Dr. Parker Seuss

Parker has become obsessed with books.

No, I take that back. 

He has become obsessed with us reading him books. He'll be playing happily, independently, and then, he sees it. Laying across the room in a pile of toys.

A book.

He quickly scurries over to it, picks it up, and turns his head looking for the nearest literate adult.

Dangit. He sees me.

He grins, throws the book in my direction, and starts crawling as fast as he can over to me.

He catches up to the book, picks it up again, and throws it until it lands in my lap.

He then crawls up into my lap and plops himself down.

If there is any deviation from the above course, massive amounts of whining happen.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading and cuddling with my little guy, it's the best feeling in the world and seriously the cutest thing ever. I die. But I really can't afford to drop everything every time he runs across a book. So Steve and I hid all the books...AH! Is that bad?! I'll pull them out and read them a couple times a day, but this way WE'RE in control of reading time.

wrastling

 There's this delicious southern place called Johnny Reb's that Steve and I have been to, and I was craving their chicken fried chicken the other day. So naturally I signed up for their e-club to see if I could get anything for free (I usually do this for most of our favorite places. The easiest free you can do! FREE people.) We got free breakfast, so we picked a morning and went, mouths salivating expecting some awesome biscuits and gravy, sausage, fluffy pancakes, eggs, the whole enchilada.

Let's just say Parker painted the picture of how we felt.

Parker loves him some PB&J sandwiches!

 If it wasn't obvious who wore their sassy pants to the debate, then I don't know what is.

 Roadtrip! A lot of Steve's family was getting together up in Walnut Creek, California for his Grandma's 87th birthday. It also happened to be conference weekend, and the lady who approves vacation days happens to be LDS, so Steve justified getting the two days off from clinic as it being a 'religious holiday'. BAM. All sorts of perks from this whole religion thing, I tell ya. 

The week we left, I had a million plans with different girlfriends (shopping and lunch dates, crafting, etc.) a class at work to attend weekly, and Steve had another intense check-off and test (which he again rocked), so our level of quality time had dropped off the charts even more than usual. Friday morning we packed up the car and took off at naptime.

Obviously.....

 Parker actually did better than expected! It took him a while to cry himself to sleep during his naptimes (2 during the 7-hour trip), but when he was awake he was pretty dang happy! Lots of food, peek-a-boo, new cars, books, keys, water bottles, whatever I could find. We made it that evening in time to get reacquainted with mostly everyone and just hung out. We walked over to Steve's Aunt and Uncle's house where they have chickens in their backyard! Crazy! I want some, I think that would be amazing. It'd have to be when Parker was old enough to do all the dirty work though, because you know I'm not about to get all up in those chicken coops every day. That's just screaming little boy chore, don't you think? The next morning Steve and I went for a run TOGETHER. That never happens.

The landscaping reminded me of Utah, we were right at the foothills of a pretty hilly area, so the cooler weather, the view and tall, green trees were a nice change of pace. Steve usually goes at about a 45 second to 1 minute faster pace than I was running that day, but he was sweet enough to stay with me.

We came back and Steve's Aunt Karen and cousins had made this amazing breakfast we got to feast on while we intermittently watched some conference along with socializing. The only bummer of the trip was that it was during conference, so we missed quite a bit, but we'll try to catch up.

We went to the park to get the wiggles out of the boys.

Steve's sister, Lori and cousin, Maddie.

Sifting through the sand with Grandma Anderson

 Steve's Grandma's house has this one step that separates the kitchen and dining area from the living room. That thing provided HOURS of entertainment for Parker. It was fabulous. He kept crawling up and down it, sometimes using his face to land the transition, but usually did so gracefully. We need to get one of those at our place. That balloon (top right) actually provided quite a bit of entertainment for us adult cousins. Like really? Obviously we were all pretty tired from going non-stop, but at least we were all-on-the-same-page-tired and all thought it was hilarious. So apparently like 90% of the Andersons are musically-inclined (and when I say inclined, I mean extremely talented) in the strings department. They usually get together and play during any type of reunion, and Grandma Joyce just loves it, so of course during her birthday weekend, music was her activity of choice. It's her birthday and she'll play if she wants to. Again with the cooler, amazing weather we chilled outside a lot. Parker's feet didn't like the grass so when he was crawling, he'd curve his little feeties up so they wouldn't touch the grass as he crawled along. So cute. On the way back, we listed to as much conference as we could with our earbuds and phone. I don't know about everyone else, but by the last hour of any roadtrip, I'm so tired of the car that I usually start singing extremely loud and obnoxiously, Steve usually joins in, and we're usually laughing hysterically because we're so delirious. Parker was entertained.

 my bubby

 The whole family, minus Steve's brother and wife and their kids. We missed you guys! And happy birthday Grandma Joyce! You are the cutest little spunky Grandma and are as active as ever.

(Apparently didn't get a picture of everyone looking at the same time, oops!)

 It was so good to see everyone and get away for a little bit!

Pleeeeenty of book-reading all up in here. No shirts required for little boys apparently.

                            

 Just trying to record some things he's doing. When he crawls, he's been doing this Mogley Jungle Book crawl with him bum in the air and legs straight, I die every time he does it. He only did it for a second or two in the videos, wished he would do it more! He gets camera shy and doesn't do things as intensely or as much as he usually does, but you get the point!