A Sleep Deprivation Experiment

The subject volunteered and even came up with the concept if you can believe that. The conductor of the study however is not a willing participant. It's still in progress, but hopefully in it's last phase, so I'll have to post the results of the experiment later.

...

Austen has not slept in two days.

And by not slept I mean no naps (at least nothing longer than 10 min) and less than 5 hours at night which is a lot less than his usual 12.

I think his teeth are really bothering him. He's got two molars that have just broken through and two more that are extremely puffy and red. The baby ambesol and tylenol routine is apparently not enough to quell the pain.

He was up at 1:00 this morning asking for ice...poor thing.

And here I thought we got off pretty easy on the whole teething thing.....ha

...

Here's some cute pictures of a happier, well rested Austen at the lake the other day.

BFF's

Here they are together.
Austen's going in for a kiss.

Austen has re-kindled is friendship with Curious George.
He drags him around everywhere, even on his new big wheel, and he's been super cuddly with him lately too.
The other day I found him sitting in the coat closet (he will NOT stop opening doors, but more on that in another post) holding Curious George like a baby while making fake crying noises.
I'm pretty sure he was pretending George was sad and he was comforting him.
He's done it a few times since then too.
I could have exploded with pride.
I know it's totally normal behavior, but I just think it's so adorable that he's learning to play pretend.
Here are some pics of a cuddle session with Curious George.

Here's Austen's "smile".

One of my all time favorite pictures of him!!!

Not Even Sure What To Call This Post .....

And....
I'm not quite sure where Austen gets his crazy ideas and...
I'm not actually sure if Austen just really likes dogs or if he thinks he is one.
Or
Maybe he just needs other kids around instead of Sophie being his primary playmate.

He is obsessed with all things dog lately. Well, not just lately. That was one of his very first words now that I think about it.....a sign of things to come I guess.
He points out every dog we come across
doggoo, doggoo
and he now wants to eat and drink like a dog.
With no hands.
He will bend over and lap up any standing water he sees! The fact that he hasn't picked up any parasites is beyond all reason at this point.
When I let him play outside in the hose, he purposely makes puddles just so he can crouch down and drink it up.
He pours out his milk onto the highchair tray with the sole purpose of drinking it- not out of the sippy- but off the tray.
He used to just do this with water, but it's so much fun, that he's moved up to food as well.
Food is apparently much better if no hands are involved in getting it to his mouth.

AND
Because that wasn't enough
he now wants to sleep in the dog's bed.
(Well more like pretend to sleep.)
And watch T.V. in the dog's bed and have snacks in the dog's bed etc. etc.
You get the point.
He also pants which is quite hilarious!
Hopefully it's just a phase and he doesn't prefer dogs to people when he gets older!

Here he is having a snack in the bed....at least he's nice enough to share his milk with her.
Compensation for stealing her bed.

He says night night and then lays down. He'll wait a couple seconds and then pop up laughing.

On a totally unrelated note.....
We ignored all the warnings on the side of the bucket and stuck our baby in. We call it the baby h0t tub.
Brian can get very creative.
One night he filled the bucket up with warm water and stuck Austen in. He fit perfectly and LOVED it!!! He did not want to get out, so now Brian sticks him in there at least once a week after he gets home from work. It's very cute and he fits perfectly.

Only under constant supervision of course. :)

Well......

I guess this is what happens when I blog too often.
I run out of stories and pictures and then you're left hearing about not so interesting stuff with just mildly cute pictures.
Luckily we're not quite there yet, but close. Austen's constantly doing funny stuff and I have some pics of the fourth of July that are pretty cute.

Last night while we were eating dinner Austen kept saying bawk bawk. I had no idea why because that's the noise he makes when he sees a chicken and then I realized he was asking for more chicken. . How funny is that???

He's also become obsessed with the lawnmowers. He loves them and is a little scared of them at the same time. When they come, he likes to watch them out the window, but when they get too close, he'll run to me so I can hold him. Brian found this stupid little one on clearance and now he mows the carpet.

Some pics of us on the fourth

My boys

I can't look at this last one without smiling.

Thanks to my very talented sister for the amazing pictures. They're so good that I guess you can keep your job as family photog even though you're too busy to send an email. ;)

Bucket List

This post has nothing to do with Austen, so if you only read to find out about his antics or see cute pictures of him you might want to skip this post.

This post is strictly about me.

I started running about 5 months ago and I've been having a love/hate relationship with the "hobby" ever since. It is mostly pure torture with a few glimpses of light along the way. I guess it's those glimpses along with the sense of accomplishment I feel when I've done something I never thought I could do that keeps me at it. I'm not really a runner and never have been.
In high school I had to take a whole semester of an extra fitness class because I failed to run the 1.5 miler fast enough. That being said, I have always wanted to run a marathon. Don't ask me why, it's just a bucket list thing I guess.
When I started running 5 months ago I realized that the marathon goal was totally out of the question considering I couldn't even run more than 3 consecutive min without dying, so I decided to make smaller more reasonable goals. (And I had to edit the bucket list.)
The first of which was to run a 5k.
I ran my first on a freezing cold day in May and I was very proud of myself. I ran the entire time and I finished in 33 min. Feeling like a pro, I entered another 5k race the next month and beat my previous time by a minute.
I've taken the last couple months easy in the running department because it's been hot, and Brian's been home and.......well, there are just a few reasons to make yourself run and infinite excuses/reasons not to.

Alright, so the whole reason of this post and all my rambling is I've decided to run a 10k.
I have 8 weeks from today to train.
I'm scared.
But I'm going to do it anyway
AND
I'm going to do it well!!!
My goals are to:
run every step of the 6.2 miles
finish in close to an hour
not die or throw up on anyone
and mostly
just FINISH.

There, now that I've told everyone I can't back out!
Wish me luck!
Now I get to see what I'm made of.

And don't ask me why I posted super embarrassing stories about my lack of running stamina dating all the way back to forever or why I posted highly unflattering pictures of myself running. I guess I think all blog posts need to come with pictures.
I may be reconsidering that....

Because He Needed More Toys

We bought Austen a big wheel and he is so in love! I know Austen has more toys than one child can play with, but before you think we're just greedy hear my reasoning. It was half price, so that made it hard to resist plus he'll be able to use it for a couple years or until he's big enough for a bike at least. Plus it's a really cool Cars one that sings and does Lightning McQueen"s voice. Can you tell I've totally justified it?

We had to put the big wheel together, so Austen and Daddy got out their tools. I took the instructions and the parts and did my best to "help". After Brian tried to make the 3rd wrong part fit, I quit "helping" and let him takeover. It went very smoothly after that. (I kept handing him the wrong parts and screws. He was very patient, but I gave up. In my defense the pictures in the instructions were not very clear.)

In other news Brian starts his new job tomorrow, so that's exciting. It's also kinda sad.....we've gotten spoiled having him around all the time and we've really been enjoying it. Back to reality I guess.

Here's Austen helping daddy
He wanted to use real tools so bad, so we gave him the rubber mallet.....I figured that was the least dangerous one.

He was trying to get on before Brian had finished putting on the seat.

He's too short to reach the pedals yet, but he doesn't care! He just scoots himself all over the place.

Eating With A Fork AND A New Treasure

Austen is doing new things so often now that I feel like I can't keep up on the blog even with my daily posts.

Okay, first things first.....

He is talking constantly and he says new words daily. If I don't know what he's saying and can't say it back to him, then he just keeps saying the new word until I get it right. Most of the time this works, but when it doesn't.....man it gets frustrating. For both of us!!! Last night he started saying a new word while we were on a walk. I thought he was saying moon, but when I said moon back to him that wasn't it. Then I thought maybe he was saying deer because we had just encountered a deer on our walk, but that didn't work either. He said his new word for over a mile of the walk, the whole drive home, the entire time I was trying to get him to sleep last night, and he started in on it again as soon as he woke up. (He is very persistent!) He says the words over and over and when I tell him I don't know, he'll get his face really close to my face and say it again. It makes me laugh because it's like he's trying to dumb it down for me or something. I still have no idea what he was saying and he got so frustrated with me that he actually gave up. That is the first time that's happened with anything!

Some words are clear as day, but he uses them for the wrong thing and no matter how many times I correct him, he still says the wrong word. He thinks "knee" works for his arm also. He thinks motorcycles (which he is now into pointing out while we drive) are lawnmowers. I kinda get the connection there. Rain is ice (because it hailed one time) and all shoes are bop bops (flip flops).

Also new, yesterday his very first molar peeked through. Only a tiny corner has come out of the gums, but I'm sure all of it will be out in a day or two. I'm quite relieved because his teeth have been taking forever to come in and he has been in quite a lot of pain. The night before the molar poked through was rough!!! He was rolling around in his bed in pain and that was with ambesol. We gave him some tylenol around midnight and that helped him sleep, but I felt so bad for him.

He's eating with a fork really well, he's actually been doing that for quite a while.

Here he is with his new favorite thing..... a stick he found at Wheeler Farm. He even took it with when we went up to Park City.

He plays with it all the time!

P.C.

We got crazy and decided to spend a night away from home. Austen is almost 19 months old now and he has never slept anywhere but our house. We don't get out much, but thanks to my super generous sister we got to spend a night in Park City. It was serious fun!!!
The room was huge and way to big for just the three of us, but Austen had so much fun exploring and climbing on everything. Surprisingly there was very little trouble he could cause, so I just let him do his thing.
We ventured out of the room long enough to make it up to Main Street and just in time for an amazing Ford Mustang show. There were so many Mustangs to look at. Brian and I really enjoyed it......Austen fell asleep in the first 3 min and he slept the entire time we ate lunch. He's such a good sleeper when he wants to be.

The hotel had an awesome pool, so after the car show we took the little man swimming. I think that's his favorite pastime.....he had a blast!!

We visited the outlets and then had dinner with some friends who were staying in Park City as well. Austen was so good all day even though he was totally off his schedule. We even let him stay up late so we could all go down and sit in the hot tub. He loved that so much that when it was time to get out he kept telling me no. He has a very polite sounding no that cracks me up!

I wish I would have taken more pictures of the trip, but let's be honest....the taking pictures thing is not my strong point.
I did manage to get some, so here they are.

Austen on the drive up there.

The car show on Main

This is Austen doing his made up sign for swimming with a pen in his hand. (I told you I let him do whatever he wanted.)

Here he is running down the corridor of the hotel. Who knew hotel hallways were so much fun???

This last one is us on our way to the hot tub way too late.

World's Str0ngest Baby

I don't know why, but Austen loves to pick up things that are WAY out of his league. He picks up his tool bench all the time and carries it into different rooms. He even grunts when he does it.
Here's some cute pics of him trying to carry his huge tractor. Most of them are blurry which is annoying, but they're still funny......especially his faces.

Two posts one day......I have a lot of catching up to do.

A Different Kind Of Pony Ride

Not only does he love to ride actual ponies, he loves to pretend his dad is one as well.

I was going through older pictures and found these two. Do you think he has enough toys???

His aunt saves everything and he's lucky enough to be the beneficiary of her sickness!!!

A Suite Bee's Game

The baseball season almost passed us by without seeing a game, but we finally made it!!!! I love baseball, so I was very excited when Brian mysteriously acquired some tickets. A suite......and all to ourselves (I didn't ask too many questions, but seriously no idea where he got the tickets). Austen had fun running around the suite, but his favorite thing was eating all the ice while standing on the table under the window. He has a molar that is so close to breaking through, so he's been eating ice like crazy lately! He loved watching the game for the first 5 min, then he was over it!!! If we hadn't had suite tickets I would have been outta there in no time.......that boy can not sit still!

This is the face he makes when we tell him to smile. I have a ton of pictures with him making this same face.......he cracks me up!

And we got a new word out of the adventure......baseball

Farm Country

We went and visited Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point a couple weeks ago. Austen had a blast!!! Here's a bunch of pics from our adventure.

Austen was sitting on Brian's shoulders and threw his hat into the goat cage, so Brian had to jump in and save it from being eaten.

Riding the pony.

He has no fear.

And.......he's done!!! He fell asleep almost before we even left the parking lot.