swing wedgie

These boys love to be outside!

pedals

Every morning, for the past week or so, Sam has begun his day by running into our bedroom and asking to go for a bike ride. He LOVES, LOVES, LOVES to ride (or rather scoot) on his bike. Eric and I can often be found at 7:30 am, in our pj's wandering around the block behind Sam while he scoots and scoots to his little heart's content.

This is his current ride: It's a little babyish and Sam knows it. He tells us every day that he wants "a big bike with pedals, just like my best friend, Jack." He's a lucky boy because Eric's been working on a little birthday surprise each night after Sam goes to bed. I'm 100% sure that Sam's going to LOVE it.

Baseball

Eric loves the game.

Sam loves the food.

Max loves when his dad wears a baseball cap.

And me...I love boys in baseball pants. (and any excuse to take pictures for the blog.)

Go Mudhens!

It's nearly...

impossible to get a picture of Sam these days. Getting him to look at the camera has become quite the task, but getting him to smile is ridiculously hard. This is the only smile he'll offer me lately:Hmmmm, not quite the 'natural' look I was hoping to capture. Eric and I have exhausted all of our funny-face-pulling tricks and our sound effects, so we are now resorting to bribery and pure sneakiness when it comes to photographing Sam. Reverse psychology also does the trick occasionally. These soon to be 3 year olds are not the most cooperative subjects.

I recently attended a photography class where the teacher shared with us his secret to taking good pictures. He called it 'The Machine Gun Method.' It's pretty simple really, just 'shoot like hell and hope you hit something!' So yesterday, thanks to this method, I was actually able to capture 2 pictures (out of about 200) where Sam actually looks like Sam.

Another nearly impossible task is snapping a decent picture of a mom with her two kids. Now this has nothing at all to do with the photographer's abilities; it's purely the subjects who are at fault. Here's proof:

Things became a little easier (but not by much) when we decided to try our luck with only 2 of the 3 subjects:
Just the thought of trying to get a good family picture with all FOUR of us stresses me out.

Psych = Love

We're 3 days into Eric's psychiatry rotation, and IT IS HEAVENLY! Eric is home more than ever. We hardly know what to do with ourselves.

On top of that, the weather has been amazing. This makes for tons of time outside...which makes for happy kids and most importantly, a happy mom.

This is the life!

Safety Kid

Poor Sam. He has been cursed with a Safety Kid for a mom. I was one of those kids who had every single Safety Kid tune memorized by the age of 3. I can still sing and hum most of them to this day. I am a total goodie-goodie, I'll admit it.

So, when Eric mentioned that he wanted to take Sam on the Father-Son Campout this weekend, I immediately went into Safey Kid mode. I felt the need to talk to Sam about fire safety, the use of an emergency whistle, and what to do if he found himself lost. Our neighbors probably wondered what in the heck was going on inside our apartment yesterday, as Sam and I practiced yelling for HELP in our loudest voices and blowing on our whistle as hard as we could.

Eric just laughed at me as he loaded up the car last night for the campout, and I went over things once more with Sam. "Stay by Daddy. Use your whistle if you can't find him. Here, show me one more time how you blow on it. Do you run by the fire? No. Do you touch fire? No. Be safe. Obey.....yada yada yada..."

And then they were off; Sam in the back seat with his little whistle and flashlight hanging around his neck.

They called me around 10:30 last night and I could tell Sam was in pure heaven; and safe as well. "Hi Momma! I'm having fun today! I'm camping! I eat two marshmallows! We have a tent. Daddy's here! I peed on a tree. Yuv ya!"

At first, I wondered what Sam would like most about camping. Would it be the s'mores? Sleeping in the tent? Peeing outside? Hanging out with just Eric? Getting dirty? Or having a chance to get away from his overprotective mother?

I'm pretty sure I know the answer.

Six Months!

MAX

He's ticklish, giggly, and round. He's happy, observant, and aching to move on his own. He's a sitter, a squealer, and a babbler. He's into eating his toes and anything else he can grab. He's obsessed with his brother and gets thoroughly excited when his daddy gets home.

What did we ever do without him?