Blasts from the past...

Cal's 1st Birthday cake

Cal's 2nd Birthday

Cal's 3rd Birthday

Ben's 1st birthday

So it all started with Cal's 1st birthday cake and the 3D duck. To give proper credit, I did NOT decorate that cake. My sister-in-law Jill did - great job huh?! After that I was inspired to always make a cake and decorate it myself. Now I have to try to come up with good stuff THREE times a year.

Happy 2nd Birthday Ben!!!

Yummy cake!

He didn't put Dee Dee's keytar down all day!

Opening prez

Waffles and balloons for breakfast!

The cake didn't quite turn out the way I wanted. I messed up on the light blue part (not that you'd be able to tell) but it doesn't look like the picture. I also realized late in the decorating game that I was missing my writing tip. So I got a shoddy plastic one from a neighbor and that's way the strings on the guitar aren't straight :( The frosting kept getting clogged in the tip. Oh well...this cake was just for us anyways. We're going with a Doodlebops theme so this is Rooney's guitar. Had I known the keytar was going to be more popular I would have made him a pink one! I'm making Moe's drum set for Thursday's gathering with family...stay tuned!

"Feels Like 9 Degrees"

Brrrr....

This is what weather.com reported it to be yesterday!! I think it was actually 19 but feels like 9. Lovely!! We were getting ready to go to Chuck E Cheese in these pics for Ben's birthday!

My Little Chub-a-lub

• Wow! Days are just flying by!! Seth had his 2 month checkup on Monday (well, 9 1/2 weeks really). He weighs 11lbs 4 oz and is taking after his chubby older brothers quite nicely. He LOVES attention and will promptly reward us with huge smiles and ah-goos and gurgles. He's up to 6-8 hour stretches at night with one wake-up for feeding. I've pretty much mastered this sleep thing by now!!

• Not too much to report....Ben is about to turn 2 this Sunday. What we missed with Cal not having terrible 2s, Ben has decided to fill us in and then some! The kid is a terror. I say that semi-lightly...not so terrible as some toddlers I've seen but I like my children to be well-behaved MOST of the time and lately Ben barely ever is. No, I take that back, he's a perfect angel out in public (well except for his FUN screaming session at the grocery store today. He thought it was funny to see how long he could scream for...meaning at the top of his lungs until he ran out of breath). Other than the yelling, which happens mostly at home and mostly at the dinner table, we are also in the throw food/spitting milk phase. I can't wait for this to end! It's so annoying. I think mostly I haven't been able to nip these behaviors in the bud because I don't have time to! With Cal I could discipline and swiftly take care of problems. Now I sometimes just have to ignore them and move on just to get things done! Oh well...poor, poor middle child. I can see why you get super lenient on the last kid! By that point, you just don't care anymore...

• Cal is doing well. He's learning to write all his letters as he just recently demonstrated to me! I didn't even know. I guess preschool is doing its job :) He continues to be the best big brother there is!

What's all the Buzz about?

Cal had a superhero birthday party to go to where they had to dress up. So he borrowed this Buzz Lightyear costume! He loved it!

Smiles and coos

• Cal and Ben think it's hysterical that they can lay down and have Seth lay on their tummies. I have a picture of Cal and Ben doing this when Ben was a baby too. I should post that. Seth loves all the attention. When he's awake (which still isn't all that often) he is very alert and is smiling and cooing A LOT! He's also experimenting with raising his eyebrows and sticking out his tongue - fun! Seth is even holding his head up and doing a mini-pushup for 30-45 seconds at a time. I was amazed today!!

• I'm sad to see in these pics though that Seth is looking less like a baby and more like a little person these days! I think his "newborn" phase is over :( Boo hoo...I'll never have a tiny critter again. He's definitely made it to the 10lb mark, maybe more. He'll have his checkup in a week and a half.

• In Ben news - he's reached toddlerhood and the terrible 2's in FULL swing. Bring it on! He's a fiesty one that Ben...I'm missing the days of calm, sweet, quiet Benbo. He's quite often the one who's sparking the food fights, screaming matches, and the occasional swats at his older AND younger brothers. He has found lots of ways to test the limits lately: yelling at naptime, spitting milk out, throwing food all over the place, to name a few and being yelled at by mommy doesn't seem to phase him.

• He's also talking up a storm and well out of the "delayed" phase. He was re-evaluated and it looks like they're going to cut us off in another 6-8 weeks. The therapist who evaulated him was great and got him being silly and talking and laughing like crazy last week. He even talked about an activity after they had moved on to the next and she said that was something that is deemed "a 3-year-old" level. Cheers for Ben! He even remembered the activity (popping bubbles with his nose) today when Denise brought out bubbles!

• **It seems the only way I can get paragraphs anymore is to bullet them? Otherwise it all runs together...weird.
  
  
  

Mall Trick-or-Treating

• Since Portsmouth is strange and celebrates Halloween on the night before, we get to do other fun stuff like go trick or treating at the mall on the actual night of Halloween! I'm all for this! It's so much fun...you're warm, you don't have to walk far to get lots of candy, and you get to see tons of kids in costumes...what could be better?

• Ben was much happier on Friday night and willingly put on his costume...all except for the clown nose, it scared him for some reason. I was thrilled to get some pics of him wearing everything and with a smile on his face. He was mesmerized by all the goings-on at the mall and had a ton of fun. He didn't want to take his hat off or give up his bag of candy. He dragged it all around!
  

Happy Halloween!

Trick or treating in 29 degree weather didn't stop Cal!

Ben was so sad...didn't stop crying the whole night :(

He's a candy corn, people, not the pope.

Hehe...

One of the MANY fittings to see if this would work!

Halloween sends our household into stress-filled pandamonia until it's over...thankfully it now is...since we are now known for our costumes and are expected to come up with something good, especially after this year. The main questions we get are:

• How did you come up with that idea? On the internet.
• How long did it take to make? I have no idea since Eric did most of it at night but we started working on it weeks in advance since it's always a matter of trial and error.
• How did you make it? The balloons are attached by duct tape I think. Eric said it took "a long time" to pump all the balloons up. It's a box with lots of hot glue, PVC pipes with foam, and lots of cardboard for support. No, it's not that heavy!
  

Where'd I go?

I will SO miss the days of the awkward head position in the bouncy chair when they're gone :(

• It's been awhile since my last post...I've been wasting time on this little thing called Facebook which I knew would be bad to join but my curiosity got the better of me. Everyone in the world is on that dumb thing EXCEPT the 3 people I actually joined to find. Go figure! So now I think it's bullshit but still waste time on it - oh well. It did get me back in touch with a couple people from far away times and I did find out a friend had another baby I didn't even know about. Hmm...I guess that's when you know you haven't talked to them in so long you aren't even friends anymore!! - startling but true revelation.

• Anyways, we've been very busy around here "standing by" for all the deliveries from our summer purchases. This Thursday will mark the 3rd attempt Jordan's is going to make to deliver a dresser for our bedroom. It's been damaged the last two times. We're working on getting our gas fireplaces installed. We bought an insert for our existing fireplace since we can't deal with wood and then put a cabinet with another gas fireplace in the living room. When they're all in and looking pretty I'll take pictures! Our entertainment center came damaged too and now I have to wait for the "furniture medic" to come repair it. Warning: Never buy a large piece of furniture off the internet...of course, you probably already knew that. It's been weeks of calling and calling to finally have them come repair it when really I just want a NEW and wholesome one! Mmmm..and did I mention that our new flat screen broke a week after it was installed. They came to fix the faulty wiring the day after the Red Sox got knocked out...sorry Eric. Not to mention that the receptionist at Amerigas now probably thinks I'm a lunatic because I asked to NOT have a specific repairman (who creeps me out) come to the house to hook up the fireplaces. Turns out it was him scheduled to be here so I had to make arrangements to not be here by myself all day!

• FLOOR UPDATE: Well, posting that my floors hadn't been cleaned in forever finally gave me motivation to get them cleaned....by someone else! I'm just never going to do it so I hired myself a cleaning lady to come once a month and do all the big stuff (dusting, floors, etc). Not that this is going to save me any time since it's the daily clutter, dishes, laundry that is constant and most time consuming...BUT at least my house will be cleaner.