Was That Easter or Christmas?

As we all know, yesterday was Easter Sunday.  Although, if you looked at my facebook feed you might have been confused and thought it was Christmas instead.  Saturday night my news feed started being inundated with pictures of these over the top Easter baskets that people had ready for the morning.  I was kind of taken aback.

When did Easter turn into some huge gift explosion of a holiday?

My memories of Easter growing up were of waking up and finding out Easter baskets outside of our bedroom door.  We would then start to hunt the little foil covered chocolate eggs that the Easter bunny/my mom had hidden throughout the house.  Our baskets would have jelly beans and some other candy filled eggs in them. And we loved them.

Now I was seeing these "baskets" overflowing with gifts and toys and so many things that I couldn't even wrap my head around it.  I'll admit that Andrew's basket included a few little things. There was a coloring book ($1 bin at Target) some bubbles, pez dispensers from his grandma, egg shaped sidewalk chalk (that I think was actually a birthday gift from daycare) some candy and some peeps.  I'm fairly certain that the peeps and most of the candy will be eaten by my husband.  

Oh, and there was a little tool set that my husband brought back from his out of town trip the weekend before that we decided to give him or Easter instead of just giving it to him randomly.  I thought that was even weird. Easter is not a gift holiday.  Actually, to me no holidays are gift holidays except for birthdays and Christmas.

I seem to be in the minority, however.  Every holiday that comes to pass seems to be met with huge over the top displays of gifts.  Has it always been this way and I am just now noticing because it's splashed all over my news feed?  Or is it becoming this way because people feel the need to out do their peers and show off how much they get for their kids - to show what great parents they are?

Either way, I don't want to fall in to that trap.  I don't want to set the precedent that every holiday is going to mean gifts and excess.  I want my boys to appreciate things when they receive them, not just expect that they will be showered with things because the calendar says it's a holiday.

That being said, here are some pictures of our Easter weekend:

Hard at work coloring our eggs.  

Digging in to his Easter basket.  He was very excited about the candy.  Next year's basket will not include a separate gift.

Finding the eggs hidden in his shoes

And the ones going up the stairs

The rest of our Easter was very low key.  We suck and didn't go to church or anything. And honestly I didn't even really get out of sweats all day so there are no cute family pictures with the boys all dressed up in their Easter best.  Maybe next year...

Goodbye Gummy Grin and Hello Pearly Whites

Last Thursday I got a text from Andrea telling us that she could see the bottom two teeth coming but they hadn't pushed through.  I instantly felt a little pang of sadness.  I'm not really sure why.  I guess it's because I love a baby with a gummy little smile and since this is the last gummy smile I wanted it to last.

I looked back to see when Andrew got his first tooth and it appears that it was when he was 6.5 months.  So that means that Elliot went more than a month longer with no teeth.

Thursday night I looked in  his mouth and I could see that Andrea was right.  I could see the bumps and the little white spots on his bottom gums.  The next day when he was laughing and shouting I got another look in there and could see that he also has the little bumps on the top that mean his top teeth are on the way, too.

He hadn't been too overly cranky, but he did hesitate at the bottle a little while my mom was here.  Based on what others have said that can be a sign of a teething baby, too.  Andrew never really gave us any signs of teething - he never got overly cranky and was always a drool machine, teeth or not.  Elliot is a whole other person, though (as we've learned over and over again).  He hasn't been exceptionally drooly, but he has gotten a little fussy.  He also got a pretty bad diaper rash the day before Andrea pointed out the coming teeth.

We've been trying to give him a dose of Tylenol at night before bed to help with the crankiness, but Elliot isn't a fan of medicine (another difference between the two - Andrew LOVED it). His nighttime sleep hasn't been too bad, but he hasn't been napping much.    Yesterday I stuck a finger in his mouth to check the progress and felt it - a sharp little edge on his bottom gums.  It's official, there's not going back now.  My littlest love no longer a member of the toothless club.  I'll have to soak up all the gummy grins that I can while they last.

I love this little cutie!

Weekend With Grandma

This past weekend my mom was here with us to help out Friday and today while our daycare is closed for vacation.    The last time she did she didn't stay the whole weekend because she had some stuff to do at home, but this time I talked her in to staying all weekend. Mostly because she had surgery on her eye last month and I didn't want her driving back and forth, but also because J was out of town Friday and most of Saturday and I kind of wanted the help.

Saturday morning we got up and and after hanging out and eating breakfast we headed downtown to the aquarium.  We have a family membership, which gets in the parents and all kids under 18 in the family. I didn't think that my mom would be able to get in with it, but I was pleasantly surprised when she got in for free on our membership (Score!).  We stopped for the picture on the way in:

Probably should have taken Elliot's hat off so he wasn't just a big white blob.

I didn't realize that it was mermaid day when we decided to go, so it was probably the most crowded that I have ever seen it.  It was ok, though.  Andrew was a little hesitant with so many kids running around, but he eventually started getting a little more brave and exploring.  We decided to go out and look at the stingrays and this time we got the shrimp to feed them:

The fish ate all of his shrimp instead of the stingrays, but at least the birds didn't swoop down and steal them off of his stick.

He of course loved the big tank as usual:

We spent about two hours there and then headed out. We stopped for lunch on the way home (Juanita Greenberg's - kind of gross and I won't be going back) and then headed home.  J got home right before bedtime and brought some new toys for the boys:

Yesterday we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and headed out to the Strawberry Festival out at Boone Hall.  We went last year, but Andrew was a little too small to ride most of the rides and kind of freaked out about the merry go round.  This year he was big enough to ride quite a few rides, including the train:

The merry go round:

The elephants with me:

His first "roller coaster" with his daddy:

And the trucks by himself:

Elliot was happy to just hang out and watch:

He was even happier to hang out with his grandma after I very nervously nursed him in public without a cover:

We had a very nice two hours there before heading home to get him down for a nap.  My mom stayed in the house with Elliot while J and I worked on the garden (and Andrew played with worms).

They are home again with my mom today and I'm hoping the weather held out long enough for them to make a quick trip over to the playground.  I also hope that Elliot drank some milk (he only took one bottle on Friday and it stressed me out).  I know my mom is loving spending so much time with the boys (even if they do wear her out!).  She loves being a grandma  :)

Bridge Run 2014

This past Saturday was the 37th annual Cooper River Bridge Run.  I've been doing this race every year since 2006 except for 2011 when I was one week postpartum with Andrew.  Last year I ran it when I was 4 months pregnant with Elliot and still got a pretty decent time. I was hopeful that since I'm not pregnant I could beat last year's time.  Of course I probably should have trained more than a week for it.

We got a ride to the start line from my father-in-law and made our way all the way down to Corral D.  I wasn't happy about starting that far back, but we didn't have a choice. And since security was tightened up this year in response to what happened at the Boston marathon last year there was no sneaking in to a better starting position.

We got a picture while we were waiting for the start:

At 8:00 the elite runners got the start gun and were off.  Every five minutes the next group would get to go so we would move up closer to the start:

Finally almost 21 minutes after the start of the race we were at the start line and on our way. The first mile and a half was spent zig zagging in and out of people and trying to get into my running groove.  I wasn't feeling awesome and didn't have high hopes for the rest of the race.  By the time we hit the bridge I'd settled in to a relatively good pace.  J was running with me since he hadn't run at all since last year's bridge run and I was hoping that maybe him running with me would get me a better pace.

I felt great on the down hill portion of the bridge, but I knew once we hit the straightaway after the bridge I would hit the wall.  I was right - from mile 4.5 - 5.5 and I wanted to stop and walk so badly.  I almost told J to go ahead, but he stuck with me.  We hit King Street and I kept checking my gps to see how much farther we had to go.  Once we hit the 6 mile mark I tried to kick it in as much as possible. We made the last turn and I could see the finish line. I sprinted as much as I could and we hit the finish.  I stopped my timer and saw 55:45.  I was happy to come in under an hour, but not thrilled that I was able to run it faster last year when I was pregnant.

My results:
Division (females 35-39) - 204
Gender - 1451
Overall - 4875

We made our way over to Marion Square for the after the race party:

My legs were sore, but it was nothing compared to J.  He hadn't run in a year and was totally feeling it.  We hung out until 11:00 and then made our way back to the car hoping that the bridge would be open so we could head home (it was).

So we made it through the bridge run for another year.  And now I have a time to beat next year and more motivation to train harder pre-race.

Little Smarty Pants

Last night Elliot got me up at 12:45 to eat. He hasn't been eating in the middle of the night much lately, but he has a cold so I knew he probably wouldn't sleep through the night.  I fed him and had him back in the crib around 1:00,  hoping that he would make it until my alarm went off at 5:50.  I didn't hear him again until my alarm went off. When it did I glanced at the monitor expecting to see him sleeping, but instead saw this:

My little guy was awake, but not fussing.  He was laying there playing with his crib soother - watching the swinging monkey and listening to the music.  He lay there watching it until it turned off and then put his head down and fell back to sleep until I was done getting ready for work.

What can I say?  I'm just a proud mommy who thinks her baby is a genius for figuring out how to turn on his own toy to entertain himself.  My little smarty pants  :)

Zoo Adventure

As previously mentioned, we opted out of having a big birthday party for Andrew this year and instead decided to have a family adventure day at the zoo.  We had been watching the weather like a hawk and were afraid that Saturday would be rained out.  Saturday morning we woke up to a kind of rainy day, but it looked like it was clearing up, so we took a chance, threw all our stuff in the car and hit the road.

On the way to Columbia Elliot napped and Andrew watched some 'Finding Nemo' while enjoying a snack:

We got there right around noon. Elliot woke up as we were pulling into the parking lot so I quickly nursed him and then we headed in.  The first thing I wanted to make sure we did was head over to the giraffe exhibit because they have a thing where you can feed them from 10:00 - 1:30, or until they've had their fill.  I'd been talking to Andrew about feeding the giraffes all week and was silently praying that he wouldn't freak out when they got close.  We bought a couple scoops of the lettuce mixture and headed up to the platform. I was very pleasantly surprised when Andrew didn't hide from them or cry.  Instead he held up a leaf and let the giraffe eat it.

It was so cool.  The giraffes were so gentle and friendly and are clearly used to being fed.  I was able to pet their soft noses and Andrew was very excited about feeding them. Every time one of them would eat something he would shout "Andrew did it!!" (he needs to learn pronouns!).

This little giraffe was so cute!

After we were done feeding the giraffes we headed over to find more animals.  Next up was the elephant exhibit:

They don't have elephant rides, so Andrew had to settle for  sitting on this one:

I had promised Andrew that we would get him some ice cream at the zoo,  but instead we bought him a souvenir icee that he could carry around:

He was also wearing his "birthday boy" ribbon that I bought for him. I thought he might fuss about wearing it, but he loved it.

We went and walked through the Kangaroo Walkabout:

I thought he would be interested in the 'roos, but he was more interested in stomping in the puddles that were leftover from the rain:

We stopped and looked at the flamingos:

And checked out the gibbons when he headed to get some lunch:

When we walked quickly by them to get to the giraffes they had been swinging among the branches and whooping, but when we stopped to actually see them they just sat there. Go figure.

We had a quick lunch and while we were sitting there I nursed Elliot for only the second time ever in public without a cover.  I'm always too nervous to do that, but I didn't take any bottles and Elliot did NOT like having the cover over him. Luckily I was able to be very discreet and there weren't all that many people there.

We saw the lions and the one tiger, stopping to take a picture with the tiger statue.

Elliot settled into the carrier:

We saw every animal on exhibit and found a nice man to take a family picture of us before we headed out. Of course Elliot was asleep  :)

All in all I think we were there for about 3 1/2 hours.  We stopped at the little playground and let Andrew run around and play some more.  One more stop at the potty and we got on the road to head home.  It was a pretty perfect family day and I'm so glad we decided to do that instead of throwing a big party and stressing over it.

Oh, and Andrew hasn't stopped talking about the animals and playing with the ones that we bought him since we got home. I guess he liked the zoo, too.  :)

Take that, Pinterest!

When we were initially talking about having an actual birthday party for Andrew I had the idea of doing a pirate theme since he loves Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  I started googling things and coming up with ideas.  I will say that the first place I went was not pinterest, though. I have an account on there and when I found images of things I liked I did pin them, but I didn't start out perusing on there.

The reason is simple - pinterest makes me feel like an inadequate mother.  I go on there and see all of these crafts that people do or the decorations that people make for their child's birthday parties and it in turn makes me feel like a mom fail.  I really just don't have time to make five different kinds of cake pops and color coordinated decorations with elaborate themes.  Maybe I just lack the motivation, I don't know.

Anyway, I pinned a couple cake ideas because once I put the idea of a pirate cake in Andrew's head there was no getting it out.

Fast forward to us deciding to forgo the big birthday party this year and do an outing to the zoo instead (if effing Mother Nature would cooperate!).  I still wanted to make a birthday cake for Andrew even if there was no party.  Every time I asked him what kind of cake he wants he would instantly say "Pirate cake!".  I came upon this one and decided to give it a whirl:

Before you laugh let me clarify and say I had no intention of making the little characters.  I looked up online who locally carried the little Jake and the Neverland Pirates figurines and hightailed it to JC Penney to pick some up.  The cake itself didn't look too difficult as far as shapes were concerned.  It looks like the front is a round cake cut in half and stacked and the back is a sheet cake cut and stacked in three layers.  How hard could it be, right?

I stopped by the grocery store on the way home in hopes of buying some icing from the bakery and getting them to dye some brown for me (I did that for his 1st birthday cake), but the bakery person was gone for the day and the other yahoo working there didn't know how to sell the icing apparently.  So instead I picked up the ingredients to make my own buttercream icing.

Before getting Elliot in the tub I mixed up the cake mixes and got the 9" round (yellow) cake and the 9x13 (chocolate) cake in the oven.  Once the boys were in bed I mixed up the icing and went to work constructing the cake.  I really should have taken pictures during the process, because in the beginning it looked like I had the makings of a giant pinterest fail.  I was already tired, however, and didn't stop to take any pictures of the mess. Instead I slapped some more icing on it got to the decorating.

The brown isn't as dark brown as I wanted, but since I was working with red, blue and yellow food coloring it was as good as I could get.  I was afraid that the back of the cake was going to topple over, but a couple dow rods inserted for stability helped.

There were a few decoration mishaps (ran out of blue icing) and that messed up part of the yellow border in the back is from Jake falling off, but all in all I think it came out ok.  The most important thing was that Andrew loved it.  He particularly loved the candles and I had to relight them five times so he could keep blowing them out.  So while my cake might not look exactly like the inspiration one, it wasn't a complete fail. And next year I will give myself a little more time to work on whatever cake I'm going to make for him so I can make it even better.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Andrew!

It's really hard to believe that it's already been three years. Three years ago at this moment I was in the hospital, blissfully numb from an epidural, throwing up from nerves and trying to push our still unnamed little bundle out into the world.

At 11:05 AM he was here:

Now three years later we have this sweet and silly little kid:

It's gone by so fast.  I thought it wasn't possible to love someone as much as I did that day three years ago.  Now I know it's possible to love them even more.

Happy birthday to my sweet little man.  Your smiles warm my heart and your laughter and hugs can always cure whatever ails me.  I love you so much more than you'll ever know.