Let’s review the statistics:

Logan -

Pacifiers: Logan had a paci until he was about 6 months old. We took it away because he just tossed it out of his crib to get us to come back in and give it to him. After the paci’s were gone, everyone slept much better!

Loveys: (and by this I mean blankies, animals etc): We used to encourage Logan to bond to this cute little mouse we got when I was pregnant with him, but to no avail. He really never had anything like a security blanket or a favorite stuffed animal. When he was 3, Nana and Papa took him to a movie and he won a cat, whom he later named Checkers, out of one of those claw grabber machines. A few months later, he added Scruffy to “his crew”…a dog we created with him at Build a Bear on Valentine’s Day last year. He likes them, but doesn’t freak if they’re missing.

Aiden -

Pacifiers: Aiden had a paci all the time until 6 months and then only at nap & bedtime after that until we took it away around 20 months (based on the advice of our pediatrician at his 18 month appointment). Aiden used to be a dream to put down at night…but not after he lost his paci! Obviously he’s fine now, but still a total pill about going to bed.

Loveys: Again, no attachments to blankets and that sort of thing, but Aiden did have an odd attachment to an egg for a while. We used to have to show him that we were putting a small bouncy ball inside of a small orange (had to be orange) egg and then that small egg into a larger orange egg. He also used to have random bedtime requests like “goose”. That was the night after we went and fed the geese along the river. Brian finally got him to calm down and go to sleep by giving him a picture of a goose that he printed from the internet. Even today, Aiden doesn’t do stuffed animals. He will, however, sleep with one of his many many many stretchy lizards or a stuffed basketball (which he got as a trade when the pacifiers were taken away)

Brady -

Pacifiers: Like his brothers, Brady was given free reign of paci’s until 6 months. At that time, we tried to restrict it to only nap and bedtime. But that kid was so darned cranky without it that I went ahead and gave it to him from time to time. When he learned how to crawl and manage the stairs, he would go up to his room, crawl under his bed and retrieve pacifiers. I even saw him stick his hand through the crib bars and flip the sheet until a pacifier came close enough to the edge where he could grab it. Even today, I can get him to leave them in his crib, but he will go and get them later if I forget to close his door. Every time he gets hurt or upset, he starts whimpering, “paci! paci! paaaaci!” I found out yesterday that he has given them names. This is the text of an email I wrote to Brian and my friend Anne (mom to Matthew….aka “Chewy” who is just under a year old right now):

I found a bunch of pacifiers in my purse this morning and had them downstairs in a little pile. When it was time to take Brady up to his nap, I grabbed them and held them out to him. He took most of them in his hand and put a green one in his mouth. Then he mumbled, "I got Lonan (Logan)". While I was changing him on his table, I kept holding up different paci's and he would tell me who they were. We had: Lonan, Aynan (Aiden), mommy and Chewy...which he also kept just calling "baby". No wonder he's so attached to them...they're obviously his buddies. I was dying laughing when he said "Chewy". I said, "oh...that's chewy!?" and he did his little "u-hu" and nodded.

I think Brady will probably have his paci friends until he’s old enough to negotiate their removal for something he wants more…wonder what that’s gonna be!! So far he has no loves that we can’t satisfy with things already in the house (trains for example!)

Loveys: As she has done for each of my boys, Nana gave Brady a bear when he was born. He must have “discovered” this bear again about 2 months ago and started sleeping with him, carrying him around the house and taking him on occasional outings. It was hard to get him to pick a name, but his tag says he’s made by a company called Jelly Cat. Opting for something besides the “George” the older boys suggested, I named him Jelly Bear. He has big sqooshy feet filled with beans or something and Brady LOVES him. So far he won’t freak if “Jelbear” isn’t in his bed, but I usually go get him and bring him to Brady after I’ve laid him down at night. He smiles like a maniac, grabs him and presses his cheek into the bear. Adorable.

He’s just a lovey sort of baby I guess!

This was Sunday morning. Logan and Brady were watching Thomas. Bray had his paci and Jelly Bear on the couch. I included this picture to also demonstrate one of Logan’s little idiosyncrasies: playing with other people’s ears.

Hugging Jelly Bear (that paci, by the way, is apparently Aiden)

I wanted a shot without something in his face. Notice the eyes…they are focused on my hand, which is holding his paci!

Building on Logan's bike riding progress from last week, we went to an open parking lot last Saturday to try even MORE riding sans training wheels. Brian made up a cute story to motivate our fear-of-failure child...something about going on a safari and learning how to drive the jungle jeep (aka bike). It took all of 15 minutes before Logan was feeling great on his bike. He learned stopping, starting, turning, weaving and coasting. Go big boy! True to the sap that I am, I found a piece of loose asphalt from the parking lot to put on our summer stepping stone. We took some great videos of Brady playing with and moving the cones we brought to use as markers and some of Aiden "training" too...but still with the training wheels on. I did offer to take his off, but I'm glad he passed...one new bike rider is enough for one day :)

Here, Daddy gets the boys ready for training. We put knee and elbow guards on Logan to help abate the fear factor.
Learning how to stop and start.

Way to roll! The reward for learning how to ride a bike?? A trip to the new town Sonic. Eating in the car is fun :)

Sunday night, the kids had ice cream cones after dinner. Brady has, of course, had ice cream before, but never on a cone. He ate the ice cream off the top and then came over to ask for, "more". I told him, "Brady...you eat the cone too!" After a suspicious examination, he turned the ice cream over and bit into the BOTTOM (we had the ones that are flat on the bottom...cake I think...I will never remember the cone names!). Hysterical. He continued to take bites wherever he thought they should be taken and ended up holding a pretty nasty mess in his hand.

Choco-baby!

And our final story for today, a new home for the fish. The bowls I originally bought, while cute, were prone to getting quite nasty. Dust was settling on the top of the water, the water evaporated quickly leaving a gross filmy ring and I actually found a dead fly floating in one yesterday. So....we bought these little (covered) containers instead. Biggest selling point? They stack up on top of each other! Logan said it looks like a big fish city! We probably won't stack them like this all the time. They are stable, but I keep thinking that they're going to topple at any moment. For now, however, we are still enjoying our new fish high-rise.

The older boys, having liked their day camp so much a few weeks ago, went again this past week. The theme was Super Heroes. They had a great time and I had more quality time with Bray! We did lots of stuff around the house, but mostly he wanted me to put him up on the counter top so he could look at and talk to the fish. Because having him up there was quite nerve wracking, plus I couldn't walk away for even a second to do...whatever, I decided to put "Bish" on the table and let Brady enjoy him from the safety of his booster seat. He was chatting with him, kissing and hugging his bowl and laughing. That kid loves his fish!!! I took a video and had to prompt him to do everything he was doing before I found my camera.

Ok...I super hate it when I accidentally upload my pictures to be aligned to the left. I simply can NOT figure out where to put the type and the preview looks nothing like my actual post (captions are mostly under the pics...until the end of the post where the pictures were actually centered...shrug). Sorry for the ugliness of this post :):)

Well...it's been another week or so since my last post...obviously I have a lot of pictures (camera happy = me)! Last week was a ton of fun, but it did have it's very sad moments. Two of my very good friends are moving away within the next 2 months. I started off my week with a going away party for Kristina (see queen of fun with the mattress surfing) and Kelly (a member of the greatest playgroup Mothers and More has ever known). It was seriously one awesome going away party....a bit of the "laugh so you don't cry" philosophy!

So...we had one final playgroup with Kelly and her kids on Wednesday. Another sad moment for me! Back when Logan was only 6 months old, I joined this playgroup with other moms and their (one and only!) babies. There were originally 4 of us with three boys and 1 girl, then came Darlene with Kennedy and then Kelly with Caleb (total count: 2 girls, 4 boys). After Kelly joined, she, I and Lisa all had a second boy and Lauren had a second girl. We continued meeting weekly until some of the kids started preschool this past year. We've tried to meet here and there, play when we can, go on park outings etc. I can't even remember if Brady came before or after the official end of our playgroup, but Kelly also had a third baby (a girl) after we had already stopped getting together on a weekly basis. I remember thinking, back when we had our group every week, that I just never wanted it to end. Kids grow up though...and good friends have to move on to different places. Here are some pictures to commemorate and remember the good times:


This is Halloween 2005 with 4 of the original 5 playgroup babies (Logan is the pumpkin!)



That was then....this is now! (5 to 12!)


Logan did a great job holding Brady next to his buddy Caleb, one of Kelly's little boys, who was doing a great job holding his baby sister

Aiden ended up next to Caleb's brother Sammy....those two are little peas in a pod! I didn't get a good picture, but they were grinning at each other and having a blast during the pictures. I found them upstairs hiding together under a blanket when we were trying to pull the whole group together for our photo session :)

The light coming in my windows was horrible, but here are the 6 playgroup mommies and all our babies.

The mommies!!

Friday I took the boys to Prairie Fest for "Wheels Go Round". We went with the neighborhood crew. There were at least 7 or 8 vehicles that the kids could climb in to, honk horns, check out gadgets etc. Here are Logan and Aiden in the garbage truck!

Here are the babies: Jackson, Kate and Brady. Bray was SUCH a good boy that day. It's getting harder and harder to convince him that the stroller is tons of fun (notice the emergency paci is in place....that always helps)

Little kids, big wheel!

Little kids....big scooper!!!

After procuring balloons and fake tattoos, we played with the goats and rabbits. It was....red day for my boys :)

We had to teach Brady to show his open hands to the goats, indicating that he did NOT have food. After they stopped rushing at him, my little animal lover had a blast petting them and running around. I swear that Bray is going to be our kid who, "just really really wants a puppy mommy!"

Saturday night was family night for the neighborhood crew. Logan and I picked up Nana and Papa at the airport, drove home, had a quick re-fresh, packed the car and headed out. The kids all rode a ton of rides. This was the first one they did (and a first for Aiden who was too small last year) - the dragon roller coaster

When they got off the ride, AJ and Aiden rushed over to each other, grabbed hands, and had a conversation that went something like: AJ: "Aiden!! Did you like that?!"

Aiden: "ya!! it was like THIS (jumps) and like this (sways to the side)" AJ: "me too!!" (jumps and waves his arms in he air as Aiden does the same)

then they happily hugged for a while!

Next, the kids all tackled the cars. I got a sweet picture of Logan (in his "just like daddy visor") and Ryan who rode together.

Nana and Papa took the boys on the big Ferris wheel (I was quite happy to stay on the ground...!




Here is Aiden coming down from the big obstacle course / slide thing. His shirt says "100% good, 10% of the time" Hysterical!


While the kids were on the rides, I was trying to scope out an arcade game they could actually play. I found this giant fishing game...a smaller version of the one Aiden loves at home. For $3, you try until you win....and you win a ball (what could be better?!) Aiden and I went first....it took a while until "he" got the hang of it (plus the girl running the booth finally showed us where the fish were the hungriest...aka opened their mouths the most). After Aiden, Logan and I gave it a shot...we got his ball much faster :)

Aiden was hugging his ball as we walked back to our circle of chairs

A few more kids in our group went to play the fishing game after we came back (oops....sorry moms and dads!) They did make for great entertainment while we were there though!

Here is our annual "circle of fun" at Prairie Fest. Papa got all the kids some balloons from the info booth. We all ate, played with some mini beach balls and danced until it got close to dark. Since there were no fireworks this year, we left "early" and invited everyone to come back to our place to make s'mores outside and play with glow-in-the dark stuff

Bray tried a corn dog. He actually liked it despite the face he made

Brian somehow got mistaken for a climbing toy

I think he prevailed though...

Brady found a chair just his size and chillaxed in it for a while.
On Sunday, it was time for Nana and Papa to give Aiden his early birthday present...an actual UP house!! After we saw the movie, Aiden said he wanted a house with lots and lots of balloons on it. Wish granted!

Nana bought a bird house, added shingles, a door, windows etc etc and painted it to look just like the house in the movie! We bought 12 balloons to see if they would lift the house off of the ground...no luck. Another trip to the party store and we had a total of 35 balloons. Brian even cut the bottom out of the house....it was SOOOO close to flying! Bri realized later in the day that the best thing to do was to toss it over the edge of the balcony upstairs and watch it float nicely down to the ground floor....we let them do that a few times with supervision.

Aiden's house was waiting for him under the front stairs when he woke up from his afternoon nap. It took him a while to fully wake up and enjoy this amazing balloon creation, but he LOVED it!

We tried to fly it outside (see video). Aiden even wanted it to sleep in his room that night (and he put all his stretchy worms, frogs and snakes inside the house for their bed time). I for one loved the house, but would probably freak if I woke up and saw it in my room in the middle of the night! I kept mistaking it for a person standing in the living room all afternoon!

Brady has a thing for bottles right now and tries to steal them ALL the time. Brian was trying to enjoy a beer Sunday night, but it's hard when a little one is chasing after you whining. So....he filled his empty bottle with a little water (after it was washed out) and Brady was just so very happy. He climbed up on the fireplace and sat there grinning. Silly baby.