photoshoot fun.

More tomorrow (or maybe Monday)!

(If you take a peek over here, you'll see who else was having fun with us!)

The Trip

After an eagerly awaited (and actually fairly smooth and drama-free) day of flying with my boys. . .

. . . we arrived in Alabama for a visit with the Cobb family. We're not even half way through our stay and we've already had lots of laughter. . .

some tears. . .

cookies. . .

a few naps (thankfully!). . .

and one baby-locked-in-the-bathroom incident. . .

All-in-all, we're having a fabulous time!

Almost Ten on Tuesday: Just Ben

Hayden has preschool every Tuesday morning and I relish having those few hours to spend with just Benjamin. Lately, I've been wanting to use our time together for photo shoots. He's getting so big so fast and I know it won't be long before he completely turns against my camera. I have to document him now! Not to mention all these great props and outfits and ideas I've got and am dying to try out. The reality, however, is that in the last month of Tuesdays I've only been able to pull off one photo session. And then it's taken me 2 weeks to proof the pictures and blog them! So, here is the first of (hopefully) many Tuesday mornings with my boy. Forgive me for not quite making it to Ten!

Hope these make you smile!

Haydenisms

As Hayden gets older he's really been coming into his own, personality speaking. He's much more willful than he ever, but I think that's just because he never realized he had the ability to disagree with me until recently. Don't get me wrong, he's plenty friendly and agreeable, he's just a little sassier from time to time.

The other day I saw him sitting at his table playing with his trucks. Not an uncommon sight. As I got closer I heard him mumbling. I never could quite make out what he was saying, but he was having an animated scene play out before him. . .

And watching this got me thinking that there are so many things he says right now that I want to remember. Things that amaze me and things that make me laugh. It also got me thinking that we need to pull the video camera out more often, but in the mean time, here's a sampling:

Me: Oh, this is the last pack of hot chocolate.
Hayden: Well, we need to go to the hot chocolate store to get some more.
___________
Me: Hayden, I can't find big duckie. We'll just have to keep looking. (it's a super-size rubber duck for the bathtub).
Hayden: We can go to the ducky store to get a new one.
___________
He'll crash into something, banging himself up, inducing tears. I'll run over to check him out, give him a hug and a kiss and ask if he's alright. He instantly stops crying and says, "I'm okay" in his very matter-of-fact way.

___________
Me: You can watch a show in a few minutes, Hayden.
(10 seconds later) Hayden: Is it a few minutes yet, Mommy?
___________
The boy is like a lawyer, always negotiating and bargaining and talking. We tell him he has to take 2 more bites of carrot at dinner and nearly 10 minutes later he's still jabbering about it, but hasn't taken a single bite yet.
___________
"Benjamin doesn't want to play with that!" (he's an expert at what his brother does and does not want--and he's convinced that Benjamin doesn't want 90% of the toys in the household)
___________
The incessant questioning has begun. He doesn't really ask "why" he asks "what". This was our exchange while making pancake batter this morning:
Hayden: What's that, Mommy?
Me: This is the flour
Hayden: And what's this Mommy?
Me: This is the sugar
Hayden: What's this Mommy?
Me: You know what that is.
Hayden: It's an egg! Mommy, that's an egg!
Me: Right!
Hayden: What's this, Mommy?
etc
etc
etc
___________
He picks out an outfit in the morning and then after getting dressed tells me, "I look spiffy!"
___________
He's got a bit of his mother in him in that he's always planning and asking what's next and what this day is going to be. "And what are we going to do after that?" he's always asking. Once he has our entire agenda down he repeats it all back to me--often. I don't need a blackberry, I have a Hayden!
___________
Shortly after he got into bed he started calling, "Daddy, I peed. Daddy, I peed. Daddy, I peed." I went in to check on him and, sure enough, he had gotten out of bed and peed in the potty in his room. As I'm helping his get his jammies back on he tells me this:
"And I'm going to get back into bed, and I'm going to sleep, and I'll get up when it says 7 again (on the clock) and come downstairs and get dressed, then go to church and play with Cooper."
___________
He used to have issues with pronouns. He's conquered that, but now he has some issues using the past tense, adding an extra "ed" to the end of his words. . . "I poopeded" (said like "poop-did"), "I wakeded up" ("wake-did"), "I cougheded" ("cough-did")

Okay, that's enough for now, but I could fill pages and pages with his quips. I really need to capture some of this on video, but I'd have to keep the camera on pretty much all day!

Tandem Ride

It's been a few months since we've taken our daily morning walk with the neighborhood pals, but the sun was out and the streets were snow-free enough to actually make our 3 mile loop this morning. The kids ride in their respective strollers, but when we got back, we let the boys loose to play for a bit. Hayden went straight for his tricycle. And Hank thought that was a great idea!

They were quite the pair, alternating between driving and pushing (or riding on the back). They certainly looked like they were having a grand old time!

And Hank ended up with the last ride, this one a solo!

Benjamin: 9 months old

I didn't miss it--I'm just delayed a few days in posting it! Benjamin celebrated 9 months old on Sunday and I sat him down to take his monthly picture with his stuffed lamb. He had other ideas and was just too fast for me. Every picture was slightly blurry! But I love his mischievous little grin here.

At 9 months, he's always on the go. He crawls around the house like he owns the place. Under, over, through, and around--nothing stops him. He's even started crawling up the stairs!

He's found his voice and seems to babble incessantly. He's obsessed with his older brother and always very interested in what Hayden is doing. He loves meal time and he's getting pretty proficient at finger foods. His latest favorite is a grilled cheese sandwich. He has the best laugh.

He's still a mama's boy and when he's done with his exploring loves nothing better than to be carried around. He knows what he wants and is not afraid to let me know if he's unhappy (with very loud lungs). He's starting to recognize some sign language and I think he's started using signs, his first "word"--milk.

He's still not sleeping through the night (much to my dismay) and I think we're drawing a tough line for him. Soon. Like I said, he's not afraid to let me know when he's unhappy. And he's persistent. The few times we've attempted to let him "cry it out," he's still crying 45 minutes later. So, we relent.

And we love him more every day!

I was cleaning up in the kitchen while he was crawling around the family room yesterday. I heard him fussing a bit and peeked over to find him like this. . .

Oh, he makes me smile!

Baby Long Lashes

Benjamin has the longest eyelashes! I took my camera up to document bathtime a few days ago and I also succeeded in documenting those gorgeous lashes of his!

Since I captured more fun than just his lovely lashes, I might as well share those, too! Rich (a.k.a. Super Dad) takes both boys up for bath every night. It gives me a few minutes to enjoy the sweet silence and get the dinner dishes all cleaned up before heading up to help with bedtime. I do miss out on some fun stuff, I discovered.

Rich has to juggle getting 2 bathtubs ready (the big one for Hayden, the baby tub for Ben), 2 boys stripped down, 2 sets of towels and jammies ready. While Rich was getting Hayden situated, I caught Benjamin performing one of his favorite nightly activities. . .

Then he crawled on over to see what big brother was up to. . .

Ben would love to join his brother in the big tub, but Hayden just doesn't want to share. He's been asked several times and he politely says, "no thank you" at the suggestion of Ben taking a bath with him.

He's left to just look in over the edge at all those fun bath toys. . .

"I'm getting him wet!" Hayden exclaimed as he patted Ben's arm. I was just happy he didn't start splashing him (and me!).

Really, though, I think Benjamin is much better off not sharing a tub with his crazy older brother!

Olympic Spirit

We kicked off the Olympic games by headlining the local 11 o'clock news! Our neighbors invited us over for pizza and to watch the Opening Ceremonies. What we didn't know was that they also invited the local news station to stop by the party!

Their brother is competing in his third Olympic games for snowboarding. Not only is he a competitor, he's also a medalist--earning a bronze in the 2002 Olympics. The celebrity-by-relation didn't end there, though. The cinematographer that made the video sequence of the snowboarder coming down the mountains outside of Vancouver--which kicked off the Opening Ceremonies--lives in Bozeman and is friends with our neighbor. He got a ticket to the Opening Ceremonies, but his wife and daughter joined our party.

And then the newscaster arrived!

Where was Hayden? Too shy to go sit on the couch with all the other kids. . .

Until they all got up and the camera left the room. Then, he jumped up on the couch and started chanting "USA! USA! USA!" and asking if everyone else was coming back!

It was kind of cool to see the guy that we see on our TV every night walk into our neighbor's house, by himself, with a camera and tripod. He asked some questions, did some interviews, shot some footage and then headed back to the station to put his story together.

And here is what was piped into living rooms across Southwestern Montana as the lead story on the news last night:

CLICK HERE

If the video doesn't start automatically, you can click the thumbnail of the kids on the couch (right above the weather map). We thought Hayden had missed out on his 10 seconds of fame, so we were surprised to see that he got the last "word". Make sure you watch 'til the end! (And for you super I Spy fans, you will see a glimpse of me in the first 10 seconds of the clip--it's riveting! Ha!)

Friday at the CMB

We spent Friday morning at the CMB--the Children's Museum of Bozeman. It's our typical Friday outing, but this was especially fun for a few reasons. First, several of Hayden's friends were there. And second, Benjamin got in on the playtime action.

My favorite picture of the morning:

I did get plenty of his inquisitive face, too.

As you can see, there was plenty to keep him busy! Unfortunately, I didn't have plenty at home to keep his big brother busy. I was upstairs putting Benjamin down for his nap and when I came back down, this is what I discovered:

Yes, that's ballpoint pen. All over the couch. The scribble extends all the way to the right side of the cushion. We had a little talk and he told me that he knew the only thing he's supposed to draw on is paper. So, he lost his bucket of trucks for the next 3 days. It's the first time we've ever tried this sort of punishment (it's the first time we've really had to do some punishing). Let the terrible 3's begin!