Friends for life (so far!)

We had a playgroup picnic last weekend at a local park. Looking at the pictures afterward, it struck me that Sam has known these kids (well, most of them anyway) almost as long as he's known me! We met at a mom and baby support group at the hospital. I took Sam there for the first time when he was only 9 days old. He's known some of these kids since that day. Here's a picture of the group (including younger siblings)




And one of us (crazy) moms:

A Visit from a Fairy!

Sam lost his first tooth last week (finally--all of his friends have been losing them for months!) And the tooth fairy payed a visit, leaving movie tickets (to the new Fantastic Four movie--one that only big boys can see) and some quarters (for playing video games at the movie theater.) Gotta love that fairy!

Mmmm, cake!

Here are a few pictures of Paul and I baking his birthday cake! As you can see, the batter was pretty darn yummy!





And here's the finished cake!

Goodbye Terrible Twos!

Well, the bad news is our baby has grown up. The good news is that I'll never again be the mother to a two year old! Does that mean that I'll never see this face again?



(this is known as the "my mean mommy won't let me have a third cookie" face) I'm not counting on it--I'm sure mommies are just as mean to three year olds) But I won't be able to blame it on the "terrible twos" anymore.

Paul woke up yesterday morning and asked "Am I still three?" I said yes. He then asked "When am I going to be two again?" Apparently he thought that he'd be turning three on his birthday, and then would be going right back to being two.

Graduation Day!

Today was the last day of Kindergarten for Sam. He left school wearing a badge that read "Official First Grader." It's hard to imagine that my little guy has already finished kindergarten. It was one of the fastest years of my life! It really feels like yesterday that we were worrying about him starting school. And now he's finished a whole year, and it really wasn't a big deal (for him anyway--it was still pretty big for us!) Anyway, congrats Sam! We're proud of you!


He's changed just a bit in the past 6 years!

Field Trip Fun!

Sam had his last field trip of the school year on Monday--to the local zoo. Paul and I went along as official chaperones, and we had a great time! The first exhibit we visited were the penguins. Usually when we go to the zoo, the penguins are huddled in the doorway of their area, under the sprinkler. Well we got there, and the penguins were actually swimming! The zookeepers were throwing fish into the penguin pond, and they were swimming around and eating breakfast. It was a lot of fun to watch--one of the windows was down below the water level, and Sam loved watching them swim around. Paul kept ducking when they'd swim too close to the window--which was hilarious! Here are a few pictures from our day at the zoo:

Here's Sam and Paul with Anna, one of Sam's friends:

Here's the whole class, on their best behavior:



And here's the whole class, looking a bit more like they normally do:

When the Mommy's away.......

The boys will play! I got a weekend away not too long ago, and the boys (the big boy "Daddy" included) had lots of fun with theme days. The first day I was gone was "Monster Day" where they all pretended to be monsters. The next day was "space explorer day" and they had a great time pretending to be astronauts. They built a rocket ship, wore space helmets, and flew to all different planets for different missions (and in our house, Pluto is still a planet). I came home and Paul told me all about climbing Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system. (I have to say I never expected a 2 year old to know about that!) And Sam was explaining to me all about the importance of airlocks. My 3 geeks had a fun weekend!~

20 questions

Paul has been full of funny questions lately. (Of course there's the usual question--why? why? why?) But he's had some new ones lately, ones I didn't see coming.

Last week on the way to the zoo, we passed the hospital. He said "Look, Mommy! That's where I was borned! Were you there when I was borned?" My answer of course was "Um, yes! Mommy was there when you were born. That's how I got the name 'Mommy'."

And today while eating lunch, Paul announced "I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up. Sammy's going to be a basketball player when he grows up! Daddy's going to be a fixer guy when he grows up. What are you going to be when you grow up?" Hmm, good question--I'll have to think on that one!

Big Boy!

We got home from Paul's 3 year checkup a little while ago. (they scheduled us a couple of weeks early, which worked well so I don't have to take Sam along too, once school is out) Anyway, he's 39 1/4 inches tall, which puts him in the 92nd percent for height. And he weighs 35.7 lb, which puts him in the 90th percent for weight. I guess this explains why people always look shocked when they ask how old he is, and he answers "I'm two and a half!"

Rolling, rolling, rolling.....

Paul and I went to visit Sam at school yesterday, to help the gym teacher out. They're doing a rollerblading unit in gym class, and have 50 kids rollerblading at a time. With the gym class period only being 30 minutes long, they were having problems getting everyone all suited up and ready before it was time to start taking the stuff off again (and not having any time to actually rollerblade) So they asked for parent volunteers, and also had some fourth and fifth grade helpers. In order to rollerblade, the kids each needed bike helmets, elbow pads, wrist guards, knee pads, and (of course) rollerblades.

After Sam was all padded up, he told me "Mommy, I wish they had butt pads too--I never hurt my elbows--I always fall on my butt!" But he had a lot of fun, and I only saw him fall once. Paul had a blast too, there were rolling chairs for the kids to push around to help them get used to balancing (sort of a set of training wheels for skates). The girls in Sam's class were taking turns pushing Paul around on one of the chairs. He thought he was pretty cool to have all of the big kids' attention, and I think he rather enjoyed being a parade float!