9/30 - Pictures of both boys

Here are a few pictures of both the boys. They are doing parallel play now which is nice until Eli decides to play with Aiden (who thinks he wants to play with Eli until Eli touches his stuff). Aiden is so sweet and tries to give Eli kisses but Eli just head butts him back. Eli loves it though (as does Aiden).
They are true boys and love to roll around on pillows and blankets. They are too cute and Aiden can get a little rough by trying to suffocate Eli but they both have good times.

Brad is coming late tonight and we are very excited to have him back for a few days. We are going to enjoy the weekend and take lots of pictures. I'll post again after Brad leaves. Have a great weekend.

9/30 - All about Eli

Eli has actually been sick over the last couple of days but these pictures were taken before he started feeling sick. He's been imitating Aiden playing and starting to put cars and trains on the track and move them and likes the tunnels now. He is so goofy sometimes and the picture of him with his eyes closed laughing cracks me up.
So Eli hasn't really shown that much interest in walking. I am trying to take advantage of Brad being home and trying to get Eli to walk between us. He does pretty good if we have something he wants which a lot of times is just the camera.
He started being silly and trying to drop down to crawl so Brad played with him arms for a bit and that made him smile.

The picture with me in the background is Eli taking 1-2 steps on his own. He takes 1-2 steps and then just falls forward because he knows we'll catch him.

Eli has had a fever for almost 4 days but I think it finally broke today. Brad left on Monday for Norfolk again and I finally took Eli to urgent care last night. Even with drugs he had a temp of 101. They said he had no ear infection and give him another 1.5 days and then come in again. He's been very cuddily but also very needy. I'm glad he's starting to feel better.

I know I said it was all about Eli but the picture of Aiden was too cute not to include.

Brad comes back home late tomorrow night so we have all day Friday to spend together which we are excited about. I am consigning some things tomorrow and get to shop a little early. I can't believe I will never need my pump or nursing cover again (I am consigning those). It's such a weird feeling to get rid of something that I have used almost on a daily basis for the last 27 months! The jumping johnny, exersaucer, and activity table are all gone too.

9/29 - Aiden's first bowling trip!

I never knew a fly swatter could bring so much fun! Aiden didn't want Eli to have it and tried to take it away. Unfortunately for Aiden, Eli thought it was funny and didn't want to let go. Little Eli is so crazy sometimes.

We decided to take Aiden bowling for the first time last Friday. He had a blast. The little bowling shoes were too cute. The lightest ball was 7 lbs and it was this ugly green ball. To help speed things up (from waiting on Aiden's ball which took forever to get to the pins anyway), we got Aiden another ball that was 8lbs and florescent orange which he thought was really cool.

I've included the video of Aiden's first bowl. He finally got the hang of carrying his ball to the end of the alley (that was quite a workout). We stopped the grandma roll after 2 frames because it took FOREVER for the ball to get to the end and we were on a time limit since I had to get back to pick up Eli from daycare.
Brad asked for a ramp and that sped things up and was pretty fun for Aiden too.
He carried his ball all the way from the ball return to the ramp and then we helped him put it up there. He quite often got so excited that he got the ball there and the would forget to stay and push the ball down.

Aiden loved waiting for his ball to come back and that the end of ball return blew air out.

I haven't bowled since we left Jax over 3 years ago so I was pretty excited at my bowling score. It's been a long time since Brad bowled too. The A in red highlight is Aiden's score! We ended up playing 2 games although Aiden and I had to leave before the 2nd game was over to get Eli.
I've made the boys start bathing together all the time rather than separately because I don't have time for that anymore. Aiden is helping wash Eli off. The rules: No water on Eli's head! It's a hard one for Aiden to follow but he tries.

I'm going to do a post tomorrow about the status of Eli walking!

9/24 - Aiden's first trip to the zoo

We took Aiden to the zoo for the first time on Tuesday. We dropped Eli off at daycare and headed off to the zoo right as they opened at 9am. We went to the Jax Zoo. I know we will be back so we bought an annual membership for me plus one other person. Kids get in until 3 so we can take Aiden for almost the next year.
Aiden had lots of fun. He got to pet a pygmy goat. He got to see them poop and pee up close and then didn't want to talk anywhere because he was gonna step on poop. It was too funny.
They had a pretty cool playground there and Aiden loved it. They had these huge slides that he liked to go down. We then walked over a bridge and played in the nest with an egg in it.
We only saw a small portion of the zoo. We got to visit some small monkeys and Aiden thought they were pretty cool to watch because they liked to play chase.
We walked by the carousel and we told Aiden he could go on it next time. We bought train tickets this trip to we rode the train right when we got there and at the end. He wanted to get on the carousel horse that wasn't moving for a picture and then didn't want to get off of it.
We made one last stop on the way out and that was to feed the giraffes. Aiden was so excited. When I asked him first thing in the morning what he wanted to see at the zoo was a giraffe so when we found out he could feed them, we had to let him do it.
We rode the train around the zoo for a second time and Aiden got the map out and was pointing out all the things we had seen. We all had a lot of fun. We left around 11:45, drove the half hour home, had lunch, and then took a 3 hour nap!!

We are excited to go back again and see some more animals. Today we took Aiden bowling for the first time. I'll post pictures of that soon.

9/21 - Family Beach Pictures

In the first picture is Brad and I and my awesome cousin Rachel (blue shirt), and her partner (very cool as well) CJ. We had fun with them and they were so gracious with their very busy schedules.
Here are some of the pictures that my cousin Rachel took last week. Aiden isn't exactly a smiley kind of boy and he didn't change for this special day. He had his serious look as normal. Eli was his normal self too with lots of smiles.
We met Rachel and CJ out on Sunset beach at 8:15am. The sun was out and bright but thankfully it wasn't too hot yet. We played on the playground for a while but the equipment was casting shadows everywhere which isn't good.

This was the first time the boys have been to the beach and have had their toes in the sand. It was fun to get to capture that on camera. Aiden, who normally doesn't like to get dirty, did pretty well. I didn't even think he'd walk in the sand to be honest. He didn't mind walking and even touched the sand. He wasn't too fond of the water on his feet but he did put his feet in the water which I was also a little surprised by.

Eli loved it all. He loved the sand although I didn't ask him how it tasted even though he could have told me. Eli really just wanted to crawl straight into the water. He got dirty and wet pretty fast despite me trying to keep him clean. As you can see in the pictures, Eli is usually trying to get to the ground and just wanted to play. I can't wait to take him back to the beach and let him play.

I think we are going to try and get with Rachel again and do a shoot at a different time of day. I'm hoping we can do that before Brad leaves for deployment but we'll see. I love the picture of Brad and Aiden - it is so precious.
Next time we do pictures Eli should be able to walk by himself which I think will be good for pictures.
We let the boys with the Lightening McQueen at the end of the shoot. They are gonna be best buddies and hopefully that will last a lifetime. I know they will get into fights and argue but I am praying they are loving brothers.
We had a blast taking pictures and are glad we get a glimpse of this time in our lives right now.

9/21 - Eli's 1st birthday

We celebrated Eli's 1st birthday at my dad's house. We came to St. Pete on Friday and spent the day with my dad. On Saturday, we took some pictures in the morning with my cousin Rachel. Rach is fine tuning her photography skills and we wanted to give family photos a try in which we were not in a studio. We had fun and I'll post some of those pictures in the next couple days. Eli was really indifferent that he could face forward. In fact, I think he likes facing backward better.

The boys had matching green shirts on at the beginning of the morning but Eli got so dirty in the sand that we had to change him after we were done with pictures.

Eli got his own "smash cake" as Publix called it. He went for the cake right away which was a big contrast to Aiden's 1st (and 2nd) birthday. He stuck his hand in the cake with no problem and just put icing all over his face.
He ate quite a bit of cake and icing and then I finally had to pull the plug on the cake eating. He made a huge mess of himself but he had fun.

Despite the picture of Aiden looking so serious, he had fun eating cake too.

He wasn't really sure how to open presents but thankfully his big brother knows how to open them. I think Aiden had more fun than Eli opening presents but that's because Aiden understands about presents now. We were very excited to see family (nana, Aunt Becky, Uncle Bill, Jeremy) and friends (Carol & Doug, Cathy & Buddy).

Aiden even got a few presents of his own which he was excited about. Eli got a truck from Becky and Bill and Aiden kinda thinks it's his. This is a good lesson in sharing for Aiden because he gets mad when Eli wants to play with it so we explain that it's Eli toy and he was sharing with Aiden.

The UF vs. Tenn game was on right after Eli's party started so it was easy to all coordinate our clothes! We even shoved Eli into a 6/9 mo Gator outfit. We are on the lookout for a new 12 mo outfit for him but haven't found one yet.
It's pretty close to impossible to get all of us looking at the camera when you have 2 boys at this age. We still try though.

The boys did a pretty good job of sleeping while we were away. They don't room so well together because they want to stay up and play and they take turns keeping each other up. One day Eli went to sleep and Aiden was up playing and the 2nd day we were there Aiden fell asleep and Eli was up. Eli got some clothes for his birthday too. He loved playing with the bags on Sunday.

On Sunday, we decided to take our time rather than try and race back. Our only goal was to make sure the boys got a good nap. Eli took his morning nap fine and then we all went to a local playground. Aiden had a ton of fun and Eli crawled around the playground too. We stayed there about an hour and then came home and did an early lunch so we could do an early nap. We separated the boys to help ensure a good afternoon nap. It worked! The both slept like champs for 2+ hours. To make things even better, my dad hurried home from the family reunion he was at to be able to see us before we left on Sunday. I though we were gonna be able to see him for 10-15 min because he was gonna get home right before we left but it ends up he and my grandma drove straight from GA to the house and showed up at 12:30ish. It was awesome. We all got to talk for a while until Eli and then finally Aiden got up (I had to wake Aiden up).

Since there are steps at papa's house, we decided it was about time to make Eli learn how to crawl them. He can go up with no problem and we haven't started working on the going down yet. I need to spend time with Eli without Aiden around. I feel like Eli is going to be pretty behind in everything because I don't have the time to sit down and do stuff with him like I did with Aiden.

Aiden was being goofy at pop's house (we started off calling him papa but Aiden has decided to call him pop so I'll use that terminology too). He was running around the house pulling his pants up and laughing. He loves the toy room at pop's house. I don't even bring toys anymore for him to play with. My sister and her 3 boys used to live there and left lots of toys behind because she doesn't have room for them. She has lots of Cars stuff and Aiden manages to find all it and borrows it while we are there.

Aiden absolutely adores pop and it's so cute. He talks about him for days after we/he leaves.

Here is a picture of great grandma Hagan and the two boys. Aiden wasn't really in a picture-taking kind of mood but Eli was game.