Easter and other things

ok, so I don't feel like sitting forever and uploading pictures today, so for the visually stimulated, visit http://jesseandlauren.com for the pictures to go with these stories. They are in the second half of the March album.
First of all, Erin left yesterday, and that was a lot of fun to have her here. It was stressful not being home, and Graham was quite fussy most of the time, but who am I kidding, he's upstairs crying right now because he doesn't want to go to sleep.
Anyway, we went to DC one day, and I decided that is a place where you need to have one person dedicated to following around a 2 year old. In other words, I wish I had Jesse to help me out, but alas, it did not work out. We started in the Art Museum, which Nate of course loved. Now, he did not love it due to the priceless masterpieces that adorn the walls. We saw Monet's, Cassatt's, and many other works by the Impressionist Masters. No, Nate loved how when he yelled his voice echoed. He loved running through the scarcely populated hallways. He loved playing with the flowers in the atrium. He loved running right in front of people. Good times were had by all. Chances are good that Graham was upset, so I was carrying him this whole time.
After the art museum we went to the Natural History museum, and that went better. We got to see the dinosaur bones, and the hall of mammals, and the insect discovery area, and Nate loved all of those. He still ran around like a madman, and Graham was crying quite a bit when he woke up and realized he was starving. But it went better.
We then had a break and let the kids run around on the mall. It wasn't too cold that day which was nice. After that we went to the Air and Space museum, and Graham slept through that whole thing, so my mom sat on a bench with the 2 strollers full of sleeping babies. (Isaac was asleep as well.) Anyway, Nate's favorite activity was going up and down the escalator. We did that for quite a bit. He did love the planes and space ships too though. That may have been the best museum for Nate for the day. Plus, we got to ride the metro, and Nate loves that. All in all, it was a stressful day for me, but we had fun. Nate had a lot of fun.
We also went down the Baltimore, which as you all know, is my favorite place in Maryland to visit. We took the metro to get there as well, which was fine in the morning, but we got poured on when we were walking back to it. We spent the day at the Maryland Science Center. That was fun, except that it was pretty full. At first I had Graham that I was carrying, and Nate running around, and a stroller to watch on top of that, so in Newton's Hall it was not as fun for me. Then though we went up to the little kid's room. It's an under 8 room. There is stroller parking right inside, and an attendant at the door to make sure your kids do not run away. Nate spent most of his time in this room at one of those walls that has the pegs that poke through and you make hand impressions in it. He could have spent all day playing with that. He did finally find some other areas to play with, and all in all it was a good time. They even have a chair in the toddler room where you can sit and nurse your baby.
Easter was fun. We did some activities at my mom's house, like dying eggs and having an Easter egg hunt. Nate enjoyed those things, even though I think it was like 20 below outside as we were hunting for eggs. Anyway, Nate enjoyed these activities so much, that we did some of them at home a second time. He really was interested in coloring eggs this year. A big part of that for him was actually coloring the eggs, with crayons and everything. I showed him how if you color on the eggs first, then the design will show up after you put them in the dye. Nate also really liked plopping the eggs into the dye and splashing it all over the place. That is what you get when you dye eggs with a 2 year old.
He really liked his Easter basket, and enjoyed eating candy for breakfast. Who doesn't? For the first time this year I had Nate and Graham in matching outfits. I figure that I only have a few years when I can dress my little boys in cute outfits. After that they'll be like, 10 year old boys, and the whole world will be over. So for now, they are my cute little boys, and I will dress them in matching outfits.
Our final outing was to Chuck E Cheese, and that worked out ok, until the end when everyone had a meltdown at the same time. Myself included.
Now I am enjoying having my life back to normal. Nate does miss Ben and Mady, and continues to ask to play with them, and I miss my sister, but it will be nice to clean my house again, and for my kids to take naps. Speaking of which, I need to get on with my day, so check out the pictures on the other website, and that's it.

Randomness

So Erin is here in town, and that means fun fun fun. (Ok., it just means that Nate has someone to play with while I sit at my mom's house, and now we have one more person to sit around bored with.) But we have done a few fun things already. We got to fly the kites on Thursday, and then we went to the outlets on Friday.

On Saturday we went to Adventure Park USA. They have a pass that you can buy that will give you unlimited access to the carousel, tea cups, moon bounce, mini-golf and the climbing area. Well, Nate enjoyed following Ben around and sometimes hitting the ball with the club. He was really good at dropping his ball into the cup. Fortunately, no one cared about cheating in this game. He kind of liked the carousel, but not as much as he loved it while we were in Philly last September. He didn't want to get off there, but here, he was like, ok, whatever. He didn't go on the tea cups, because adults were not allowed on, and I was certain he would be scared, so we skipped that. He had fun in the climbing area for a bit, but only in the toddler area, which was a little small. He would not have anything to do with the moon bounce, even when he would have had it to himself. If he had gone in, he would have liked it, since he is so fond of jumping on the couch, but alas, no such luck.

What he really liked was pretending to play all of the arcade games. He has recently figured out how to turn on the PS2, and get the racing game on. He only knows how to make it go forward and backwards, but he loves it. He was very excited to see games that had real steering wheels and stuff. So it was kind of fun, but we probably will not be doing it again any time soon.

So while we were in the car on the way to the fun fest yesterday, Graham was not happy at all. We had to wake him up to get him into the car seat, and he didn't appreciate that. So I'm not at my best, I was stressed, and Graham's constant crying has been wearing on me. Anyway, I'm all in a dither, wondering exactly how long it will be before I am admitted to the loony bin, when Jesse tells me to look back at Nate, and this is what he was doing. He was just sitting there silently covering his ears. I guess he is getting tired of Graham's crying too.

Graham sometimes sleeps with his eyes open. I guess he is practicing to be spies like both of his grandpas.

And these are just some cute pictures of Nate and Graham and Lizzie. So there you have it, that makes it a bit random. Tomorrow we are going down to DC. Erin's kids need some culture. I hope we survive. Then we'll have a few days to recouperate before we head down to Baltimore to do the Science Center. So it should be fun.

Excitement

Erin is coming on Wednesday for almost 2 whole weeks! I'm super excited since I don't get to see her that often. We get to do lots of fun things when she comes too, like the Science Center, the zoo, Martin's grocery store, the Outlets, DC, Chuck E Cheese's. It's going to be grand, and Nate is going to love having his cousins to play with. Of course, he has come to be used to having all of the toys at Grandma's house all to himself, and he may get quite upset if they try to play with the Cheerio's matchbox cars. Oh well, a lesson in sharing.
Anyway, I'm really excited and I can't wait until Thursday when I get to see her.
That's it.

Stop Time

Sometimes, when I am sitting rocking Graham, I just wish I could stop time. I never was able to rock Nate, because he didn't like it too much, and I wasn't all that fond of the rocking chair that we had, and so it usually was piled with clothes.
But Graham is different. I cherish our times when we just sit and rock as he falls asleep. With Nate it was nice that I was just able to plop him in his crib and walk away, and he would go to sleep, but I wouldn't ask for that with Graham if it meant that we had to give up our rocking time. What it comes down to is that I am in love with this little guy and I wish that our peaceful moments could last forever.

Ice Storm

So this entry is another after the fact one (It's just that I'm downstairs where the pictures are so I can upload photos.)

But last week we had a pretty cool ice storm, and here are the after effects. My dad taught Nate to kick icicles off of the car after the last mini ice storm, so next time this happens, Nate will be over the moon. Of course I think it was with this ice storm that Nate slipped and fell, so he is pretty wary of walking in the ice or snow any more.

Graham's blessing

So it is a little late coming, but we did bless Graham earlier this month. It was a pretty low key event. We just had my parents, Jesse's parents and sister there, and a few friends from the ward and bishopric members participated in the blessing.
Graham just barely fit into the outfit that my mom made for Nate when he was blessed. It worked out though, but it's a good thing we didn't wait until March to bless him.

A Breakthrough!

Ok, so I am pretty tired of Nate's eating habits, or rather lack of eating habits. He is a total non-eater. I have managed to hold onto a few healthy foods that are now his staples, but it drives me nuts that I can't just take him out and order something for him to eat. I have to pack my own food when we go to dinner at friend's houses. So I know that if I want to do something about this, I need to be better about exposing him to new foods. That and I need to actually feed him real meals every day. Sometimes I just don't have any fight in me after putting a colicky baby to bed and goldfish is a good enough dinner.
So my plan is to just be better about offering him new foods. When at all possible, he is going to get what we are eating for dinner. I know, it's revolutionary. So today was the first day that I am doing this, and we had pancakes for dinner as well as some fritata thing. I made a tiny little pancake for Nate, and cut up some fritata and put it on his plate with the chicken nugget and raisins that I was hoping to make a real dinner for him. To my utmost astonishment, he ate the pancake. No surprise, he liked it. He has tried pancakes before, but they have always been a gag food for him.
Now, let me regress about 2 years. My little boy was just getting to the age where he could start to try finger foods. He was doing great with this. Then one day, he gagged on it, and threw up. This happened over and over again in a short period of time, and he developed a fear of eating. The doctor said that it was physical (over-active gag reflex) and mental (associating eating with throwing up.) So we kept him on Gerber, which he loved. It cost us a pretty penny. Finally when he was about 16 months old, I said NO MORE! and I cut him off from baby food. At the time he had a handfull of foods that he would eat. Since then, he has added maybe 3 or 4 foods to that list. (This has been over a year, close to a year and a half.)
So he really does not have this problem anymore. I thought that the only reminder of this problem is his terrible eating habit. However, I have come to realize upon closer attention, that he still has a mental stigma associating eating and throwing up. He had put a hault to eating chicken, and then just a few days ago, he was talking about eating the chicken, and he said, "don't throw up." Then I remembered that a few weeks ago he had a big piece of chicken in his mouth and he gagged. Then today he was eating the pancake and he said "don't throw up." (I'm glad that he didn't.) But it's a little sad that he still has this mental association. The poor kid.
So I'm sorry for the digression. When I started this post I had no intention of going into the ins and outs of my child's over-active gag reflex. (no pun intended) and I certainly am sorry to those of you who have stuck through this post that has turned into a story about how much my child throws up. I really just wanted to say how glad I was that my child had eaten a new food. I think we'll start to have pancakes for lunch some days. Too bad he was 2 weeks too late for Shrove Tuesday.