Playdate and crafts

Cal is in a playgroup, which I have written about before, that is really just wonderful.  We are so blessed to have these friends-- I love all of the moms and Cal loves all of the kids.  It is so much fun to get together and everyone usually has a great time!

I offered to host a playdate today, and it happened to be BRAD'S birthday!  Brad is one of Cal's most favorite friends and we were excited to host today in honor of Brad! 

Being the geek that I am, I had to come up with some fun little activities for the kids to do (wait, I didn't have to...I wanted to...).  I did a post a while back about the ice activity and got some great feedback from people reading the blog that said they did that with their kids and loved it. Maybe y'all will find some inspiration again today...??

The weather today was absolutely PERFECT to be outside.  It was sunny, but not too hot... just a gorgeous day.  I had my mom come over to help me with Andy, since I knew I would be preoccupied with everything in the backyard, plus, I wanted some time with Cal.  Basically, I just opened up the backyard and had different things for the kids to do... they didn't do the activities all together, they just all kind of ran wherever they wanted to go!  (I was going back and forth taking pictures of everything-- these are out of order below.)

One activity we did was a color by water book:

I took the pages of one of those coloring books where you paint with water and the colors magically appear-- and ripped out the pages.  I hung them up by a rope between two trees in the yard.  Instead of painting with paintbrushes, the kids "painted" with spray bottles.  We took old cleaning bottles and cleaned them out (a lot!) and filled them with water.  The kids could spray the paper and watch it change colors.  I found a Mickey Mouse book and a Big Wheels book-- both were hits with the kids.

Brad spraying the pages

The kids seemed to really like this activity, and I had a bunch of extra pages that I could "restock" the line as they were complete.  Once the kids lost interest, they still loved playing with the spray bottles and were anxious to clean the various toys. 

Another "activity" I had planned involved shaving cream.  I took some tin dishes and filled them with shaving cream.  The kids got to pick which food coloring they wanted and then they took spoons and mixed it up!

 This can get messy and the food coloring can stain, so I told all the moms to not wear anything nice...

And I had out the kiddie pool and the hose to rinse off when messy-- the pool was the nastiest color ever during this!  I dumped the pool a few times and tried to refill it, but it never stayed clean for long!

If the kids weren't spraying, mixing, or splashing, they were playing in the yard or on the swingset!  I brought out all of Cal's big toys and the kids had a ball playing...

that would be cal

After all that playing, we had to have some cupcakes for Brad!  Sally brought out the cupcakes and the kids swarmed...

And then we attempted a group picture on the stairs...it was cah-razy, but fun trying!

 This was almost everyone-- we had one little guy not make it in the picture.  We had 11 total.

And after ALL of that, it was time to pack up and say bye to our sweet friends. 

I got a bunch of emails from the moms later saying their kiddos either fell asleep on the way home, fell asleep during lunch time, or that they were taking the best nap ever... sounds like a successful playdate!

We had a great time and can't wait for the next one!

ZOO!

What a fun day, Mr. Cal had yesterday!!!

Ever since my parents sent this back from Africa, Cal has been OBSESSED with giraffes!

He sees them and points to them and screams "AIR AFFE!" He also has developed a love of el-fants (elephants) and a bunch of other animals.  My parents showed Cal their pictures from Africa and Cal was just blown away.

Jackson, Cal's cousin, is off from school this week (he goes M-F, so this is really a treat for him to be off!), and my parents wanted to take the boys to the NC zoo.  So, yesterday morning, Grandma and Grandpa loaded up their car with 2 carseats and both boys and headed out to the zoo! Cal had THE best time.

I begged my parents to take lots of pictures and they did not disappoint!

i love love love this one

 How cute is my dad pushing the double stroller?  I am obsessed with my double bob, and mom said it worked great for their trip to the zoo!

Cal loves his Grandpa-- he calls him Poppa (and it makes my heart melt)

 Apparently, Cal had a car with him that he wouldn't put down.  He would run it on all of the animals and he paid more attention to the car than the gigantic creatures right next to him!

how sweet is Jackson feeding the monkey a chip??

And finally, the air affes!!!

THANK YOU, Mom and Dad for taking the boys to the zoo!  I know Cal had just the best time...he took a wonderful nap after he got home and is still talking about all of the animals!!!

Because I can...

I can do matching jammies if I want to....

thanks, grandma, for the jammies!!!

I felt the earth move...

I have to document this event today!

Eddie was home getting ready to go out of town and I was rocking Andy to sleep for his nap.  My mom, being the wonderful human being she is, gave me a little break from sweet CalBoy and she let him "nap" at her house. 

As I was rocking Andy, I started to feel like something was shaking-- weirdest feeling ever.  I looked over to the bookshelf and everything was shaking on it, and the little buoy we have even rolled off.  I jumped up and looked out the window thinking I would see something huge drive by, but the street was dead.  I walked out of Andy's room and found Eddie and asked him if he felt that shake.  He said he noticed something, but didn't know what it was.  I said "you are going to think I'm crazy, but I swear it was like we just had an earthquake!" We both laughed and said we had no idea what it was... about 5 minutes later, Eddie's sister called me (I couldn't answer because I was putting Andy in the crib), and then she texted and asked us to text her to let her know we were all okay.... I called her back immediately and asked her why she sent that-- she said there was an earthquake that hit VA and the effects were being felt down to NC!  I KNEW it!!!

We were totally fine, of course, but NC was reeling from the excitement of an earthquake!  We were all busy watching Hurricane Irene that we couldn't believe that an earthquake could possibly hit us here. 

I called my mom to make sure they were all fine, and she said she heard/felt something, but thought it was just Cal throwing stuff against the wall during his "nap" time! hahaha!

Anyway, I had to document this "first" for both boys!

"that's a what??? an earthquake?????"

"haha-- you are so full of it, mom"

"no really....you are crazy..."

3 Months/23 Months

Oh, Cal and Andy! Where to begin with you two this past month???

 I am so in love with both of you.  Prepare for the cheesiness:  I just feel like I was meant to be a mother and I am extremely grateful to both of you for making that a reality.  There is not one day that passes in this crazy life we lead where I do not sit back and feel incredibly blessed to have you both in my life. 

Let's start with Anderson (no, his name is not Anderson-- it's Andrew-- we love the name Anderson, but felt that AnderSON WilliamSON would be a lot of SONs, so we stuck with Andrew...we just refer to him as Anderson...)
Well, Andy has just made himself right at home with our little family--- and we can't imagine life without him.  The first thing Cal says in the morning is "where Andy?" and he is always looking for Andy and asking if he is up yet.  He loves his little brother so much, and Andy has started smiling and even laughing at Cal now-- and it melts. my. heart.

Two weeks ago, Andy had an ear infection and he was weighed in at the doctor's office: 14 pounds, 10 ounces.  I just went to a shower and told some of the girls there how much he weighed and they were all shocked at what a little chunker he is!  He is a chunker, but he is also realllly long.  He has long legs and long fingers.  Eddie says all the time that he has the biggest hands he's ever seen on a baby-- and he's already planning which sport will best suit those long fingers (palming a basketball? pitching a baseball? throwing a football? only time will tell!).

in his jammies...dreaming of which sport to try

While Cal is Eddie's mini-me, Andy is becoming more and more my mini-me!  We had dinner with some friends last night who met Andy for the first time and they were literally taken aback at how much he looks like me.  They kept saying it over and over again...

Andy is SUCH a happy baby now.  He is either: smiling, laughing, cooing, "talking", sleeping or eating.  He has been talking more and more and it is the cutest thing ever!

Other stuff:
Andy has discovered his thumb and is using it to comfort himself more and more...

side note: Cal had a very short phase of sucking his thumb...here he is at almost the same age:

Sleeping: We are making some progress with sleep.  Andy takes a GREAT afternoon nap every day while Cal (sometimes) naps (or screams...or strips...whatever), and he sleeps in the morning wherever he can-- the crib, the car seat, the stroller...wherever! I am so thankful he's flexible like that... the past few nights he has gotten up to eat only once, and then goes right back down again.  He is usually wet (and soaked through his pjs) which I think wakes him up for a second time... we are changing jammies in the middle of the night every night.  He is still too young for the over night diapers, but I am ready to use them!  I might try some in a size too big just to see if they help keep him drier. 
A typical night for Andy is bed time around 7:30, eating around 2am, waking up one other time soaked (last night it was 5am) and then going back to sleep for another hour or so.  Last week, he was waking up every single day at 6am, no matter what time he was fed last.  He woke up one morning at 4:45, ate and passed back out again and was up at 5:59-- when I went to get him to see if he needed to eat (I was too tired to think about anything else), he just wanted to look at me and smile and coo.  It made being up early worth it!
Eating: During the day, Andy eats just about every 2 hours (from time off to time on), but he will go longer stretches if he's sleeping.  He is still 100% on the boob, and is pretty funny about taking a bottle.  He is very resistant to taking one, especially from me.  I would say about 2-3 out of 5 times he will take it, but the other times he just refuses.  And I HATE when people say "if he's hungry enough, he'll take the bottle...." just don't say that to me... who wants to watch their child struggle to eat?
I am anxious to start him on some sort of cereal/oatmeal just to try to fill him up more, but I am going to wait until our next appointment to see if the doc okays it. 
Activities:  I am lame in this department.  With Cal, I had him doing tummy time every day to work on his neck muscles, etc...I have been SO bad about doing this with Andy! I can come up with excuses like it's hard having him on the ground because Cal thinks he can tackle him when he's down there, but the truth is, I just reallllly need to focus on this!  He sleeps on his tummy, so he works his neck muscles then, and I do feel like he has great head control, but he can't flip back and forth yet, and I feel like we need to work on that one some more.... I have been putting him in his Bumpo some and he finds that hilarious:

He just sits in it cracking up at everything and rests his head against the back of the chair looking up.  I will get down on the floor in front of him, but he won't even look at me-- something up high is either really funny, or his big ol' noggin is too heavy to lift off of the back....

Andy is just so much fun right now and I fall more and more in love with him every day.  He looooves to snuggle and I looooove snuggling him.  Sometimes I wish I had more time in the day to cuddle with him, but I know I am doing the best that I can right now!

On to Cal....

The terrible twos are knocking on our door and we are trying our best to ignore them!
Cal can have a meltdown like no other, but he is still SUCH a sweet little guy and is so loving and so kind.
We've been working with him on manners and he is very good about using them.  Every single time you do anything for Cal (buckle the seat belt, put him on/off the potty, help out shoes on, etc, etc...), he says, "thank you, momma!" except is sounds more like "tookuu momma"-- we know what he means.  He is also saying please anytime he asks for something, and if he's in time out or about to be sent to time out, he will start saying "SORRY!!!" over and over again.  He now says, "I sorry! I sorry!" It is so cute, it's hard to stay mad at him for long when he's doing that. 

Here, he is loving on Hank-- he LOOOOVES his dog, but lately, he's been into tormenting the poor thing.  The latest thing he does to get in trouble in run his shopping cart as fast as he can go into Hank.  Hank can be sleeping and Cal will plow into him at full steam ahead.  Or, Hank will know it's coming and try to avoid him, but Cal will corner him in the kitchen and just ram into him.  He went to time out numerous times for that last week-- and he has to apologize to Hank and kiss him each time.  It is SO sweet to watch Cal go over to Hank and squat down with his hands between his knees and say, "I sorry, Hank. I love you." AGH! Melt my heart!

Let's see.... we had the last day of camp last week and we are ALL sad that it's over!  He will be starting preschool in the fall going 2 days a week again.  It is so good for him socially-- we have noticed a huge change in his timidness since going to camp.

the last day of camp: wanting to take McQueen with us

Cal very rarely sits still, but the other night he was exhausted and wanted to watch Chuggington on TV.  He came over and sat in my lap and rested his head on my arm.  I wanted to cry it was so sweet:

A few of Cal's favorite things as of now:
Cars the movie, match box cars (LOVES), fire trucks, golf, golf, and more golf, trucks, books about trucks, giraffes (I think because of my parent's gift from Africa), trains.... really anything that moves makes him happy!

Eating: Cal is an outstanding eater.  He eats pretty much everything we give him.  Last night at dinner with friends, they stuck two little holders in the end of his corn on the cob and he ate the entire thing-- down to the core!  It was amazing! He loves ketchup and would eat it on everything if we'd let him. 

Sleeping: ha! I feel like I have done so many posts about this in the past week, I am beyond redundant! He is sleeping now.  I'll just leave it at that.  I don't know if it's because it's the weekend and daddy is home that he knows he needs to sleep...?  We will see how he does this week with just me.... let's just say he can remove the zip up jammies with the snap...

And, I have to share this because it cracks me up.... on Friday, Cal was, once again, not napping.  I was pretty close to losing it because he was getting naked, no matter what I put him in.  SO I finally just let him out of the crib to play.  Normally, he gets up and is calmer and will play nicely...not this day.  He ran over to Andy's door (who was sleeping....) and started banging on it.  I pulled him away and he started screaming-- loud enough to wake up Andy after only sleeping about an hour. I started nursing Andy and Cal was like a one man wrecking ball.  He was pulling lamps off of tables, ripping books off of shelves, and just all around tearing things up.  I decided to load the boys up and head to the mall.  Cal could get out and run like wild and I could chase him with my stroller.  When we got there, I loaded both boys in the stroller and took a quick phone call while I walked around.  Everyone was looking at the stroller and smiling up at me giving me a kind of awwwww face.... I figured given the state of Cal that day, he was probably undressing himself in the stroller/was already nude, or better yet, flipping everyone the bird.  I walked past a mirror to see what he was doing, and saw this:

That little stinker was so worn out that he crashed in the stroller!  Andy was fine in there, so I just walked laps around the mall and let him sleep!

The night, Eddie went in to check on Cal (as we both do every night before bed), and found this:

He skinned off his shirt, but I guess was too tired to do the rest before falling fast asleep. 

Saturday morning, we went in to get him, and he was doing this:

Having a full on dance party in the crib...naked! What a character this one is.... I am on the lookout for footless jammies that zip up so I can zip them up the back.  I haven't been able to find any yet, but maybe as the temps cool, stores will start offering them...

And a quick note on potty training: we are about 90% there.  He is hesitant to poop on the potty, but pees on the potty every time.  He has been staying dry at naps (IF he naps) and is still wet in the mornings, but as soon as he wakes up, he is running to the potty to go. 

Cal is chatting up a storm and is really forming sentences now.  It is so much fun to hear him figure things out...he is also repeating everything we say...everything.....we now have to watch ourselves constantly.  (yikes!!!)

I can NOT believe my little Cal Boy is about to be TWO years old!!!!!!  In less than one month he is going to be 2!  ACK!  How can that be???????? 

just to leave you with a little glimpse of our chaos...

xoxox,