Food, trucks, cake, more food and lots of family

Well, dang-it. I'm behind again. I'm sure this is not a real shocker to any of you. I am just now getting to uploading pictures and writing about our fun birthday weekend celebration two weekends ago. But it was so much fun I really can't skip over it, so I must write so that I can move on with life over here.

First of all, the kids were so excited for everyone to get here on Friday. They completely wore themselves out and were snuggling on the couch right before the first crew arrived.

Naturally, we started the weekend celebration with food. Pizza from Jockamo's - Yumm! And, like every other party we had way to much and finished the last few pieces yesterday (they were in the freezer so no one got sick eating it almost 2 weeks later).

The next day began with more food (of course) and a trip to the bowling alley (which involved beer and more food). I was super excited because for once I planned well enough and prepared enough ahead of time that I got to go too. I know you're probably thinking that since this was just a small family gathering there shouldn't have been a need for much planning or preparation but I tend to get excited about food and get a little carried away.

Of course this is an appropriate dress to wear when its 30 degrees in March, but she just had to  be fancy.

Birthday boys sharing a secret

Right before the big meltdown. We knew it would come since it was past nap time, but unfortunately someone forgot to bring a paci and it was quite a long ride home. Whoops!

I'm not really sure who won. I wasn't really paying attention to the scores and Brennan had pretty much given up halfway through the second game. But I think everyone had fun. And we all learned an important lesson. Don't leave the house close to nap time without a pacifier.

I believe this was supposed to be during quiet time, but someone started a game of balloon bellies.

And there was plenty of Mario action.

Finally, after we had all stuffed our faces, the boys got to open their presents. Bren's were a little more interesting than Tate's. Here he is opening his tunnel with a little help. I'm not sure who was more excited, Kaelyn to give it to him (she talked about it at least once a day the entire week) or Brennan.

He really loved all of his presents and has been playing with them all pretty regularly. So I guess everyone did a good job. And no huge new toys taking up lots of space in the house, so Mama's happy too! :)

And then there was cake! I cheated a little and just made one cake into two smaller cakes so each of the boys could have their own. Two full cakes would have been way too much anyway.

Gracious! I can't believe this boy is 14! I still think of him when he was Bren's age. I think he might stay 2 in my mind forever.

And I went for an easier version of the dump truck cake I made for Kaelyn on her 2nd birthday. This one just involved smearing peanut butter filling on chunks of cake, plopping on the back of the truck and pouring chocolate ganache over the top. Oh, man. My mouth is water looking at these pictures.

And I was able to make him his own little personal dump truck.

Say "cheese!"

Brennan's favorite present might be a new pair of pajamas. Yes, I actually think he gets more excited about these Superman pajamas than any of the toys. He calls himself "Super-Brennie" and points repeatedly to the "S." He wanted to wear them the very next night and has worn them immediately the night after they get washed ever since. Which means Kaelyn has been wearing her Supergirl pajamas a lot and they've been jumping off the couch before bed. Bren must have been too fast to get a good shot, but Kaelyn actually slowed down a minute to pose for me.

Luckily for us, Nana, Pop and Care-Care were able to stay a little bit longer and celebrate with us on his real birthday. And, thankfully they got him some of his own tools so he won't try to pick up the real hammer any more when we're doing projects around the house. I was pretty sure we were eventually going to end up with (another) hole in the wall.

Since it has been six months since we went for K's birthday, we figured another trip to the Columbus Commons was in order.

Bren ventured up the climbing apparatus this time. Though he was more hesitant than we expected with his monkey tendencies.

Luckily he had some help from his big sister,

and Dada.

Somebody wasn't quite ready to leave when it was time and had to practically be pried off his spinny thing. I had learned my lesson and packed a paci this time, but luckily we got out of there without having to use it.

It wasn't nice enough to take the kids golfing, but we did manage to swing by Dick's later on the way to dinner for some green time.

Birthday dinner at Red Robin! Yummm!

I'm not really sure why neither of them could manage a normal smile here.

What's a birthday without a second round of cake? I think he was having a hard time waiting to dig in this time.

We are so glad that (almost) all of our family was able to come from far away to celebrate with us. The kids really love having everyone here and so do we. We are so fortunate to have family who are willing to travel to see us and we hope that we'll always get to be with family for special occasions.

By the way, I didn't count but I think there are at least 30 pictures in this post. That's not too many, is it? Do you think I should add more? (Cause I definitely could.)

As you turn two

Our dearest little tiny Brennie,

You are growing up so fast. You are both a delight to watch and mystery to be solved (or not). You're giggle lights up my world, your cry breaks my heart and your screams of defiance make me want to pull my hair out.

As you turn two today, I want to take a few minutes to remember what your life is like right now.

Despite your sister's best efforts to do all your talking you are talking more every day and I love hearing your little voice shout with excitement, "Mama, watch dis!" I wish I could bottle it up to take out and open when you are sixteen and saying, "Leave me alone Mom!"  You can count to five now and for the past couple weeks have been able to hold up two fingers (sometimes with assistance) to tell people you will be two. You are starting to recognize letters and correctly identify some colors. I think you can get all the colors right when you actually concentrate and try. Yesterday, waiting in Kaelyn's preschool dropoff line, you excitedly called out, "Two Bees!" At first I questioned what you were saying. It's February, there are no bees out. And then I realized you saw the two large "B"'s on the side of the school.

You love to sing and dance. You get excited to do Dance Party that Maya let us borrow for the Wii, but for some reason you never actually dance to this. But you do love to dance to jingles on commercials.  And we catch you singing all the time. Not little kid songs. You can most often be heard singing along to Mumford and Sons "I Will Wait" but you also try to sing along to several other of your favorite hit songs.

You are truly a little boy. You love to run and jump and climb and ride your bike. You love trains and cars and trucks. You love playing these with your big sister but for some reason she just can't always understand the joy you get from pushing a truck around the house. "Playing trucks is boring" to her but you would happily push them around for an hour saying "vroom" and occasionally crashing them into each other.

You are communicating better and sleeping better (knock on wood) so we are blessed with fewer tantrums than 6 months ago. I'm hoping we are already on the down-swing of the terrible two's (which inexplicably seem to start well before the age of two). But you still know how to make we want to throw my hands up in the air and lock myself in my bedroom sometimes. Life is never dull but frequently unpredictable with you around.

You still love your paci. You like to cuddle with your pup-pup and blanket too, but paci is really the only thing that comforts you when you are too tired, get hurt or are really upset about not getting your way. This will be changing very soon, but for a few more days (maybe weeks) we'll try to appreciate the cuteness of your little pleas for "pa-see" when you are upset.

And you are still as snuggly as the day you were born. I remember after the first night in the hospital with you one of the nurses brought you back to the room and said you were the snuggliest little baby. I thought "whatever, don't all babies like to be held and snuggle? how can you tell he's more snuggly than the rest?" But I soon found out how right she was. I will truly miss your snuggles when you outgrow it.

There's so much more I'd like to remember about life with you at two, but since I'm already wiping tears from eyes I'll stop here and end by saying...

Happy Birthday Brennan! We love you so much!

Big girl things

I know I probably say it all the time, but the kids are just growing up too fast.  I'm so proud of all Kaelyn is learning and can do now, but it also makes me a little sad knowing that she will never be my tiny little girl again.

Just look at all the big girl things she has been doing lately:

Riding her "big" girl bike.

Cleaning her room and making her bed all by herself (ok, this only lasted 3 days but I thought it was huge that she wanted to do this and she even had me make a little clean-up chart for her).

 Signing all her valentines AND writing her friends names. She did everyone single one herself.

My fancy Valentine girl. :)

She loves writing all the time now. She is constantly asking me how to spell things so she can write them down.

Reading. Like for real. Not just memorizing which she's been doing since she was two.

Coloring (and painting) in the lines. Some days she will sit at the table for hours coloring in her books with the greatest detail.

Oh yeah, and she's no longer oblivious to things that we say or are said on the tv. We can't spell things in front of her because even if she can't figure out she'll ask over and over what it spells until we tell her. She now knows what Disney World is (thank you Disney Channel commercials) and has been asking on a regular basis when we can go. She really wants to go "when I'm this age, because I really like princesses." It was even what she put in her dream cloud for Martin Luther King Jr. day at school.

And her imagination is just taking off. From making up games (which we don't always quite understand) to drawing pictures to making up and singing her own songs to go along with whatever she's doing.

I know I'm her mom and I'm a little biased, but I have been so impressed with her lately.

And speaking of growing up, I can't believe our baby boy is almost 2! There is entirely too much growing up going on in this house.

Sweet Rudy

Or, Rudymans as we sometimes like to call him. But whatever you call him our sweet little boy gave us quite a scare over the weekend.  We had been concerned about him last week, but were thinking he was just getting older and then maybe he had an ear infection or a little stomach bug. On Friday we had decided to call the vet on Monday to get him checked out. Saturday went from concerned to worried and then overnight to thinking we might have some very difficult explaining to do to the kids. He hadn't eaten anything since Thursday and wasn't really even interested in treats. In the middle of the night he started throwing up and couldn't even keep water down.

6:30 Sunday morning Matt ended up at the emergency animal hospital with him barely moving.  We tried to distract ourselves all morning while waiting to hear some news but I'd be lying if I said we weren't biting our nails a little bit with the "C" word crossing our minds.  The phone call from the vet finally brought us some relief. He likely has Addison's Disease. Which is serious. Left untreated it is fatal. I hate to think what might have happened if we had waited much  longer to bring him in. But it is treatable. And Rudy should be back to a normal life and live for quite a few more years.

Sleepy but doing much better.

Rudy is definitely a big part of our family. He was our first child. And the kids are crazy about him. As much as his barking and incessant scratching at the door to go out can get on my nerves, it really was strange not having him around for the past day and a half.


A few pictures of our little boy right after we got him (look how tiny he was!):

Snoozing at his first tailgate

Cuddling with cousin Tate.

Chasing golf balls as a puppy - his favorite activity still.

We are so glad to have him home and have our family complete again.  We love you Rudy and can't imagine life without you!

Cheep thrills

Here's proof that hours of fun doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg.  All you need is a table and a marker, crayon, pencil or anything that's light and can roll and you have yourself a great winter (or rainy) day activity.  We have Maya to thank for getting us started on this while she was visiting last week.

Who knew that blowing a marker across the table could be so much fun? It kept them entertained for at least an hour and they were giggling wildly. Granted after the first half hour Bren resorted to sitting on the table and just throwing the marker off the edge, but he was happy so I won't complain.

Knock, Knock!

Who's there?

Banana?

Banana who?

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Because I've heard it least a million times in the last 3 months..

Kaelyn's been fascinated by knock, knock jokes for awhile now.  And back in November Brennan started copying her banana joke. His is a condensed version, which might make some people happy. Oh, and it starts out more like "Gaaahhck, Gaaahhck!"

And here some of Kaelyn's other favorites.  The salad one is my favorite. I actually think it's funnier the way she tells it. But the bunny one is sweet too. Especially since she made it up all by herself.

Everyone's a comedian.

Snow Babies

When it was snowing here the day after Christmas we were busy doing this:

Running on the beach, flying a kite and splashing in the water with Auntie Care-Care and Uncle Jay was a lot of fun. But, believe it or not, we did actually miss the snow a little. I think it would actually be fun to be snowed in with the family and no place to go. And of course the kids (mostly Kaelyn) were dying to play in the snow. Especially since we didn't really get any snow to speak of last year.

So, the day after we got back from Savannah we bundled up as best we could and headed out in the snow.

It actually took me awhile to convince Bren to put on all his snow clothes and go outside. But once he did he did not want to come in.

While I was busy shoveling the kids were having a blast playing "snowball party," Queen and King of the snow party and making snow angels.  There were a few brief pulls in the sled mixed in too. It didn't seem like they'd ever get cold or tire of the snow.

And then for a good half hour after we finally came in with wet mittens and socks, this is what Brennan did:

 

I didn't think he'd ever stop crying. Even the promise of the iPad and watching a show did not calm him down.

And now, the snow is completely gone and our grass is green. What?!  Kaelyn is still holding out hope for another snow but is also already asking if she can play in the snow more next Christmas.