Pumpkin Patch

Earlier tonight, we took Ryan and Lucas to the farm that we got to every year for Halloween. It's a cute little family farm right nearby that has a hayride, corn maze & pumpkin patch. And just last year they added Ryan's favorite part, the hay maze! For those of you who don't know, it's a maze for little ones made with hay bales.

First we checked out the pumpkins. Ryan said he wanted the "most giant one" and picked the one he was sitting next to.

Daddy & Lucas coached Ryan through the hay maze.

Ryan had a blast running in circles through the hay bales. He cheated a few times, but it's so tempting to just climb right over when you get to a dead end!

"Tada, I did it!"

After the maze, he was dying to try the duck race game!

Finally, before we left he got to pick out a pumpkin to take home. He picked a big one for himself and then asked if he could get a baby one for his brother. It was very sweet!

Scary Pumpkin

Yesterday I had to bribe Ryan so I could go to Michaels and get some supplies for his birthday party. I told him he could pick out a craft for being good. He searched the entire store and finally chose a pumpkin puff kit. He wanted to do his craft during daddy/son time tonight and Dave was nice enough to take pictures.

Concentrating on his project...

Applying the eyes with a steady hand...

And tada...I give you the creepiest pumpkin in the world!

As always, here's Lucas, happy as a clam in his favorite spot on the couch.

Happy Baby!

We should be on a plane to Boston at this very moment, but I decided to cancel our reservation(sigh) and reschedule for another time (sorry girls!) The past couple of days have been a little rough around here. For two days Lucas has refused to eat anything, has been acting really cranky and sleeping more than usual. Normally he eats 4 oz every 3 hrs. Sunday and Monday he would only take about an ounce of pedialyte every 4-5 hrs. His doctor has determined that it must be a stomach bug. It's been a challenge, to say the least.

Anyway, every single morning for the past 10 weeks I have been woken up by Lucas crying for a bottle. He literally opens his eyes, realizes he's hungry and immediately starts screaming his little heart out. This morning, I woke up to complete silence. After checking both boys (and doing a little happy dance) I made myself some coffee. Finally, I heard little noises on Lucas' monitor and went to check on him. I couldn't believe my eyes when I found a HAPPY baby! I guess he's feeling better! The little Houdini wiggled his way out of his swaddle blanket and apparently he was really happy about it. He was all smiles, kicking, punching and his new trick-cooing! Yes, I know, this seems trivial to most of you. But for me, it was a very good morning! Now, if he would just sleep through the night...

We've also discovered that Lucas' favorite thing to do is sit in the corner of the couch. He likes his swing, his play mat and his bouncy seat, but they all last about 10-15 minutes and then he's bored and crying. But, he loves the couch. We sit him there to read to him and he just loves it. It doesn't take much sometimes.

Little Paleontologists

Today during Lucas' tummy time, Ryan was very upset that I was paying so much attention to the little guy. I tried to get him to join in but he wanted nothing to do with it. I started to explain that Lucas needed tummy time so that we could teach him how to hold his head up and that way he'd be able to play trains sooner :) I then asked Ryan if he'd help me teach Lucas to hold his head up and eventually crawl, walk and talk. He said NO! and then ran out of the room. He returned with handfuls of dinosaurs and began to line them up next to Lucas. I asked him what he was doing and he said "teaching brother what my dinosaurs names is". Dinosaurs just happen to be Ryan's most serious passion these days and he knows each and every one of them by name. Yes, he struggles with Ryan but Metriacanthosaurus poses no problem for him. Anyway, he proceeded to tell Lucas each of the dinosaurs names and was very proud of himself for teaching his brother something new!

2 months old!

Lucas is 2 months old today even though it feels like we just brought him home from the hospital. The past two months have been amazing. Lucas is starting to hold his head up, make eye contact and (best of all) smile! Thankfully, the novelty hasn't worn off yet and Ryan still adores his baby brother. Although lately he's been showing a bit more jealousy since Lucas is demanding more of my attention. He sounds like a broken record as over and over I hear "put my brother down and play with me!" He has his sweet moments too though-if Lucas is crying Ryan immediately starts singing to him or tries to give him his binky. You can tell by the way that the boys interact that they are already best friends.

My intention was to get lots of pictures of the big 2 month pediatrician appointment. However, once we got there and I had to get him down to just a diaper it was all downhill. He HATES being naked so he screamed the entire time, even a bottle wouldn't calm him down. And then came the shots :( This morning I was thinking about it and I remembered that when Ryan got his shots he cried for a minute until I picked him up and then he was fine. Well, Lucas was another story. He cried & cried and there was nothing I could do to make it better, so then I cried. And to make matters worse, Ryan was so upset that his brother was in this condition that he started crying too!! Luckily Lucas has been sleeping most of the afternoon and I'm hoping Ryan isn't now scarred for life!

OK...so, our chunky monkey is now 11 lbs, 10.08 oz and 23 inches long. He's in the 50th percentile overall.

Soccer

Anybody who knows me knows that lateness is a huge pet peeve of mine. Since Lucas has joined us, I haven't been on time for anything at all. It's making me nuts! As hard as I try and as well as I THINK I prepare ahead of time, we're late every single day. Today, I was on my own with both boys and I was super paranoid that somehow we were going to be insanely late for soccer or miss it all together. So, I woke up extra early to prevent it from happening. I was successful in getting both boys fed, dressed and ready to go by 8:30am. The only problem was that soccer didn't start until 10:30. Better early than late right? Hopefully at some point I'll be able to figure this out!
Rather than sit around wasting 2 hours, I decided to head over to soccer anyway and let Ryan play on the playground. I know everyone now knows about his obsession with knights, well he also has a slight obsession with pirates. Needless to say, he loves this particular playground.

Ryan had his coach all to himself for the first half of the class. He was in heaven soaking up all the attention and praise!

After soccer we headed home for some down time. Ryan constantly wants to watch Go Diego Go. We have to carefully monitor his Diego time. I let him watch his favorite episode so he could help Diego rescue a blue morpho butterfly while I made lunch. He immediately asked if his brother could watch Diego too. Yes, I know 8 weeks old is a bit young for tv, but Ryan wanted to teach him about blue morpho butterflies...how could I say no?!?

As you can see, Lucas does not share Ryan's passion for Diego, butterflies or tv for that matter.

He was much happier just getting some attention

Stars & Strikes, Lucas and...Uh?

We've been promising Ryan that we'd take him bowling for a couple of weeks now, so we attempted to follow through on that promise on Sunday. We took the boys to Stars & Strikes only to find that all of the lanes were taken up by numerous birthday parties. Ryan was bummed for about 3.5 seconds until we told him he could play in the arcade instead. He found his niche with "the popcorn game", he played about 20 times only stopping to play skee ball once in a while. He racked up a whopping 213 tickets so we proceeded to the prize counter and got...a slinky. Yup, that's right, $30 goes into the machines and you get to leave with a 25 cent slinky.

Luke didn't get to play....but he's been busy with other things, like perfecting his smile!

OK, I know I've recently mentioned Ryan's stubborn phase so I won't get back into it, but lately every time I try to get him dressed his immediate response is "no, I'll do it myself". Yesterday I made the mistake of letting him wear his knight helmet to Target (yes, people stared!). Has everyone seen Big Daddy? Ryan reminds me of the boy in that movie-I now fear he will soon want to be called "Frankenstein" :)
Anyway, this morning I tried to dress him so that we could go shopping and as usual he wanted to do it himself. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is Ryan dressing himself. Don't worry, I didn't take him out looking like this!