Hudson is really in a fun stage where you can carry on a conversation with him and you never know what he's going to say. Sometimes, you can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he's trying to put words together to make a sentence and get his point across. It's fun when it works, but when he knows what he's saying and nobody else can decipher it, he gets pretty frustrated! He's quite the little tattle tale lately, and doesn't forget anything! The days of promising him something later to divert his attention right now, and then forgetting about it are long gone! He points out the park by the Riverwalk that Grandpa takes him to on Sat mornings while I go shopping with Mom and Grandma, and talks about the bridge that they run across and throw rocks off of. He knows the way to certain places, so when we turn off of the highway to go to Great Grandma's house, he knows where we're going, and that she has a piggy light he can turn on and candy for him to eat! He was a hamburger for Halloween, so any time anyone mentions something about Halloween, he'll tell them he was a hamburger and mommy was ketchup. I took him to a Halloween carnival set up for kids at a local church, and he had a blast.(pics below) Everyone was getting a kick out of watching him run from one thing to the next.

Potty training is still hit or miss. He goes just about every time we sit him on the potty, but he rarely tells us when he has to go. I'm sure that will come with time, but until then we just have to make sure we ask him frequently. He does prefer his pull ups, or big boy pants (bo bo fants in Hudson speak) over diapers, which is good, but that doesn't stop him from going in them. Oh well, I guess he'll get it when he's ready and until then there isn't anything anyone can do to make him do something he doesn't want to!

Hudson is now firmly entrenched in the Terrible Twos in both age and attitude. He's as stubborn as they come, and not afraid to let anyone know when he isn't happy. He can yell, scream, slap, kick and throw tantrums with the best of them, but he's usually a ball of energy and a lot of fun to play with. We've started the potty training now and he's really good with it when he wants to be. It's just convincing him that it's worth taking time out of playing to go on the potty that we're having trouble with. He'd much rather just go in his diaper and keep right on playing. I picked him up from the sitter one day last week and asked her how he did with potty training that day. She just started laughing and explained that he must have overheard us talking about potty training and every time he had to go, he ran up to her and told her he wanted to go on the potty train! I told her whatever worked was fine with me.

We took him to Huber Farm over the weekend to play around and get a pumpkin, but we were so disappointed with it, we only stayed about 45 mins. It's $6 per person to get in, and then pretty much anything else he wanted to do was extra. But we did get some good pictures of him while we were there.

We took our first family "vacation" over the weekend and ventured out to St Louis. We left last Fri when Jesse got off work and went straight to a Cabellas store that luckily ended up being attached to a mall! I was picturing chasing Hudson around the store while Jesse looked at everything, but it worked out. The mall had a great childrens area in the center of it so Hudson and I played on that for a while, and then a train pulled up that offered rides around the mall. Of course, Hudson made a mad dash for the train and was trying to scale the fence to get to it when I convinced him to go around the fence like all of the other children were! So we went on a train ride that turned out to be a neat way to see what stores were located in the mall. After the mall, we went downtown and met up with some of our friends who were in St Louis that weekend as well and we had dinner and then went back to the hotel to let the kids play.

Sat we went to Grant's Farm, which is just a little outside St Louis and that turned out to be fun for the adults and kids. Hudson got to ride a carousel, feed baby goats, and also ride on the tram, which he thought was a choo choo train. The goats were probably the funniest thing, though, because they knew that the people entering their area had milk in bottles for them, so they attacked! Hudson didn't like that, so we brought him back out and he fed them through a fence, and that was much more his speed! After Grant's Farm and naptime we went to a St Louis Cardinals game. We got first pitch tickets, so we only paid $5.50 per ticket, which ended up being a good thing. Hudson was more interested in standing at the back of the stadium and watching their metro trains come in and out than he was in watching the game, but we expected that. We visited the gift shop and found a mini wooden bat for him that he loved. He ended up finding a couple of older boys who had a ball and they were nice enough to picth the ball to him and let him pitch it to them a couple of times. He really thought that was neat! Below are some pictures from the weekend.

The summer is almost over already and Hudson will be 2 years old in less than a month. Isn't that crazy?! He's such a big boy now, he does or says something new every day it seems like. His big thing is anything that has to do with sports, especially baseball and basektball. He has a little ball and glove and a bat that he gets out at least once every day and we all take turns with them. He'll throw it to you, but only if you have your entire hand in the smallest glove ever made, and if you catch it, he smiles real big and says "Good Catch". Then he'll announce that it's his turn and he'll grab the bat or the glove and then we have to throw it to him. Right now, he's much better at throwing or catching the ball, but I guess that's allowed. Over the weekend we went to the Strassenfest, where Hudson got to ride some rides, play a few games, and even go on a choo choo train ride. He loved every minute of it, and there are pictures below of the rides and the train ride. The big grin is from when he finally heard the train whistle and we started to move.

I can't believe it's almost July already! In two months, Hudson will be 2 years old, and officially a toddler. Although in size and attitude, he's been a toddler for a while now! Everyday is a new adventure with Hudson as he talks more and more, and constantly tries new things. He's not afraid of anything, and there is no end to what adventure he'll think of. We took him boating with our neighbors for the first time yesterday, and he absolutely loved it. I was a little concerned about how he'd do out there all day, but he was great. If the older kids did something, he was going to do it, too. It didn't matter that they were a lot bigger than him. He jumped off of the boat into the water, played with water guns, beach balls, squealed and laughed as the waves rocked him, and threw a major tantrum when it was time to get everything back in the boat and head home! He wasn't afraid one bit. He had his backpack (life jacket) on and was happy as could be swimming and playing in the water.

We also went to Jesse's nephew Braydon's little league tourney over the weekend where Hudson cheered and clapped for Braydon, and pretty much hunted down anyone with a baseball or a bat that he could catch! While they were here, Jen gave me some pictures that she had taken when we were down at their house on my birthday over Memorial Weekend. Those, and some pictures of Hudson enjoying the bouncy house that my mom bought him are below.

Hudson is talking more and more every day and his favorite sentence is Daddy lawn mower mow the grass. Except it sounds more like Daddy maw-moer mow da dass. But he'll repeat it over and over and over. He also gets excited any time we see a tractor, motorcycle, or school bus, but his favorite is still the lawn mower. I'm not sure what started his obsession with lawn mowers, but he sure loves them.

We made our first trip to Splashin' Safari last Fri, and it was a hit. The water was a little cool, so we only stayed a couple of hours, but Hudson was having a great time, and was not ready to leave. But his lips were blue and he was shivering, so I pried him out of the waterpark and we rode his favorite car ride, and went home. We are planning on going back again this Fri if the weather cooperates, so hopefully the water has warmed up some over the last week.

There are some pictures below of Hudson playing with bubbles last weekend at Mom and Dad's. This was really the first time it wasn't too windy and he could actually chase the bubbles and catch up to them. He had a great time!

Holiday World Fun

I took Hudson to Holiday World for the first time on Fri. I was pretty sure he'd like it, but I've been wrong on things like this before. The first two rides we tried were in the kiddie area of the park, and he wasn't impressed. As soon as the ride started, he yelled for me and wanted off. So we tried the Lewis and Clark trail where you drive cars around a track that guides you through. So Hudson could drive the cars, which he loved. We went on that ride so many times, the guy working it was Hudson's buddy when we finally left. After that we rode on the train that goes around a section of the park and talks about some fairy tales. He thought that was pretty cool because he loves trains. After the train we went to the Holidog section, which is a play area for kids, and Hudson absolutely loved it here. They had little fountains that sprang up from the ground, and he played in those for almost an hour! he was kicking the water, trying to drink the water, running through, over and around the fountains. And then an older boy showed him how to stick your foot at the base of the fountain and it sprays everywhere. He tried that a few times, but decided kicking the water once it came up was much more fun! There are some pictures below from our adventures.