Ice Cream (I Scream?)

This picture is a hilarious snapshot of our lives currently. Alex, spoon clutched in one hand, screaming defiantly, empty ice cream cone dripping on the ground, pants growing short in the legs, bib a constant necessity due to teething drool. Jake, posing politely for the camera, ice cream cone protectively gripped in opposite hand, a look of exhaustion on his face due to his sister's antics. I'm just along for the ride, having fun capturing it all :)

SO PROUD!

Yesterday was a VERY big day in our house!

After six long months of cruising around with one hand on walls and furniture to steady herself, Alex decided last night was the night she was going to start to walk. And, just like that, she walked lap after lap around our house. Clear across our kitchen in 29 steps. The entire length of our living room. And up and down the hallway. Previously, at least a month ago, she took two steps toward me. Since then she has made it maybe one or two steps before giving up and landing on her butt and simply crawling. When people would ask if she was walking, my answer was always, "She is perfectly CAPABLE of walking, she just hasn't decided to pursue it yet." Do I know my daughter or what?

I have a video that Ralph took of her walking last night, but the house is such a disaster area in the video that I can't bring myself to post it.*

ALSO, yesterday, my big five year old boy was writing out thank you notes to his friends that came to his birthday party. Jake wrote the names of each of his classmates all by himself! Jake's classmates have names such as Lizzie, Sophia, Yelena, McKinley, Ava, Gianluca, Adelia, Cody, Isabella, and Jack, so I realized we had probably written most of the letters of the alphabet already! We looked for the letters that we had missed (F, P, Q, R, T, W, and X) and Jake wrote them too!


I was smiling ear to ear with pride last night. I am so, so proud of my favorite son and my favorite daughter!! :)


*You know what your house looks like after your kids and your dog have torn it apart all day and you are too busy chasing them to pick up all the crap that they insist upon throwing on the floor? And then your husband works late and you are ready to tear your hair out since it's been 13 hours since you have spoken to another adult? And it's time for dinner but you haven't made anything yet? And now it's getting close to bedtime and you have to figure out how to feed them/clean them/change them before you can even think about getting around to cleaning up the living room? And you have a bunch of emails to return and work to do because the new babysitter you hired stole money from you and then had the nerve to quit? No? Oh well, that's what it looked like in our house when Ralph took the video. At least when I tried to take video (13 secs then the batteries died), I was innovative enough to position baby so that she would walk in an area where the background was clean. (Photography is all an illusion anyway.) Ralph on the other hand took a walking tour down tornado alley. Or, should that be "Tornado Ali"? I crack myself up.

Alex eating oatmeal

Alex has been very eager to feed herself lately. She is a fantastic eater and will gobble anything you put in front of her. Both Alex and Jake are pretty good about eating healthy breakfast foods, and we've been on an oatmeal kick lately. I made too much for myself this morning, and Alex was eager to finish my bowl for me. It was a lazy sunday, so after a bunch of clean spoonfuls from me, I decided to let her have the bowl and spoon all to herself, not caring too much if she made a mess because we didn't really have any place to go today anyway. I think she liked it:


We went directly into the bathtub once she had her fill. Ruthie volunteered to clean up most of the mess left on the tray of the highchair.

Five Years Ago!

Five years ago today, my baby boy was born!


And our lives have never been the same since! Happy Birthday to my beautiful sweet boy! I love you so much Jake!!

Some recent cell phone snaps

I owe my blog readers lots of things, including full coverage of Alex's first birthday and her complete destruction of a Lulu's cupcake. Jake's birthday is in two days, and we are in full party-planning mode. Next up, Peepa has a significant birthday coming up as well. Lots going on this time of year, we're just trying to keep up.

For now, here are a few fun cell phone snaps from the last couple of weeks.

Alex has been getting into EVERYTHING, here she is raiding our pantry for pots and pans to bang on:


And here are my two little Leprechauns celebrating St. Patrick's Day. Once Ali saw Jake in the hat, she wanted to try it on too:


And on the way to meet Geedah and Peepa for a weekend away. They look so much alike to me here: little sleeping mirror images with long dark eyelashes, pale skin, messy strawberry blond hair, pouty lips, squishy cheeks and tiny button noses.


Thanks for reading the blog, even if the posts are sporadic. Someday, we will look back and be very happy I kept this record of this time in our lives.

JUMP! Three years apart.

Same song, different kids:

April 23, 2008 (Jake at 25 months):



March 23, 2011 (Alex at 13 months):

Jake Scores A Puck!

We were lucky enough to get front row tickets (thanks Peepa!) to the Islanders/Capitals hockey game at the Nassau Coliseum! Jake was pretty much terrified to sit right on the ice because he was afraid the players would hit the wall, make a loud noise and the glass might break. He was partially correct in his assumptions - the players did hit the wall and make a loud noise (we jumped more than a few times), but the glass stayed intact and Jake got over his fears (mostly) and really enjoyed the game, sitting on the laps to see over the wall. The highlight was in the 2nd period when a puck went into the penalty box right next to us. An Islanders player was nice enough to throw it to Jake. Needless to say he was on Cloud 9! If we ever go to another NHL game again, it will have a real hard time measuring up to this awesome experience!

Peepa, Uncle Danny and his girlfriend Shannon, Ralph and I, and Jake all went to the game, and you can even see us on the highlight reel! Pause the video at 0:51 and you can see us all from above, we are just to the right of the security guard in the bright yellow shirt. You can see us again a little better at 1:09. You can see most of our group at 3:13, (I'm absent, waiting in line for one of the SIX ladies stalls in the entire stadium), and then you can see us cheering at the glass at 4:16. It was a fantastic time! Thanks to Geedah who sacrificed a sports night out to instead stay home and cuddle with Ali-girl.