A Very Chuggy Christmas

Here's a brief little recap of our Christmas festivities, which actually ended only an hour or so ago (at least the present-opening part... side note: Rowan is going to be totally disappointed come tomorrow morning when, for the first time in three straight days, he has no gifts to open.)

Helping me make cream cheese frosting for the pumpkin cookies. In his apron, of course.


Christmas Eve pajamas. With this kid's recent propensity for removing at least half of his sleepwear almost every night these days, we were hoping jammies that featured his beloved Thomas might make it the whole night. Not so, though. I had to re-pant him when I checked on him around 11:00 p.m. Christmas Eve.


I feel like we might be breaking some unwritten rule by letting him open Chuggington toys while wearing Thomas pajamas. It's like wearing a Cubs hat and Sox jersey or something, right?


Rowan got an awesome garbage can/ toy storage bin from my parents. The kid loves a garbage can foot pedal, and this one makes cat and dog noises when the lid opens. He's in heaven. But we're all a little sick of the noise already, so this may be a bedroom or basement only "toy".







And some attempts at a nice family picture. It becomes, like, twelve times more difficult to get one with each one child you add, I'm fairly certain. Oh, the days when all I had to concern myself with in a picture was hiding my double chin and not squinting my left eye too much...




Merry Christmas!

My kids are still cute.

Not much of a newsflash, that title, but oh, well. You need proof?

Once again, I really can't take much credit for how astoundingly handsome they are. I'm okay with that, though.

Rowan loves having his picture taken with Silas (or, as he generally refers to him, "Brudder" or "Hold it"-- as in, "I want to hold it- that kid"). Anytime his face gets near Silas, he squishes cheeks with him and says, "Cheese, mommy!", waiting for the camera to come out. Unfortuately, it's true what they say about taking, like, 90% less pictures of your second kid than you did with your first. Good thing these two are almost identical. Someday I'll just throw all the photos in a big pile, shuffle them around, split them in half and give a stack to each boy: "Here you go. Your baby pictures." And no one will be the wiser.

Lots of crazy eyes going on in the next few pictures. I think we all had Thanksgiving dinner hangovers. You understand.

Rowan helped Grandma Hardy roll out some pie crust on Thanksgiving. No, really. Not just for the cute photo. I swear...

And Silas slept while we decorated my parents' basement with our Christmas stuff.

Eye eye eye, Rangers!

(That title? It is in honor of my brother, the young man to whom I give credit for my extensive knowledge of all things Rita Repulsa.)

My sister Sarah, Keeper/Organizer of Old Family Photos, sent me an email last night with a couple pictures of little me in Mr. Potato Head glasses. She suggested I do a side by side of these pictures and the one I posted of Rowan in glasses for an Us Weekly Magazine-style "Who Wore it Best?" thing... My vote is for Rowan because, as we all know, men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.




And speaking of stuff on eyes, here's what we did today. Last night I busted out Connect Four and Rowan was in heaven for a good thirty minutes putting those little checkers in the board. So I brought it out again today, and this is what we ended up doing. He is big into wearing blanket capes these days, so I feel like these pictures are very superhero-y. What's a good superhero name for this look? Connect Four Eyes? Captain Cataract? Suggestions are welcome; this might just be his Halloween costume next year, and we'll need a good name to tell people.




Oh, and here I am. I'd like to say something along the lines of, "Please excuse my sloppy, pajama-fied appearance; this isn't normally how I look..." And that would be SUCH. A. LIE. I look like this allllllllll the time. Minus the eye checkers.

We've been doin' stuff.

Stuff like:

wearing Mr. Potato Head's glasses, a childhood rite of passage, right?


Riding on steam engine trains.



Getting delightfully chubby.


Picking apples.


Eating apples.


Driving tractors.


Trying to wink.


Laying on cold, slightly damp grass with cousins.


Cracking ourselves up.


Pumpkin-ing.


Bathing.


Halloween-ing.



And growing up at disturbingly fast (but also mind-bogglingly cute) rates.

Side by Side

Perhaps I'll turn this into a monthly feature called "Guess which baby is which?" This one's kind of a giveaway, since I think I may have already posted the picture of Silas a couple weeks ago. But, yeah... turns out I may have given birth to the exact same child in 2011 as I did in 2009, no?

Photo Assault

As promised, lots of pictures of my kiddos. These are in no particular order. Here's what's been happening with us lately:

Lots of naps. Glorious, glorious baby-on-chest naps.

Those of you who read this blog when Rowan was brand new may recall a very similar picture of him, right down to the fauxhawk, button nose, and good baby tan.

It has since fallen out, but I'm so glad I got photo documentation of his insane cheek hair. Total werewolf baby.

Milk drunk.

Lots of play-doh. And many thanks for the ability to make play-doh at home, so I don't have to be stressed about what is being put in Rowan's mouth when he makes a "sammich" and just can't resist the temptation to take a bite. I had to add some flour to it after a couple days, and he really

enjoyed that. A total pain to clean up, but at least it made for some cute pictures.

.

Lots of brotherly love. Rowan loves shaking hands lately, especially with people at church. One day he was lying next to Silas and started saying, "Shake... shake..." and trying to show him how it's done.

Speaking of Rowan, and how he is handling having Silas around, he is doing pretty well. There may be a bit of imitating a baby on his part. Like how he steals all of Silas' pacifiers. Funny, they had no appeal whatsoever the first two years of his life.

We went to a little fall festival a couple weeks ago. We would have taken pictures of Rowan on a pony, if he hadn't been a) completely terrified to go near the ponies and b) way more interested in the horse trailer they arrived in.

I skipped the chance at eating a fried Snickers, regrettably, but did manage to order us a chocolate dipped cheesecake. Yum.

You can file the next few pictures under "Things That Have Recently Blown Rowan's Mind":

-chocolate dipped cheesecake (obviously)

-having his carseat turned forward-facing (side note: This makes for SUCH easy temper tantrum avoidance. Whenever he is about to have a meltdown about something, we need only say, "Look at that bus/tree/tractor!!!!!" and he is completely distracted.)

-Nutella (He's never had it before, and may never have it again, because I lack so much willpower with that stuff that I can't buy it anymore. Tough luck for both of us.)

And these pajamas blow my mind with how cute they are:

And this is what usually happens when we put #1 to bed with footie pajamas:


And this is #2 getting more adorable by the minute: