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...!

Happy April Fools Day!

The title is the only concession to the day - this post is absolutely legit. I pinky promise!

When we moved into this house, we knew that the lack of fence around the house would be an issue considering the dogs obviously like to play outside. The previous owners had a dog and had solved the same problem by installing an invisible fence. We knew this, but didn't really know how to use an invisible fence. We only had one collar and no idea what to do with it. After walking the dogs outside on a leash or having to yell at them to keep them in the yard for a few months, we decided to get the invisible fence company out to get another collar and train the dogs on the fence. And since then, they have stayed in the yard reasonably well.

The downside to an invisible fence in Anchorage is that the moose roaming the neighborhood don't have collars that make the invisible fences work to keep them out. (Darn!) So we always have to check for moose. Well occasionally we forget and let the dogs out to potty without checking like last night... 

Luckily, our dogs need very little encouragement to bark like crazy, so we knew pretty quick we had screwed up and got them back inside before anyone got hurt.

Apparently our yard looked pretty tasty to this momma and baby moose that we wandering around the neighborhood. They hung out in the yard for as long as we wanted to stare at / photograph them. Every time I don't see one for a while, I forget how ridiculously tall they are. These things are huge - we're lucky the girls made it back inside safely!

Which is why it's even more embarrassing that it happened again this morning! This time Matt looked, but apparently a baby moose is very well camouflaged against the trees. Fortunately, the dogs again barked and we got them back inside before they even managed to make the baby moose stand up.

The momma moose was nowhere to be found and the baby hung out in our yard for hours today. I finally decided that our yard must be moose daycare. I mean other than our dogs, it's probably a pretty safe place to hang out. And the moose certainly figured out last night that our two pups aren't much of a threat (something about their bark being bigger...?)

We managed to take a photo to show the how close the wildlife in Alaska can get. And he's pretty obvious when you know where to look for him, but I promise if you scanned the yard quick, you probably would have missed him too! :)

Henry's First Photo Session

One of the neat things I found when I started working up here in Alaska was that work had a bunch of diversity networks. We had a version of those back in Houston, but up here they focus not just on gender or ethnicity, but also on hobbies - which I find way more interesting! So I joined the Photography group (and Brittney joined too once she got a fancy schmancy camera for Christmas.)

The first meeting I attended focused on photo editing and led me to finally buy Lightroom - I can't believe I waited so long! The lady doing the presentation on Lightroom, Joanna, actually has a photography business (her website) and she has done quite a bit of newborn photography. I emailed her and asked for tips, which led to her coming over and taking photos of Henry and walking me through some of her editing workflows. Which means I now want Photoshop as well...

She took some really amazing photos and she has so many more props than I would have ever been able to buy without Matt having a "talk" with me. Although I am very much considering going out and buying some reflectors - the light in our house is pretty awesome with our wall of windows, but being able to reflect it around some to banish shadows would be nice. (That and one of our shades broke in the "up" position, so we had to move around some when that window was shining in the wrong spot. Whoops!)

Anyhow, that's the back story on why Henry got nice newborn photos taken even though I never did it for Thomas. Which is also why I made sure he was included in several of the shots. Even though he was still in the "not too sure about the baby" phase... ;)

Sick Days

I got the dreaded "Can you come get Thomas, we think he is sick" phone call from daycare Friday afternoon. They were worried he was getting pink eye because his eyes were all goopy. Great...

Took him to the doctor first thing Monday morning since the eye gunk wasn't improving. His eyes weren't getting red though, so my money wasn't on pink eye. And turns out I was right - poor guy has another ear infection. We're at the point now that every time he gets an ear infection we have to decide if it's time for ear tubes or not. He hasn't had one since December and summer is almost here (ha!), so we opted for the antibiotics again. There's just something about putting my toddler under general anesthesia that doesn't sit well with me. If he gets another ear infection soon, I may just have to suck it up and go with the tubes...

But in the meantime, Thomas had to miss hanging out with his friends for a few days and got some extra playtime with us!

He got to play with the newly repaired WingBat with Matt. Matt ordered this thing awhile ago, but when it arrived, it was missing the very critical nosepiece. Matt managed to McGyver together a nose piece with a K-cup container, spare change and electric tape. Now the WingBat flies like a champ! I'm not sure who was more excited, Thomas or Matt:

We also had some fun playtime inside. He rediscovered an old favorite with his fire truck - and now he's coordinated enough to actually make it go, though not without losing one of his new rocket slippers:

The extra paper towels were then pressed into service as rollers for Thomas to slide on and then blocks so he could bust through them a la the Kool-Aid Man!

Since we had a nice, sunny day to enjoy, we even went to the zoo. Matt was concerned that Henry would get cold, but I remembered that he had the perfect outfit from his Aunt B (Brittney)! It fit him perfectly and even though he may not look terribly excited in the photo, I am sure he was stoked to be going to the zoo in such a fashionable outfit!

The car seat straps are somewhat obscuring the awesomeness - it's a monkey outfit. And he makes the cutest grumpy monkey! :)