Thursday, November 1, 2012

Thanksgiving Countdown

I decided I wanted to do some sort of Thanksgiving countdown with Aidan this year since our whole family will be joining us for the Holiday.

 It's a huge event!

So after scoping out Pinterest for ideas I decided to make my own combination of a few that I saw.

I found a package of 24 fall leaves today at the grocery store clearance for $1.50, which helped me solidify my idea.

So while Mason was napping we got to work making a tree trunk from brown construction paper:




He told me the tree needed a hole for the squirrels to live in, so he drew that too.

When we were done, Aidan taped the first leaf to the branches, and every day from now until Thanksgiving we will add another until we have a full tree!!





Wednesday, October 31, 2012

oooh Sandy......

Well, I must say for the week prior to Sandy's appearance I just didn't see the big deal.

Yeah, we'll get rain, and it will suck and I will have to cancel a bunch of sessions I said.


Never did I think I would be laying in my bed the night of the storm, terrified and having a damn panic attack thinking my house was going to rip apart from the winds.

We survived the night with no damage to our home, but with a loss of power. It was expected anyway so we were prepared.

When the boys and I got up I was in desperate need of coffee so I decided to venture out into the neighborhood and see the damage as well as find someplace to get coffee.

I found our mcdonalds was open but had a huge line at the drive thru...same with the first Dunkin I found. I made it to the last point I was willing to drive to since I realized all the lines would be that long, which was the DD on Hamilton/CC. I drove into line which was wrapped around the building, and probably 20+ cars long....





And we waited. I had my camera with me just in case I saw something crazy from the storm damage but I saw nothing cool so I just decided to photo-document our first post-hurricane day ever :)



We had juice boxes instead of milk for breakfast since I didn't want to open the fridge and let all the cold air out. Aidan was PISSED. He wanted chocolate milk (chocolate pediasure) which is what he's had for breakfast since he was Mason's age. A massive fit ensued of course, but he finally gave up and drank his juice.


Mason was in his glory and if you know my kid it's because you know he LOVES juice boxes.

We also had pop-tarts (thanks Grandpa for stocking us up!) which was Aidan's choice, and Animal Crackers, which was Mason's choice....even though Mason ended up eating all of my damn pop tarts too. Piggy.



Mason played with his talking flashlight while Aidan watched some Disney Jr on my iPhone.




I drank my coffee and read a whopping 2 pages on my kindle.

We moved upstairs where the boys played for quite some time in Aidan's room in the closet, opening and closing the door and yelling Surprise! each time it opened.




At this point you can see Aidan's hives were starting to spread across his face. I gave him Benadryl and we kept playing.

We decided to go out to lunch with Michele, Wells & Maddox since we were getting a little chilly. We went to our McDonalds where I swear half our town was playing with their kids.

I bought my kids Happy Meals which neither ate because they were too excited to play! Mason even got to go up into the big play area with Wells helping him out. He did great and I didn't even have to climb up and rescue him!



After we got home I put both Guys down for a nap and the power came back on! Hooray!!

But when Aidan woke from his nap his face was so covered with hives that I started to panic (he had come home with his usual mystery hives on his abdomen on Monday after work). A friend of mine is a nurse and she suggested I call the after-hours on call Dr since the pediatricians office was closed due to the storm. She was concerned that he was getting them on his eyes which is a mucous membrane, meaning that other mucous membranes could be affected next, one being your throat. He was also itching, which he hd never done before with the hives.

When I called and spoke to the triage nurse at the Dr's office she told me to bring him to the ER. This was where I totally panicked. Michele offered to keep Mason, so Aidan and I hopped in the car and off we went. 
I called Ryan on the way and he was already at the hospital working, so he said he would meet us there. The beauty of having a hubby that's a surgeon is he knows the ER docs. A perk I get for eating dinner alone. A lot. I guess if you can call that a perk : /    .....

So we walked in, showed him to the pediatric ER doc who suggested it might be a penicillin allergy since we had been giving him amoxicillin for a sinus infection. He told ryan the steroid dose he should be on and suggested we follow up with an allergist. In fact he even recommended the allergist we already see for Mason.

Soooooooo.......I think the penicillin thing is crap. If any of you have known me for a while you will know that ever since Aidan was Mason's age he's gotten bouts of what we refer to as "mystery hives".

They appear on his trunk/groin/abdomen, usually last a day and then are gone.

There's never a time that he's been on amoxicillin and gotten them before. He gets them so randomly in fact that we've never been able to attribute them to anything. He's even gone to the pediatrician in the middle of a break-out who suggested they might be his body's response to a virus. Who knows? 

The steroids definitely helped and I'm hoping that the Benadryl I was giving him had helped too.


So that he doesn't look like THIS again. And remember this is only his face you can see...he was covered from his feet all the way to his head!








Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Photoberfest Week 3! Kids

I simply love this photo of my one year old. My friend was standing behind me making silly noises and faces so we cold get some smiles out of him! It worked like a charm!!


Another of my favorites: my 3 yr old being kissed by his 2 girlfriends (another friend's daughters)


And finally, I just took this this weekend at Sesame Place in Langhorne, PA. I was desperate for some photos of the two of them together (you know both actually looking and smiling because I'm delusional), so i let them run around the entrance to the park while I sat on my butt and snapped away. This one makes me laugh so hard. It's definitely them.



Saturday, September 29, 2012

Cookie Monsters

We decorated some cookies today...just like we did last weekend when cousin Korey was visiting. I had leftover sugar cookie dough in the fridge (the pre-cut easy store-bought kind) and it's such a fun easy thing to do with little kids. I make my own royal icing and get out the sprinkles and let them go to town.

Voila...instant fun!

Aidan enjoys spreading icing on the cookies then topping them with sprinkles just like I showed him.








Mason, on the other hand likes to just eat his royal icing by the spoonful:




After Aidan lost interest with the cookies he decided to climb under Mason's chair and pull on the straps...no idea why. It did however, remind me of this picture of Aidan climbing on his chair while Austen was in it when they were babies. Ah, vintage A Team.



In pulling on the straps of the chair, he pulled Mason's chair away from the table, which is where his icing was.

Mason was not happy...and I find these photos HILARIOUS.


I don't know WHO ate all those cookies, Mommy!

Yes, that is icing dripped ALL over his shirt.


Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Manny's Gang

Aidan and I were in my room putting away some laundry today while Mason was sleeping.

I turned around at one point and saw this:



  I thought it was cute so I ran for the camera (shocking, I know)

Aidan saw me taking the picture and wanted to be in one too:

The he decided to knock them all down and line them back up again:
I love how he bites his lip when he concentrates because I totally catch myself doing that alot :)

Then he decided he wanted to take my picture (I don't normally recommend letting a toddler handle a dSLR but he was on the bed, plus it's insured)



At this point we heard Mason get up and decided to bring him in to join the fun. He has a thing for buttons and remotes so the first thing he did was grab a remote.

This irritated Aidan because Mason does not yet know the big red button turns the TV on, so Aidan kept telling him to push it with no luck. He finally got frustrated enough to try to yank it out of Mason's hand before I had to start refereeing and put the camera down.




Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Preschool Blues


Aidan's first day of Preschool was today. I knew from the moment he woke up and I reminded him that today was the big day that it wasn't going to go smoothly.

He started out crying and telling me that he didn't want to go. 

Awesome.

We managed to get through the groggy phase of the morning with some chocolate milk and Little Einsteins, but when he saw me come down the stairs with his clothes in my arms he freaked out again.

Don't ask me how I managed to convince him to get dressed AND take pictures, because the whole stressful thing is a blur now :(



Mason even gave his big bro an encouraging Good Luck hug! (Aidan even brought Ducky along to school to help ease his nerves).



Daddy is on his way to his final Fellowship interview today so he was just going in to work this morning very briefly before his flight, and was actually able to meet us at the School to drop Aidan off. It was a surprise treat that Aidan loved.....yet didn't make drop off any easier.

Aidan kept asking me to stay and play with him and would panic if I left his sight for more than 3 seconds. By the time Ryan and I tried to sneak out while he was occupied at a table with some other kids he was in a full blown freak out. The teacher grabbed him up to comfort him and shooed us from the room, which was fine with me.

I knew he would be fine once we were out of sight, but it broke my heart to have him have such an absolute panic attack about it. He's such a sociable, outgoing kid that it's killing me that he's reacting like this. It's not like he's never been in someone else's care before! 

The director of the school assured me that they would call if he remained inconsolable, which I knew wouldn't happen (and it didn't).

When I picked him up he told me he had a great day, had ice cream, AND made me a drawing.

Cross your fingers that Thursday goes smoother than today :/



Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Aidan and his Girls

Last week we hung out with 2 of our favorite people, Allie & Emma! We decided to go out and take some pictures since they are some of my very favorite models.

 Aidan of course wanted to copy every single pose he saw the girls doing, and it was adorable. We definitely got some keepers of all 4 kids plus some amazing ones of Allie & Emma (as usual).

Here are some of my favorites: