And then he was two.

To celebrate Cole's birthday (a party on the actual day of his birth- how awesome!) we had a small party in our backyard. It was a beautiful day and Cole had an awesome day. However, the pictures (from 3 different cameras) have yet to be imported. I'll leave you with this picture, taken this morning.

I go in the pool?

Cole has had a hankering for our pool all winter long. He enjoyed the pool last summer, but with him constantly wanting to go up and down the ladder, we didn't go in the pool much when Dada wasn't home. It felt like a constant battle. And he quickly forgot about it in favor of exploring the backyard for the first time.
Now, though, Cole knows the backyard well. And the pool is the center of it all. Literally and figuratively. Since going in last weekend, we realized his main interest is being in the water. He doesn't even want to go near the ladder because he knows where it leads. As you can see, he was overjoyed when we went in on Sunday afternoon, after we went to our farm's annual potluck picnic. The sun had been beating down on us most of the afternoon. So the pool was refreshing (to say the least) for Dada and Cole.

I just love that he's big enough to hold his hand and go places together.

Happiness doesn't quite describe this look. Sheer joy is more like it.

I think we need swimming lessons - STAT!

I just love that devilishly sweet look in his eyes

Still in his 18 month swim suit. Can you tell he's grown?

Splish Splash!

An afternoon at the farm

Last weekend we attended our annual CSA potluck picnic. It's one of the things I love about small town living. We belong to a farm for one thing. That was unheard of in my city life growing up. The most open space I knew was the local park. And then there was the annual apple picking trip. But other than that and the occasional camping trip with my uncle and aunt, I knew boulevards, avenues and streets. I rode my bike on sidewalks and streets and played on my grandmother's cement patio and her small contained garden. I can't even tell you what I did from the age of birth to age 4. I probably only saw the outdoors when my father came to take me for the weekend. That's why I love this life I am giving my child. He has so much to see in nature and so much to learn from. And in return, he teaches me how much to appreciate the beautiful place we live in.

The other thing I love about small town living is that when you go somewhere you almost always see a few people you know, which we totally did.  And the food? The food was also out of this world. Three trays of pasta with different in-season veggies. Freshly made bread. Homemade cookies and brownies. Our contribution was a salad that included fresh lettuce from our vegetable garden. Our salad, which had all the fixings, including dressing, was the most popular out of all the salads. Just sayin'.

I can't tell you Cole's absolute favorite part of the picnic, but I can tell you the highlights:
Cole went on his very first hay ride.
Cole got to see new baby chickies.
Cole got to say hello again to the grown up chickens (who may have been baby chicks he saw last year).
Cole climbed a mountain of gravel.
Cole stood by a really OLD tractor.
Cole ran through a maze of wheat grass.

The only thing Cole didn't do was eat much food, which was a crying shame. He nibbled on a few things, but the farm was too exciting to sit down at the picnic bench for too long. Plus, he slept damn well that night. So I'm not complaining.

Here are the best of the best. As you can tell, Dada took them all.

Cole watches a 5-week old baby (not seen in this picture) nurse.

He loooooves chickens. 

Yook at me!

Pure fun.

Baby chicks.

People, places and things

Cole has an amazing ability to recall people and places. And what makes me most proud is that this is a trait he most likely inherited from me because for as long as I can remember Keith cannot remember names as well as I can. I remember when we first started dating he had an entire conversation in the middle of Ames (remember that store?) with a woman whose name he could not remember.

Cole knows everyone's name at his school, he knows all of our friends' names and their kids' names, and he can usually put together the faces with the names. When I told him recently that Emma and Hailey were coming over, his gaze went immediately up to the refrigerator where a photo of them was located. He pointed, I took it down, and together we identified the members of the family. He remembers his doctor's name and he can easily name the waitress/ friend who works at the local cafe.

When Keith takes Cole to day care two days a week, he and Cole drive over bridges and across small rivers and creeks. After just a few identifications of the creeks and rivers, Cole now knows their names by sight, even when crossing in different directions. He knows the name of the town Keith works in and he knows the name of the hamlet we live in. When we ask him where he lives he gets it right usually on the second try.

As far as "things" go, that's a slightly different story. He can identify objects well. He knows where most things belong. But determining their color or how many there are is another story. His go-to number is 3, as in "One. Two. Freeeeeee!!!" His fall back color is red. So if you point out a yellow triangle and ask him what color it is, he'll usually say "Red!" If you ask him to count the five blocks, he'll say excitedly "One. Two. Freeeeeee!!!"

His newest answer for requests to do something is either:
"No way, Mama"
Or
"No way, Dada"
Or my personal favorite-
"No way, guys."

Some of his current love for things include:
The rocking horse that Grandma Fern got him
The radio flyer wagon Gamma got him
The sand and water table
The pool
Helping open the pool

I'll be posting some pics soon of Cole in the pool, since last weekend was the official opening of the pool after a week or so of the grunt work of owning a pool: getting the water off the cover, pulling the dang cover off and cleaning the inside-complete with vacuum and chemicals.

Below are some iPhone pics of the things Cole loves.

Riding in his radio flyer for the first time

The sand and water table is a permanent fixture in our backyard

Helping Dada clean out the leaves from the cover of the pool

Not helping Dada take the cover off the pool.

Pre-summer fun

This is going to be me for the rest of the summer: "Cole, stop so I can put your hat on."

So what?

I just wrote a very educated, theoretical post about this ridiculous cover. I managed to exclude all expletives and covered all my bases on why I thought this picture was creating so much controversy and what we should do instead of giving into toxic opinions that only cause more division in this country. I also asked some very good questions. But, much as I love my iMac, with a simple stroke of my finger on the mouse, the page moved, and I lost MY ENTIRE POST. Usually, blogger saves my posts automatically, but for some reason, it didn't. And I'm all written out. Here's what I have to say on this asinine cover: Since mothers don't normally breastfeed a child who is standing on a chair, this cover is: Sensationalism at Its Best.
Believe me - I've worked in the field - I know.

I'll tell you instead what extended breastfeeding is:
Beautiful. NOT Disgusting (as some ignorant souls have mentioned on Facebook).
A way to connect and reconnect with your child. (not a way to ensure he has problems with breasts or sex -or some other stupid theory - for the rest of his life).
Perfectly normal in other parts of the world - except in this divisive and sometimes prudish country, despite our collective fascination with tits and ass. Thanks to the USA Today, who published a very informative piece on this very issue of what's normal.
A way to continue to nourish your child's developing brain and strengthen your child's immunity.

My kid can walk; he can talk; he can ask to nurse; he can even tell me he loves it. He's going to be two years old in two weeks. It has never seemed abnormal or shameful to me to continue to nurse him into toddlerhood. I don't think "it's about time" I stopped. And I feel no further need to defend my decision.

All that's left is this: I breastfeed my child. So what? What does it matter to anyone else but him?

Mama's Day

Up until I became a mother, I disliked Mother's Day for obvious reasons. I always wished I could call Mother's Day, Mafather's Day, since my father acted as both mother and father- doing the job of raising me with no help from my mother, who abandoned me when I was 4 years old.

Usually, though, I just celebrated my grandmother and hoped the day would go by quickly so that I didn't have to think about a mother who could care less about me. Now that I'm a mother myself I have stopped feeling sorry for myself and feel sorry ( only in the most superficial of ways) for my mother, who missed out on the amazing job of raising a child. When I had Cole I realized how selfish she must have been (and still is) to not want to be a part of my life. I always thought it was some deficiency of mine, but now I realize that the deficiency was hers.

Mama and Cole

This year and last year, I have actually looked forward to this day (for more obvious reasons). In fact, the entire weekend has become a celebration. One day we celebrate my mother-in-law and the other day we celebrate me! I'm lucky to have such an amazing mother-in-law. She is such a doting grandmother and a loving mother-in-law to me. I always told Keith that he was so lucky to have a mother like her (not that he didn't know it), but now I feel that that luck has extended to me. Not only did I marry an amazing man, but I got his awesome mother to boot.

Happy Mother's Day to Carolyn. And a happy Mother's Day to the other lovely mothers in my life: Fern and my grandmother. I love you all!

Gamma and Cole

Mama, Gamma, and Cole

Snack time

I learned a valuable lesson recently: just because you make it doesn't mean they'll eat it (or be fed it).

To put it simply, the snacks Cole eats twice a day at day care are not that healthy. I know I've talked about this before, and I've had to come to terms with it, but only because we bring snacks in twice a month that are NOT goldfish, pretzels, pirate booty, tortilla chips, ritz crackers, or cookies. If parents want to give these snacks to their kids at home, that's fine by me, but when my kid has to eat it too on a regular basis, that annoys me. I wish the daycare didn't have this policy of parents bringing in snacks. It turns into a vicious cycle. Parents either bring in unhealthy snacks or they don't bring enough. If they don't bring enough, the teachers have to supplement with the snacks the daycare already has (a giant box of goldfish, a giant tupperware of chips, pretzels and goldfish).

Full disclosure here: we do give Cole some processed snacks, but we do it within reason and we don't do it on a regular basis. We also supervise how much of it he eats, which we can't do when he's at day care.

My hope has always been that I'd at least get healthy snacks into Cole (when he's there) twice a month.
We bring in fresh fruit, cheese, yogurt, cucumbers, and hummus. Not all at the same time, but those are the types of snacks we bring in.

Imagine my dismay when I arrived recently to discover that the snacks we brought in for consumption THE DAY BEFORE had only partially been consumed by the next day. This was partly due to the lack of communication amongst staff (there is no full timer in the toddler room) and partly because the staff was supplementing our healthy food with leftover junk food from previous snack days.

When I got into the toddler room I found the container of cheese was still half full and a bag of goldfish was on the counter. Cole was starving on the way home and ate four pieces of cheese in his car seat. This is a frequent problem. I pick him up only a half hour after his snack, and he's almost always hungry. When we arrived at home that afternoon, he told me he had eaten pretzels for snack. I called the daycare director and expressed my concerns and she affirmed that yes our snacks were being supplemented with "crackers" (a safe catch-all word if you ask me) because "that's what toddlers want."

Well here's the reason they want it: if that's all you give them, that's all they'll want. Plain and simple. I told her that, and she offered a solution for Cole: we can bring in his snacks just for him every day he's there and then we don't have to buy snacks for everyone else twice a month.

What a revelation. If only she had allowed us to do this from the very start of his time in the toddler room.

No wonder why childhood obesity and the related health poblems are at an alltime high. We're starting unhealthy eating habits even before the age of 2.

On that happy note, I leave you with this picture of Keith and Cole on the picnic bench at recent hike at Split Rock. This is where Cole had his snack that afternoon, so I thought it was only fitting: