From baby to toddler

Despite that Colin has been "toddling" for a while, I suppose he is technically a toddler now.

We spent all day Saturday deep cleaning the house, with help from my mom to distract Colin and do some work herself.  I'm not exploiting her, she genuinely likes to clean.  It's a sickness.

Sunday was the big day, and there wasn't really time to be emotional because we were so busy.  Colin looked incredibly cute:

 This outfit brought to you by Uncle Todd.

He got a few presents:

By a few, I mean a ridiculous amount.  Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Todd went a little overboard!

Colin had his wardrobe replenished, as well as got more new toys than he'll need for a long time.  We put away most of them, and we left out a little tool bench and a dog that sings/talks (kind of like our Scout dog).  He loves both of them!  I'm excited for cool weather just to put him in some of his new clothes.  It's really warm here still.

Most importantly, Colin ate cake.  Video by my Uncle Joe.

Colin's Smash Cake

He had a special cake, due to the fact that he's still having allergic reactions to fresh eggs (as evidenced by the fact that he broke out some after meatloaf the other day).  However, after many tries, we couldn't get Peter's Fabulous Chocolate Cake to come out remotely well without eggs; so we made a separate cake for everyone to eat.  I didn't get a picture before we dug in, but this picture is where I got the idea from.  Ours looked surprisingly close to this!

 

And here's Colin's cake:

Another fun thing that we did was to make a poster of Fun Facts about Colin:

He's 22 pounds, 31 inches tall (that might be a little high), has 7 teeth, and he's had 4 haircuts.  He loves pictures of himself, books, Douglas, kisses, and wrestling.  His favorite foods are green beans, Cheerios, cheese, and Mandarin oranges.  His first words were Ella, Dada, and Nee-Na/Mama.  Ella is the only word he uses with purpose right now.  Things he doesn't like: being tired, not being allowed to walk down the stairs, being told not to play with the X-box, diaper rashes, getting in the car seat sometimes.  He walks, he dances, he talks to Ella.  He's generally a very happy little boy, and he makes us very happy.  His favorite game right now is to run away from us laughing when it's bathtime and bedtime and make us chase him.  He usually giggles so hard that he falls down.

He has done great with the transition back to daycare.  They have him taking only 1 nap a day now, and while it's not as much sleep as I would like for him to get, he's functioning okay and still sleeping well at night.  He's got some strong separation anxiety going on right now, but his "teacher" is good about distracting him in the morning as we run out the door.

He recovered beautifully from his surgery; the doctor didn't think he needed a second visit to return, which was great news.  I can't even tell he had surgery, to be honest (well, except for that whole circumcision thing).

I'm so happy with my new job.  I work with some of the most wonderful ladies, and I'm excited for what's coming up for our program.  I don't know when I'll feel truly comfortable, but it's still so great.  The classes I'm taking are not so great.  I'm a little burnt out on school right now, so I'm trying to find the positives.  Like the fact that I will be done at the end of April, and I will graduate in May.

I can't believe I went so long without updates; I'll try not to let that happen again!