Pumpkin patch fun

Herding cats might be easier...

...than trying to get that perfect Halloween picture of our boys at the pumpkin patch.

Yesterday as soon as Trey flew in from his business trip, we went straight from the airport to the pumpkin patch (he's such a great Daddy!). However, I had to wake Parker from his morning nap so he was not too cooperative and Thomas was just being his usual self when it comes to taking pictures. Oh well...we had fun anyway, especially Thomas.



We headed straight for the tractor/hayride and Thomas was most excited about that:






Then Thomas informed us he wanted to go get on the "mountain" (a "mountain" of hay in the middle of the field). A mountain with a slide; what could be better than that?


A mountain of hay equals endless fun:




It's no wonder he had hay in his shoes, in his pants, in his shirt and in his diaper at the end of the day:


Parker looked on with his approval, perhaps dreaming of the day he can romp in the hay too:


Thomas as Frankenstein:



Before we left, we attempted to take a picture on more time with the pumpkins. But Parker just wanted to eat anything...including his hands:


And Thomas just wanted to be Thomas:


In the end, no perfect pumpkin patch picture, but a good time was had by all.

Halloween photos to come...

Pumpkin carving

Last weekend the excessive amount of rain that fell on Friday kept us from keeping our plan to go to the pumpkin patch on Saturday, but we still went and got some pumpkins from a local church and carved them Saturday evening. First we took a few pictures of our little pumpkins with the pumpkins...


At first Parker wasn't sure what to make of the hat. He was making the funniest faces...




And Thomas wasn't too sure about holding his little brother, but he did a decent job...


Then it was time to carve them. Trey cleaned them out while Thomas supervised:


He had to take a closer look...


Parker kept an eye on things from his little perch in the doorway:


Trey carved the first one, and then I tried my hand at it (for the first time, ever!):


Parker patiently waiting...


Thomas showed off his hard work...



And later that night we took Thomas down to check them out before he went to bed. He thought they were pretty neat!


Next up...our trip to the pumpkin patch yesterday!

Halloween carnival

Thomas' school held a Halloween Carnival today. Instead of his normal classday, Parker and I came to school with him for the carnival and a little Halloween party with his class.

I'm not sure how much involvement Thomas had in making his own t-shirt or if the teachers made them for the children, but all of the kids wore matching t-shirts instead of costumes. Here's the best picture I have of Thomas in his at the carnival:


They were very cute and Thomas was very excited about wearing it. He kept telling me he painted it and pointed at the flower. Not sure how true that is, but they were cute all the same.

The carnival consisted of many different games the children could play to win prizes. Thomas had a fun time, but since I was carrying around Parker as well, the pictures aren't all that great!

Thomas worked on his golf skills...


He dropped some hula hoops around pumpkins (probably are supposed to throw them, but the 2-year olds get a little break)...


He even had his face painted with a little pumpkin/jack-o-lantern:


With this game he couldn't quite understand how or why to throw the ghosts onto the sticky tape, but he finally figured it out...


Once we got back to their classroom, we sat down for a little storytime and singing, and then got to the Halloween party. Thomas kept asking when he could eat his snack, so he was most happy when the time finally arrived.


Thomas' Daddy should be proud to see his boy sitting at a table with four girls and one boy. :) This is half of his class, the other half is at the other table.

Then my camera died, so that was it for the pictures!

Boys will be boys

What a day! I've heard the saying "boys will be boys," and today I really learned what it means. Boys will be mischievous!

Thomas decided he didn't want to take a nap. So after he spent about an hour not napping in his crib, on my fourth trip in to answer his screams of "Mommy! Mommy!" I decided to let him get out. I asked him to play quietly in his room while I finished sorting the laundry downstairs and got that started. I put the gate in his doorway and he wasn't completely quiet, but he was good enough. He, of course, however, pulled ALL of the books out of his bookcase (as he has done a lot lately) and dumped all his toys on the floor. I let him come downstairs and let him play while I sat down to figure out what to cook for dinner. After sitting for a few minutes he ran into me shouting "I ran in the clean clothes! I jumped in the clean clothes!" Yeah, it took him less than five minutes to turn my five neatly sorted piles of laundry into this:


And it actually got much worse after that. He started kicking laundry into all parts of the house and everytime I tried to pick things up, he came behind me and dumped them all out again. But that was nothing...

When Parker woke up from his nap I went upstairs to feed him for about 15 minutes. I left Thomas playing downstairs and he usually is very well behaved. I think actually I left him in his room and then he went downstairs. After I finished with Parker I called down to Thomas and asked what he was doing. He ran to the bottom of the stairs, looked up at me with a sweet smile and said, "I'm making a mess with the water in the kitchen." Uh-oh. I asked him what water and he said, "The water in the kitchen." I thought he had pulled my glass of water off the counter. I wish.

As soon as I got downstairs I realized that not only was his hair wet, but his shirt was soaked and his pants were so soaked they were making splashing noises as he walked. Not only that, they were so wet they were falling down. I got to the kitchen and quickly noticed there was water ALL OVER the floor. I am not kidding. It covered almost the entire kitchen. Since the camera was closeby from the earlier mess, I picked it up and that kid kept on going! You can kind of see how wet he is here:

As I was trying to take the video, he was still pushing the dispenser!!

It took me 5-6 bath towels and about 15 minutes to clean up all of the water (which stretched 10-15 feet away from the fridge at one point. I had to pull out the fridge to dry out underneath it. Water was everywhere. If it wasn't so funny, I probably would have been really angry, but as it was, it was all I could do not to laugh. I guess that's the reason the dispenser does have a lock on it. And I need to get in the habit of using that feature!

Rolling, rolling, rolling

This morning when I looked at Parker on his video monitor, something looked a little strange. I went in for a closer look and sure enough, this is what I found:


The reason this was remarkable was because this is the first time Parker has rolled completely onto his belly from his back. He has rolled to his side and almost to his belly a number of times, but always goes back to his back. He has rolled from his belly to his back a number of times since he was only a couple months old. He was very proud of himself this morning:


I was so proud of him. When I took him to his 4-month well baby visit (nearly two months ago!), the doctor asked if he was rolling over yet and said he should at some point between 4-6 months (with it being just as "normal" at 6 months as at 4 months). Even though I would not have "worried" about him either way, I didn't want to go to his 6-month WBV next week and tell the doctor he still wasn't rolling over.

So just in the nick of time, he decided to make the big move. Good for Parker! And, by the way, when I put him on his playmat this morning, he did it again...and again. I guess he just wanted to prove it wasn't a one-time thing.

And actually, this is what he looked like when I came in this morning:


He is becoming more and more of a thumbsucker. Unlike his big brother, he's not very interested in pacis, and just recently has started taking a bottle (a few times). But he is most content with his thumb. I guess it is perfect seeing how he always knows exactly where it is and how to get it in his mouth. Here he shows off that skill in his bouncy seat this afternoon:


The orthodontist is going to love us.

Two and a half years old!

I'm only slightly over a week late... Thomas is now two and a half years old! I cannot believe it. I know it is an overused phrase, but where does the time go?


When Thomas first came home from the hospital, we noticed right away that he laughed in his sleep. He started smiling early and he soon started laughing while awake, too. And that's just Thomas. He smiles and laughs and loves life. His teacher has commented to me about how much he just smiles and smiles all day. He is such a happy boy and his happiness brings such light to my heart.



How can you not smile when you see this face? Can I ever really have a bad day?


I don't even know where to start with his update this month. He is growing so much, developmentally and physically. He talks ALL.THE.TIME. He loves to give me the play-by-play on his life. "Mommy, I'm going to get my dump truck. Mommy, I'm sitting in my dump truck. Mommy, I'm sitting in my dump truck. I'm putting my toys in my dump truck, Mommy." And on, and on and on and on.

He loves reading books (or having them read to him, rather) and he's always saying things later that he picked up in his books. Like he'll tell me his car is "stuck in the muck" or "I'm frustrated, Mommy," or a wealth of other little lines he picks up here and there from the books we read. It's funny. Today's line of the day was everything was "taking it easy today," because that's a line he got from the book we read last night, Goose Goofs Off (one of my Sweet Pickles series books from my childhood).

He still loves cars, trucks, tractors, planes, firetrucks and is lately fascinated with Play-Doh. I'm not sure if I mentioned in here, but recently it was fire safety week at his school. One day they had a fire truck come visit and the kids got to check it out. When I picked up THomas that day, his teacher said to me with great exclamation, "Thomas ABSOLUTELY LOVED the firetruck!!!! He was running around giving the firefighters high fives and we had to beg him to come back inside." The next day one of the kid's dad is a firefighter and he came to talk to the kids. He wanted someone to demonstrate how to stop, drop and roll and apparently Thomas was the only one willing to do it. I was actually a little bit surprised by this behavior (pleasantly so), but it just says how much he loves firetrucks. :)

One thing we are still working on is his eating. He is becoming more open to trying new things, but I wish he would eat more. He is a very picky eater. He loves rice, but makes an utter mess eating it. And we've moved him out of the high chair and into the booster seat, so getting him to sit still is a new challenge. He also is starting to prefer drinking out of a topless cup. That is fine, but he still has not learned that you can't run around with a cup of drink without a lid and you can't just tip it back and forth either. We only put very small amounts in his cup at a time (makes it less to clean up!), but it's definitely a work in progress! We are also trying to introduce cow's milk for the first time (as of a few days ago). So far it's going well in terms of not causing a reaction with his skin, but he doesn't really like it yet. He hasn't had a whole lot of it, but I'm trying to mix it with his soy milk to get him to slowly change over. Hopefully he won't have any reactions. It would be so nice to allow him to eat whatever he wants to try and not have to worry about it all the time.

Potty training is probably not far away. Lately he has asked to go to the potty occasionally (like tonight...and he did both things on the potty right before bedtime). He seems to do better going on the "big potty" instead of his little potties. And what he really seems to like to do is flush the toilet. He'll go a little bit and say he is finished, get down, flush the potty, wash his hands and then say he needs to go again. We'll do this about three times before he finally says he is finished. I'm sure if I really focused on potty training he'd probably do okay and I know I need to do this soon. My goal is to have him potty trained by the end of the year.

I think soon after he is potty trained we will move him into a bed. He is still happily in the crib, but I think before too long we'll at least take off the front of his crib and let that be his "transition" bed for a little while. I'm not quite ready, but it will be soon.

Wow. Two and a half years. It's hard to imagine that for as quickly as this time has gone by, when this amount of time goes by again he will be five and ready to start kindergarten. It really does seem to go in the blink of an eye. I know he won't always be this cuddly little guy who loves to give hugs and kisses, so I try to soak it all up now. I need to record the things he says like, "I'm so glad to see you too, Mommy" (that he says without me saying anything). He cares so much about everything and everyone. If he sees trash on the ground he says sadly, "Ohhhhhh, Oh no.... That's terrible. Somebody has to pick that up, Mommy." I hope he always keeps his loving personality.

He is so sweet and loving to his brother. As soon as he sees him, he always wants to give him a hug and tell him hello. He is always giving Parker his toys and saying he will let him hold them for a minute because he is sharing with Parker. Granted, sometimes he does tell me to stop feeding Parker and come outside with him (and leave Parker inside), but for the most part, he wants Parker to be around him.

I love this little boy with all my heart and I just cherish every day I get to spend with him, watching him grow and learn. And now a few more pictures for fun...












I love my "little man!" :)

Text for a cure

I meant to post this earlier this week, but I don't imagine that this only applies for today. You may recall my friend whose son has a fatal form of muscular dystrophy, Duchenne MD. He is four years old (his website is the first on my list of links on the right side). Today college football coaches are wearing patches on their sleeves as part of an event, Coach to Cure MD, to raise money for researching a cure for this dreadful disorder. You can send a $5 donation just by texting on your cell phone (CURE to 90999) or using this thing below. I cannot tell you how worthy this cause is. I feel certain a cure can be found; I just want it to be as soon as possible. Just thought I'd post it here in case anyone is interested in participating. No pressure... :) But I'd love you forever if you donate now...and so will Thomas & Parker. ;-)