Happy 2nd Halloween

Our Halloween was a lot of fun.

 

Ben is Iron Man (in red).  Alex is War Machine* (blue).  (*Cody brought it to my attention that I called him Warhammer before my edit.  I have NO idea where that came from.  I don't know the characters as well as Cody, but I DO know it is not Warhammer.  Sorry, Cody!  I assume it is because I typed it quickly after the Halloween craziness.)

 

I still can't keep them off my chairs.  I had the chairs up for a Halloween party we had.   We invited our friends from across the street and their 10 month old and our friends from the Thomas party and their 2 kids to pre-treat before trick or treating.  It went really well. 

 

 

Alex

 

 

 

Finally quit standing and decided to climb up on the counter.  I really missing having upright chairs.  :(

 

If you notice, I only have one curtain up on the window.  I lost a curtain.  I think it is a hilariously Courtney thing to do.  I'm nearly sure I will probably find it.

 

 

We had 2 couples and their kids over.  I took the opportunity to make themed food.  I don't know if you know how much I like making weird food things... but I do.  Anyone remember the turkey Army in Virginia?

 

Here is the food area

 

 

Kitty Litter Cake.  It was supposed to be served in a litter pan, but I was too cheap to invest in that for this.  More honestly, I went to look at Hyvee, but they didn't have one.  I was too lazy to go anywhere else.  It still looked pretty authentic.

 

 

Grape worm family.  Mom and Dad in the middle, and babies all around

 

 

Pumpkin Cheesecake Dip.  Not fun, but good.

 

 

Turkey Meatball Mummies

 

 

The drink area.  B + blood, which we decided should be B -.   Also a significant number of jello shots.  I gave 2 jalapeno devil horns to be Devil shooters, but the rest were just regular.  I did one of the shots with one of the jalapeno horns.  It was DELICIOUS.  Spicy, but delicious.

 

 

We had a good time trick-or-treating, but we didn't get any pictures.  It was already dark and really cold when we went out at about 6:45.  The first house we went to is the nice neighbors that have baked us stuff and made the baby's quilts.  The boys felt comfortable enough at their house to just walk right in their house while she was giving them candy.  Cody and I had to chase them in to the kitchen almost.  Sorry, neighbors!  My kids are animals.  Other houses went  better.  They got pretty good at the routine.  One house had a neat little haunted house set up with curtains in their garage.  They were nice enough to yell ahead at the monsters to let us by without any scares.  The boys got to see the people in masks and take in all the strobe lights and stuff.  All in all we were out for probably 20 minutes and hit maybe 10 houses.  The kids were losing interest and everyone was cold.  Candy is cheap enough to buy without going to all that effort for free stuff.  Nobody hassled us about giving their candy to toddlers (us using the toddlers to get free candy).  A few houses had toddler ready candy or fruit chews for little ones. 

 

This is when we came back.  Alex had a costume change and trick or treated as the Hulk.  When we came home, he walked around giving his candy to everyone.  Here he is giving candy to our 2 year old friend from previous posts.

 

Our boys also continued their love of sharing by giving the infant brother grapes again.  This time they didn't put the grape in his mouth, though.  My boys are just too good at sharing, I guess!

 

 

Alex

 

 

After everyone left, I saw that our friends across the street were outside, so I told Cody to go hang out with him and I'd get the boys down.  The next set of pictures is my time alone with the boys until bed.  Cody ended up staying up there for like 3 hours, so I did get a nice bit of time to sit alone on the couch and relax alone after they went down.

 

We had to take another bath.  I let them eat candy until almost 9 (bed time is 8!).  They really liked playing in our candy bowl.

 

This is the bowl we had for trick or treaters.  We get almost no trick or treaters at our house.  We have a really long street with a pretty big hill and only 3 houses.  It is totally not worth walking on our street for candy.  They stop at the house down on the corner on a main path, but that is pretty much it.  The boys took the full bowl as a chance to play.

 

Alex in diaper.  Ben dressed.

 

 

And make a mess.  Alex standing.  Ben on floor.

 

 

Ben being a candy monster

 

 

I cut them off from candy after I got them dressed for bed.  (Yes, those are footie pajamas.  Their room gets cold!)  Alex tricked me by getting the sucker open himself.  Then he stood there putting the wrapper back on and taking it off.  He was really proud.  Then really sad when I took it away.

 

 

Party aftermath

 

 

We gave up on keeping the chairs upright. 

 

 

The house is still destroyed.  I'll get to it later!  :)

 

 

Reading, Pumpkining, and Jumping and Stuff

Brother Hugs!  Ben red, Alex black.  Alex still has a small cut on his cheek from Ben scratching him, so it is an easy way to tell them apart.

 

 

Reading together.  They don't really like me reading to them.  They mostly want to flip through books themselves and chatter.

 

 

 

 

Alex talking to his book like a phone.  Ben yelling at his.

 

 

Time to put them back in the box!

 

 

The boys were making a bunch of noise, so I went to check on them in their room.  This is what I found. They pushed their cribs together in the middle of the room and asked to get in their brother's crib.  Alex on the left in Ben's crib.  Ben on the right in Alex's crib.

 

 

Alex meant business

 

 

They were jumping.  Look at how much air Alex got!  Ben was doing this also, but it is hard to catch baby feet mid jump.

 

 

 

Ben.  I tried to make up for not having many pics of Ben last time.  We didn't do anything really exciting though, so they are all pretty similar.

 

 

 

 

Alex

 

 

Ben

 

 

Eating a sandwich and telling me about his day

 

 

Our friends invited us to the pumpkin patch.  Our running joke is that she (and we) are late.  We were supposed to meet there at 2:30.  We both pulled up to this light within a few minutes of each other at 3:45.  Oops.  We kept sending each other texts saying, "X happened, it is looking more like 2:50", "That's okay. Y happened here, it will be like 3:15 for us." etc.  I told her it felt like we were at an auction.  Anyway, these pics show the line waiting to turn on to the side road that is still 1.5 miles from where you park.  This was after we had been in the line at the stop light for 20 minutes.  Approximately 1 car per light got through because the side road was so backed up there was nowhere to go.  We wanted to bail, but we wanted to go with the friends.  We stayed with the line and went to the side road.  We finally ducked out of the line and left after we had been in line for 45 minutes.   It still took them about 20 minutes to park from where we were in line.  It was awful.  We ended up going to Walmart and spending a fortune on random crap.

 

 

 

 

We had time to check out the van.  We have 6 cup holders up front.  6!  There are more in the rear.

 

 

The boys like to stash things in the outdoor outlet.  Usually I find the little books in there.

 

 

Alex giving me a leg hug.

 

 

I call this series, "Ben pointing"

 

Ben pointing at an airplane

 

 

Ben pointing at me

 

 

Ben pointing at birds (geese are their favorite.  All birds get called geese now.)

 

 

table wrestling for a kitchen implement

 

 

Brother hugs.  They don't always put much effort in to hugging.

 

 

Alex

 

 

I caught Alex using this pen as a fork to eat pieces of his peanut butter and jelly.

 

 

Ben is either a vampire or he ate some red m&ms.

 

 

They like tv now.  Can you tell?

 

My favorite kids show is Dinosaur Train.  We learn a lot of fun things, and there are songs.  The boys like it okay, but they like Thomas and Friends the most.  I hate Thomas.  A lot of the lessons are stupid.  Cody has an irrational hatred of trains, so that has been fun.  I've got them sort of watching Sid the Science Kid.  That one is okay.  I will admit it is really nice to be able to turn on a show and distract them long enough to do some cooking.  Cooking had become extremely difficult.

 

 

Alex was putting this horseshoe on his head and calling it a hat.

 

Birthday party, new camera, and stuff

A fair warning, this post will contain pictures of a disturbingly messy house.  There are days when the babies make it their mission to drag out everything they can get their hands on.  It is not worth trying to clean up until they go to sleep, so some of these pictures show quite a mess.  Sorry.  I have 2 toddlers.  We're messy.

 

Also, I got a new camera because my cell phone camera takes awful pictures indoors, so some of the lighting in some pics is weird.  I was playing with the settings. 

 

Alex brown.  Ben orange.

 

Relaxing together

 

 

 

They like to wear Cody's shoes now.  They also walk in his sandals and his hiking boots. 

 

Ben

 

 

 

Driving the van.  Alex

 

 

Ben comes to help

 

 

Our friends have a boy that is a few months older than our boys.  He was turning 2 in September.  I offered to do a little mini party at our house for him because she also has a newborn.  It was a lot of fun.  He really, REALLY, likes Thomas the train,  so I did some minor decorating with a train/Thomas theme.  All but one of his gifts was Thomas stuff.  Lucky boy!  Here is my pushy Ben helping him unwrap a gift.

 

(I covered his face because I don't know how other people feel about pictures of their kids ending up on my blog. He is very cute.)

 

 

Ben grey.  Alex blue.  Trying to get all 4 kids to line up by the Thomas scene setter.  My two managed to do this by accident so it was a rush to get the others.

 

 

Here was the birthday boy.  There was also a girl there.  She is 3ish and was not in the mood to sit with the boys.  My boys were nice, but she was not used to having kids in her bubble.  My boys have no bubble. I completely agree, little girl.  They would've driven me crazy too.  So we did manage to get the 3 in one shot.  They did not pose together though.  Alex was cute here.  Another Ben was cute.  You just never know.

 

 

I made these signs (Obviously).  One says "Chugga Chugga Two Two" which I think is the most hilarious thing EVER.  I found the idea online, so I can't take credit for it.  The other just says "Birthday Crossing."  I didn't take pictures of any other decorations though.  I'm not sure why.  I made the food dishes look like a train on a track. There were Thomas party hats and tablecloths.  It was glorious.

 

I let the birthday boy take home all my decorations except this, so he walked away with a lot of giant Thomas stuff.

 

 

After the presents and cake, we went outside.  Luckily my mom has outfitted the boys with so many ride on toys, that there was more than enough for everyone. 

 

 

 

It was actually a little warm, so we pulled out a sprinkler.  Of course my boys were all over that.  Alex and birthday boy completely soaked Ben.  Again, the girl kind of wanted to join, but not how the boys were doing it.  Poor girl.  This is actually all 4 kids, but birthday boy got lost in the bubble.  Cody helping the boys with a beer in his hand.  As usual.  :) 

 

 

 

The boys have demanded that we hang out outside for hours every day now that the weather is nice.  This is fine, except they also want the back door open.  We have ended up getting a lot of flies.  It is not worth the fight though, so I've just been on fly patrol.

 

Anyway, one day this plane flew over and drew this baseball in the sky with some sort of trail.  I don't know what it was, or why the plane did this.  They boys love air planes so they watched it closely for the 20ish minutes that it took to do.

 

First the plane drew the black circle.  The circle looks way tighter in the earlier pictures.  Then it came around and drew the yellow line.  Finally, it drew the green line.  It wasn't an accident.  It made a really good looking circle, then the lines started and stopped right on the lines of the circle.  Weird.

 

 

 

Proof of my excellent gardening:

 

I found this weed on the other side of our detached garage.  It is as tall as Cody.

 

 

This is some sort of tomato plant that never ripened and that I never planted.  Also on the other side of the garage.  Maybe I need to check it out more often.

 

 

Ben

 

 

Alex

 

 

 

Toddler feet

 

 

Alex's toddler yoga

 

 

Alex with a meat tenderizer.  I took a few of these.  In some he looked innocent, in some he looked like he was plotting, and in some he looked very guilty.  Yes, he was using it to hammer the floor.  And the cabinets.  And a window.

 

 

Playing with the camera settings.  The camera takes pictures in sepia.  Baby tears look much sadder in sepia.

 

 

Alex showing how he feels about the potty chair.

 

(We still haven't really tried potty training.  I put them on the toilet if they ask.  Having the two makes it hard though.  One will ask to sit on the toilet, and then the other will sneak up behind him and start whacking his head with the toilet seat.  That is no way to learn to use the potty!)

 

 

Alex angry

 

 

Ben checking out the camera

 

 

Cody and Alex

 

 

More settings.  The camera will shoot selective colors with the rest being black and white. Here it is with blue.  It picked up the blue in his eyes.

 

 

Alex.  This round is a bit Alex heavy.  Not on purpose.  A lot of these were taken on the same 2ish days.  I think Ben just hung out in the bad lighting way more.

 

 

 

Please excuse the baby markings on the fireplace glass.  I try to remember to clean it, but they really like hanging up there, so it gets dirty again quickly.

 

Alex.

 

You're probably thinking this couldn't get any cuter, right?

 

 

Oh yeah, that is cuter.

 

 

 

Alex.. again.  I'll go out of my way to get Ben pics for the next couple of weeks.

 

 

I let them back in the can cabinet.  They've handled it pretty well so far.  They've done some stacking.  Only a few can labels got torn off.  Now it is going to be like post-apocalyptic movies when they have all the unlabeled cans and they just have to like roll the dice with what they get.

 

 

 

 

 

Ben lost interest and snuck under the table

 

 

 

 

Alex really concentrating

 

 

I don't like taking them out front because they always run away.  Luckily our street gets very little traffic.  Ben.

 

 

Ben 

 

 

Alex walking over to check us out

 

 

 

Ben looking at Cody

 

 

Alex looking at another inappropriately tall weed

 

 

The boys like to peep through the neighbor's fence.  They have a smaller dog.  (Not tiny, just smaller than Shep.)  So they will run at the fence yelling, "Doggy!  Doggy!  Doggy!" even if he isn't out there.  He is friendly with them though, so that is good.  They don't try to poke him in the eye and he doesn't try to bite the kids... so I'd call that a win.  I try to discourage the behavior, but sometimes the siren call of the dog is too enticing.

 

 

 

Pointing at Shep and talking to Cody about it

 

 

 

Shep was really excited.  This was an action shot.  It happened right before he body checked me.  He's heavy! 

 

 

Swinging around Ben

 

 

Ben running 

 

Alex made a break for it.  I circled him in red.  They are fast.

 

 

Alex digging in a dirt patch on our driveway.  They like to crush bugs with their fingers.  I did not teach them this, and I'm hoping that doesn't mean they will be serial killers when they grow up.  He wasn't killing here... just digging.

 

 

 

Things have been going fine.  Nothing exciting has happened.  Just enjoying the fall weather.