Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Since Cinco De Mayo was pretty big back home, we decided to celebrate with our fellow Texans - albeit the day before since they had to work. I'm still on leave so it didn't matter to us, but we're nice like that. :)

Our little kitchen helper decided to model my weapon of choice in the fight against crying while cutting onions. Yes, I know they look ridiculous, but they honestly work! I wasn't even the one cutting onions - I offered them to Matt to use, but I think he decided he would rather tear up... *sigh*

Matt hard at work making his Uncle Jerry's salsa recipe. He had been promising Brittney a batch practically since we moved up here, so he figured today was the most fitting occasion!

Thomas and I went for a walk while Matt was hard at work and when we came back he had multiple batches in differing states of jalapeno content and texture.

Thomas was more than happy to be the taste tester. And, as usual, he liked the hot salsa more than the mild stuff. That is certainly not my genetics! Oh and I know he looks a little ridiculous, but he didn't want to change out of his pajamas before our walk...

Once we finally made it to Brittney & Duncan's house, Henry proceeded to do his usual routine of trying to sleep the entire time. I wonder if babies ever realize they fell asleep in one place and woke up somewhere completely different? That would certainly freak me out!

Brittney even made us tortillas to go with our fajitas! Talk about spoiling people - she's worse than I am! ;)

Of course by the time the fajitas were ready to eat, we had all eaten our full weight in tortilla chips and queso, guacamole & salsa. Completely normal behavior - especially at all of my favorite Tex-Mex restaurants back home. I miss you , Lupe!

Thomas even had more birthday presents to enjoy! He pretty much loved his new Elmo couch. I can't say that I blame him - a couch that folds down into a lounging bed? Why don't they make these for adults??

Eklutna Lake

The weather has turned gorgeous up here, so Matt and I decided to make the most of it and take the boys out for some fun. We had talked before about going to Eklutna Lake and scoping it out, so no time like the present!

I'm sure if you had asked Thomas what his preferred mode of transportation would be, he would choose to walk on his own. But if that wasn't an option (because we want to go faster than a snail...), I am sure he would choose his dad carrying him. He's gotten to the point where he will climb into the backpack rig without too much prompting. Yay!

Heading down from the walking path to the lake. Having never been here before, I don't know if the water is higher or lower than usual. I do know it was still pretty brown and there were still a few patches of snow. Those seem way more treacherous when you are wearing sneakers and carrying kids, by the way!

See the mountains all around? See the lack of snow? Apparently that is super unusual this time of year. We lucked out for our first year with a mild winter and an amazingly awesome spring. I'm wearing short sleeves - unheard of!

As awesome as the sun was, I started to get worried that Thomas was going to get a sunburn on his face. His baseball hat my parents got him is super cute, but not so great at covering the sides of his face. So I tried to convince him to wear my hat instead. I don't mind getting burned if it keeps him from it. (Note to self - bring sunscreen next time!)

The beach of the lake was super muddy. Matt had the foresight to wear his boots, but I was stuck jumping around puddles and tiny rivers of water to get around. And as you can imagine it was super slick.

We retreated up to the rocky part and let Thomas run around. You might notice he isn't wearing my hat anymore. He wore it long enough to laugh and let me get a few pictures, but then decided he didn't want it. Luckily, he didn't get sunburned. My face was fine, but my arms definitely got some color. So at least I had the smarts to put Thomas is long sleeves!

His favorite activity of the day? Throwing rocks! We were safely away from anyone getting hurt as long as he didn't throw backwards, so we let him have fun with it. The boy is developing quite the throwing arm!

I can't let him have all of the fun, can I? I think he would have been more impressed by my throwing skills if he had looked up long enough to see them - he was too busy hunting for his next rock to throw.

All in all, it was a fun day with the boys. Not a long trip by any means, but enough to test out the kid carrying packs for future use. I think Henry slept the whole time, so he may not have even noticed we were out in the gorgeous Alaskan "wilds". :)

Thomas Turns 2!

Thomas turned 2 today! It was such a fun day hanging out with him, opening presents and taking him to Chuck E Cheese. We went to Chuck E Cheese pretty frequently (well for celebrations) when I was a kid and I thought a two year old might enjoy it. Plus for the same price as a normal lunch in Anchorage, we got lunch and two hours of fun. I'd call the whole day quite the success. There are a lot of photos in this post, so I'll try to explain the events just using the captions on the photos to save some time and reading effort on your part. :)

I made this awesome balloon chandelier for him the day before and had Matt sneak it into his room last night. That backfired a little when he woke up in the middle of the night (he's not feeling 100%), saw the outline of the balloons and flipped out. Luckily, when Matt came in and turned the light on, he saw the scary shadows were just balloons and giggled at them. So not scarred for life (hopefully)!

He absolutely loved hitting his balloons and running into them. What toddler wouldn't?!?

Unfortunately there was an incident. I took the balloons downstairs while we ate breakfast, then we went back to his room to play. We had hung them from the dome on his light fixture and when I tried to put them back up there, the dome slipped off and shattered all over his floor. The exploding glass and balloons was heart attack inducing, but luckily neither one of us got hurt (he was still out in the hallway telling Eliza to "go!"). He was pretty upset at me for breaking his light though...

Inspecting his birthday banner!

His cupcakes yesterday were homemade "funfetti", so I had to buy sprinkles and thought since we had a huge tub of sprinkles, why not add them to the pancakes?? He approved! In this photo he was testing the temperature of his pancakes and deeming them "hot".

So he blows on them to cool them off. That's one thing he's gotten pretty good at!

Another new skill - helping dad make coffee. He can turn on the grinder, start it and turn it back off. The he hands his dad a filter and helps dump the grinds in. Obviously he doesn't drink coffee yet, so this is truly a labor of love for his parents. And adorable!

Sitting on his first present of the day. Like his birthday shirt? I made it from a swatch of tie-dye felt I found at Michael's. I like making him stuff from my limited crafting skills! Also note the Elmo socks - his favorite (from his Granny!)

This rocket ship is made by the same company as the airplane I bought him for his first birthday, so I thought it would be good to add to the collection. He loved it! (And I love toys I find that are actually made in the US - shockingly hard!)

This photo is from his birthday last year. He absolutely hated when we tried to put a birthday hat on him. He didn't even want me to wear one. There are several "melt-down" photos because we kept trying to convince him that party hats are awesome. He never agreed...

So while the rest of us wore party hats, we never got Thomas to keep one on. Henry goes along with it, though his expression is pretty skeptical.

Since we had so many extra, Matt finds other ways to wear them than just on his head.

And you might be able to tell here that Matt was saying "Don't let go!" realizing he was about to be whacked with a party hat. I think Thomas actually put it back instead of hitting his dad with it. What a nice little guy, huh?

On to Chuck E Cheese! Thomas was a bit overwhelmed when we first got there, but he warmed up to the idea pretty quick. First he just wanted to help put the coins in the slot, but then we managed to get him to help play some games.

Of course, Chuck E Cheese knows what even the littlest of kids like - he loved this "game" where you dial a number and a Chuck E Cheese character talks to you on the phone. Woooo.... ; )

Matt got in on some race car driving while Thomas helped by holding his tickets.

Break time for lunch. The pizzas were about as good as I remember, which wasn't bad. Even the little guy approved of the choice of toppings. I think he actually ate the bell peppers even though his momma was picking them off. Sorry - green bell peppers are not made to be eaten. Gross!

He tried his best to help with skee ball, but didn't really get the concept. He sure liked the fact the games had balls though! I distinctly remember them being wood though, now they are plastic... Henry was strapped in his baby carrier for most of the visit, but unfortunately Matt didn't manage to get a photo of me playing skee-ball with him strapped to me. I'm sure it looked pretty silly!

Thomas was very intent on this game, it required shooting little balls and trying to get them through holes. I don't think they scored very high, but he liked it!

This one - he did not like! He was excited about sitting on the horse - until it started moving. To his credit - it was shaking him around pretty good. Matt ended up finishing the game for him and he seemed to be having a blast on it.

I remember spending so much time at the end of the day counting tickets to see what I could get in prizes. Now they have machines you feed the tickets into and it gives you a printed receipt to take to the counter. Kids these days have it so easy!

We picked his prizes for him and got him a bunch of stickers and a crazy straw. On the drive home, Matt told me to look at him in the mirror. He had stuck stickers on his face and was content with them staying there. Also note the yellow bags in the far back - those are the summer tires we need to get put on the car. Last day for snow tires was April 30th - whoops!

By the time we got home, he was passed out and still had the stickers on his face. Only now we noticed he had them on his hands too. This boy loves his stickers!

More presents before dinner - this one was the only kitchen set I could find that wasn't rated 3+. I was pretty excited because he loves playing with my kitchen stuff, so I figured he would like his own set. And he loved it - he was pretend feeding us with the spoons. We avoided actual contact with the spoon since he had already stuck it in his mouth... "/

And after dinner, more present opening! We tried to spread it out over the day to make it more exciting. Henry even seems more excited about the party hat this time. :)

We decided to open the last presents and eat cake while chatting with his Granny and PawPaw on Skype. Here the boys are looking up at their grandparents. You've got to love the wonders of modern technology!

Thomas loved his helicopter that Tom (his namesake or whatever the term would be for the person he is named after) sent to him. It's a model of the Eurocopter that Tom flies for the Army - UH72 Lakota. Don't tell Thomas, but this one is likely going to be hanging in his room, not readily available for play. Well at least until he's old enough not to break it accidentally!

The Elmo birthday cake! Still the same red problem as the cupcakes, but this time Thomas said "Elmo" as soon as he saw it. And it didn't even have the black on the eyes at the time. So success! How could I resist buying the Elmo pan when he loves Elmo so much (and I had a 20% coupon!)?

Blowing out the candle on the cake. Well trying to, I think Matt helped him out so he wouldn't end up blowing spit all over the cake. Good call, Matt!

But he wouldn't put his bubbles down to eat his cake. I think he loves bubbles almost as much as stickers!

And this is about as messy as he got. Matt's mom was asking me if I was worried he was going to ruin the cute shirt I made him, but he actually didn't get any cake or icing on it. This kiddo can be a neat eater when he wants to be! Which is usually when I want photos of cake all over his face... Oh well!

I'd call it a pretty successful birthday! He seemed to have a fun filled day and I don't think he had a single meltdown all day - so at least for the day he turned two, we avoided the "Terrible Twos!"

Love you Thomas and we're so glad we've had you around for the past two years! You're turning into quite the awesome little guy! :)

Elmo Cupcakes

Thomas turns 2 tomorrow, so my plan was to have a bunch of stuff planned for him - which meant he obviously wasn't going to go to daycare. But they celebrate birthdays at daycare if you want to bring in treats, so I decided they could just celebrate a day early and made cupcakes to send in with him today.

Since he's obsessed with Elmo these days, I thought I would try to make him Elmo cupcakes. I probably could have looked up ideas online, but figured I could wing it well enough from previous experience. I wanted to buy the candy eyeballs I always see to save myself a little bit of trouble, but then came the issue of the frosting. Red is my nemesis color. I'm not alone with having red troubles - a search online shows all kinds of people asking for help coloring red and black.

Oh great, the two colors I happen to need...

I decided to be brave and try the red, but buy black. I ended up buying black cookie glaze because I thought it might look better from the mouth. And I remembered a neat trick from my "What's Up Cupcake" book and bought Starburst to make the nose.

Brittney even came over to help the decorating last night and I think they turned out pretty good. Not perfect, but I felt they were easily identifiable:

The textures were all a little different thanks to having two of us decorating and the icing getting warm as we worked, but my favorite was the "furry" Elmo that Brittney made:

But when I showed the Elmo obsessed toddler, he would not say "Elmo". Eventually, he saw his snack container that had Elmo on the cover behind the cupcakes and pointed to that and said "Elmo"! But no dice on the cupcakes! To be fair, the pictures make the red look a little better than it was in real life. It was definitely not Elmo red, but I couldn't put any more red dye in the frosting. I mean, I'm giving these to other people's kids and you always hear that red dye isn't that great for children. So I had to draw a line somewhere, and that line was "muted red"...

Matt said the teachers at daycare said Elmo right away, so at least they got it!

(And as I am typing this blog, I had to walk away to feed Henry and hear Thomas yelling "Elmo" from this direction. The little toot saw the cupcake photos on the screen and now thinks they look like Elmo. I swear toddlers have the directive of toying with their parents...)

Spaceship Update

But first - since I was discussing moose related presents on Monday, I figured I would share a photo of Thomas and his other moose present that hasn't made an appearance yet. Granny (Matt's mom) gave this to Matt after I was already up here, so I didn't know about it until the shipment arrived - just like the space shuttle actually! Anyhow, this is the first time Thomas has seemed to get the hang of what the moose is for. He had quite a bit of fun "riding" it around the house. He still has to grow into it, but adorable anyway, huh?

On to the spaceship!

I recall making the promise that we would duct tape it together if we had to. And boy have we had to! Thomas is rough on this thing, as much as he loves it. It has packing tape, "real" duct tape and white duct tape holding it together as best that it can. I looked at getting a new one, but for a bunch of cardboard - it's not cheap! Grannie found a great deal on it and we'll keep patching it for the foreseeable future.

What is Thomas doing in there, anyhow? And why is there a snowman on the front of the space shuttle?

Stickers!

This is the Sticker Shuttle. He loves going in there and putting stickers on the walls, ceilings and instrument panel. Matt added the snowman to the front once Thomas started adding stickers to the outside as well. But mostly they are on the inside - luckily I bought a set of about 2000 stickers for his Christmas present. There are obviously many, many repeats, but so far he hasn't seemed to mind.

I was trying to get a photo of the new stickers on the outside and he ran to the door when he saw me. I was touched that he was holding the door open for me to join him...

Or not!

I guess he wanted me to stop taking photos of him playing with his stickers. I guess being momma's favorite photography subject has lost its charm!

Too bad, big guy - it will take more than a closed cardboard door to keep me from wanting to capture you. You're growing up much too fast and I want to at least have photographs to remember all this by! :)

First Haircut!

Sorta...
I've cut his hair before, but finally gave up on giving him another good haircut and paid someone to cut his hair. (I did so good on the first one, but the rest went downhill...) They are certainly much better equipped to distract kids at a salon aimed at kids. They gave him bubbles! Why didn't I think of that?!?
Of course you might notice the bubble container changed in the two photos - I did my part in distracting Thomas from what was going on by switching out toys and bubbles as needed.
He did great! And I think it might be worth the money for future haircuts to not have to wrangle a toddler while trying to figure out how to cut his hair evenly... ;)

Moose Monday

Not the real kind, thankfully. We've been doing really well about checking for them since last weekend. No moose to be seen! Though we saw on the news the other day that the bears are waking up, so now we need to watch for them as well. I guess once the snow all melts and the days get longer, they decide come out of hibernation and be "social"...!

No, this moose was a present to Henry from his Aunt Jo (Matt's sister, JoAnna) that she sent right after he was born. And I'm just now getting around to taking a photo and saying thank you on his behalf!

In my defense, he's not been that great at staying awake for photos or looking at the camera until now. And I think this photo of him and his pretty peepers turned out pretty cute! Worth the wait, right??

And since Matt was at tumbling with Thomas, I took advantage of the lack of chaos to try and take more shots of Henry. I had all these shots I had wanted to take and never got around to. I managed to get some finger and toes shots, but those kind of detail shots are where a macro lens really pays off and I don't have one. I'm mentally debating if it would be worth renting one for a few days. I can't imagine I'll get Thomas to sit still enough to get any zoomed in shots of him, so it might not be. Stay tuned, you'll know if I get around to it!

In the meantime, Henry fell asleep pretty soon after I started trying to get photos of him all wide awake. Figures... So I ended up just wrapping him up in the blanket his Nonni (my mom) made him to keep him cozy.

He looks just as cute asleep as he did awake. :)

Hoppy Easter!

I was super excited about the chance to dye eggs with Thomas, but was worried about the huge potential for a mess. (This seems to be a theme with me wanting to do crafts with Thomas...!) Luckily, I saw a Easter egg kit that promised to be spill free. What kind of voodoo magic is that?!? I decided it was worth a shot and it pretty much worked as promised. Look at that dye containment when Thomas drops an egg into the yellow dye:

Of course, the fork didn't come with the kit, so they couldn't have predicted that toddlers would try to stir the eggs with said fork and manage to get a little dye outside of containment. Fortunately Matt predicted that there might be some dye issues and put down the craft/pastry mat. (One side for each!)

They weren't the most spectacular eggs I've ever made, but we all had fun playing with the eggs (Matt got the most creative). Turns out we probably should have invested in some sort of display mechanism as well, the cardboard carton the eggs came in wasn't all that festive. Can I at least call it rustic? ;)

I also wanted to redo one of the photos I got of Thomas last year where he was looking super cute in a pair of bunny ears that his teachers at daycare made for him.

"Where's the bunny??"

Unfortunately, he wasn't in the most cooperative mood with his bunny ears. I got him to put stickers on the band, but then he didn't want the band on his head. Then I got him to wear the band, but he didn't want the ears. I finally got him to wear the completed band after his nap, but he wasn't in the mood for photos.

So, sometimes you just take what you can get - in this case, I was happy he stopped trying to take photos of his socks with my phone camera long enough to at least look at the real camera...

Of course, he was more than willing to let me borrow his ears to put on Henry. Henry, on the other hand didn't seem to sure about what was balanced on his head.

Maybe next year I'll have more cooperative kiddos! Then I can have the group photo of all of the Easter participants. I'm pretty sure that Brittney and Duncan were bummed about not getting in on the bunny ears I kept talking about. :(

So next year, you guys! A repeat of the brunch extravaganza followed by bunny ear making and a group photo!

Two (23.5) Months!

Another month has gone by and I managed to get the boys to sit for the next set of stickers. I hemmed and hawed about whether I should have done a set of photos when Thomas hit his monthly "anniversary" but decided that was just a bit too much effort and would probably end up with wrinkled stickers from trying to reuse them. So just image that each of Thomas' stickers have a ".5" on the end of them...

It also just occurred to me that I could have been all clever and photoshopped a ".5" onto at least this one photo, but again with the too much effort...

This month, I was fully prepared to not get much cooperation out of the boys on sitting together after last month's outcome.

But they surprised me! Well, mostly Thomas surprised me - Henry is still pretty unsteady and slumped over if I exhaled too hard... ; )

Thomas was a super sport about the whole process and willingly (!) put his arm around his brother to help hold Henry up. How adorable are they all snuggled up together?

After I got a few nice photos, I told Thomas how awesome he did and that he could get down so I could get photos of Henry. But Thomas decided he would rather play with his baby brother and even got Henry to smile at him. I think these two are going to be the best of friends!

Happy two month anniversary, Henry! The time with you is just flying by!

Playing with Play-dough

Up to now, I've been a firm, no play-doh in the house person. I'm kinda hoping Thomas doesn't even know what play-doh is. But then somehow I got a crazy desire to play with Thomas and some play-doh. I have no idea where these things come from. Can the brain have cravings for play?

Anyhow, I obviously didn't have any in the house, but some vague memory of childhood surfaced about my mom making us a version of the stuff. Specifically, I recall an elementary school diorama Heather made that had a wolf made from homemade play-dough. No idea what the wolf was for, maybe she can enlighten us. But thanks to the wonder of the internet, we soon had a recipe for homemade play-dough. And since Thomas has been showing such interest in the kitchen, I thought he could try to help.

And he tried really hard to help! Unfortunately the dough gets pretty hard to stir once you start mixing it, but he stirred it some while he could. He also tried to taste test it even though I tried to explain it wasn't technically food. Oh well, he only tried it a few times before giving up on it... Then I gave him a finished batch to play with while I tinted the other ones.

I demonstrated how to roll and squish it, but he really didn't seem to be getting the concept. (This photo was taken right before he tried to eat it.) So then I had the brilliant idea to pull out the cookie cutters and play with it that way!

That wasn't too successful either. You can see the two shapes I cut out as a demonstration. He seemed pretty excited about the cutters and then proceeded to put them on top of the shapes I made and press on them ever so slightly, then pick them up and rearrange them. At least he was having fun!

I decided to make him a super exciting thing out of the play-dough while he played. But apparently I'm not that great at play-dough either because this was what I came up with:

Ha - I bet my parents are questioning that sculpture class I took in college right about now. At least I live in Alaska and a snowman is somewhat appropriate for 6 months of the year. So much for all those amazing play-dough creations I saw online that were so inspiring. I guess we both will have to work up to that...!