Are we in Philadelphia?

Because I am definitely feeling the brotherly love. We have known for sometime that Benjamin is enthralled with Noah. He loves to talk and interact with us - until Noah is in the room. I could set my head on fire and I still don't think he would take his eyes off his big brother. Well, today I got my first glimpse of affection moving in the other direction. I placed Benjamin in his swing this morning and his arm was sort of sticking out to side. Noah was walking by and saw his arm there all by itself. So, being the sweet big brother that he is, he walked over and held it. He just stood there holding Benjamin's hand while he was swinging. Truly one of the sweetest things I have ever seen. I guess Noah then thought they needed a little more entertainment so he went to get a book to read. I told him he could tell Benjamin what animals were in the book so he would turn the page and say, "Cow, Ben-jin. Ca-pillr, Ben-jin." And they are not even in high school yet. I don't believe it. I tried to get a picture of the look on Benjamin's face but my camera missed the smile. I think this one is still pretty cute...

Happy birthday to me!

So, yesterday was my birthday. I got up too early and missed out on breakfast in bed , but I did get to have a chocolate chip cookie with my egg sandwich. Christopher took the day off and we took the boys to the zoo. It was supposed to rain but it held off while we were out. We had a lovely day. Here are some of our pictures. As you know, zoos have lots of animals. Before we got there, Noah told Aunt Cammie he was most excited about seeing rabbits. (Unfortunately, we didn't see any...) But of all the animals he did see, daddy thinks he liked the frogs the best. This was a giant toad slide. We actually got him to go down it one time but my camera was too slow to catch him. You can just barely see the top of his head. We saw birds. They eat nuts. We also saw sea lions. This one stood right up in Noah's face and barked. You should see how quickly Noah can get out of the stroller straps and into his daddy's arms.









We also got to see elephants, hippos, and kangaroos. I think the zoo was a hit. I'm guessing we will go back. Dinner was also very nice. We left the boys at grandpa and grandma's and went to McCormick & Schmick's. I had shark and Christopher had swordfish. YUM! We also got to watch the first half of 'The Pursuit of Happyness.' It was a wonderful day. My honey always makes sure of that. Thank you, Christopher!

Color his thumb green!

Noah is truly in love with flowers (fwa-pahs). It is all he talks about on our walks and while riding in the car. I found a little flower set in the $1 section at Target, so I let him start his own garden. He planted "Sunshine fwa-pahs". He did a great job of spreading the seeds all out but was not such a fan of pushing the dirt down on top of the seeds. Gets your hands dirty, you know? And every evening at dinner he is in charge of watering his seeds. This is his pot one week later. 10 little flowers so far... Wish us luck! Cause if we don't get any actual flowers out of this, I could be in big trouble.

Sleeping update

Another installment in our 'Many ways of sleeping' segment. We took the rail off Noah's bed Sunday night. He has not fallen out - yet. And he can still climb in and out of bed with ease. However, do not - I repeat - do NOT try to cover him up with his blankets. He screams as though you have just cut off his legs. To make sure you cannot use the covers, he has found some unique ways of sleeping. This is one of those times daddy wishes we had a video camera in Noah's room. How long do you think he slept with his legs crossed like that? (This picture was taken 3 hours after he went to bed.) It's a wonder he could even walk the next morning.Not to be out done, Benjamin is also changing up his sleeping. He moved out of mommy and daddy's room Monday night. He is now sleeping in a pack 'n play. He loves all the space so much that he immediately sticks out his arms and legs. I swear he is about 10 feet across. The first night was a little rough. It appears without the bassinet walls so close, he can roll right over. While he might enjoy sleeping on his tummy, he does not so much like waking up and being stuck on his tummy. So he would cry and cry for mommy or daddy to come and roll him over. Only to find himself back on his tummy the next time he woke up. Poor kid. Maybe he will figure it out soon. He, of course, likes to sleep right in the middle of mommy and daddy's bed the best. (Bonus picture - doesn't his hair stand up nicely while he sleeps???)

Books away... Books away...

Time to put our books away.... Luckily, Spring has finally returned. After Noah's non-nap, he wanted to go outside to play with daddy. I told him first he needed to help pick up his books. Ask and you shall receive... Not without about 100 choruses of our clean-up song, though.

So many books...

So what do little boys do in their rooms in the afternoon when they are not sleeping??? They take off their socks and read a whole lot of books... (By the way, in the bottom picture he is telling me what Buzz Lightyear says - [to infinity] AND BEYOND!)

Happy Birthday, Benjamin!

4 months is here already - can you believe it? I sure can't. Benjamin continues to be a little angel. His new hobbies are blowing bubbles and saying 'gully, gully, gully.' He also loves to stick his legs in the air and roll from side to side. In fact, yesterday I laid him on his back and left the room for a second. When I returned, he was lying on his tummy! He couldn't get his arms out from under himself though, so he eventually fell back over. I am sure it is only a matter of time. Benjamin is also becoming quite the giggler. Big brother Noah discovered Benjamin's favorite game. If you look him right in the face and laugh, he will laugh back at you. Apparently, he and Noah played this game for a couple of minutes. (Unfortunately, I missed it. But daddy said it was pretty cute.) Oh, and Benjamin got himself something for his birthday. Check it out...

Jumpa, jumpa, jump...

Mommy decided it was time to get out some of my exercise equipment. We started with the Johnny-jump-up. No one was sure what Noah would do with this in the doorway, but it turns out he was very interested in helping me learn how to use it. He stood right in front of me and jumped and jumped, laughing the whole time. I have to admit, it was much easier to use once mommy got my bunners up off the floor (it took her a while because she was kind of laughing at me). As you can see, I did have a little trouble staying in my seat. Mommy thinks I was trying to feel for the floor so I could see just how high I really was. I might be afraid of heights, you know?

Thank you, Uncle Joel!

Uncle Joel shared this outfit with me. It is only 38 years old. Still looks pretty good, I think! Daddy was glad mommy didn't make me wear the hat or the mittens, though, since I was inside the whole time.

Night and Day

Just one more proof that our sons could not be any different... I'm not going to tell you which is which. See if you can guess... :)

HAPPY EASTER!

Some professional - some not-so-much. Noah finally got the hang of hunting eggs. I think he had a pretty good time with it. He has been doing a lot better with Benjamin as of late so I thought we would try pictures together. 30 minutes, 5 adults, hundreds of tears, 2 photographers, and 1 bag of m&m's later, I have decided we are not quite to that point yet. Maybe by the time Noah graduates from high school...

A day of play!

So Noah talked me into taking a day off to go check out his favorite play center. We had quite a day. Noah showed me all of the cool cars that you can drive (crash) and they don't even require a license!

There are quite a lot of fun activities for the kids there. A "roller coaster", plenty of balls to kick and throw, and an inflatable moonwalk. This was the first time that I saw Noah try the moonwalk. I think he has more fun throwing himself down than he does jumping but it's all good fun. Now if only the big kids would have been a little more careful not to run over my son with the bicycles it would have been a perfect time.

As luck would have it the Kansas City Zoo-mobile was visiting the play center that day to show a few of the animals. Noah loves animals so we thought we would give it a try. Noah was able to meet a poison dart frog, a snake (I forget what kind), a cockatoo, and a "mouse" (chinchilla). They also allowed the children to touch a turtle shell, and several different kinds of animal skins as they tried to teach the difference between scales and feathers, wet and dry, etc. I'm not sure which was Noah's favorite. He really wanted to touch the frog but they did not take him out of his cage. The "mouse" was great fun because we read about those often enough but I think the best might have been the cockatoo. They fed the bird a peanut and Noah was fascinated by how the bird held it, cracked it open and threw away the shell. What a great idea to have the zoo came by, I am very happy that I got to see that. Noah talks very often about the animals and he loves to say "bird eat nuts". That might be the longest sentence he has said so far. We capped off the animal visit by watching a train cruise by the play center. A perfect day so far!

Well the day wasn't quite over after the animal visit. We had plenty of time in the afternoon to try out one of his "new" toys from his birthday. Grandpa Campbell fixed up the little red wagon that I had as a child and gave it to Noah for his birthday. Check out Noah as he rides around the driveway. I was going to give him a ride down the block but we didn't make it out of the driveway. Noah needed to get down and go check out some "flowpers" (flowers).


Well I have to say this was a pretty awesome day. I know that not every day is this perfect with a budding two year old but I would endure a year's worth of tough days to see the smiles and hear the giggles like I witnessed on this day. What a blessing a child is!

I would walk 500 miles...

One year ago yesterday, at approximately 5:31 in the PM, Noah Douglas took his first step. I think it is safe to say that he has logged about 50,000 miles since that time. (Not to mention gone through about 10 pairs of shoes.)

Oh, and tomorrow marks opening day for the Go, Royals! Let's keep our fingers crossed that they have a better season than they have in recent years. I guess one way to look at it is that they would have to work pretty hard to make it worse... But for the eternal optimist that resides in this house, we must have hope. So, let's PLAY BALL!!

Fa-shew! What a week!

I think this picture says it all! We started our week by having our carpets cleaned. We are getting new furniture this week and we wanted everything clean and ready. Since Grandpa and Grandma Campbell are out of town, we packed ourselves up and moved to their house while our floors were wet. Thank goodness we had that option! Noah usually naps in a porta-crib at their house but at some point discovered that he can dismantle the bed while he is in there. He started by just removing the sheet but then moved up to removing the sheet AND throwing out the mattress which would leave him to sleep on just the plywood. So, we took the pack-n-play. Unfortunately, it did not get set up in the best location as Noah's arms are a little longer than I anticipated. He chose not to nap on Monday and when I went in to get him up, discovered that he was able to reach Grandma's dresser - more specifically the drawers holding her jewelry. What was probably once all neatly sorted put away was lying in a giant heap on the floor. And I am fairly certain I have never seen my son more proud of himself. We will have to wait until she returns to hear if we found everything when we put it all away... Wednesday the boys and I took a road trip. Uncle Scott had left his backpack here over the weekend and as they were headed to Michigan this week, we decided to meet half way to give it back to him. I was not quite sure what to expect as Benjamin isn't the fan of his car seat that Noah was and Noah is not always the best traveler, however, it turned out to be a very nice trip. Benjamin slept and Noah kept me company while we rode. Our drive took us through the country so we got to watch for animals. I pointed out the cows and he wanted to see horses. We came upon some horses and he decided he wanted to see goats. We never did see any (well, he says he did) but it kept us busy watching. Now every time we get in the car he calls out an animal that we should be looking for. He is pretty disappointed that our suburb has no livestock. Anyway, we met at McDonald's and Noah made his first (and possibly last) trip to the play area. It did not take him long to discover that the iron fence around the area has spindles far enough apart to stick your head through, but maybe not far enough to pull your head back in. Luckily I managed not to freak out and he eventually got himself all on one side of the fence. And mom decided it was time to go. We arrived back in town about 4:00PM and Noah chose then to fall asleep. So I drove around town a bit to give him a chance to rest. Thursday we took the dogs to the groomers. I had this most excellent idea that we would take daddy to work so I wouldn't have to try to get the dogs and the boys all inside together. Their appointment was at 8:30AM so I figured they would be done by lunch. We would pick up daddy, grab some lunch, get the dogs, and all would be well. Wrong. They were backed up and the dogs weren't done yet. So we picked up daddy and decided to have a picnic. It started pouring. So we ate in the car and walked around Target instead. The dogs were finally done about 3:30. The groomer closed at 5:30, Christopher didn't have a car, Noah's music class was not until 6:30 (down the street from the groomer) and, as luck would have it, Noah decided to take a nap that day. I let him sleep as long as I could then had to wake him up so we could race across town to pick up daddy and get to the dogs. We then headed to the church and walked the dogs before music class. I can't really remember Friday, so I am not sure anything happened that day. The weekend has been laid back, which is good. We have all taken advantage of the down time. Noah has even napped both days - which means his parents got to as well. Oh, and as for Benjamin? He learned how to roll over on Monday. So he is keeping himself busy practicing that. He didn't want to be left out of all the activity! And that is probably why he is so beat in his picture up above.