7/26 - Trip to St. Pete & Eli's 1st day of daycare

It's been a busy couple of days. You can see Eli hoping Nana with the dishes. They were clean ... I guess Eli is making them extra clean by putting Aiden's plate in his mouth. On Thursday I took my mom and the little boys to St. Pete. We left around 3:30 and got in right at 7:30. Eli went to bed over an hour late. We made due with the sleeping arrangement and stayed with my dad. It was the first time in while that my dad (papa) has seen the boys.
Aiden didn't miss a beat and warmed up to my dad right away as did Eli. They went to sleep right away and then my dad drove my mom back to her apartment where they discovered the air was broken. My poor mom slept in 90 degree plus temps.
Aiden had fun playing with papa and the cars at his place.

He really enjoyed/found it interesting to look at all the stuffed animals on the walls in my dads house. He was tipping over all the carved ducks on one of the tables.

I hope it's the first of many visits that papa can have with the boys.

We had a safe trip back to Jax on Friday and the boys tried to take a nap in the car. Eli did a decent job but Aiden really didn't want to sleep. Eli eventually woke up, cried for about 2 min, and went back to sleep. Unfortunately, Eli's crying woke up Aiden so Aiden only ended up sleeping for 30 minutes. :(

On Friday night, Brad and I got a babysitter and went to a movie. We saw Knight and Day and we liked it. It was a nice way to celebrate our anniversary. I was exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open after such a long day, but it was great to be with Brad.

After a morning a trip to the pool on Saturday, we came home and I fed the boys lunch while Brad mowed the yard. Aiden is doing so well in the pool. He goes under water and can kick and blow bubbles. Eli loves the water .... he always has.

You can see Aiden and daddy playing "Launch Aiden to the couch." Aiden was loving it and asking for "more." Aiden tried jump roping in the afternoon. He thought it was pretty neat. Too bad he doesn't know how to jump yet. He decided to wear my shoes around the house on Saturday night.

We went to church on Sunday at Orange Park First Baptist Church again. It was good but we haven't figured how to get there on time and since it's such a big church, I spent 15 min trying to find parking!! Eli decided to help me in the kitchen on Sunday fixing lunch. What a big helper. He takes on the role of garbage disposal!

In the video, you can see Eli and Aiden playing. I can see lots of playing in the future and it makes me smile. I know they will be a handful but right now it's pretty cute. Tonight was bath night and Eli was loving it as usual. You can see he has 2 upper teeth clearly in and a third one has just come in. The fourth one is about to come in I think. Eli had his first day of daycare today. He did fairly well. Ms. Lydia is taking care of him. He didn't take a morning nap and only slept for 75 min for an afternoon nap. I gave her some new strategies to hopefully let Eli get some more rest. I pray that something works. Otherwise, he ate good (not a surprise) and did great.

7/18 - Brad's back

We have had a great couple of days topped off by Brad coming home yesterday. We've finally had some nice weather in the morning and we have taken advantage of it lately. We took a visit down to the pool with the boys and my mom. We all had a blast. It was much easier for me to have some help (my mom) and both of the boys ultimately have more fun too. Aiden wasn't too fond of the Adult swim break so I had to bring a snack to occupy him for the 10 minutes.

Aiden and Eli are cracking me up lately. Aiden got a new slide as you saw in the last post and he found a great way to make Eli laugh ... let cars fall down the slide. You can see the video below which is hysterical. Carol - I bet you can't watch this without laughing - this one is for you!!

Eli has been all over the place and is getting very daring. The child has no fear (frowny face) and has fallen numerous times over the past few days.

He stood up for the first time on 7/14 from a sit in the dining room using the chair. I found him awake from his nap on 7/15 in the picture of Eli in his crib. He was so excited when I walked in and gave me the biggest smile like "mom - look at me stand. Aren't I so cute?" He's got 2 teeth that look like they are through but when you touch them, they aren't.

Aiden, the worldest sweetest kid, is doing great as well. He got a new McQueen car that changes with water (thanks Jess for the gift card - he still has enough money for something else so I'll keep you posted). The only bad thing is the car takes ice water to turn it red. I thought it was just hot/cold water changed the color and I went to the store to buy another one because ours was "broken" and realized my mistake! Opps. Our ice machine is broken so I froze some water and rubbed the cup all over the car. He LOVES it. He is showing it to Jess in the picture.

Aiden has had fun coloring with Nana. He loves playing with stickers and coloring around them. Aiden continues to love his new daycare and is really doing good. His vocabulary is getting bigger everyday!

After a bad rainstorm shut down an airport that Brad had to fly through, his arrival was postponed for a day. Although he was supposed to come in on Friday night, he ended up getting home Sunday around 3pm. He took a little catnap on the couch with Aiden by his side and Bronco on his lap. We are all really glad Brad is home.

We are pretty sure we have found a church: Orange Park First Baptist Church. It's much bigger than we are used to but the pastor is awesome, the kid's program is great (and extremely secure - we get a digital fingerprint verification in order to pick up our kids), and the people are friendly.

Also, Nana is going to stay until next week to help out some this week. Aiden has more testing this week and I have a doctor appointment to give me the results of my ultrasound last week. We have two weeks left of Brad here before he leaves for a while again. We are going to make the most of it and we get to celebrate our anniversary this friday - yeah.

7/14 - Brad is gone; Eli is everywhere

Little Eli has been a pretty good baby lately despite some teeth coming in and causing him some nap troubles. When he is awake, he's pretty happy which is awesome. This is pretty new for us and I am attributing it to the Zantac he is getting now. This very first picture cracks me up yet scares me because Eli looks like he is about to cause some serious trouble.
Aiden got a new slide a few nights ago. He loves slides and I thought it would be a great toy to have in the house since it seems to rain so much. He LOVES it. He's reminding me to take his shoes off in this picture. I don't know why he thinks he needs his stool to go up 2 steps but I'll let him experiment.

Aiden decided to eat his corn the other night by picking up his corn with his fingers and then placing it on his spoon. I'm pretty sure that he is not supposed to be regressing using his spoon and fork.

Aiden got a "new" (bought it off Craig's list) bike last night. I showed it to him and all he wanted to do was push it around. He finally has a bike with pedals, and he wants to push it! After we both got frustrated with that, we went back inside where Aiden played on his new slide and "crashed" at the bottom into stacks of pillows he placed.

Aiden also decided he would try and suffocate his brother by using all the pillows at the bottom of the slide. Don't worry, no one was harmed in the making of this video.

For a special treat the other night, I pulled the sofa bed out for Aiden. That's where Nana is sleeping right now. Aiden LOVES that bed when it's pulled out. He got all the pillows he could find and was rolling around on the bed. Eli was trying to walk around the bed but was trying to hold on the the sheets which move so he was only mildly successful.


Eli is all over the place right now. We leave him in one spot and he's clear across the room a minute later. He found his way under the train table the other night which was pretty funny. I think he'll eventually consider underneath a play area and crawl in there.

Nana and Aiden played with stickers this morning and colored some. Aiden has done a great job playing on his own which he normally does anyway. He's found a turtle that I have blown up for Eli for the pool and keeps pulling it out of the room. He took it out this morning and was standing in it playing with his cars this morning.

Eli is being brave (sounds better than kinda stupid) by crawling to unstable things and trying to get up on his knees while balancing with those unstable things. He'll learn eventually but he doesn't even care that he falls over so much from trying this kind of stuff. His latest goal is to pull his curtains down from his crib in his room. His curtains are tucked in the window and I've pulled the crib away from the window but that darn little boy has still managed to get ahold of them a few times since moving things. I'm gonna have to just move his crib to the middle of the room soon so he can't grab anything.

I'm hoping to get down to the pool today. We'll see how that goes. I went last night with Eli before bed and he LOVED it. Aiden hasn't wanted to go lately so I'm gonna see if I can talk him in to it today.

7/11 - Lots of firsts for Eli!!

I had a great birthday on Thursday. We had a screening appointment for Aiden in the morning for an early intervention program. We have some more testing to go to in 2 weeks. I just had to buy some of those Huggies blue jean diapers. We are normally a Pampers family but these are too cute. We went to chic-fil-a for my birthday dinner. It was great because the one near our house has a toddler play area. Aiden had a blast. Eli got a tooth on my birthday too. He's about to get 2 more pretty soon too (his front top 2 teeth).
Aiden has started to try and play with Eli a bit more. It's so cute. Aiden wanted to push Eli around on his bus the other day. Brad had to follow them around so Eli could stay up on the bus but they both had a good time.

Eli has been pretty busy lately. On Friday, Eli got up on all 4's!! He started crawling that way (sometimes) although he moves pretty slow right now. On Saturday, Eli decided he would sit up from crawling and also start really cruising.
Aiden has really enjoyed spending time with Brad. Aiden especially likes doing push-ups with Brad. I'm not sure if Brad likes the extra 30 lbs!

Here are a few pictures of Eli getting up on all 4's. Too cute.

I can't help but smile when Eli flashes me a smile. He's gonna be a little daredevil I think.

I went down to St. Pete to get my mom on Friday night and bring her back up on Saturday morning. We brought Bronco with us and boy was Aiden glad to see him. Aiden woke up from his nap to see a "dog" and didn't stop playing with him until bedtime. We even went for a walk where Aiden insisted on walking Bronco. I'm waiting until the day Bronco pulls a little too hard and Aiden bites it. Hopefully it won't happen but I wouldn't be surprised.

In the afternoon, we filled up the pool with some water and the boys splashed around. They had fun but Aiden doesn't like Eli to have toys in the water. When he catches one he either throws it out and then I put it on the side. Aiden refuses to bathe with Eli anymore. Aiden doesn't want to be touched in the tub and doesn't want any toys in there other than his. Eli wants to move all around and splash and play with toys so they don't mix very well right now. Hopefully that will change in a few months.

We went to a new church again this week. We've been here 3 weeks and have gone to 3 different churches. The first one was a definite no, the second is a maybe, and the third one we just went to we want to go to sunday school there. The one we went today was big; much bigger than we are used to. After nap time today, Aiden an

d Eli played in their respective areas on the train table. Eli got some one-on-one time with Bronco for a bit. Eli is all over the place right now and he's kinda grumpy because he has 2 more teeth that are about to come in. He's been discovering what his tongue can do this afternoon and it's been pretty comical.

Aiden will be going to daycare on Monday and Thursday this week. Tomorrow I will make some phone calls about getting Eli in somewhere. I just haven't found the right place for him yet and I'd rather take an extra week or two and get him into a permanent place rather than letting someone care for him for a few weeks to just switch again. We went to Toys R Us this afternoon and Aiden got a new slide. He was VERY excited to come home and us it! Now keeps asking to put it in the pool. That should be fun.