8/31 - Eli's 1st haircut

On Sunday, we all stayed home. Aiden and I were feeling pretty yucky and I didn't want him the boys to spread germs around just so they could get sick again next week. We were feeling pretty cooped up after staying home all day so we went out in the late afternoon and tried to ride the train - again. We were successful!!

Aiden and Nana went on the train ride and I stayed back with Eli (I know I'll have lots more chances to ride the train with him). Aiden had SO much fun. He had a huge smile glued to his face the entire time. He wouldn't even really let Nana take a picture of us since he wanted to get in and ride so much.

Aiden and Nana went on the train ride and I stayed back with Eli (I know I'll have lots more chances to ride the train with him). Aiden had SO much fun. He had a huge smile glued to his face the entire time.

The boys played in the play area for a bit. They were glad to get out of the house for a bit.

I tried to get a video of Aiden saying his name, especially his last name. It's amazing what he is learning in daycare! He's doing so good. He's known all his color and most animals for a while and he's counting now and even knows some letters. He knows ideas such as high/low, close/far, now/later, etc. Anyway, he's a smart little boy and I tried to get him saying his name.

Eli is so intrigued with Bronco and follows him around everywhere. Bronco is so good with him.
I bought the boys the same jammies the other night. They both love them and look so cute in them.
We had a pretty good day today. Aiden is still pretty sick so he was glad to be home with us today. He still gave us a few smiles today although he decided not to nap today and he woke up over an hour early for the third day in a row.

They had fun watching me blow bubbles today and trying to catch them.

Eli had some pictures taken today but he wasn't very happy since he is sick and it was his nap time. My cousin Rachel is taking pictures in a few weeks and I'm SO EXCITED about it. We are going to take pictures outside and some as a family. It should be fun. Eli had a few decent pictures but none that made me really happy.

Remember how I said Aiden didn't nap ... that was true until dinner time. He was SO TIRED that he actually fell asleep at the dinner table. All he had for dinner was corn so I bet he'll be starving in the morning. He was such a nightmare to put to sleep. He woke himself up knocking his fork off the table and cried ever since. I tried picking him and carrying him for a bit and he still cried. I tried sitting with and he cried. Needless to say, he cried with everything I did. I finally put him to bed about an hour early and he cried for about 20 min yelling "mom." I calmed him down and the second I got up to leave, he started balling again. My mom finally sat with him until he fell asleep while I walked the dog. I have never seen him so upset for that long.

While Aiden slept during dinner, I cut Eli's hair for the first time. It was also the first time he has ever had a lollipop (he loved it). I think it turned out pretty good. You can see the before and after here.

I took this picture in the middle of the haircut. He did great and sat on Nana's lap the whole time. Hopefully Bradley is satisfied with this - I've been getting lots of "hippy" comments from him in regards to Eli's hair!

Hopefully Aiden will have a much better napping day tomorrow. Oh yeah, Eli got another tooth. He now has 8 teeth at 11.5 months!! He's ready for a steak.

8/28 - A day in St. Pete

Eli has learned a new sign; okay, it's his second sign. He knows more and now he knows milk. Since Brad can't see video, I tried to get to pictures so that Brad can see it. For everyone else, watch the video. He's so cute. His "more" sign is starting to look a lot more like he's praying but we know what it means.

The boys have been able to enjoy bath time together again in our big tub. Aiden was having a blast the other night pouring water on Eli. Eli didn't mind it as long as Aiden obeyed the rules of no water on the head or eyes.

We went to Chic-fil-a to see the train on Thursday night and the weather was too bad so they cancelled it. That is two times in a row (Wed and Thur) that I have told Aiden we can see a train and haven't been able to. He was heart broken and was sent to tears when he had to leave the play area since a little girl peed her pants (and the slide). The ice cream they gave him (in place of the train) made him feel somewhat better even though I didn't let him eat it until he got home since Eli was so tired.

Eli has recently started to understand he can chase the cat. Pouncer isn't really excited about this too much. Eli really wanted to pet him and when I was holding Eli, Pouncer didn't mind. This chase went on for 30 minutes. Unfortunately, Pouncer didn't realize that although he hides under the bed, his tail sticks out and still draws attention to little Eli.

The boys and I drove down on Friday early afternoon to St. Pete. The drive was pretty horrible and they didn't nap. Thankfully they did get to have some fun when my Aunt Becky and Uncle Bill stopped by for pizza that night. The boys had a blast getting to play with them. I'm so excited the boys are getting to know more family and interact with them. Eli thought he had magical fingers by making this flashlight come every time he touched (thanks to Becky's timing).

Bill pushed Eli around a few times with his hurt back and all and Eli was loving every second of it. That's a huge open mouth smile if you can't make that out in the picture.
While I nursed Eli, Aiden went downstairs with Becky and Bill to see the truck. Well, as you can imagine, he had a great time. He thought that truck was the coolest thing and I'm pretty sure he would have been fine to just sleep in there.

When I brought Eli down, he didn't want to miss out on the truck action either so he joined in. He had fun driving and beeping the horn. I think the truck was the coolest toy they had seen in a while!

Aiden really wanted to go for a ride so we told him next time. We'll see if he remembers next time.

This morning we went to a park that also had a splash park. There were so many pieces of playground equipment. Aiden had fun but we got there a little late and it was pretty hot.

After the boys played for about 40 minutes, it was really hot and I changed them into their swimsuits and let them play in the splash park part. It didn't take Eli long to crawl off and have fun but Aiden didn't care too much for it. I think that is mainly because he wasn't feeling that well and told me earlier he didn't want to go to the water part. I'm slowly learning that when he says thing like that, I should listen.

We finally went and got nana and we drove back to Jax. We got in right at dinner time and Eli had enough of the car. It was a bit chaotic but the boys ate and got a bath. They are both enjoying playing with Bronco as you can see in the video. Little Eli was crawling all over the place doing laps tonight trying to keep up with Bronco. I forgot that the last time my mom was here Eli wasn't even crawling yet.

Aiden is feeling pretty bad and was up coughing quite a bit last night. We are going to see how he's doing in the morning to decide if we are going to church. I don't want him to get anyone else sick and I don't want him to get worse. It should be nice to have my mom here for the next couple weeks.

8/24 - Amy has some surgery

The past couple days have been an adventure. These first couple pictures are from Sunday. It's so weird to see Eli in this shirt. It was Aidens shirt and we bought it for him for his 1 yr picture. Eli has been good. He's still teething and I think his one tooth is gonna pop through in the next day or two. Needless to say, everything goes in his mouth ... even his feet.
Aiden was goofing around on the couch with me and kept trying to touch the camera with his feet (little booger).
As I mentioned before, Aiden is into doing everything himself and now he wants to brush his teeth at the sink like a big boy and TRY to spit. He isn't successful and I've been working on this with him for a few weeks. He doesn't understand that he isn't supposed to swallow toothpaste and the little cup of water I give him.
We went over to my friend Sue's house today and Aiden got to play with Carter. He had a blast and was really excited he got to come home with a bag of cars/trucks (some of them are actually Cars characters) and a bunch of puzzles. In fact, he was so excited he wouldn't nap at all!! He played in his room for 2 hours. If I made him lay in his bed, he would start crying and would wake Eli up who was having a hard time sleeping anyway. Aiden is a bit more manageable without a nap than Eli so Eli got to sleep.
Eli had a blast tonight playing with Aiden's hat. He thought it was so funny that it went on his head. I'll have to get a video of this later.
OK. So, I found out Friday I needed to get some more skin shaved off behind my ear because they found some bad cells back there when they did a biopsy a few weeks ago. It turns out, they needed to take a lot of skin. In this first picture, the doctor outlined where they needed to cut at.
I thought this was gonna be a quick procedure and it took them 15 min to give me enough lidocaine for the area and then another 70 min to do the surgery. It was so close to my ear that even though I couldn't feel things (other than some slight tugging), I could hear everything!!! It was so weird. I could hear them cutting my skin and I could hear them tying sutures. They ended up putting a couple layers of stitches in.
It's in such a weird place so it's hurts to turn my head. It's partly because of all the tape and partly because of the tightness of the stitches. I got to take off the bandages tonight to clean it. It needed some cleaning because it started bleeding today. My neighbor helped me clean it and then bandage it back up. I have 12 stitches and am praying that they got all the bad cells. The doctors told me I would probably need some minor surgery when this heals because it's probably going to "pucker." Not sure what that means put I know they are referring to my skin. I'll take a scar over melanoma any day!! Pray for good results and no more bad cells.
I go back next week to get the top layer of stitches out and my biopsy results.

8/23 - fence

I've posted these pics to the blog just so Brad could see our new fence. It looks pretty nice and should be successful in keeping Bronco in! Can't wait until he can get home and see it for himself.

8/21 - Playing together and OP mall

I was watching Eli the other night and about had a heart attach when I saw him climb up and over his activity table onto the coffee table. I got a picture of him in action (I couldn't let him climb anymore because I needed to tell him no). This little chunky monkey is going to be trouble.

Aiden and Eli have been playing pretty well together lately. Aiden has been sharing more although he still does his fair share of yelling "no touch." He was showing Eli how to work his mini-tool set yesterday and even let him have Mac as they played trucks. It was pretty cute.

Aiden has been drawing a lot lately and his drawings are starting to change. They used to be just giant scribbles everywhere. Now he's starting to draw circles, lines, and spots. He normally names the spots like ma, dad, Eli, "me", and then also a variety of objects of like ball, bike, car, etc. These spots look nothing like the objects he names but he's getting the idea that everything has a name. We mainly took this picture for daddy to see how different his drawings are getting.

When I went to go check on Aiden last night, I found the following big legos set up. They were up on his shelf in his room in a box. He's too cute. He did a great job fitting them all on there. I also had to include the picture of Aiden sleeping. Brad is used to checking on the boys with me before we go to bed. Brad: No way am I taking a picture of Eli. He wakes up almost anyway lately with me just opening the door.

I decided to give Eli a spoon this morning to see if he was interested in holding it. I think we can start food training with him soon for him to learn how to feed himself. He was very ready.
Aiden has been really independent lately and wanted to do his own cereal this morning. Fistful by fistful he filled his own bowl up!
Aiden and I played around this morning while Eli was playing by himself. Aiden loves being on my shoulders lately and it's how we got around at the hospital yesterday for our doctor appointments.

Aiden was in a cooking mood this morning and made car and egg soup. Yummy sounding I know.

He wouldn't go to his room for a nap without the oven mitts! He was too cute.
Today I decided we would take a field trip to Orange Park Mall and go to kids play center. It was the first time I've been to mall since we moved back here. There is a train that goes around the inside of the mall that Aiden just about fainted over he was so excited. We didn't take the ride since I left my wallet in the car but we'll have to go again. It's short and expensive but I have to let him go on it once.

Both of the boys had a blast today. It was nice when we first got there but was horrible when we left. There were dozens of kids, a lot of big kids, running around playing tag and jumping off things. I stayed calm but decided in my head the first one to knock-down or jump on one of my boys was gonna get a talking to. Surprisingly, my boys were pretty safe and Aiden only got knocked down once (the girl helped him up and made sure he was okay so I can't get mad at that).

There was a tuunel there Eli was intrigued with. He has never been in a tunnel and was scared to go in at first. Even though he watched Aiden go in and out but he was still very hesitant. I took a video when he went in a he had such a great smile on his face I had to stop it so I could get a picture to show Brad since he can't see the videos. He turned around and crawled back out after I stopped filming.

This picture is from when Eli really did crawl through the tunnel for the first time. He was so excited for himself that it was cute. They both were in the airplane at one point too and that was cute. I tried to get them to pose for a picture but there was way too much action for that to happen.
We will try church again tomorrow but I'm going to be mentally prepared to have to come get Eli after Sunday school because he's so tired. We'll see. I wanted to go for a rollerblade now but it's thundering pretty bad although it's kinda sunny out still. I'm not going to chance it - rollerblades in the rain with a double jogger just sounds like a bad idea. Both of these cute boys have been struggling to nap for the last 2 days. I'm hoping things will change soon for them and they go back to napping.