Brad's visit home & Aiden's 1st Chuck-e-cheese visit

Last week, Brad came home to visit for 4 days. It makes me sad that I have to say he came HOME to VISIT, but at least he was here. These first couple pictures are out of order but I don't want to spend the time to move them. Brad got home last Thur evening. Aiden went a little crazy and didn't want anything to do with daddy for the first night. He refused to eat with us and was really whiny. Thankfully, when he woke up Friday morning, he was much better and thought it was pretty nice that daddy was here.

I don't even remember what we did while Brad was here. It was great though!! In the picture below, I got out the jumper to see if Eli was ready for it yet. Aiden went crazy and wanted to get in it. Brad showed Aiden and Eli what Eli was supposed to be doing and in the picture below, Aiden is trying to help bounce Eli.
Look at that chunky monkey face. Too cute.The video below is cute. Here is Brad swinging Aiden in the swing.

Before Brad came home, Aiden helped grandma bake a cake for his big arrival. You can see the picture below of Aiden helping grandma. Grandma took these pictures and did a great job.

They iced the cake when I got home so I started taking pictures. I had to help with Aiden icing it because he started to poke the frosting rather than spread.
Once he got the hang of it, he did a great job putting sprinkles on it for daddy. It took him a few times to understand that you don't touch the cake when you put the sprinkles on because he kept trying to literally set the sprinkles on the cake.
On Friday we got some Valentine's presents from grandma and grandpa Hoyt. Aiden got some new colored pencils and paper that he was pretty excited about using.
There was still snow left to be shoveled so we went out on Friday on got a little exercise. Our friend let us borrow some snow boots for Aiden and he could explore so much and he loved it. Here is Aiden with a giant snowball on his shovel. The video below is pretty cute. It's Aiden trying to move the giant snowball of the shovel by picking it up.

Brad was helping shovel me a spot out so that I could backup out of our driveway without hitting mounds of snow. Here is Aiden with his rake imitating daddy. Too precious.

No I haven't forgotten about Eli. Here he is! He's pretty cute these days and loves to smile. He still isn't rolling over but he's thinking about it. I thought he was gonna do it for Brad while he was here but he's holding out for a bit. He's at least rolling onto his side and looking ahead of him. Eli and I have still been dealing with thrush which has been annoying. We started treatment again last Thursday. This is a 2 week treatment with my on diflucon and Eli on oral Nystatin. Hopefully this treatment will work. I don't have the energy to do this kind of treatment again.

Here is a picture of Brad hard at work while at home. He's holding onto Eli and helping Aiden eat his dinner. What a great daddy.

These boys are too cute. Aiden is great "help" because he's free entertainment for Eli! Eli loves to watch him play with his trains and cars. I wish Aiden wouldn't mind if Eli actually touched one of his trains/cars but I that will eventually come.Brad getting is hand sucked off by Eli. He's got some seriously strong suction. If he's not sucking on something, he's not happy which makes it extra hard for him to sooth himself at night. When Brad gets back in mid/late March, we are going to change some things with Eli's sleep. My friend (thanks Jess) just sent us a sleep book so I started reading it tonight. I'm going to have to do something in the next 2-3 days but I don't know if I can handle letting him cry it out during the night because it keeps me up and I don't get to nap the next day because of Aiden (and Eli). It was much easier to let Aiden start to cry it out because we were both here to take turns taking care of him and just reassuring each other we were doing the right thing. I also wasn't worried about waking up another baby and Aiden was about 10 months I think.

On Monday, Brad decided we were taking Aiden to his 1st Chuck-e-cheese experience. We were all really excited. Below is a picture of Aiden in the American truck. Brad was playing around with him and he loved it. We put the coin in and Aiden wasn't real sure. He started saying "out" so we took him out and I put Eli in there. He didn't seem to mind it!

After a few more tries at rides, we realized that Aiden doesn't like them. They finally opened up the "Toddler" area and he had a blast on the little slide (no coins required).

He finally got brave enough and went up into the big tunnels with me. I got him to go up twice but he went right down the slide after we got up. Brad went up with him and got him to go exploring through the maze of tubes.


Aiden had fun and got lots of exercise running around. He wanted nothing to do with the pizza though. I can't wait until we go back. We also went to Babies R Us since we were out in town and you can see below what Brad bought Aiden. We are calling it the ball crawl. it a little ball pit with a tube that you can slide balls down and throw them through the top. He loves it! This will be great on the snowy days up here or the rainy days (which there are lots of) in Florida.


Below is a video of Brad playing with the boys. It's pretty cute. Brad left on Tues at 6am and will be back towards the end of March. I miss him already.

I have started getting really nauseous from the amount of diflucon I am taking. Unfortunately, there is no other treatment for thrush so I have to figure out a way to deal with it. I have some anit-nausea medicine so hopefully that will help. I also found out I have bursitis in my elbow (I can barely pick up the boys now) and will start PT next week and am waiting for an ortho appointment. Other than that, my mom is sick and has been for a week! She's better than last weekend but still sounds pretty back. Please keep her in your prayers.

2/14 - Blizzard Round #2

So after we got done with the 2 feet of snow that got dumped on us last week, we got

more on Tues/Wed of this week!! This blizzard Part 2 brought tons of wind and some more snow. You can see in the picture above that we actually had white-out conditions for a while and the winds were up to 45 mph. In the video below, can see (and hear) the wind pretty well.

Our driveway was shoveled out the night before this blizzard hit and I was shocked to see that you couldn't even tell it had been shoveled!!! We had 2-2.5 ft snow drifts where I had plowed out the drive-way earlier. In the picture below, I fell while I was going to stand for the picture. There is LOTS of snow in our side/backyard.

We got some pretty amazing icicles too. Some of them got to be 3 ft in length!

Aiden learned something new he can do with icicles. He figured out he can suck on them like a popsicle. Yummy.
In the picture below, Aiden was making snowballs to throw. Unfortunately, most of the snow would get stuck to his glove and he couldn't throw it. Needless to say, it was still funny to watch.

Aiden didn't like playing outside during the blizzard (he didn't like the wind) but when it finally got nice outside (a relative word at this point), we went out to play. Aiden decided he was going to push his bubble blower around in the snow. I didn't have any bubbles in it because it would freeze in the garage but he still had fun.

Aiden tried to help shovel snow since Brad isn't here to help but it wasn't the same. He could barely move the shovel it was so heavy. My elbow has been bothering me and shoveling snow has made it much worse. Hopefully I'll get to stop shoveling snow soon!

This is big boy Eli chillin' out inside while I Aiden and I play outside. I call him my 'Chunk-a-monk.'

Last Friday I was taking pictures of Eli since he was a20 weeks. Aiden wanted to get in on the action and it then occurred to me ... Aiden is 20 months.
In the picture below, my chunky monkey Eli is 20 weeks and weight almost 17 lbs!! Aiden just turned 20 months!
Eli has been doing pretty good lately. The last 2 nights have been pretty bad because he thinks 5:00am is his wake-up time (I'm not so excited about that). He still has very little interest in rolling over but we still make him do tummy time. He drools like a mad-man and sucks on anything he can get his hand on or his hand if he can't grab anything. The crazy thing: he's not teething ... his gums are not swollen at all!
We've been forced to be inside a lot over the past 2 weeks. Below is a picture of Aiden and grandma watching for birds. They are finally coming back out and Aiden loves to watch birds or any kind of animal really.
Our friends, Don and Andrea, built a snow cave with all the snow in their yard. Actually, it was Becky, their daughter, and Don that built the cave. When I saw pictures on Facebook, I knew I had to take Aiden to see it. Thankfully, they let us come over. Aiden was a little leery at first but he likes Becky so having her there to play with calmed him down.

Once we got in the cave he was scared and wanted to just stand on my lap. Becky showed him how if you run your hand on the roof, snow will come down. Aiden that was pretty cool and decided to give it a try. After a few handslaps on the roof, I was getting nervous he was going to make the cave collapse so we stopped that game.
Aiden crawled out on his own. He wanted to keep playing but it was getting dark and cold so we had to leave.

We tried finger painting for the first time yesterday. I wasn't sure if Aiden would like it since he doesn't like getting dirty. He didn't mind it though. He loves coloring and using markers and he got into this pretty fast and liked it. I stripped him down and planned to go from the kitchen floor to the bath. We did have a little heater set up in the kitchen so Aiden wouldn't get cold. I knew there was no way we could get those socks off him so I didn't try (he won't walk on tile if he doesn't have socks on).

As you can see in the video below, he did pretty good at the finger paints. I had to let go of the control and not freak out because he ran his finger through all the colors ... it was good for me!

After church today we came home and relaxed. After a walk, we turned on the Daytona NASCAR race. Aiden went nuts. He recently saw the movie 'Cars' for the first time and couldn't take his eyes off the TV. When Brad gets back guess I know what the boys will do on Sunday afternoon ... NASCAR bonding time.


Eli was being cute this afternoon. Here is a picture of him smiling so big. He can be a really happy baby at times. He's starting to get really ticklish.
Look at the cute little man ... so stinkin' cute.

Brad should be coming home at the end of the week for a few days which would be awesome. It's the Navy though so I'm trying to mentally prepare for it not happening too.

2/6 - Blizzard 2010

So we have had lots of snow lately. Wednesday was spent running around making sure we had groceries and such for the snowstorm we currently have. Thursday was my mom's infusion in Annapolis and we got some camping-type stuff on the way home in case we lose electricity. In the picture above, Aiden wanted to hang out in his room, the only place where he can have his blankie and paci. Sometimes he still gets jealous of Eli and will go in his room, lay on the floor, and get his paci and blankie. There are worse things he could do so I'm okay with that.
Some of these pictures are out of order. Aiden and grandma were coloring the other day. Aiden loves hanging out with Aiden and I'm so grateful that she is still here to help out while Brad is away. Eli is getting bigger everyday. Now that he's on all the medicines, one of them is working!! He's not throwing up as much and he's sleeping at night. It's beautiful!! Here he is wearing some cute overalls hanging out on Aiden's pillow.
Eli weighed in this week at 16 lbs, 7 oz. He's my chunky monkey. He's getting stronger everyday too. He can now last about 15 min in the exersaucer (compared to 3 min 2 weeks ago). We only have 1 more day left of treating thrush. I'm so excited. His part of the treatment is a huge pain and I feel like I give him medicine all day long.
The boys were hanging out in the living room the other day. There are some times when I think Eli looks just like Aiden and other times when I think they look nothing alike. It will be interesting to see how their personalities come about.

The boys were doing tummy time. Eli still does not care for it yet and I don't think he's close to rolling over anytime soon (unfortunately). He's fine with just sticking his head straight down on the blanket for tummy time.

He can finally bear his own weight for a minute now. That chunky monkey has a lot of weight to hold up and his legs can actually do it for a little bit. Here is Aiden showing Eli the new bee on the exersaucer.

Eli put himself into a nap today. He loves this blanket that his great grandma Hagan gave him. It is very soft and furry.

It is safe to say, I've never shoveled so much snow in my life. Yes, I have lived in Florida MOST of my life but still. I lived in Cleveland for 2 years and we had over 100 inches of snow fall both winters but other people took care of the snow plowing since I lived in an apartment. This is our house from the corner. You can barely see it with the plow snow piles which are about 3.5/4 feet high right now.My strategy for the blizzard: keep shoveling and don't get behind!! I think it's worked. I went out twice yesterday and shoveled and twice today. I will need to do a final shovel tomorrow but it won't be bad. Each time I'm out there for about an hour and I'm sweating my the end. In the video below, Aiden was helping me out yesterday. They made a snowman at daycare on Thursday so he got used to grabbing snow with his hand (he won't do this for me usually ... he HATES getting dirty). Friday, while I was out shoveling for a bit, Aiden decided to help me by grabbing snow and putting it in my shovel. Too cute. If you are reading this on FB, you can go to http://thehoytfamilyhappenings.blogspot.com to see the video.

Here is our entry way. The snow came under our balcony and onto our front door by mid-afternoon (when the winds changed).
The snow doesn't look very deep here but ... it is!! That's the space I've shoveled out for myself. After all that work,when I was done I realized my van wouldn't clear the middle part so I had to go back and take out half the stuff off the top in the middle. At least that was light snow from today.
I took Aiden out with me today again but he didn't have any fun. It was way too windy for him. He kept getting hit in the face with snow and wanted to go back in not long after I had him out. He was trying to make his alligator eat snow (it's a sand toy). This snow was from last night. You couldn't even tell I had been shoveling the day before.

The picture below was taken this afternoon. I shoveled at 10am and then again at about 3:30pm and you couldn't see that I had done any work. Snow was everywhere at 3:30 and a couple inches thick on stuff I had just done a few hours before. The picture below is ... bushes. They used to be anyway. There is so much snow that they are less than half the size the usually are and it has completely smothered some of them.

The picture below was taken from our side yard. The snow is up to my knee and I'm still a few inches from the ground because the snow is so packed. Our poor dog has no where to go potty at right now and he disappears in the snow.

This blizzard has been a crazy experience. God does such marvelous things. It really is so beautiful. I would really like to go for a walk with Aiden tomorrow to look around but it's supposed to be really cold tomorrow. We'll have to see. There will definitely be no stroller pushing ... even with the baby jogger. I think he can handle the cold and the lack of wind should be good.