Sticker Books

Mason woke up crabby from his nap one day and I thought that since Aidan was doing sticker books that maybe it would be something that would entertain Mason for a bit too. So I got out another sticker book and set Mason on the couch with Aidan to play, and they cooperated very nicely!!

Not only are stickers fun, but apparently they are tasty, too.

And they make great accessories for your legs.....

or your furniture......

Thankfully they are only half as sticky as normal stickers since they are reusable for the sticker books, so they come right off of any smooth surface.

I guess at this point I decided to feed Mason and then he was all better, but this face is hilarious!

Color Me Mine

We got invited by my friend Melissa to go to a local pottery painting store with her daughter Kailyn and our friend Jen.

They have so many different things you can paint I thought it might be hard for Aidan to choose. They even had Disney stuff and I thought for sure he would pick the Lightning McQueen or Buzz Lightyear piggy banks...but I was wrong.

His choose was a firetruck bank!

I wasn't sure how Aidan would do with this project, but once he got a paintbrush in his hand he just started painting and had a blast!

The finished product!

Cinco de Mayo

Well even though the history and meaning behind Cinco de Mayo has nothing to do with tacos and Margaritas that's how we celebrated in the Lawless house ;)

I had to work but since it was such a warm beautiful day we got the boys outside to play as soon as I got home. We hung out on the deck playing with cars and drinking juice boxes (haha or margaritas), and Ryan even got the sprinkler running for Aidan.

We had tacos for dinner and surprisingly my picky eater LOVED them. He even requested tomatoes and cheese on his!! Taco night will now totally be instated in this house.

 Oh, and Mason still doesn't like to touch the grass.....

"Dancing Party"

My good friend Lisa turned 40 recently and her hubby asked me to be in cahoots (sp.?) with the guest list. 

Being so sneaky and secretive was fun, and when she started getting suspicious I would mess with her.

I was messing with her up until that very day!! Mwuahahaha.

Anyway I brought the monsters along with me since Ryan was working, and even though I was worried they might misbehave, they were both great.

Aidan danced with Austen ALLLLLLL night long, and I don't think either of them even stopped to eat (minus the cup of chips one of Lisa's nieces gave each of them).

I ended up stopping at Wendy's on the way home to get him a kid's meal so he would eat something before bed, and he actually scarfed the whole thing down, which is very rare for him!

Then it was off to bed since I had to work in the morning!

Even though it was almost a month ago, Aidan still refers to it as "The Dancing Party".....

Visitors :)

The day that we got back from vacation we started a quick prep for Nani & Poppy's arrival.

The boys, as always, loved having them here, and I even got to go out shopping for the afternoon with Nani...kid-free!!!

Cold rainy Spring day

Well, I know we didn't get the Spring winter weather like they did home in NY, but it was still really cold and rainy here.

Saturday night the boys and I (Ryan was on overnight call at the hospital) went to a surprise birthday party for a good friend from work Lisa, and when we left it was 79 degrees. By the time we got home that night it was pouring and about 45. Bleh.

Aidan danced for the entire 2 hours that we were there and threw a fit when it was time to leave (of course). I'm just glad that he had fun and that Lisa enjoyed herself too ;)

Yesterday I had off from work and had lots to do of course. Sessions to edit, sessions to schedule, continuing education to submit for my certification for MLT, receipts to scan and email to the insurance company for all the photography equipment and software, dinner to prepare, etc etc.

So would my kids cooperate on a day like that?

NO WAY.

Aidan was an absolute terror all day. It all started when I was making some food for Mason and while I was in the kitchen Aidan threw a very large hard truck at Mason's face. The screaming brought me into the living room where Aidan promptly put himself in time out, and told me exactly that he did.

Check out the nice chunk it took off the bridge of his little nose!

At one point he was being good and since I could tell he had ants in his pants from being trapped inside so I pulled out a sticker book I got on the clearance rack and barnes and noble when we went to see the Easter Bunny.

Success!! It kept him entertained for almost an hour!

I also put together a toy that we got them while we were at Ikea and they both loved it! In fact for a few minutes they even played nicely together with it!

Sometimes the terrible twos aren't so terrible. Like when Aidan just came up to me with his hands shaped like a heart and said 

"here's a heart for you because you're my best Mommy".

~melt~

Vacation!! Well...sort of.

Ryan gets 3 weeks off this year instead of 2 which is nice. He had to pick which 3 weeks he wants out of the coming year as soon as the fiscal year begins (this is the norm for his residency).

 This means in June our vacation weeks have already been chosen for the next 12 months. This can sometimes suck because once the dates are chosen, that's it, there is no going back or changing your mind.

 Ryan chose the week following Easter this year (for no particular reason) and since I had to work mon, tues and fri I had to do some switching with other part timers to get friday off so we could at least have a few days to get away.

First we tried to get a cabin on a lake in the Poconos, and they were all booked since apparently around here in eastern PA it just happened to be Spring Break for the elementary schools. Awesome. We let the idea of going away somewhere sit on the back burner for a bit, but then vacation week was upon us and I think Ry had ants in his pants.

We decided Tues night we would leave for the shore on Wed after Mason's PT. We decided on Ocean City, NJ as opposed to Atlantic City because the boardwalk there is more family friendly.

Bad decision.

Apparently this early in the spring the entire town is basically still closed for the season. Awesome.

So we made the best of it by finding an open restaurant for dinner and then the next morning we walked the boardwalk and discovered a few shoppes were open so we got some coffee and then loaded up in the car for the short drive to Atlantic City to take the boys to the aquarium there.

This was a big fish Aidan has his head in, but there was a giant bus parked right in front of it so I couldn't get far enough back to get the whole fish in the shot :(

After the aquarium we had lunch right in the little marina at a cute restaurant and then went downtown to find some parking so we could go to the boardwalk. The boardwalk in AC was of course open and much more populated since they cater to a year-round crowd.

We got the boys some Ben & Jerry's ice cream and then headed back to Ocean City.

That night we managed to get over to Ryan's Aunt Charlie's since she literally lives about 12 minutes from where we were. We had pizza, got caught up, and even got to go to the park with her Grandson Korey!

The boys had a blast, stayed up way past their bedtimes, and to be honest Mommy had a liiiiitttle too much wine (that always seems to happen when we "play" with Aunt Charlie).

The next day we got up and headed home. I convinced Ryan to stop at Ikea on the way since it is right off 476 and I have always wanted to go. I ended up getting a doll bed that was recommended to me as a prop for newborn photos and I'm so excited. It was only $20 as compared to the shops out in photog-land that want close to $100..... since they are deemed "photo props" I guess they think they can charge more. 

Now all I have to do is build it! Oh and we got one of those toys with the metal wires that have all the beads on it that you can slide around since Aidan loves those...but uh since it's Ikea we have to build that too yet haha.

Easter 2012

We had lots of fun around Easter this year!

We went to the Promenade for the arrival of the easter bunny where Aidan refused to have his picture taken in front of the cool green screen, and then when we got to the Bunny for the real picture he freaked out, which is very unlike him. Meh, who knows what his deal was that day......

So, 2 cute pictures of Mason by himself!

The weekend of Easter Michele invited us and Jess and her kids to her church's easter egg hunt.

Well, all of the kids had a blast! Sadly Wells & Maddox had their egg hunt in a separate part of the yard so we didn't get to see much of them during the mayhem.

Once Aidan and Austen each found an egg and realized there was candy inside they pretty much stopped gathering more eggs and sat down to eat their candy haha! I think they ended up with 6 eggs between the 2 of them. A pretty sad haul considering the other kids were filling their baskets!!

After the egg hunt we headed to the playground and let the boys burn off some more of that toddler energy.

After we got home from the park we colored our eggs with Daddy.

Mason helped by eating a cookie and watching ;)

Easter morning started waaaaay too early in my opinion. Mason woke up crying at 6am and of course his crying woke Aidan who then remembered the Easter Bunny had come and started to run down the stairs. Once he made it to the kitchen we sat the boys on the floor and gave them their baskets. Please note the one photo where Aidan is pouting.

It's because Ryan told him he couldn't have a peanut butter cup at 6:15 in the morning, haha!

After Aidan found all of the plastic candy-filled eggs in the living room I made us a Quiche (or Egg Pie as Grandpa says....because real men don't eat quiche), and then Ryan went golfing with some of the guys from work.

 We had a very relaxing day with just the 4 of us and we ended it by going to the park where the kids had a blast. Mason even likes the baby swings so much now that he absolutely flips out when we take him out.

I hope you all had an amazing Easter too!!

Spring is here?

OK, I don't want to jinx it, but I think that Spring may finally be here in eastern PA!!

I had to work on Sunday but it was so beautiful out that when I got home Ry and I brought the boys out to the front yard to play a little bit. We have a big square of dirt out from that used to have a juniper plant in it but we hated it so we dug it up.

Aidan loved that there was nothing in it so he used to use his garden set and play in the dirt....

Then I planted one of my pretty mums in that spot in the fall to leave permanently for it to bloom each fall. Well the ice storm in October destroyed it, so once again the spot got dug up.

So for now it serves the perfect purpose of sand/dirt box play area for Aidan. He plays around in it digging stuff up and when he's done I sweep all the stray dirt back in and we go inside. Perfect plan!

Mason was desperately trying to play with his big brother, and along the way snatched up lots of dirt clumps, and eating a few before I could get over to him to get them away. Yuck.

We finished up our outdoor fun with the return of our nightly walk around the neighborhood, and a steak on the grill. Aaaaaah. :)

Sleepy Baby

I love when babies become just mobile enough that they can thrash around in their cribs and end up in spots so far from where you left them!

I have some similar pics of Aidan at about the same age, sleeping in very similar poses as Mason is here. I found him like this a few weeks ago:

please note his little feet sticking out!

he had his face completely buried in his ducky, but don't worry he was fine!

Now he is completely able to get himself back up to sitting from a laying position (and wiggling and army crawling all over the damn room now), so it looks like here he was sitting, then just fell asleep and flopped over. I swear I have an identical pic of Aidan like this! I found him like this this morning and he was so sleepy he barely even stirred when I layed him down on his back and covered him back up.....