Camping with the Boys

One of Caed's buddies had a birthday camp out at his grandparents' farm this past weekend and about 5 little boys (ages 2-3) and their daddies, including Caed and Brad, enjoyed a fun-filled night and day on the farm!

This was Caed's first camp out, so we starting prepping him early in the week as we had him watch Elmo goes Camping and had him try out his sleeping bag during naptime and bedtime on his bed. At first, he wasn't too keen on the idea of sleeping in a bag, but once his Elmo and Monkey tried it out and hid in the bottom, he warmed up to the idea pretty quickly. Plus, he even got to use his uncle Mark's Thermarest and tent so that was pretty cool for him. (He'd point to the mat and with a smile on his face say, "Uncle Mark." Thanks, Mark.)

When Friday rolled around, all Caed could talk about was going camping. Errands and everything else for the day were a bit tough because Caed thought he should be going camping. But thankfully, we made it through the day, and when 5pm hit and Brad got home from work, we woke Caed up from his nap and he was already to go. Backpack packed, complete with Elmo, Monkey, blanket and all.

I'm not too sure of all the details of the weekend, remember this was a guys-only trip, but I know that Friday evening consisted of roasting hotdogs and I'm sure trying to wrangle the boys into their tents for bed. Caed apparently did very well. Brad tried to lie down with him at first, but he didn't want to have anything to do with it, so Brad left him alone in the tent and after a few minutes, he was out like a light .... it was after 10pm, so I'm sure he was exhausted, but pretty impressive for his first night in a tent.
From what I can gather, the boys did most of their camping-related activities the next day, including roasting marshmallows, eating pop tarts, swiss cake rolls, cupcakes, etc. (no wonder they had soooo much energy to play), visited the goats, sheep and horses, fished (Caed waded up to his knees in the lake w/ his crocs and pants on :) and even had a hayride, thanks to Mr. Jay!

Interesting story about the hayride: Apparently as they were getting started and were heading uphill away from the lake, the trailer hitch on the tractor came loose and the trailer started rolling backward toward the lake. From what I can gather, they were still a ways off from the lake, but everyone got a bit nervous and Brad and Caed were the first ones to jump off the trailer and one of the dads even had to pass his kid off to another on the ground for fear of hitting the lake. Several boys were pretty upset over the event, and even though Caed was never really in harms way, once he saw the other boys crying, he started as well. (What a fun scene that must have been!)
Anyway, that's the story that I picked up from Caed's first camping trip. I'm sure there are many more stories and details I left out. After all, I was home ALONE and had the opportunity to grab dinner with a friend and go OUT to see a movie, so I was certainly not there to enjoy the fun. But I think that was the basic gist of the adventure.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Caed has grown very fond of reading alone in his room lately and it's the sweetest thing. He talks through what's happening on each page as if he's reading it and continues along. (I remember doing this when I was a kid.)

One of his favorite books right now is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so as he was reading it this morning I thought I'd try to catch him as he was "reading" and capture it on video for you to enjoy.

The batteries died 2 pages from the end and I unfortunately missed the part where he says, "Big Fat Caterpillar" and "Beautiful Butterfly." I'll try to capture this again sometime, but thought you'd enjoy regardless.

Caed's 2nd Birthday

My baby boy turned 2 August 25. How time flies! We've been so busy since then that I haven't had the chance to blog about it. But now that our schedule is winding down for the moment, here's a brief recap of his special week in pictures.














Birthday Morning w/ Special Dinosaur Pancake



















Caed in his birthday garb: NC State
Wolfpack t-shirt, Fire Truck PJs, and
Red, Converse One Stars















Mesmerized by his new train set!


Aslan-zilla taking over train city!



















Gazing at his long-awaited lemon-cupcakes.
(He actually blew the candle out all by himself!)



















Caed enjoying his yummy lemon cupcake!

Our Zoo Trip

Brad, GG and I took Caed to the zoo for the first time yesterday. It was in the high 80s, low 90s most of the day and despite a little more walking that we weren't planning to do, we had a GREAT time, and Caed was running non-stop from exhibit to exhibit all day. Caed is still talking about the zebra, giraffe and alligators that he saw. Here are some fun pictures and video of the day:














Caed getting a higher view of the chimpanzees from daddy's shoulders.















Caed watching the baby baboons wrestle and attempting to give them a high-five.















Ready for take-off dad?















Look at what just hatched?















GG and Caed during our picnic lunch.















The three of us while watching the bison roam.


Caed (& GG's) elephant impression.



Chomp, chomp, chomp

4th of July Weekend Fun!

July 4th weekend was jam-packed with fun activities: Mason's 2nd Birthday Party, Progress on our Deck, and a 4th of July Cookout on our Friend's Farm. Caed was battling that chest-congestion-cold-thing that has been floating around, but thankfully he was in good enough spirits to enjoy all the fun. Here are some pictures from the weekend:














Funny thing: Beginning last Tuesday, Caed grew so excited about Mason's party that he'd yell in excitement in the backseat of the car saying, "Mason party, Mason party ... hooray!" He was so excited to celebrate with his buddy!















Some friends of ours recently moved out to a farm in Creedmoor and we've had the luxury of enjoying some time out there with them. They have horses, sheep, goats, a cat with a crooked tail, named Bolt, and lots of fun toys and places for Caed to explore.















Caed loved this little playhouse. He would run in and out of it and stand at each window and call out to us.



















He also found this neat little lawn mower that he pushed around all over the place. I think this is a neat shot of him mowing in the shadow of the flag on the 4th of July.

Caed's First Movie-Going Experience

The cinema up at North Hills just began their free summer kids flick series today with the showing of Doogle and we decided to take part.

Up until about a month ago, Caed wouldn't even watch TV for more than a minute at a time, so the thought of taking him to a movie was completely ridiculous. However, within the last month, he's developed a strong liking for his GeoTrax train movie and can sit down on the couch for about 20-minute intervals to enjoy some trains. "Fix track," he says often, and "All board!"

Before we left the house, I stocked my purse with a few granola bars, a bag of Gold Fish, a cup of water and a diet coke for me ... thinking that these snacks would suffice until we returned home for lunch. Well, Caed did make it about 40 minutes into the movie, but that was with the distraction of 2 granola bars, water and several helpings of Gold Fish. He sat enjoyably at several minute intervals and stood in front of me, occasionally trying to get the kid's attention in front of us. He enjoyed verbally identifying all the animals and making the corresponding sounds. (It was a kids' movie specifically designated for kids ... 10am ... so I wasn't concerned about stopping him ... even though the mom to my right gave us a few hard looks.)

Overall, I think it was a positive experience. Heck, the movie was free so there's no better time to get your kid acquainted with the movie-going experience than during times like these. We'll probably try some other movies throughout the season and see how it goes.

Latest Pictures

Caed's first try with playdough. (The figures above were examples that mommy made, but Caed enjoyed making the snake and caterpillar slither around the table.)














Caed playing with his friend Adeline














A quick shot of Caed, Brad and Mason before Brad headed off for work and the boys ventured outside to 'work' in the mud.














Caed's first venture of the season in his turtle pool. What a difference a year makes in his interest in the pool. Last year he just stood on the side splashing or dabbled in the pool for a few minutes. Now, he loves to fill his buckets up and dump them all over himself and water all the plants around the pool. (thanks for the help bud!)

Caed's Getting Big

I just realized yesterday that I'm not very good at taking pictures or keeping track of Caed's milestones any more. He's getting big, fast ... in fact, Brad and I think he's grown and hit some big development milestones just within the past week, so I thought I'd try to take some random footage to share with you.


Other fun things that are not on the video include:

• He runs fast! "Fast," he says, as he moves his arms back and forth by his side.
• He counts to 15 pretty well with some assistance. About a month ago, he seemed to have a fear of walking down the stairs with us ... he always wanted to be carried. So, I decided to make a game of it, and we started to count as we went down the stairs. Can you guess how many stairs we have? If you said, 15, you're right. So now every time we go up and down the stairs, we count to 15 and when we hit that number, Caed exclaims "Woo hoo!" It's hilarious when we say 15 out of that context ... he stills says, "Woo hoo!"
• He uses his spoon and fork pretty well now. He'd rather pick up his banana and Cheerios with his hands, in the milk, during breakfast, but most other meals he does pretty well.
• He loves to be outside. He runs around with his wagon and gardening tools. He collects rocks and transfers them from the ground to the wagon to his car and so forth as he yells ROCK. He's a busy guy. He loves to visit our neighbors and help them garden too!
• Saying "hello" is a fun thing for him. He says hello, as many other folks do on our street, but he has definitely perfected the straight-armed wave that he sees so often from frequent passerbies.
• He LOVES Trader Joe's cinnamon alphabet cookies, and thankfully a love for the actually letters has developed as well. "B" is his favorite letter ... he even points it out on signs, but recently has come to like and recall other letters as well. Pretty impressive for a 20-month-old!
• Just this week, he's figured out how to use his frog puppet and say it's name too. We're trying to be careful how we teach him to enunciate this word because it seems to roll off his tongue as "foc" .... "FFFRRROOGGG" is what we're saying now to try to reinforce the correct pronunciation :).
  

Pictures From Raleigh Easter

Caed showing Mason his spoils (1 egg)



















Brad "helping" Caed climb a tree















What a big boy!

Sharing Shoes & Other Fun Pictures

Caed's usually the one to try on daddy's shoes, but in a rare moment after dinner last week, Brad decided to try Caedmon's shoe on ... so cute! Caed thought it was very funny.

I decided to take Caed to the Museum of Natural Sciences last week to get out of the house and do something fun in the midst of the rain. With Caed's love for birds, he was right at home. While there weren't any real birds there, he still enjoyed pointing and looking at the stuffed ones. What a little enthusiast! The picture below is of Caed in a mock dinosaur footprint. He thought it was so neat to climb up into it and sit (not something he was suppose to do since there was a sign that read, "No climbing," just beside him.) In my mind, he was content and wasn't causing any damage, so it was fine by me :).

The next picture is of Caedmon and his favorite little, red friend -- Elmo. We're not sure how he came to like him so much ... he doesn't even watch TV for more than a minute or two at a time ... maybe it was the Elmo Manners book ... but either way, he's quite a fan. Grandma Helen and Grandpa got him the stuffed animal for Christmas and he's been sleeping with it ever since. One other thing to note about this picture is the excessive drool streaming from Caed's mouth. It seems like he's been teething for over a month now. Three canine teeth are coming in at once, but thankfully the pain hasn't been too terrible and Caed has been a great sport about it!

The last picture was taken after dinner one night when Brad thought it would be cute to have Caed try on his glasses. So cute! We have a similar picture from when he was 7 months old and another from about two weeks old ... my how he's grown!

Kangaroos & Blue Birds

If I haven't told you before now, Caed does quite a good kangaroo "jump" and is quite the bird enthusiast. Brad thinks he'll be the youngest member of the Audubon Society, thanks to GG's instruction. Take a look at the video and you'll see why!



If you're wondering about the kangaroo jump, it all started as we were reading Caed's Sesame Street alphabet book, and I was trying to explain what a kangaroo was. So, I showed him how it jumps and he seemed to think that was pretty fun. Now every time we talk about a kangaroo, he takes a big no-air-leap, thrusts his shoulders back, and laughs ... priceless!















I'll have to capture his hyena impression on video next ... it's great!

Visiting the Airport

My friend Erika had a great idea to go to the airport observation area today and let our boys watch the airplanes take off and land. It was a little chillier than we expected and the sun certainly didn't shine as bright as we had hoped, but we had a lot of fun ... and I'm sure the boys did too! We packed a lunch and enjoyed our morning/early afternoon with airplanes overhead and captivated little boys.

As soon as we arrived, Caed headed for the stairs of the observation deck, so that was our first stop. The wind was a bit brisk up there, but the boys got to see several planes take off and land right away. Caed has never been too interested in airplanes, but when face to face with them, he was quite intrigued. As each plane would begin to take off down the runway or come to a quick halt to land, he was pretty quick to stop what he was doing, look at the airplane and point. He does a good job at his beginning attempt to say airplane, and I'd like to give you an idea of what that sounds like, but putting it into letters right now would not due his attempt justice, so I'll just have to leave it at that .... Very cute, all the same! (Mason's word for airplane is pretty recognizable so hopefully Caed will catch on soon.)

The boys eventually made there way down the ramp and into the play area, where Mason immediately invited himself to play with another family's shovel and bucket set, and Caed attempted to climb the ladder to playground equipment that is much too advanced for him. Once he realized that he wasn't going to get too far with that attempt, he joined Mason in the sand and the boys carefully scooped sand into the bucket and actually played pretty nicely with the other little boys. They're growing up so quickly!

Our picnic lunch was pretty fun .... Mason ate in his stroller and Caed sat next to me on the picnic bench. For being one who enjoys walking around and eating, he did very well sitting next to me without a booster seat. (I just love it!) And we shared our lunch together ... thanks to Erika for making an extra sandwich for Caed! I made a complete lunch for both of us, in addition to the one that we were going to drop off for Brad, but Brad accidentally picked up our joint lunch instead of the one I made for him. We were left with 1 sandwich, a banana and a piece of pound cake. Brad on the other hand had his choice of a ham sandwich or PBJ cut up into 12 little pieces, a large bag of goldfish and thin slices of apple. But I guess that's better than the day that I had to give him Caed's lunch (intentionally) b/c we were out running errands and I realized that I forgot to make him lunch, so instead of heading back home to make him a lunch, I just dropped Caed's lunch off with him and put something different together for Caed later. (He was able to enjoy a PBJ, apple and alphabet cookies with his fellow staffers that day :).

I LOVE my new kitchen!

Ok, it seems weird to me that I'm writing a post specifically about my kitchen. It's obviously a room that I frequent a lot, but on most occasions I'm not sure it deserves to stand on a pedestal. I have done a decent amount of cooking in it since we moved in Christmas week, but I haven't had the chance to prep and cook a big meal in it or have a nice baking session in it ... until today.

Caed's been taking a good, solid 3-hour nap each afternoon, so it gives me a nice window to get quite a bit done around the house. Today, that means prepping for my first Beef Burgandy and baking my Grandma Courtney's Cut-Out cookies, heart-shaped for Valentine's Day. The really great thing about the kitchen, for baking especially, is the granite countertop! I have always struggled to keep the dough from sticking to my baking sheet or cutting board (maybe I should have always rolled the dough straight on the countertop, I don't know), but I tried it today and it worked like a charm. No sticking! Hooray! Hopefully, this milestone will encourage me to do more baking from here on out, but I suppose it's all about time and I can't say that I can sacrifice my daily 3-hour window for baking every day.

Now that I'm raving about my kitchen, I should probably mention that the size is also an important factor. When we originally had the plans drawn up for it, it didn't seem like it would be that big, but with the layout and experiencing the size in 'action' per say, it's definitely a great-sized kitchen and one that opens up many opportunities for our family to enjoy it together (Brad and I can cook together again and Caed can enjoy playing as I cook or clean), as well as invite others to enjoy it with us.

And can I also say that having a dishwasher is absolutely fantastic ... and an oven that heats to the appropriate temperature is also a huge plus!

I'm thrilled that the kitchen turned out the way that it did and I hope to use it to its fullest potential! I'm very grateful!

Long-Awaited Photos

Sorry that it's taken so long to post new photos. But, here they are ... enjoy!

THE 909 HOUSE BEFORE














THE 909 HOUSE NOW
(during our big snow a few weeks ago)














OUR BEDROOM VIEW OF DOWNTOWN
(sunrise)














CAED @ CHRISTMAS














JUST THE 3 OF US
(at my birthday celebration)

Home Sweet Home

Hello Blog, it's been about a month since I've seen you. Durng my absence, I am excited to announce that we have officially moved into our 909 House and that despite several hiccups along the way (clogged sewage pipe, which led to frozen pipes and no water), we are gradually settling in and making the 909 House our home. It's so wonderful to spread out these days and have more than 900 sq. ft. for the 4 of us (including the cat) to move around in. Aslan thorough enjoys his freedom, and is hopefully on the road to his 2010 weight-loss program (stairs and the like). Caedmon couldn't be doing better either ... he now has the space to play a lot more independently and move around and this has thankfully resulted in a new 3-hour nap time (he only took 1.5- to 2-hour naps before) and also to very pleasant night sleeps. You know your child is getting good rest when he wakes up happy instead of crying and enjoys time in the crib before he calls out "Ma, Ma." What a huge blessing! Brad and I also enjoy the house ... we still have a slew of projects to finish and begin as time goes on, but it's just nice to be in the house and enjoy the fruits of our labors over the past 2 years.

We still don't have Interest yet, so my ability to share news frequently isn't there yet, but once we do, I'll be sure to post pictures and the like.