Simon: A Day in My Life

A Day in the Life of a Hard Workin' Baby Boy...

If you click and zoom in on this one you can see his two little bottom teeth!

 The new teeth also came with newfound habits - whole hand chewing (not always his left, Grandma! Just today lol!) and spitting. Mommy's been wiping up a ton of baby drool these days!

This standing up stuff takes some serious concentration! He wants to stand up at everything now!

Playing with Jaden and Sawyer

I'm coming to get you and that camera, Mommy!

 Getting ready to go on his very first bike ride with Daddy! My sewing project for this evening is making some padded strap covers for the bike trailer :) 

 He was SOOOO excited that he was screeching!

 Going around the cul de sac with Dad and Sutton.

What a fun day! I'm beat!

Three Boys ♥

School Portraits (from the Art Show)

My very favorite one isn't posted because the only copy of it went home with my grandma at today's art show, but I ordered a larger print of it, and I'll post it when I get it! :)

Happy Mother's Day!



The boys and I finally got some flower pots started for the year. Sawyer suggested that we spray paint this pot bright orange, and it was practically begging for our Target Dollar Spot gnome to come and join him! We are SO behind on our planting our vegetable garden, but I hope to have it all in by the end of next weekend *fingers crossed!*

Sutton got me some sunny yellow tulips, which went perfectly in this mason jar that also got hit with the orange spray paint. Love it!

Mitch kept the boys occupied on Sunday while I got some things checked off of my "to do" list. Their idea of keeping busy was to  build marshmallow shooters for all the boys in our neighborhood!

The boys and I made some Angry Birds shirts. Sutton thought his was sooo funny, "It means I'm super cool!"

Sawyer practiced his closed mouth smirky smile...

...to hide the fact that he lost ANOTHER tooth! He has three teeth missing now! This one was incredibly special; however, because it was the first one that came out naturally on it's own (without any intervention from a trampoline net enclosure!).

Simon learned to crawl last week, and he has gotten FAST! He is already starting to pull himself up on EVERYTHING, which means that I can't turn my back on him for a single second! He likes to get up on his knees and sit like this, especially at the fireplace where he can talk to his own reflection.

Meet Sebastian, our new hermit crab. I won him yesterday at the Strawberry Festival (where I also completely forgot my camera in the car!)...because nothing goes better with strawberries than hermit crabs, right? Sawyer & Sutton are super excited to have a new roommate - he's co-habiting on top of their bookshelf.

Easter Highlights

Dyeing Easter Eggs

We dyed half of our eggs using a rubber cement resist method similar to batik.

The Easter Bunny left a basket of goodies for Simon.

The big boys, however, found this note and golden egg instead of their baskets. The note told them that instead of hunting eggs (since they were going to have a huge egg hunt at Gigi's that afternoon) they were going to have to hunt for their Easter baskets.

Each clue led them to a new location and a new golden egg until they eventually (okay, more like 1.5 minutes later) found their baskets hiding in the car.

Ready to hunt eggs at Gigi's house!

Look high and low and all around! There were literally hundreds of eggs to be found, and Sawyer quickly had to switch out his basket for a grocery sack to hold all of them! He moved so quickly around the yard and back behind the trees with his cousin Jedi that I didn't even get a chance to take very many pictures of them!

Sutton was much slower and methodical in his egg hunting approach, savoring the victory each time he snatched one up. Despite his lack of speed, he still managed to fill up his entire basket with candy and trinket filled plastic eggs. He skipped right over all of the dyed chicken eggs, saying "We already have a LOT of these real eggs at home!"

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well!

Sutton is Four!

Yesterday my sweet middle child turned four! It seems like it was just a short while ago that he was making his overly dramatic at-home entrance into the world, and now he's such a grown up big boy!

On Sunday we took the boys and their cousins to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate. I didn't really take many pictures because it's tough to lug my huge camera around a place like that (thanks to Grandma and Grandpa's camera for this one picture!). They had a great time and Aunt Jessi even hit the ticket jackpot on several games, so everyone walked away with lots of little prizes.

My favorite part of the day was getting a chance to go into the Ticket Blaster machine with Sutton. It was SO much fun, but those little tickets are incredibly hard to grab!

Yesterday we opened presents at home (Again, I only got a few really awful pictures in the rush. Oops!). He got two Shake N' Go Crash Up cars, which I had to hunt high and low to find since they don't make them anymore. I really wanted to get these for him though since he only had two things on his birthday wishlist, and he had his heart set on these.

I wanted to get him something to represent his birthstone, but since his birthstone is diamonds I opted instead for a sparkly aurora borealis crystal. We can't wait for the sun to come back out so we can hang it up and make rainbows!

Grandma and Grandpa took us all out to dinner at Red Robin, and the boys shared a birthday sundae for dessert.

Last night at bedtime Sutton told me that he had the best birthday, and that "I very love my whole family." Thanks everyone for making him feel like the incredibly special little guy that he is! ♥

Sunday Snapshot

♥ Birthday Star ♥

Natural Light

This guy took his first trip to the dentist last week after an incredibly bloody knee-meets-mouth accident with his big brother. Fortunately none of the damage is permanent, but it was pretty ugly for a few days (it's amazing how quickly the mouth heals though!). When I pulled out my camera later that day, he insisted upon getting his picture taken. This was the first shot that I took of him, making a silly face so that I wouldn't see his bruised gums and teeth. I love that his smile is still so clearly present in his eyes and goofy expression.

Laughing sooooo hard at his brother's goofy faces (which had quickly progressed to a whole other level of silliness!)!

P.S. The dentist said that adult teeth don't usually start growing in until around age 7, so this toothless grin will probably be sticking around for awhile :)

I think the Teething Monster has vanished...at least for now!*knock on wood* My happy little Bubba is back in action!

Hello iVillage Readers!

Hi there! If you've stopped on by from iVillage's awesome Easter crafts feature, please be sure to take a look at our craft blog, Mom's Crafty Space, for more fun crafts for kids and grow ups alike!

(P.S. If you're not here from iVillage, then go over there and check out our feature today!)

This Weekend

 Mitch and the big boys took a trip to Walmart to buy groceries (I know, I know, Walmart is horrible, but the fact remains that they cost about half the supermarket price, so you know...) and they returned with this huge fourteen foot trampoline. I guess Daddy thought that the boys deserved their share of the tax refund too :)

They LOVE it, and I have to admit that I kind of love it too. My kids haven't left the backyard in days, and I haven't been worried about where they are or what they're doing when they run off to their neighborhood friends' houses. Granted, all those kids have been practically living in our backyard too, but that's fine by me :)

It didn't take long for them to put their gymnastics training to good use! These guys are crazy for flipping!

Don't worry, it has a fantastic safety net enclosure :)

All of the rain we had this year, followed by a good stretch of 80 degree days looks like it did great things for our garden. We have loads of little apricots on our little tree!

This little guy has been wrapped against my chest for the better part of the week. He's having a really rough time teething, though he's been a bit better these past two days. It seems like the only thing he wants is for ME to hold him and snuggle him, so I'm glad that I can wrap him up and still keep my hands free for the other guys. (Excuse my "I took a fast shower and then quickly wrapped the crying baby right back up" look. You can't see it, but I'm totally rockin' a scrunchie in my wet hair. I'm bringing back 1994 lol).

Poor little guy will chew on anything he can get in his mouth right now, wrap straps included!

He finally found something that made him happy - gnawing on cold watermelon! He still doesn't really want to eat baby food yet (he rarely opens his mouth for the spoon, and most of the baby food still makes him gag too much), but he looked like he was in Heaven with that watermelon. I might need to make a watermelon puree and see if he's willing to eat that!

Hold On to These Moments As They Pass

(Is it mean that I secretly wish that his front teeth would stay adorably missing forever? ♥)

(Or that I hope he'll end up with even more of those cute little freckles at the end of summer? ♥)

(Or that I wish I could freeze this munchkin in this very moment forever and ever? ♥)

I feel so incredibly blessed and grateful for my affectionate and loving little boys. They certainly know how to make me feel like the prettiest, smartest, coolest and luckiest mom in the world. ♥♥♥