I think my least favorite phrase this year has to be “Polar Vortex.” I normally wouldn’t complain about the winter – ha ha, yeah right – but this winter has been particularly frigid and I’m done. It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have an extremely active toddler, but we do, and active toddlers need to be able to run around outside and get rid of their absurd amounts of energy.  I think I can count on 1 hand the number of days he’s been able to go outside and play at day care in the past 2 months.

I am, however, grateful that we have such a large amount of space for him to play in, in our new house, though.  We had thought about staying in our much smaller townhouse and just being cramped to avoid larger mortgage payments, but the extra room has been  wonderful for this crazy little tornado who prefers running over walking, climbing over sitting, and general chaos over calm.

We’ve tried to get creative with inside play, but we’re burned out on winter and have few ideas, so my husband introduced Enzo to Nintendo.  He hasn’t quite figured it all out yet, but he’s getting better at recognizing that the buttons he’s pushing are controlling what’s on the screen.  We probably need a few more games that are geared for his age and therefore easier.  He now asks for “Tendo”, though, and we generally oblige considering his attention span is like 5 minutes and then he decides it’s more fun to jump on the bed and toss pillows around. (The Nintendo is currently hooked up to our bedroom TV).

I can’t believe this little boy is going to be 2 in just a couple of months. It’s a fun age right now (minus typical tantrums) and it’s entertaining to watch him try and copy everything as well as repeat everything, unless it’s copying certain words that are yelled when Daddy is playing video games. 😉  Okay, maybe I’ve slipped once or twice too. It’s all about redirection, though. The minute you’ve slipped, replace it with something else like… “Cabbage!” and he’ll instead try and say that over and over because Cabbage is much more fun to say than Damn or Shit.  The counting is also fun… he tends to skip over 1 and go straight to 2 and 3. I also love his animal impressions and the fact that he watches Cake Boss with me on Netflix and says, “Cake… nommy.”