Our family, including a very messy bday boy!

opening his new toys, which he soon lost interest in after he kept saying, "Open, peasse! Out, peasse!" and getting no response.

This past Saturday we celebrated Jakey's birthday with a few of our closest friends and family. Over 50 people showed up and really helped to make it such a special day for us and for Jake. He had a blast and didn't even want to stop driving around with all of his friends! We held it at the YMCA, and it turned out to be the perfect location! The kids could run around and play but couldn't hurt anything and their parents could keep an eye on them pretty easily. We might have to do another party again there in the future, especially having a winter birthday where you can't plan for the weather at all!

Because his absolute favorite thing to do is drive, and he's obsessed with everything that has wheels and some sort of steering, we decided to do a driving party. This party was such a blast to plan and we came up with some really fun stuff, the kids seemed to really enjoy it and were not happy to leave. =)

A few of our fun and simple ideas included black table cloths with masking tape down the middle to create a "road" look. We came up with a color scheme of stoplight colors of red, green and yellow with a little black, blue and orange thrown in. We used accents of scrapbook paper and made centerpieces and banners of Jake's pictures over the past two years and some words that go along with the theme such as "honk" and "jakey is two". Those were truly fun to make--I will probably be making lots more in the future! I also jumped online and found some plane, truck, car and train coloring templates and printed them out for the kids to color. Super easy and ended up being fun for the kids, too. We also used a huge "car" rug and brought some of Jake's larger toy trains, cars, buses, etc and let some of the littler kids play with those while sitting on the floor.

His cake was simply a round race track with a motorcycle and car hotwheels placed on top. The other food was kept simple with some Paula Deen sugar cookies shaped into stoplights (with red, yellow and green m&m's) and cars, trains and planes, chex mix, different flavored m&m's, goldfish and peanut butter cookies with reese's cups on top. We almost ran out of food this year! We will have more next year, promise! =) I was upset about the food running out, but Jeremy assured me that all of our friends have the means to eat dinner or pick something up on the way home, and that they weren't going to starve that night because we didn't include enough pre-dinner snacks. =) I felt a little bit better after that, but still bummed we didn't do more food. There's always next year! =)

We are so thankful for our family and friends and their willingness to support and love our Jakey. We had a great time celebrating the past two years and are so happy to have these pictures of our fun memories! Thank you to everyone who made his day so special!