Meet Harrison James

Harrison James was born Monday April 13th at 3:39PM. He is 7lbs 11oz and 21". He is healthy and a wonderful eater and pooper! Drew met his baby brother on Tuesday and was enthralled. He is one proud big brother.

Happy Easter

We have had a lovely Easter Sunday. I have had this Easter Basket ready to go for weeks. All part of my crazy advanced preparations for baby boy #2. Unfortunately, baby is not here to get his Easter Basket.
We started our day with tearing apart the basket and sneaking a few jelly beans. I made waffles and then we had our Sunday Starbucks visit. After an Easter Egg hunt in the yard, we went to Mass. Drew was pretty good, but very fidgety. When we entered church (at 12:01), Msgr. Conley was at the back waiting to proceed up to the alter. He said hello to Drew and asked if the Easter bunny visited. Drew VERY LOUDLY continued to tell him about how "I got M&Ms...green ones, yellow ones AND red ones!!!!". He of course laughed as did the entire back 1/4 of the church. They then told us we were welcome to go into the children's room. We did use it for a bit, but it is so stuffy and I assume germ filled I opted to struggle in the pews.
Right now Drew is napping and we will go to Grannie and Poppy's for dinner tonight.

Mugshots of the Jelly Bean Bandit: Time for an egg hunt!
Holy crap! There's candy in here?!? Say Cheese
We hope everyone else had a lovely holiday!

Thomas Live!!!!

For Drew's birthday, Auntie Laura got Drew tickets to see Thomas Live at the Wang Center. Even though I thought I would be coming home with a new baby today, I was more than excited to be able to go along. I guess the baby isn't going to always try to get in the way of his big brothers fun! We really doubted his ability to sit still for 90 minutes, but he was mesmerized. He sat still with his hands folded for most of the show and at the end he really got into the clapping and cheering. The woman sitting next to me laughed hysterically at his enthusiasm. Thank you Auntie Laura for getting us (5th row) tickets!

Just Pics

Drew seems to know that I can't get down on the floor to pick up all of the toys anymore, so he likes to be funny and pull EVERYTHING out of the toybox!

Best Friends

I think the sweetest words that my ears have ever heard were from Drew this morning. He was cuddled up next to me on the couch and said "I love Mommy, Mommy and Drew best friends!"

Signs of Spring

There aren't very many signs of spring, but the past 2 days have been pretty nice and we have been able to go back to the playground and use the swingset in the back yard. Drew loves being back at the "pay-gound"!

PARTY!

Today we had a (late) birthday party for Drew. It was a party just for his friends. Nine of his closest 2 year old buddies had a fun morning at Playtown Express followed by pizza and cake. We have been to this place a few times before, but having the whole place to ourselves was such a treat! All of the kids had a blast and it was fairly relaxing for the parents because it wasn't crowded and they are all the same age so the damage they can inflict on each other is pretty minimal.

Drew had fun but was exhausted after. He has been sick all week, so 2 hours of hard play and party sent him into an almost comatose state at nap time. He crashed pretty hard for bed as well. As soon as I booked this party, I slightly regretted it. I thought that I had created too much work for myself. The place was so helpful that it wound up being rather easy.

Drew and Charlie on the slide. This was a favorite for most of the kids. It is a blow up slide that reaches almost to the ceiling.

These next 3 pictures crack me up. Someone offered to take a family photo and we couldn't get one with the 3 of us looking at the camera. I am worried that now that we are adding a fourth to our clan, that we will never have a good family photo!

Zack and Stella

Drew was so excited to have a visit with his buddies, Zack and Stella. We met them and their moms when all of the babies were only weeks old. Although we don't get to visit as often as we'd like, when we do get together we always have a blast! Here is Drew's response when Caryn asked them to "raise your hands if you are 2". (They are all 2)
Here is Zack, Stella and Drew (and Lorin too) from May 2007 - they were all around 3 months old. It is amazing how time flies!

Where Have We Been?

Well, we (i.e me) have just been tired. I have no good excuses for not blogging other than being 8 months pregnant and not really having the energy go chase Drew around with the camera. I have managed to get some shots over the past few weeks, so I thought I would post a little catch-up.

We had a few days here that got pretty warm (like in the 50s). The snow had pretty much all melted by this past Saturday and then wham: another storm! We are pretty bummed about the foot of snow on the ground right now because we had lots of fun playing in the driveway and it really got us looking forward to spring. I am trying to get Drew to pedal his bike, but he just wants to scoot along. Of course, being the two year old that he is, he insisted on driving into the ice and snow even though I told him a million times not to. He is really in the phase of testing me. He pushes as far as he can just to see how I will respond. I try my hardest to be consistent, and we do have lots of time-outs. I have to admit that being this pregnant has kept me very aware of situations that may arise and try my best to avoid them. I don't believe that avoiding conflict is always the best way to go, but for now, it is really what I have the strength for.

The pictures below do a pretty good job of depicting the kinds of conflicts that can come up at our house. Here, Drew is riding his bike nicely through the kitchen, wearing his backpack that is full of cars, just having a good time. Moments later, he drives into the freezer and decides he wants waffles (it is about 4:30pm) and when I say no, he turns miserable!

I don't want to sound miserable, because it has not been all terrible twos at our house. I think we went through a one week stretch of some pretty lousy behavior, but there are a lot of things we can point to that are to blame. Drew has all of his 2 year molars coming in at the same time. The poor kid constantly has his fingers hanging out of his mouth (which drives me nuts for fear of germs!) We also put Drew in a big boy bed, which can be a very emotional change for a little kid. Not only did he go into a bed, but he moved into a new bedroom too. He has done SO amazingly well with the transition, but I could tell that some of his breakdowns were from a build up of emotion surrounding the whole situation.

As far as the transition to the bed goes, bedtimes have gone very smoothly and for the most part we do our normal book reading routine and put him in bed and he stays in and goes to sleep on his own. I had one night while Andy was away that he jumped out of bed several times and I got quite a work out going upstairs to put him back in bed. Naps have been a little more difficult. Drew and I used to go into his nursery and read a book and rock in his chair before nap. Usually, if I rocked him, he would fall asleep within minutes so this was the habit we were in. I liked the cuddle time and it was also so much easier to get him to sleep this way so I never broke this habit at naptime. Now that he moved to a bed, I have had to stay with him until he falls asleep. I feel like we are finally at a place where this goes smoothly and quickly in the bed, but for a few days it was not that way at all. He fought, and fought and even hit me a few times. We had a few days of serious doubt (mine) and some tears (mine too), but it just took a few tough naps and he was over it (I hope!).

Drew has started to come up with the funniest things on his own. For example, he hopped on his bike and started riding out of the room. He said "bye bye Mommy"..."I go get Mommy a Latte". He has also started to put a time frame on things that have happened by adding "the other day" onto his sentences. The kid sure does remember a lot though, especially the not so fun stuff. And he brings it up at the most random times. For example, we had one really rough trip to the grocery store that led to a huge tantrum about getting out of the cart (the big car that he ran and hopped into without my ok in the first place). Once it was time to get into my car he had a meltdown and would not get into his carseat. There was no physical way that I was going to get him in and I was getting concerned that people thought I was abusing him so I had to get into the backseat with him until he got into the seat. To add even more excitement for me, the child locks were on so I had to climb over the seat to get into the front. Well, you know I didn't let that one go by without a time out, and when he wouldn't stay in the chair for the 2 minute time out, I took his trains away...all of them...in a big bucket on the counter. You know that one stung. Well, the poor kid still tells people about how "Mommy said I told you" and "Mommy said stay in that chair" and "Mommy took trains". I think he is just trying to keep me in check and let me know that he is going to be a blabber mouth if I punish him.

We have a new addition to our family..."Big Boy" the Betta fish. We have tried to get Drew to come up with a name and this is what he keeps calling it, so there you go. I am going on the record now and saying that I think this fish is an awful idea. Andy took him without prior consultation and picked this thing up. I just hope when his time comes, that Andy is not traveling because this is all on him. The funny thing is that 2 days prior I was with my friends who were saying how awful it was giving a little kid a fish because of the death factor. I never discussed this with Andy and then he comes home with one.

With my intentions to stick to the nice, fun stuff in this post I think I wound up focusing more on the tough stuff. I guess that is what you get from a tired, pregnant mom of a 2 year old. Hopefully I will be able to post more often and all the good stuff will be at the top of my mind. We have a very busy March, but I will try my hardest to do better updating, because you know come April, blog posts will be scarce.