It is impossible to describe to anyone how tired I am right now. I am 35 weeks pregnant and Jack will be two on Monday. I think this is the equivalent to competing in the Ironman Triathlon every day for weeks and weeks on end. Motherhood is an endurance sport, and my endurance is waning.

That being said, Jack is more fun and interesting every single day. He knows all the letters of the alphabet and can sort-of count to ten. He marches around saying new words each day (today’s words include lap and scotch), and he is a wonderful boy to be around.

Weekend before last he went to spend the night with Joe’s parents and they took some pictures of his latest adventures. Here he is checking out the Christmas tree:















Apparently he went around the entire bottom of the tree accepting or rejecting ornaments on a whim. He is a very particular toddler.















The funniest thing he has done lately is attempt to differentiate his grandparents. Both of our families call grandparents the same thing – Grandma and Grandpa. Instead of making one family change, we have just always called both sides the same and let him figure it out. Well, he finally did last week. We now have Grandma Car and Grandpa Snocone (my parents) and Grandma Christmas Tree and Grandpa Guitar. It is now easy for him to know who we are talking about at any given time. Isn’t he clever?

As you are aware, his great love at the time is zoo animals. He can’t get enough. So Gloria bought him a set of small animals and made him a little box terrarium to arrange them and play. As you can see, he adored it.











































Back at home, Jack tested out his new tub crayons.












And he also spent some time in the baby’s tub “washing” his cow:



































And what would a blog post be without photos of the zoo? Last week Joe was traveling for work but was lucky enough to get home a day early. So Friday morning we all loaded up and went to the zoo. It was fun to see Jack showing his dad all the animals. We started at the new stingray exhibit. Here are the boys waiting for the rays to swim by:













I’m not sure how clear this picture will show it, but the rays are in the water swooping past:















Of course we had to visit the rhino:















And the orangutan:












It was a fun family outing and the weather was perfect. Since we went on a weekday morning it wasn’t nearly as crowded. I fear it will be my last trip to the zoo for a while, however, because lugging this belly up those hills proved to be quite taxing.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I will certainly post pictures of our celebration this week.