The Pumpkin Patch

It's almost Halloween and with that, comes pumpkins. So my friend Mandy and I packed our kiddos up and headed out to one of the many pumpkin patches. They have a ton of things to do for kids there. It was fun to get out of the house and enjoy the nice weather we are having. Alex is at the fun age where taking him places like this is actually somewhat enjoyable to him. He got a real kick out of the whole thing. He got to ride the barrel train, which is just a little tractor that pulls barrels with seats in them.Then we all took turns going down a big slide that they built into a large hill. He also got to go down it by himself, but the first round, we went together.We enjoyed the corn maze. They also had a milo maze, but after one maze, Mandy and I weren't game to going through it.Alex has nine months on his buddy Wesley, so he got to enjoy more of the activities there. Even though, he wasn't sure how to hold on by himself, he got a kick out of the zip-line. Really, he did pretty well. I just basically held on to his belt loop of his jeans so he wouldn't drop and break a leg.And what is a trip to the pumpkin patch without a fun filled hay-rack ride. The tractor pulled us all down to the pumpkin patch and we all hunted for the perfect pumpkin. But to a two year old, the perfect pumpkin isn't round and orange. It's green, lopsided and worm-eaten. So here are the three kiddos lovin' on thier pumpkin finds.

Abby looks like she has three pumpkins there, doesn't she? Anyhow, Alex later ditched his green pumpkin and opted for a smaller gourd-like pumpkin. So for the final picture of the day, here is Alex showing off his awesome new pumpkin. And for more fun Pumpkin Patch pictures of the day, please visit my buddy's blog about The Pumpkin Patch.

The Night Owls

So I apparently have two very talented kids. Yes...they can do a very neat trick. They can shape-shift. By day they are monkeys and come evening, they shape-shift into owls. Not just any owls though. Night owls. Which I'm finding are the most annoying kinds of owls. I knew that kids take after their parents in a lot of aspects. But I had no idea that somewhere down the line, they could even pick up on your past habits. Pre-kids, I was the worst kind of night owl myself. Starting in college, I would stay up to the wee hours in the morning doing all sorts of things, from art projects to watching movies and chatting on the internet (which my poor roommate...sorry Mandy...had to deal with). I used to love to go to midnight movie openings and stay out until 3 or 4 in the morning. Alas...having children has given me a rude awakening on the true value of sleep. Since I got pregnant with Alex back in January of 2006, I don't believe I have gotten a full night of sleep since. Once he was big enough to beat my bladder to a pulp while growing him in my belly, I was up peeing all night. I truly believe that God tells the baby to beat your bladder so that you will get used to waking up every hour on the hour for the rest of your life. Now I have no stamina for the likes of those night owl days. I can manage a meager 1:00 in the morning on the weekends, but my days of all-nighters are far behind me I fear. Of course, their dad isn't exactly innocently going to bed at 10:30 like the good role model. No...he is guilty of weekend WOW binges. (that's World Of Warcraft for all you non-gamers) He can easly stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning on weekends. Of course, he doesn't have the joy of waking up 5 times a night with the kids and waking up at the butt-crack of dawn.

Here they are planning their nightly antics together.

So back to the kids. Yes...they are now taking after their mother-dearest and enjoying the fruits of the night hours. Last night, miss Abby decided to go on a sleeping strike and was up until 1:11 a.m. Alex wasn't guilt-free for the sleepless night either. He didn't pass out until well after 11:30. So you might be thinking that these late nights make for sleeping in for mama in the morning, right? No, no, no...no such thing. They were both wide awake and ready to start the day by 8:50 a.m. *sigh* I took a long look at myself in the mirror tonight and realized that I do, in fact, have the tell tale signs of weariness on my face. The dark circles and wrinkles don't lie, my friends. A night owl no more am I, but rather a tired mama with her two mini-night owls. Ahh...chips off the ol' block.

I like to Move It, Move It!

And she's off!! That's right. Abby is mobile. She has been 'mobile' for awhile now, but I believe now that I can officially label her as a movin' monkey. She isn't crawling, but she is commando crawling everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. She not only can get into any place her little heart desires, but she also can get herself into the sitting position on her own too. She also, as of last night, can pull herself up onto her knees if she has something to cling herself onto. Which of course only means one thing. She will probably be trying to pull herself to standing before I know it. She is one cute little movin' monkey. She pulls herself up to Alex when he is sitting down next to her and will cling on to him. Alex loves it and laughs the whole time. Which of course gets Abby to laughing too. They just lay around on the floor and tumble over each other. I call it baby wrestling because they lock their arms around each other's necks and it looks like they are wrestling. It's too cute. Well, here are some pics for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Alex!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX!!!!

It's official. As of 10:31 a.m. this morning, I have a two year old. I can't believe how fast time has flown. It seems like we were just celebrating his first birthday and now he's already two! Wow. It seems like when you have kids, time doubles in speed. We had a blast at his birthday party this past weekend. Quite a few people made it to celebrate his big day. So to all of you who came, thanks for coming. It was a ton of fun. Alex got the joy of having his first sleepover here. His three cousins, Lauren, Linsey, and Kate, got to stay the night thanks to my brother-in-law, Ben, trucking them all here. Alex was of course beside himself with joy at the idea of having kids here 24/7. I've never seen him so tired at weekend's end. Anyhow, we celebrated with hot dogs, chips, cake and ice cream (soy ice cream for the kiddos).Now if you see the picture of hot dogs to the right, Did anyone know that boiling a pot 1/2 full of hot dogs would end up looking like this? You can click on it for a bigger image of what it looked like. Punch-bag balloons and noisemakers kept the party alive. There were 8 kids in all here to celebrate and BOY was that a house full of noise. My brother, Jake, brought his twin kids Jamie and Linda. My friend Mandy brought her kid Wesley, and of course with Lauren, Linsey, and Kate plus Abby and Alex of course...that made for a lot of fun. Of course the whole weekend was pretty much a celebration for Alex. On Saturday we woke up and went to the Town Fall Festival. There was a parade and the kids all came away with large sacks of candy. It was fun watching them scramble to catch the massive amounts being chucked at us from the floats and tractors. We then went to my parents house where I took the kids for rides on the horses. Alex of course was much too excited to ride the horse. He would rather play with the kids, so that is what he did. My nieces enjoyed the rides very much though. I even got my brother-in-law to take a quick ride. And then much to my surprise, Josh let my mom lead him around with Alex on one of the horses when I was out taking a quick ride by myself. Then Sunday of course was the big party. After it was all said and done, he came away with a nice size loot of new toys and fun things to keep him busy. His new favorite toy right now is the basketball from Grandma and Grandpa Shaw. But the toy we can't wait to try out is the one from Aunt Mandy. She got him a great big indoor blow-up trampoline. Should be interesting. We're gonna try it out this weekend so hopefully I can post pics of that later.

Alex & Daddy at the parade.

Alex and cousin Kate before bed...I mean before JUMPING on the bed.

Alex opening his best friend the basketball...

Alex examining his new best friend the basketball...

and now Alex throwing his new best friend the basketball and nearly killing Daddy.
(I think basketball needs to be an outside toy.)

All the kiddos enjoying the playroom.

Alex is lookin' cool in his new powerwheel. (Thank you Craigslist)

And Wesley enjoyed helping his buddy Alex open his gifts.

And here we have Lauren and Linda posin' for a pic.

And let's not forget miss Abby who celebrated her 1/2 year birthday on the 11th. She is 6 months old now. Ain't see a cutie?

And before I end the big birthday blog, I'd like to make shout out to my sister-in-law. Two years ago, she drove all the way here to witness the birth of Alex only to find that she would forever be sharing this special day with him. Why are they sharing it you ask? Well, today happens to be her birthday as well so Happy Birthday Heather! I hope it's an awesome one.

God Bless the Good Pediatrician

Today we got the honor of meeting our new pediatrician. And you know what? He was AWESOME!! My friend suggested that I change doctors after she successfully changed as well. She lovingly called our old doc, "The Talking Head". I decided that changing Alex to a new doctor with new nurses, could possibly cure him of his unbelievably awful fear of going to his exams. I was apparently right. Normally before we even get in the door, he is hyperventilating and screaming. Today he was happy and even said hi, bye and 'hi-five dude' to the doctor. He answered many questions and more that I threw at him. One of them being about Alex's allergies. He told me that when Abby starts on cow's milk, he wants to food challenge him in the office because he would bet that he has outgrown it (even though the skin-test is positive as of 1/2 a year ago). He also proceeded to inform me that Alex's reaction to the milk was not considered anaphylaxis. It is actually called Angioedema, which is the swelling of soft tissue mostly in and around the face. So even though we must still continue with the strict milk avoidance, we are now more relieved to know that it might not be as serious as we thought. And he told me that Alex's nasal passages look great and that means that his allergies are doing good. If he was having a serious problem with the cats (yes I asked him about this), then he would see the results in his nose. So he said that he more than likely has been desensitized from his cat allergy and he recommends that I keep doing all that I'm doing with him. It made me feel great to hear a doctor tell me I was doing everything right. Otherwise, Alex is still in the 90% for weight, slowin' down in height at 70%, and he has a normal head at 45%. He is nearing the three foot mark for height though. Just 3/4 of an inch off. And 31 1/2 pounds is his weight.
Now for Miss Abigail. She did good with the doctor, but I didn't expect much else from her. She is still at that age where doctors are just other people and not the 'bad guy'. She got her third big round of immunizations and we are done with those until after she is a year old. Thank goodness. Those things suck to watch. Poor thing screamed bloody murder when they gave her all those shots. And both of my wee ones got the flu shot. I believe I'm heading in to get mine in the next week or two. If I got knocked on my butt with the flu, I'd be in trouble. God watch over us all and protect us from all the nasty little buggies going around this year. Abby has slowed a bit in her growth. She is in the 80% for weight at 17 1/2 pounds. She is 26 inches coming in the 50% and has a tiny little head with only being in the 30%.

So, that's about all for the doctor exam day. I'll be posting later this week about Alex's big birthday party that was this previous weekend. I figure I'll wait until he is officially 2 years old on Friday. I have a whole ton of pictures to litter the blog with from the weekend. Until then, just one piece of advice for all you mommies out there. Get a good pediatrician. It is SO worth it!

The Monkeys In Action

Well, it's been yet another week with the monkey duo and it's never a dull moment. There really isn't much going on. Mostly I am just preparing for the big '2' party. Alex's birthday party is this coming Sunday and I've been madly preparing for the soon to come insanity. It will be fun insanity but insanity never-the-less. We of course will be going with the Elmo theme. Last weekend, we packed up and went to the party store to buy party supplies. He had fun picking out the cups, hats and what-nots for the big shin-dig. We are going to be housing my brother-in-law with his three daughters for the weekend. Alex is beside himself with excitement at the mere mentioning of kids in the house. All I have to do is tell him kids are coming over and he jumps around screaming 'kids! kids! kids!' for the next five minutes. This weekend we will also be attending the annual town fall festival. They have all sorts of fun things to do throughout the day. It should prove to be a fun weekend. I'm excited to just have something different to look forward to. From time to time, it's nice to change up the weekend a bit. Otherwise, here are a few fun pictures of the kiddos in action.

Abby has developed a complex when it comes to Alex. She has the theory that she should be able to have or do whatever her big brother can have or do. Those pretty pink sticks you see are actually Popsicles. And no...hers isn't cut open. I just let her chew on one so she feels special to. So pretty much she believes that anything he can do...

She can do better.... or at least she thinks she can do better.

And Alex shows his true monkey nature here attempting to do things that no toddler should try...but most toddlers will eventually try anyways just to see how many times their parents can go, "AHHH!! GET DOWN FROM THERE!!"

And then of course this is my favorite photo of the week. Can you see the wake of destruction that these kids leave in their path? It's amazing how fast my house looks like this after they wake up in the morning.