It's Good to be 3 (and a half) or so...

Likes to help me get Caden up from his nap :)

Loves to make a "cozy spot" with ALL his pillows, blankets and animal friends!

Watching videos of himself and cousins with Daddy.

Colton - I don't want to forget these days...these moments and the words that fill my ears...You are such a special boy and I love watching you grow up.

Love the way Colton still mispronounces some words...

Grills for girls. He informed me the other day that I wasn't a real grill :) Oh really?!

Calls Caden a tobbler instead of a toddler. Grandad shared a sweet story about Colton wondering why Caden was always knocking down his stuff. Grandad said, "Well, Caden is still a baby." Colton emphatically denied this saying, "No, he's not a baby - he's a tobbler!"

When a commercial for a show that he is interested comes on, he'll say, "Mommy, did you cacord it?"

He says world in a sweet way - kind of like wrilld.

Calls his footed pj's "footers" and wants to invent a pair that cover his hands too.

Daily is building, engineering or designing something usually using every pillow, couch cushion and stuffed animal in the house. He wants me to help him build - but has DEFINITE ideas of where things should go!  I love his imagination but boy is it tiring to put the house back together when he's done building :)

Doesn't quite get hide and seek yet and announces where he's going to hide next before the counter begins counting. He also loves Duck, Duck Goose but doesn't get the concept yet either.

Can run super fast. Like so fast, Jack and I are not sure if we could catch him if he ran away...Please don't give him any ideas!  He will chase bubbles forever! Loves to play monster (basically chase with monster sounds) and sometimes when mom and dad are tired he lets us play "Lay Down/Sit Down" Monster so we can rest. We just have to try and grab him when he runs by. He also loves to wrestle with his Daddy!

Love listening in on his playtimes - he has full back and forth conversations with his animals, trains, cars and it usually involves part reality part outer space/monster pretend.

Has become quite the eater lately! Loves frozen blueberries, cutie oranges, bananas, broccoli (trees), fish sticks, anything chocolate and ice cream! He calls breakfast - lunch and dinner - breakfast. He's also very concerned about eating something healthy before he has a sugary snack... Wonder how long this will last??

He doesn't do this every time (or I might worry) but this evening he lined up all his vegetables in a train before he ate them.

This was back in January. Grandma and Grandad brought over a birthday cake for my birthday and Colton REALLY enjoyed it! He's really calmed down a lot since his "can't sit still days" but every once in a while he still does something to remind me of those days :)

This was from way back in December. Colton had a school program in which he totally hammed it up. He sang loud, hugged the kid next to him and was just unaware of the crowd. His teacher was really surprised because during rehearsal he was stone still and barely sang. You just never know!

Loves to read and remembers so much! Today he was asking what  other animals molt? Umm, let me get back to you on that one, buddy!

Once Colton discovered Angry Birds on Daddy's Ipad - it was all over. He also loves to listen to Thomas books on Daddy's iPad... what have we started :)

Can build a gigantic railway all by himself and can play for hours with his trains. He actually enjoys building more than the actual trains going around the  track.

Proud of his block towers/city!

Tolerates Caden's exuberant love most of the time.


Colton - you are my sweetest boy! I love snuggling with you in the morning when you take a little while to wake up. I love the way you turn into a puppy sometimes. I love your sweet questions and how you have started saying 'cuz I love you, Mommy...
I love you so much!

Caden 20-22 months

Caden is a sweet, lovable mess. I love his fun and budding personality but man, can he throw a fit!  He is affectionately knows as the Precious evil one around here... I know it seems harsh, but he has a very evil laugh and he does it all the time when he thinks he's about to get caught. He's famous for the "drop and run" after being caught red-handed... Yesterday, he kept taking Colton's spiders and running off just cackling. Colton gets so mad (I can't help but laugh because it is so different  from a year ago, now that Caden is doing the instigating).

He can climb up on the stool in the bathroom and turn the water on. I will hear it turn on and say, "Caden, no-no" and he will just laugh his eveil laugh and run or continue making a royal mess!

We have had a lot of success with this high-level discipline tactic :) When Caden steals one of Colton's toys we are trying to remind Colton to simply pick up another one and pretend to play with it and then pull the ol' switcheroo. "Here Caden, let's trade." It's so simple but it usually works everytime! Saves some major screaming around here!


He has a great laugh and sense of humor. He is starting to mimic our tone of voice and expression. He watches his brother like a hawk and when he's not tormenting poor Colton he copies every thing he does! This makes my heart stop because it often involves jumping off furniture or playground equipment. Thankfully, he just dusts off his hands and keeps doing whatever "Co-Co" does!

Caden is fearless and pretty much hops or runs to get anywhere. He is never still! He continues to eat, sleep and dream about balls. He even sleeps with one or two basketballs (baketball) in his crib. He has a great arm/aim and has thrown overhanded since he was little.

He will say a sentence or word over and over and louder and louder until you get. One day he was saying, "SukAR, SukAR, SUKAR over and over until I finally figured out he wanted a sucker. Now it's a daily request and usually before breakfast :)

Caden is full of words. A lot of sentences are gobbeldy gook but end with one clear word. Such sweet babbles! Jack and I think he has a little German in him because he can be very guttaral when he talks. Some of my favorite words he says: motorcycle (moshicycle), helicopter (helcopter), green (gween), purple (poople), blue (boo), balloon (boon), sorry (sowwy), love you (lo you), Bunny (munny), paci (ishy), ambulance/fire-truck (woo-woos), bounce house (jump-jump), milk (mulk), okay (otay)...

Sings "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" so sweetly...

Insists on getting into the car and buckling up "by self" - this is maddening. He will arch his back and scream if you try to put him in too early. Hoping this is a short phase :)

 Loves to eat "boo-berries". He will only eat them frozen and boy are they messy!

 Pre-haircut - his "thug" days.

 About to jump.

 Grandad took several of these pictures.

 Look at that form and from a kneeling position...

 These are from Grandad's camera too. Love his expressions. He and Colton are very talented at scouting out mud and puddles!

 See-sawing with our friend/neighbor Zach.

 On-guard!

Over Spring Break, Grandma and Grandad took each boy for one night so I got to have one boy for special mommy and me time. Don't tell Colton, but Caden and I went to Paciugo's with Kelly and her son David. He loved sitting at the table like a big boy eating his ice cream "by self".

Fun with Colton

Yesterday, I took Colton to the library. He is such a homebody lately that I have to really "sell" the idea of going somewhere. So, I told him we could find some books about Venus flytraps and horse apples :) His latest curiosity. Just FYI - there's not a big market for horse apple books at the library. I don't even know if that's what they are called but he does not forget that I told him I didn't know if horses really ate them and that we could try to find out at the library. Why I didn't say I would just google it is beyond me!

Thankfully, there is a lot of info. about insect-eating plants! It's really pretty fascinating and I think it points to an amazing creator! But, I digress....

So, I needed to run to a couple of stores before the library and I didn't really tell him until after I got him in the car - he was not too happy about the extra stops but Mommy sometimes needs to get out of the house and the weekends are a great time to run errands because I can just take one boy and leave one with Jack.

After our 2nd store that was not the library, he questioned, "Where is the library?" "This is not the way to the library." I told him it was Kohl's and Mommy needs a dress that was only on sale today. He remarked, "You have plenty of dresses in your closet!" Wow, out of the mouths of babes :) We quickly went in and he forgave me for procrastinating our library trip just a bit longer. He was quite taken by the "short" beds in the home area of the store and decided this was a pretty good stop after all. Plus, we saw an ant hill with angry ants in the parking lot which provided a lot of discussion on the way to the library and led to some of our book choices.

We were finally on our way, when I happened to pass right by Sonic at 3:30, just perfect timing for happy hour so I turned in to the drive-in and Colton immediately said, "Mom, we are not going here are we?" I told him how happy a Sonic drink made me. He said, "I know, Mom". Then, I asked him what made him happy. After telling me I could just get some water out of the refrigerator (again, truth from a 3 year old) he told me, "I'm happy when we go straight to the library without any stops!" That made me laugh so hard!

Finally we pulled in to the library and to make up for the extra errands I parked in the parking garage and let him push all the "magic" buttons on the way in to the library and in the elevator.

Just for fun - Here are the subjects of the 17 books Colton picked out at the library:

Spiders
Ants
Ant Cities
Plant Eating Insects
Thomas the Train (2)
Jumping Spiders
Sharks
Bats
Animals of Africa

This is a fun age! Now if we can just get our horse apple facts straight! Off to google it right now!

Happy Birthday Grandad!

Happy Birthday Grandad!

We celebrated Grandad's birthday a few weeks ago but his actual birthday is today!  

The boys enjoyed "helping" Grandad blow out his candles! They really put their all into it!

Thanks for sharing your cake, Grandad! We are so blessed to have you as our Grandad!

Happy Birthday!

And the SNOW goes on...

Not one member of our household left the house by car* from Monday night to Saturday afternoon at 3. That's a record folks. I'm so thankful I went grocery shopping Monday morning and just happened to pick up 2 gallons of milk. All in all, "Snowcalypse 2011" was a memorable experience. There's something about being forced to slow down and just be. Really, I think the kids could have stayed in the house a few more days. I was reminded how much they love being at home with their family and how little it takes to make them happy. As long as there are couch cushions, Max and Ruby episodes and fruit snacks, they are good to go.

We finally got our gate open about 3 this afternoon and after setting off the most piercing gate alarm ever (which we didn't know existed) for about 5 minutes straight. The wheels had gotten off track and Jack was able to pop it back on track by using his shovel as a lever. Then, our very sweet neighbors helped Jack push the gate through the ice to unblock the driveway. Two minutes later, I hopped in the car with Colton and we went to Sonic! I have never been so excited to run errands. As we were driving, Colton was pretty chatty, so I had to tell him that I needed to concentrate because there still might be some slick spots. He replied, "I won't say any more questions, Mommy." Sweet boy, he's growing up so fast.

On Friday, it snowed about 6 inches at our house. It was beautiful. I took the kids for a walk* and it was surreal. Our neighborhood looked like a Colorado ski resort. Kids were sledding down the streets and all you could see was white. The kids enjoyed their sleigh stroller ride and loved it when I ran through the deep snow. At one point I thought it would be funny to crash into a snowbank (the neighbor's curb) and they both went flying out into the snow, Caden landing on top of Colton. Thankfully, they were fine, in their double layers of socks, pants, and jackets, and thought it was funny. 

These Cinnamon Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins were from Thursday. They get better each day :) I used the whole can of pumpkin so they've got to be good for us, right? :) The recipe came from here.

We also made these fun snowman snacks.

Caden just took the marshmallows and ran. Scared me to death when he stuck all 3 marshmallows in his mouth at the same time.

This is what our playroom looked like ALL week and still does.

Where did my shoes go?

Lunch time!

Colton's imagination is really fun! I never knew my couch cushions would be off every single day. He loves building elaborate parks with them and it really uses lots of energy so I've decided not to pick this battle. Now the bed is not usually on the floor, but I made an exception for snow days. He came up with this idea to lay the cushions end to end (forest trail) from the playroom to his room and ending at his bed (red castle). If you touch the carpet the alligators and snapping turtles will get you. We also went on several lion and bear hunts.