Big week!

I'm currently waiting on Gary to get home after a week on my own! I can't wait!!! I handled it much better than last time in the sense that I wasn't nearly as paranoid about being "home alone" (I was a big baby last time haha). But, I've missed him sooo much and can't wait to have him back with us today!!!! In addition to being without daddy this week, it was also my first full, 4 day week with the boys I'm watching now! We had a really fun week together!!


My kiddos playing together all the time now! Love it!


These two are becoming such buddies!

Nathan LOVES the dump truck!!

We made cookies and the kids decorated them :)

A little love for baby Asher!

Picnic at the park!

Planting flowers! That are already starting to sprout!! (something I always worry about since every year while teaching we'd plant seeds for mother's day and there were 2 years where none of my kids' plants really grew haha)

And today we finished out the week with a morning date!! I took Alex and Nathan to the library (yeah, I'm the "cool mom" that takes my kids to the library for a date haha!), followed by chick-fil-a (including the playplace!) and coldstone! We had so much fun!! Can't wait for daddy to be back with us soon though! :)

Nathan

Just a few bullet points about my big one year old for memories' sake today :)

*Nathan now says "chooo chooo" while "pulling the train horn cord" with both hands... it's incredibly cute!
*He is super comfortable on his feet, but terrified to let go and walk! He stands on his own when he doesn't realize he's doing it, scales the wall to get where he wants to go, and is all over the place... as long as one hand is barely touching something ;)
*He's already had some knee scrapes outside! Don't think Alex got one until maybe 18 months haha... guess that's the second child for you!
*Nathan makes animal noises for dogs (ruff ruff!) and any animal that "growls"
*He points to what he wants alll the time, and most of the time he's so cute that it's hard to say no
*He hates having to stop what he's doing for a diaper change... the second you get that diaper off he tries to escape across the room... then he'll stop and look at you and giggle! He thinks he's pretty funny!
*He blows kisses (and gives really wet, open mouthed kisses still too!)
*When you tell him to "say nigh-nigh! love you!" to daddy and alex, he waves and then blows a kiss!
*He imitates the way the big boys play, it is so cute! He loves to drive cars and makes sound effects to go with it, does a pretty good job keeping the wooden trains on the tracks, and likes to fly planes and superheroes around. He also loves the little people and putting them in the bus, plane, or truck!
*He loves the mirror and will get really excited to see himself! He even gives the mirror kisses! ha!
*He is constantly getting complimented by strangers about how cute and sweet he is :) I'll miss it when my kids are too old for that haha. They also always say what a great brother Alex is and how cute they are together! (and that they look identical!)

Four Sweet Boys!

So after almost exactly one year completely off from work, I've started a new job!! A few months ago we discovered some friends of ours in our small group were looking for childcare for their two boys when their new baby was born. After much thought and prayer, we decided it was a perfect opportunity for me to start up my own little in-home childcare! It's something that's been in the back of my mind for a while (actually, something I was thinking about doing had Gary not gotten a new job here in DC). I love being home with my boys, but I have missed teaching and it's been tight this year on one income. This is a great alternative to me going back to work and I'm so excited to be starting with two more sweet boys! Asher is two months old, and Elijah is three! My boys are enjoying new playmates, and we're all busy getting into a new routine! I've been doing preschool activities with the two big boys and have kept them all busy with trips to the park, "center time", and independent room time each day! We're all adjusting pretty well so far! Their mom only works M-Th, so I'll still have every Friday off with just my boys to do things :) I am looking forword to having more space for all of us in a couple of months (we're starting to look for a townhouse to move to in July!) and hopefully a mini-van at some point, so we're not confined to only walking places.

Here are a couple of pictures of the four of them playing together!




And a couple of fun photos of my boys, too! Here's Alex on the way home from a special Starbucks date with mommy!!

And one of Nathan with his race car! (I missed the pic of him standing with both feet on the seat... and the one of him using it to climb up on the couch by himself! Silly boy!)

Alex enjoying his "Treasure Hunt" Book - a special gift from his aunt and uncle! Cannot believe how old he looks!

Nathan's 1st Birthday!

We celebrated Nathan's first birthday on Saturday (April 30th)!! Cannot believe my baby boy is ONE year old! We had such a great day celebrating as a family :) We decided to take the boys to the zoo for the day! It was crazy how much more into it Nathan was than he was even a month ago when I took the boys in Nashville. He was even noticing many of the animals that were further away (not just the inside ones this time).

Checking out some birds with daddy!


Loving the animals!


With my big one year old!!!

Falling asleep with daddy... so sweet :) And I absolutely LOVE how much Gary loves this, too cute!


He loved the farm animals best!

Family shot at the zoo!

We left the zoo around 4:00 and headed to BW3s for dinner! Nathan enjoyed munching on mac & cheese, french fries, and oranges! What a big boy! Then we headed home for cake and presents!!

Nathan loved all of the attention, and of course the singing! Alex enjoyed "helping" blow out the candles!

He wasn't so sure at first...

But then dug right in once he realized it was a tasty treat!!

He had plenty of presents to open from his big brother, mommy and daddy, his grandparents, and some friends!

Alex enjoyed it just as much as Nathan (if not more!) A couple of nights before Nathan turned one, Alex was talking all about how fun it was going to be and informed us, "and *I* get to open alllll of Nathan's presents!!!" haha. He had a bit of trouble with Nathan getting so much attention, but liked "helping" and getting to open a few gifts of his own (from family that spoils him, even if it's Nathan's birthday, not his! ha!)

Nathan loves his new musical instruments!!! Music is definitely his thing right now! He LOVES to dance and make his own music!

But his favorite gift of all is his new "racecar!!" He absolutely loves playing on this!

Nathan had his 1 year check up a couple of days later. He weighs in at 19.2lbs (15th percentile) and is 28.5 inches long (10th percentile). And his head is in the 50th percentile... apparently his little body is a a little out of proportion! haha. The doctor was a bit concerned that he hadn't gained any weight since his last check up... she wants us to give him lots of butter, yogurt, and ice cream this month! We're also starting him back up on an iron vitamin because his iron is slightly below where they like to see it. Otherwise he looked great!! He had a hard time with the shots this time around... VERY fussy for the next day and a half, woke up allll night long, and had a low fever. That was definitely not fun for anyone!

Easter!

We had a great Easter weekend!! We had a movie night on Friday night (no it has nothing to do with Easter, I just have to share!) and rented "Tangled"... Alex ran to Gary as soon as he got home, super excitedly yelling, "Daddy! Daddy! It's MOVIE NIGHT! We got Wound Up!" (aka "Tangled") So cute!

Anyway, on to the actual Easter festivities! We decorated eggs on Saturday night. Alex was so into it!

Nathan enjoyed playing with plastic eggs and cups!

This was very messy this year! haha.

Gary and Alex dyed and then re-dyed just about every egg. Neither of them wanted to be done! haha. I guess we need more eggs next year! Oh, and Gary cracked about 1/4th of them... lol.

We hadn't made a big deal really about the "Easter Bunny" other than a couple of mentions here and there. So when we had him put grass in the baskets and get carrots out for the bunny, he was SO excited and had a million questions! He couldn't even sleep. We went in twice when he was yelling for us. The first time all he wanted was to know if the bunny was coming TONIGHT? and would he see him? The second time he asked Gary what specifically bunnies eat. Gary told him he had to go to bed or the bunny wouldn't come. And that if we heard him again, he'd be in trouble. So we didn't hear him again... but then when I went in at 11:00 to check on them, he was WIDE AWAKE!! So cute.

The Easter bunny came!!!!

Alex got Eric Carle lacing cards, do-a-dot markers, and a Toy Story shirt! And then a few dollar store things. Nathan got tadoodles toddler crayons and a Percy train (Alex thinks allllll the trains are his and has a hard time sharing them... so we figured Nathan having a highly desireable Percy train would help with the sharing haha! Nathan loooves the trains too!). And then of course some dollar store things as well!

So excited!!

Nathan's favorite was probably this ball!

...and the Easter grass! haha!

A picture of our eggs!

Sunday was a very busy, but fun day! We were teaching the k-2nd grade Sunday School so we had to be there for the 9:30 and 11:00 services. The Easter service was great! After church we went straight to a friends' house for Easter lunch! I'm pretty sad we didn't get any pictures of us all dressed up. It was so hot (in the mid to upper 80s!) that we ended up all changing after church when we got there. Oh well. We spent the afternoon with friends! We had a great afternoon. We headed home around 4ish and ate a light dinner before our family egg hunt! We ended up just doing it in the living room/kitchen. Alex was pretty pumped about the hunt, he said it was his favorite part of Easter. We had the eggs out all week and had been playing games and doing some different crafts related to Easter eggs/bunnies/etc. So he was super excited!

I hid the eggs because Gary LOVES egg hunts! hahaha... he was right in on it with Alex ;)

Nathan didn't really get it... but had fun playing with the eggs anyway!

Excited to see the treats inside!

It was such a fun day! :) Now we're gearing up for Nathan's birthday next weekend! Our baby will be ONE!!! So crazy!

Spring Fun

So I was about to post about Easter, but then I went to upload pictures and had a few others I wanted to post first! I know it's been like 3 weeks-ish now, but my birthday was on the 7th! Alex was so cute about it... he was super excited and fascinated that I had a birthday too! Him and Gary went out together to pick out gifts and a cake. Alex got me some earrings and Gary got me a waffle maker (something I've wanted for a while)! They also brought me flowers :) We went to dinner at Olive Garden, then had this "birthday party"! The kids enjoyed the cake and candles, and even Nathan got a taste!

Love my boys!

We've been spending a lot of time ouside lately. We have had some beautiful days! Alex has always been a bit cautious on playgrounds, but has been getting slightly more adventurous lately. He still isn't a huge fan of slides (he will do them, but he doesn't really like them I guess). He's more into climbing, bridges, running, and collecting and playing with sticks/rocks/sand.

Nathan loves these things!

He hates the swing. He always starts crying when I put him in! I've never known a kid not to like them. I keep trying, but he is just not a fan! It makes it a little tricky at the park because he's not at an age yet where he can really play much. He isn't walking and of course can't crawl all over the place at a park like this!

Gary and Alex enjoyed skipping and throwing rocks one afternoon!

Other than that, a couple of other noteable things...

Nathan has been sleeping GREAT for the past week or so! If you are a parent, you definitely understand how big of a deal this is!! He started having a lot of sleep issues when we went to Nashville and they continued when we got home. He was waking up at night again, and getting up around 5-5:15 every morning. This made for a grumpy baby and a grumpy mommy and daddy! We tried letting him cry, but it seriously wasn't working. Anyway, one night last week he literally just started sleeping well again! One morning we left him to cry for 15 minutes and he went back to sleep... and other than that he's been going down by 8:00 and sleeping until 6:15-6:45 again! YAY! And he's doing his normal 2 naps/day again (his nap schedule was off due to weird night sleep!) - usually at 9:00 for 45 min-1hrish and afternoon nap at 2:00 for an hour and a half ish. Hopefully this post doesn't jinx it ;)

Alex finally spent is chore money last week! I have to admit, it's been a little hard to keep up with since he doesn't really have that many "chores" and the money doesn't add up that quick. I may need to adjust how it's done a little bit. But, we counted it all up and he had $15 (some of it was Easter money he got from grandma too). He was so excited and I loved the sense of accomplishment he felt! He picked out a police car (after MUCH deliberation) and paid for it himself! It was pretty cute :) He has a few dollars in his "Give" bank to take to church, but we forgot it this past Sunday, oops!

And my favorite kid quote from yesterday, Nathan started fussing and Alex dropped what he was playing with and came running to his brother, "I'm coming, Nathan! I'm coming!!" It was so sweet! He proceeded to play with him, and give him toys. I love them :)

Just a few memories...

A few memories I want to save from the past week-ish :)

*Nathan LOVES goldfish. He asks for them allll the time... he has his own version of the word (that doesn't even come close to "goldfish", but he knows where they are and points to them constantly!

*Alex to Nathan (as Nathan played xylophone and danced to his music!): "you're too cute, little buddy!"

*Nathan discovered his birthday present waaaay up high in the closet. He asked for it over and over "this, this, this????" pointing and looking at me with the biggest eyes and little legs kicking! He went to it again the next day and asked for it AGAIN (I forgot to re-hide it, but he didn't forget it was there! haha)

*Alex: "Can I pleeeeaaaase play with NaFan in the living room???"

*Alex: "I'm big and I have to keep my brother safe."

*Alex currently loves playing superheros. He and his buddy run around with "capes" (blankets) tied around their necks with play swords looking for "bad guys". Where do boys learn this stuff??

*We picked Alex up from Sunday school the last two weeks and he was running around with lego guns. (He wasn't the only one... but we were still a bit embarassed!) Boys will be boys I suppose!

*Nathan loves to hide and play "peek-a-boo!" His little giggle is pretty cute :)

*Nathan breaks out some serious dance moves EVERY time he hears music. I really need to get a video and figure out how to post it!

*I've been blocking Nathan in the living room or the kids' bedroom a lot lately because he's ALL over. Alex frequently reminds me that we need to "cage him in" LOL

*Last week we were on our way to church and Alex says "There's a loooooot of traffic. Everyone's on their way to church I guess." Then a couple of days later we were heading to the park and he says, "Lots of kids heading to the park today!" I guess that's an ego-centric three year old's logic!