Birthday Party

Zander rallied after being sick with a stomach virus earlier in the week for a fun filled birthday weekend. We started out by making a trip home to Wisconsin to see Grandma and Grandpa. On Saturday we took him to an indoor waterpark where we met up with several of our friends and their kids where they all had a blast swimming and playing. Zander quickly left the toddler area to climb up the rope nets, tunnels, etc of the big kid structure, but did not want to go down any of the slides. He then got to celebrate with 7 other of his little friends for some birthday pizza, snacks and cake. He had a ton of fun playing and liked being the center of attention. We headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's house of Sunday (his actual birthday day) for his birthday party with family and some of his best buds again. He had a lot of fun opening presents, playing with the balloons and playing with his friends. He was happy to be back at daycare on Monday (after being home sick part of the week before) and shared donuts with his friends for his special day. Thank you to everyone who celebrated with us, Zander had a very fun birthday and is still talking about it!

He was the center of attention while opening his gifts!

We had a lot of fun playing at the waterpark

Zander with all of his friends! We love getting together with our friends and their kids!

Hanging out with Grandpa, Paul

 Zander was so excited to play with his friends Charlie and Henry and wanted to be a big boy and sit in a regular chair and drink from an open cup like them! So cute!!

 Train themed birthday and cake!

Having fun with Aunt Abbie

Great Grandpa Kruser gave him a Thomas bank and helped him put his "monies" in it!
 

Zander turns 2!

It is hard to believe Zander is already 2 years old! He is such as sweet little boy and sometimes seems so grown up! He has had a lot of accomplishments over his last year:

He began walking in June, and is now progressing to running. He also loves to climb, does really well on playground equipment and can go up and down a few steps holding the railing or likes to go up and down holding someone's hand. He is not yet jumping, but is working on it!

Zander talks a lot! and really well. He knows way too many words to count and surprises us a lot with the words he knows (ostrich, octagon....crazy stuff!). He also generally puts two words together and sometimes says longer phrases (shut the door, mama). He will also pick up a book and will sometimes "read" to himself and sometimes talks while he is playing!

Zander loves going to daycare and likes to talk about his friends. (not sure if I should mention his biting phase! oh well, they love him anyway!)  He also really loves the 2 babies at day care and always says "two babies, two babies" He has been with most of the same kids (2 have left and there has been the addition of the babies) and it is fun to see them grow up together. Most of them are around his age now (within 6-9 months of each other) so they are now spending more time during the day having "school" as well as craft time. He loves to show off his projects he made for us!

Zander is very smart and is doing well with "school." He can put together a 9 piece puzzle (really easy for him to get all the pieces in). He stacks blocks to make towers. He likes to draw. He counts to 15 by himself and can usually go to 20 (but with a lot of "aahhh teens" in there). He still loves the number 8 and it is the only one he can identify consistently. He is starting to sing the ABC song and will say repeat all of the letters with help. He is becoming more consistent with colors, but is pretty good with blue, purple and orange. He knows a lot of his shapes (circle, square, triangle, moon, star, heart, octagon).

He loves Mickey Mouse and Elmo, but also likes Thomas, Daniel Tiger, and Curious George. He LOVES trains, cars, dump trucks, tractors, airplanes, garbage trucks, etc., etc., etc. He also really likes his car seat and talks about it all the time (not really sure about this one....he's kind of strange sometimes!). He also likes to play with balls (not so great at catching yet!) and likes to watch basketball and sometimes hockey with Zeb. He also went through a phase where he talked a lot about the sun and the moon!

He really is a wonderful little boy and we love watching him grow up!!

 

 

Vacation 2015

We decided to take advantage of one more free flight for Zander (lap sit) before he turned 2 so we took a long weekend over the President's Day holiday to visit San Antonio, Texas. We were more than happy to leave behind the freezing temperatures of the Midwest to soak up some Texas sun! Zander was really good on the flights and seemed to enjoy watching all that was happening at the airport as well as the take off/landing and flying through the clouds (although at one point he really realized we were no longer on the ground and got scared and repeatedly said "down, down"). We had a lot of family fun as well as a lot of good food! It was a great trip and we are now even more restless waiting for spring to arrive. Here's an overview of our trip in photos:

We had fun hanging out at the hotel pool and got to do some swimming. Zander loved wearing his sunglasses!

We had so much fun just being outside and spent some time having fun at the playground and soaking up some sunshine!

We spent most of the day Saturday at the San Antonio zoo and Zander loved seeing the animals we read about in our books and know a lot of the names of the animals. We all really loved watching the monkey's play!

 





The highlight of Zander's trip was the 3 mile miniature train ride around the park. Zander loves trains and had so much fun. He pointed out every train gate he saw go up and down and screamed "tunnel!!!!!" when we passed through the tunnels. We were hoping to take him for another ride on our last day, but we got rained out.

We ran a (somewhat rainy) 5K race at the art museum which was a lot of fun and a good way to meet new people. Zeb lead the Gilliam family and pushed Zander in the stroller including up and down the hill  and helped me place first in my age group (he finished 5th in his which was great impressive as he pushed the stroller and talked to Zander the whole time!)

 

We had a lot of fun on a boat ride through the river, it was a good way to see the whole river walk and down town area as we were not able to walk the whole thing

 

 

We also made a visit to the Alamo

 

We got rained out on our last day in San Antonio but ended up having  a lot of fun at the Children's museum before flying back to Chicago

 

Watching the planes!

 

Snow Day!!

Super Bowl Sunday brought us the blizzard of 2015. We were lucky enough to be bundled up at home to watch the snow fall all day. The total brought us 19 inches of snow!! Zeb and Jasmine shoveled about 4 times during the day just to keep up with the amount of snow which only followed by a night of wind blowing and drifting to do it all over again on Monday morning. Luckily, CPS cancelled school so Zander and mom got to stay home for an extra snow day! We had some time to play in the snow both days, but there is only so much you can do with 19 inches of snow and a 3 foot toddler and a 12 pound dog! We had fun anyway....but now can't wait for it to melt. Maybe then we can make a snowman:)

 

We hope our new tree (Murray the Maple) makes it through this winter

 

 

We woke up to drifts of snow in our backyard

Having some fun all bundled up

Merry Christmas 2014!!

The Gilliam Family had an amazing Holiday season this year. Zander is older now and was starting to understand Santa and Christmas. He got really excited about Santa bringing presents. He loved decorating the house and got into the holiday spirit by wearing a necklace he made at daycare everyday (he asked for his necklace as soon as we entered his room in the morning!). We were lucky the December weather had been pretty mild and we got to enjoy some activities around the city including a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo Lights and riding the Santa "L" train. We started a family tradition by celebrating as a family on the Sunday before Christmas by having a pajama morning with a holiday breakfast and exchanging presents. Zander was very excited to get a train set that he played with for hours that morning. We then went to Wisconsin to spend Christmas eve and Christmas with the Ranum family and some friends followed by a trip to Iowa over the weekend to see Zeb's family and our many friends. It was an eventful and wonderful holiday. We're looking forward to our 2015!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Zoo Lights

Decorating the Christmas tree and showing off his cool necklace

His favorite gift this year was the train set (he LOVES trains!)

 

Leaving Santa his cookies and beer (Wisconsin Santa drinks beer instead of milk....of course!)

Great Grandpa Kruser was giving Zander some carpentry tips

The Santa Train

Lucky Number 8

Zander has been learning to count and we have found he loves the number 8! It comes out at least 3 times when he is counting to 10 (even after several weeks of practice).  He also likes to find the 8 and stand on it on the hopscotch board at the school playground!

Haircut

It was finally time to get Zander's first hair cut. His curls were very cute and we held onto them for as long as we could. With the change in the weather and the introduction of hats again, his hair had been getting out of control....it was time. He was very nervous when we walked into the local kid cuts salon. By the time it was his turn to get in the chair, he had a meltdown. The cut was completed with Zander sitting in mom's lap. He screamed and fought it the best he could, but in the end the hair cut was completed (a little crooked in spots) and he looks like a very handsome, grown up little boy!

He survived and got a sucker as a reward (maybe to bribe him for the next  time!)