Dallin is TWO

Dallin turned 2 years old on Monday, May 18. 

We had a lot of fun celebrating!  

We kept things simple. Dinner was at Applebee's to try their new menu. While enjoying our yummy food, we talked about Dallin's birth, milestones, and reflected on how Tanner also turned two in this house and how weird it would be if Dallin had a baby sibling right now since that's what it was like when Tanner was two. 

Also at dinner, we talked about some of Dallin's new habits and interests: 

• He loves climbing, dancing, jumping, and running. He likes to try new physical feats, and doesn't seem to get scared about falling or getting stuck. He loves the jungle gyms and ladders at the playgrounds. When he falls, he often grunts, "Ow!" and then keeps going. The only times that he really cries about getting hurt is when Tanner tortures him.
• DJ has always loved to cuddle and stroke our skin, and lately he is fascinated with the moles on our faces. Your read that right. Facial moles! He touches and pokes them and says "mole? mole?" 
• Anytime that we ask him to do something, Dallin says "Okay" in the sweetest voice, and then he does what we asked him to do! A few times, he hasn't understood what we requested, but he still went and did something for us. It's pretty funny.
• He repeats himself a lot, kind of like a broken record until we repeat back to him what he is saying. Responding to his question or comment isn't enough, he likes us to repeat back what he is saying.
• Dallin's favorite TV show is Peppa Pig. It's a British cartoon show on youtube about a family of pigs. I can't figure out why he likes it so much, but he begs for it every time I sit down at the computer. Luckily, it's a cute show, but we get the little jingle stuck in our heads all the time.
• Dallin brushes his own teeth. After I apply the toothpaste, he sucks it all up, then brushes all around his mouth and teetch, climbs up to lean over the sink, spits out a bunch of air (because all the spit and toothpaste was swallowed). Then he turns on the faucet, rinses out his brush and wipes his mouth with some water, followed by drying his hands and mouth.
• Lately, DJ gets really excited about sticks and collecting as many as he can hold. He gets so excited about finding a stick on the ground, you'd think he found a hundred dollar bill.
• He is a good example to Tanner when it's time to pray. Dallin, more often than Tanner, will bow his head and fold his arms. Instead of closing his eyes, he makes a scowl. It's so hilarious. He can say prayers when we tell him what to say, and there have been a few times when he says his own thoughts and we can understand him. 

Dallin loves his pacifier and keeps track of it really well. I know there is lots of debate out there about pacifiers. For our family, they are a must! I'm so glad we have used them and that my kids are able to be soothed by them. In fact, I'm fine if he uses it for another year. I don't worry as much anymore about how he'll give up the paci because Tanner had his until he was 3+ yrs old, and then he gave it up cold turkey all on his own. So I'm not worried about Dallin. He uses it mostly when he is tired or needing comfort. He talks a lot with and without the paci in his mouth, and sings a ton, so I am not worried about the paci interfering with any kind of speech issues, either.

Speaking of speech, Dallin has a large vocabulary, and it grows everyday. I feel like he has always used verbs in his speech more than Tanner did as a toddler. (For example, his first words other than mama and dada were Go and Look). He is combining three and four words to make sentences. Some popular ones we hear are "No, Tanner! Legoame. Tieeme out!" (Let got of me. Time out!) or "Hold you, mommy?" He also says stuff like "nack pweese. appoh." (snack please, apple) and "Daddy work? Tanner pway? Mommy cooking. Dallin!" and "kick ball, mommy. kick ball high!" or "look me, made! pwaydoe! tuhtoe! tuhtoe!" (look at me, what I made with the playdoe! A turtle, a turtle!)

Conversation while trying to take these pictures-
Me: Dallin say, "Birthday!"
Dallin: No! No buhday, no pitures!

Dallin also is a little singer! He sings lots of songs, but his go-to tune is Twinkle Little Star. Sometimes he sings on just "do" or "oo". Sometimes he makes up all his own nonsense words. Sometimes he tries to sing the real words (winkoe, winkoe wittoe tar) and other times he makes up new verses (digging, mommy, digging, mommy OR Tanner fast oh Tanner fast!). He also loves to sing March with Me, which is the tune of Skip to My Lou. He learned the singing game from the family music class I teach. About a week ago after dinner, he led all of us to this tune on the back porch. He made sure all of us were marching and then spinning and then clapping with him. He sings the word "march" with an extra R to it. It is the cutest thing. "MaRch, maRch, maRch uh me!!" He also hums the entire tune near perfect into his kazoo.

(They really liked the tablet that Applebee's added to every table in the restaurant. I'm not sure what to think about that!)

After our dinner, we came home for cake and ice cream. Jeremy made the cake for Dallin, with homemade frosting. It was super cute and simple. Instead of just singing Happy Birthday and letting Dallin blow out the candles once, we did it three times, just for kicks. He LOVED blowing out the candles each time. Dallin actually calls candles "buhday" because he thinks all candles are for birthdays. We also sang every birthday song we know during cake time and through out the day.

Great job on the cake, Jeremy!

Presents were simple. Dallin loved his birthday balloon from us. He also got some nice presents from his grandparents. When he opened the grandparent gifts, he carefully pulled away a small piece of the wrapping paper. Then, he took the piece of paper to the garbage can. He did this over and over until the present was unwrapped. It was so cute and very considerate! 
I think the balloon was his favorite. He was very protective of it all week, and wouldn't let Tanner touch it at all.

So happy!

We put a lot of thought into Dallin's birthday project. After brainstorming several ideas, Dallin "said" that he wanted to make music instruments for his cousins! So during the morning of his birthday, Dallin and Tanner painted toilet paper rolls for the rain-sticks. The boys worked really hard at it!

After cake and ice cream that night, all four of us worked on making some music shakers out of old spools of ribbon. Earlier, I filled the spools with rice. As a family, we worked to decorate them. Dallin and Tanner drew on paper, I cut out circles from their drawings and Jeremy glued the drawings onto the spools to make them look cute. It was a fun family project. We made about 10 of these! 

Over the next week or two, I made and collected a few more things for the music packages. Aren't these homemade tambourine rattles AWESOME!? I'm pretty proud since this was my own idea. I'm sure someone on pinterest could one-up these. But I don't really care because I came up with it on my own, they make great sound, can be played more than one way, and it didn't cost me anything to make them.

Eventually, this is what the contents of the packages looked like! It's complete with dancing scarves, ribbons, and wands. Conductor's batons, kazoos and a little song collection of notated children's folk songs on card-stock. Also included are the homemade shakers, rattle, mini rubberband guitar and a kit for making your own rainstick (those are the paper towel rolls that the boys painted). This particular package also had a game called Match that Sound, where the child shakes each egg and listens to find its match. I filled one pair with rice, another pair with a few beads, and another pair with cut up straws. Jeremy made fun of me for shipping boxes full of recycled trash, but I hope my little nieces and nephew didn't see it that way.

We are so blessed to have Dallin in our lives!!! He is loving, happy, determined, helpful, easily content, creative, goofy, and silly. He loves to be on the go, enjoys any activity with a ball, and likes digging, dancing and drumming. He doesn't like to smile for pictures, but he smiles a lot for me! 

Dallin seems to be the embodiment of our family motto "Don't worry, be happy." He is our DJ, Dal Pal, and my little Love Bug. I tell him almost everyday that I am so glad he is my son!!

Visit from ZaKina

We were super excited that Uncle Zach and Aunt Katrina (aka Zakina) and Cousin Leila came to visit us from Thurs, May 8 to Mon, May 11.

On our drive up to get them from the airport, Dallin made some adorable faces.

After picking them up, we went straight to the Mall of America for dinner.

Dallin kind of hoarded the food.

After dinner, we played at the lego tables for a while and then went home because it was past bedtime.

The next day, Friday, I took the guests on a special tour of our town. We toured the Hormel Home where I've been teaching Music and Movement classes for parents and kids ages 0-5. We also would have gone to the SPAM Museum, but it is under construction and relocation. But I drove them by all of the other important sights: the factory, corporate office, high school, Main Street, Hospital, Walmart and the dollar store, haha. And I of course took them to the Nature Center, where we spent a lot of time at the creek that was overflowing onto the trail.

The three Littles loved Katrina's idea of making "boats" by throwing sticks, leaves and flowers into the creek and watching them flow down the waterfall.

Dallin and Leila are less than two months apart. Aren't they so cute!?
Umm, yes, I forgot to bring Dallin's shoes.

In the afternoon, we let Leila and Dallin nap. Leila came to say goodnight to Dallin.

They also enjoyed the swing with Zach.

We went bowling Friday night and had a lot of fun! We had one lane for the adults and one lane for the kids (with a bumper). It worked out really well, and the kids learned how to take turns.

Here's a blurry picture of me rolling the ball, while Leila takes her turn behind me with Katrina.

Tanner loved having two turns in a row. Dallin loved holding the ball on his own and carrying it to his lane. Leila was mostly interested in cleaning all of the surfaces with baby wipes. Such adorable little kids!!

That night, a few of us spent some time drumming.

On Saturday, we started off by attending a baptism for our friend. Jeremy had the privilege of baptizing him! We have had three new members baptized this year, and all three were baptized by Jeremy. A few people at church are calling him Jeremy the Baptist, haha.

Right after the baptism and lunch, we headed to Oxbow Park and Zollman Zoo, about an hour drive. It was our first time being there this summer season, and we had a super great time. The otters, bear, and porcupines were hilarious! I think all the animals are excited about spring.

Seeing the snakes

Here's Tanner and Leila watching the bear. He was so funny! He was in his water hole, playing with a big ball. He would try to hold the ball down in the water and seemed thoroughly entertained when it popped up out of the water. He splashed the water like toddler in a tub, and just played and played!

Dallin says "Beeer!" for bear.

Wagon buddies!

Waving hello to the mountain lion.

Katrina did her best to get a good shot of Zach and Leila watching the bison.

This is one of my favorite areas of the park. We all enjoyed playing Frisbee and running around. All of us, that is, except for Tanner. The poor thing was super dis-regulated at this point of the zoo excursion. Despite all our efforts to help him, he never really calmed down. It's hard to see him so unhappy. Literally every moment was a battle with himself, from not knowing where to stand when looking at the bison, to not being able to decide which stick to choose off of the ground to play with, to struggling with how to hold his banana without getting his fingers dirty. He only gets really bad like this when he's tired or hungry, and I can't figure out if it's normal or not. I sometimes wish we could just zap him with a tranquilizer or some kind of sugar drug that would get him back to equilibrium. It doesn't help that I keep coming against red tape from our health care providers with trying to figure out how to help him.

This family is pretty adorable!

Jeremy and Zach are really good daddies.

Our efforts to get a good group shot weren't very successful.

Diaper changing time in the trunk of the car.

We found an Asian place to eat dinner. Jeremy tried playing a hand game with Leila.

She thought Jeremy's game was dumb.

On our way out to the car.

That evening, we made a fire on the back porch and made s'mores! Thanks to Katrina for the great idea.

Can you tell who these people are? It's our look-a-likes!

It was a beautiful evening!

Sunday was Mother's Day. Tanner talked with Daddy the night before. Jeremy told him that on Mother's Day we need to be extra nice to Mommy. Tanner decided he would make me a paper airplane and wrestle with me. Then he said "Aunt Katrina is a mommy, too! You need to tell Uncle Zach to be extra nice to her, too." 

We went to church in the morning and video chatted with MomZ in the afternoon. We were lucky to be in on the video call when our brother Matt called Mom. He is serving a fulltime mission in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a big deal to be able to talk to him because the missionaries in our church are only allowed to email and write letters home. They only get to make two phone calls a year, one on Christmas Day and one on Mother's Day. Everyone from the whole family was able to see him on the video chat, so that was very cool! He looks grown up and his Spanish is really good!!

Tanner and Katrina had a some great one on one time together while most everyone else napped.

That evening, upon Zach's request, we had a dance party with the kids. This seems to be our family's thing when any of the Zavoral cousins get together! SO FUN!

Leila really loves playing with her cousins!

After we got the kids to bed, Zach and Jeremy played darts in the man cave. Then they let the wives join, and we played a fun couple's dart tournament. Katrina ended up doing the best. On another night during the weekend, we all played the game Moods. 

Throughout the weekend, we ate pretty well. We ended up eating a lot of Asian dishes because I made Thai Cashew Chicken one night and Thai Curry another night. Plus the Asian restaurant food after the zoo, and Katrina had panda express at the mall! 

I tried making acini de pepe salad, which I first ate and fell in love with at Grandma Davidson's house one of the first times I met her. I was pretty proud of myself for making it because I've always been afraid to try it. I figured Mother's Day would be a good time to try. It turned out really good! Everyone got 3 and 4 helpings of it. Jeremy made one of Grandma's brownie cakes from scratch on Mother's Day. It was super yummy.

On Monday morning, Leila and Katrina came with me and the boy's to their little preschool class. We had fun there! 

Then, we drove up to the cities to spend most of the day at the Mall of America again. Zakina really liked it! I think we went into more stores that day than I've ever been in during one day at the MoA. We also ate yummy food, played in the toy stores and went on some rides!

My little niece is SO cute. She loved it when I tickled her arms and legs to the rhythm of "Clickety, clickety clack."

Toy store.

Both Tanner and Zach were very focused on the games at this table.

I tried a spinach souffle crepe at the crepe stand. It was SOOO good!! Dallin and Tanner were very happy to have the equivalent of 3 spoonfuls of ice cream in their own little cups.

I love it when they are so easy to please.

Here's one of the highlights of the day!

We got to go on three rides, thanks to a nice ticket man that let us have one of the rides for free. Dallin loved this blue train, and we got this funny selfie of the rest of the family in front of us.

Here's the real selfie

After the rides, it was time to take our visitors back to the airport. Tanner cried when they walked away from our car. They've been gone about two weeks now. Every time Dallin sees an airplane, he says "Zach, airplane? Trina, airplane? Waywa (Leila) airplane?" Then I say "Yes, Zach and Katrina and Leila all went bye bye on the airplane." Then Dallin gives out a sad sigh or ugh. He's probably wondering when they will ever get off of that airplane! We were so glad that they were able to make the quick trip up to visit us. It is so fun to be with them!!