Red Wagon

I've posted pictures before of Ben in the Radio Flyer wagon that was Andrew's as a little boy. What a fun hand-me-down for the boys; I knew it would be something that they would really cherish so I refinished it two years ago to liven it back up. Well, after all my efforts we had to store our newly painted wagon for over a year when our move was in limbo. So, Ben hasn't used it since he was about 18 months old and Nate has never had a chance to use it. But today was such a nice day that we got it out and spent over an hour outside riding in the wagon.

The boys climbed right in and had so much fun getting pulled around together at first. We have a fairly sizeable driveway at our new house so it gave us lots of room to move around without having to leave the premises. Plus, we broke out our new road signs that I recently purchased for the boys' construction-themed birthday party in a few weeks. Ben adores road signs lately so we couldn't resist these props when we saw them since I knew they'd have fun with them all summer on their bikes and in their wagon as well. So a little sneak peek of the party...but that's all you'll get for now :).



Ben got tired of sitting still and decided that he'd be a better chauffeur for Nate.

Stopping to play with some large sticks...and to entertain Barney for a little while.

Well, it's close to dinnertime and the sun in starting to set. Nate's getting that glazed-over look so I think our day outside is finished. Hopefully we'll get more outdoor photos these next few days if this weather keeps up!

The Crayola Factory

This weekend my parents are visiting us and while my dad and Andrew did some Home Depot errands and work around the house today, my mom and I took the kids out for the afternoon. We went to lunch and then took them to The Crayola Factory in Easton, PA. What a fun place! I have never been there personally and have wanted to take the kids for the past few months. So, we decided it would be the perfect indoor activity for this cold weekend.

Ben was very cute as we prepared him for our trip. We kept telling him that we were going to see where the crayons live and he seemed genuinely excited by the time we arrived. In fact, the very first thing we saw from our parking garage was this statue. What a fun welcome!


If you have never been to The Crayola Factory, it is basically a hands-on discovery museum revolving around...Crayola products! They have exhibits that show how crayons are made and the hisotry of the crayon, etc. We, however, centered our trip on the interactive portion of the factory: the projects. They have various rooms where the kids can turn in tokens to receive Crayola products to take home and also many different craft stations where projects can be done using many of Crayola's products. There are projects that are suitable for children as young as two and others that are a bit more advanced so assistance is required. Ben did not do every single activity since he seemed to be content focusing on his favorites. There definitely was no shortage of things to do and we were there for about three hours.


Here's Ben at the Color Wonder station, coloring pictures of his favorites: Tow Mater and Lightening McQueen.


He had a fun time putting his tokens into the various vending machines that hand out free crayons and markers to take home...and proudly showed off all of his loot to me and Nana!

Nate was too young to participate in the projects but, as usual, he was Mr. Content for the entire trip and just looked around, asked "What dat?" while pointing to everything we passed and smiled the whole time. Even without a nap. Here he is with Nana at The Meltdown. We didn't do this activity this time since it was fairly crowded (and next door to Ben's favorite station...so he got distracted anyways). I hear it involves melting wax to create your own custom crayon block of various colors. Next time!

And we have arrived at the Model Magic station. This was by far Ben's favorite stop of all. We spent over an hour here while he shaped, cut, rolled, crafted and colored the white modeling clay. He loves Play Doh so I figured he would enjoy this one the best.

Nate being happy and observing everything. What a character he has become, always making silly faces and doing things to make us laugh!

Something we did was apparently very funny!

Our next stop was the Creative Studio, where Ben made several of the crafts. Here, he is using a blue glue stick and some scissors to build a triarama (remember those diaramas we always had to make in elementary school? Well, they're baaaack...).

Unfortunately his project didn't quite make it into our craft baggie to bring home. Ben got a little, eh, carried away with the scissors and decided to hone in on his cutting skills after glueing only a few pieces of paper down. As for me, it's tough work teaching a lefty to use scissors! Andrew already has nightmares about teaching Ben to bat lefty and play golf with left-handed clubs :)

Baba break! Isn't Nate the cutest when he holds his own "baba"? Words can't even explain just how excited he gets when he sees it coming!

Finally, we went into the Easton Press and Bindery and did two projects. The first is a mask of his head and the second is a paint project. Here's Ben making his mask:

And the mess begins! Here, Nana is helping Ben use a brayer to paint a paper with blue paint. After painting, his paper is lifted up and a design can be seen from indentations on the mold we had placed underneath his paper.

Cleaning up...by himself, of course, even though Nana had started out helping. He prefers to exert his independence lately and do things alone, claiming "Ben's big now" and then proceeding to do whatever it is he wants to do solo.

After he painted, Ben had to put his paper into the drying oven and once dry, it was time to color it with crayons. What a fun project and luckily the washable paints were used! (

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's pictures this year went splendidly for Ben. Seriously, he was such a ham and has completely gotten over the "no smile" phase (I hope!). He couldn't seem to get enough of the camera and followed all of their instructions precisely. He looks like such a big school boy in these photos, I can't believe it!

The brother shot didn't go as smoothly this time. Nate is in the midst of the severe separation anxiety stage of life and was hysterical everytime I put him down. He does this to me when I have to drop him off someplace, giving me a big quivering lip when he begins to sense that I'll be leaving and then finally bursting into tears. What a difference from the other times he has had his photos taken! He's always been the smiley, easy-going one with Ben giving me a hard time about posing.

Getting nervous....well, I am standing 2 WHOLE FEET away from him!!

Ben's getting a little bored waiting for Baby Nate to smile...

Last resort: posing "joey-style" (note my shoulder in the photo!). Well, at least we got a photo of him this time. I knew I was smart to wear Valentine's colors when I got dressed that morning :)

Happy Valentine's Day to you from Ben and Nate! XOXO

New Milestones

It's the last few weeks before the official "March Birthday Month" in the Martin household begins. Nate was 11 months yesterday and Ben will be turning three on March 20th. Hard to believe that so much time has gone by already!

So, what have the boys been up to? Well, to begin with, they are indeed boys, which means there is never a dull moment. I seriously don't think I could muster up as much energy in a year as they have in a single day. And now that Nate is crawling (everywhere!), they seem to be even more on the go than before. They really just play off of each other; where you find one, you will usually find the other not too far away. Oh, I am dreading, er, eagerly awaiting the day when Nate is walking. I'm sure they will be double trouble!

The boys and I have established a routine where they have a snack after their naps and then bring some toys into the kitchen to play while I get dinner underway. Usually seems to buy me enough time to get things at least started, but with two little boys, and then add Barney into the mix as well, it often makes for a cooking adventure - toys all over, a baby crawling every which way, a toddler chasing the dog while the baby laughs. Fun, fun!

Here are the boys being cheesy for the camera a few nights ago as I tried to cook. Of course the photo is perfect - smiles, centered, exuding brotherly love (instead of fighting :)) - so Murphy's Law, it came out blurry. Oh well! This also gives a good look at the recent tile job Andrew has done.

As far as Ben, what has he been up to? Well, for starters he has been enrolled for preschool next year at the Grace Bible Church's Indian Valley Nursery School. He is very excited as two of his best friends - Tyler and Samantha - also will be going to the school. He talks about going to school often.

He still has an obsession with trucks. Seriously. Everything is about trucks to him. He does show a lot of interest in soccer lately as well, though, so this may be something I look into for the spring for him.

Finally, the Puzzle Sleuth continues to charge ahead at top speed. Ben still loves puzzles and does at least 10 of them a day, probably more. His current love is the US state map. Yes, they are all marked ages 5 and up but Andrew felt that Ben should be exposed to the states earlier (stemming from his own love of the state puzzle when he was younger!) so Ben got a states puzzle. And he has expressed such interest in it! Ben now does it himself several times per day and knows the names of at least half of the states. He also likes to point out where his family members live as he does this and to look at the state-specific pictures on each piece, letting us know that Idaho is the potato state and that crawfish are from Lousisiana (he just learned this one last night!), etc. . Hilarious!

Nate is continuing to grow quickly as well. I can't believe that he will be a year old in less than a month! Now that he has started to crawl (still using the commando crawl, by the way), he also has quickly learned to sit up himself from a lying position, to climb stairs and has even started to cruise when the objects are close enough together. I love that we have two little steps going from our study to our playroom. It gives him good practice on a very little flight of stairs and is fully carpeted. Here he is climbing the stairs (and so proud of himself!):

On another note, Nate has started to repeat some words if we say them enough times to him ("girl" being a favorite - little womanizer already!). He also has a few words that he will say within context, such as "baba" whenever he seems his bottle or cup, "bear" when he sees a bear, and "dat" (aka "that") when he points to something. He also barks when he sees Barney! After deciding to have Ben evaluated when he was two years old because he was barely talking, I did a double take the first time Nate talked since he was only about 10-1/2 months old. Just goes to show how different even brothers can be - Ben was so much earlier with the physical movement and now Nate is earlier with the verbal skills.

Snow Day

Last night we had a fair amount of powdery snow that actually stuck for once! Of course it was not the "storm" that had been anticipated in the news but we did get a few inches and plenty to play in this morning. So, Ben and I headed out while Nate napped this morning and had a great time frolicking in the winter wonderland. Barney joined us for the fun, of course.

First, we did some sledding. What a cardio workout for me! Next time we will have to wait until Nate is awake so that he can join us since Ben had such a fun time on his sled.


When sledding grew old, we had a snowball fight. Ben seriously was hysterical the entire time. What made him laugh the most was pegging poor Barney with balls of snow and watching Barney try to eat the snowballs in mid-air!


Target practice time. Ben formulates the perfect snowball for his large, yellow, moving target!

Gotcha, Barno!

Perfect Timing

Nate will be 11 months old next Wednesday, 2/11. Ben started crawling when he was 7 months old, as do many kids (more or less). But not Nate. He rolled over early on, sat up on his own sooner than lots of babies, took to a sippy cup and started eating solids earlier than most, and currently has 8 teeth while many of his friends his own age only have 2 or 4 of them. And did I mention that he has had 4 haircuts? In many ways he seemed to be reaching milestones rather quickly. But, crawling was different; he really showed no desire.

We knew he had nothing physically wrong since he loves to stand up and explore while leaning against something, so obviously his legs have strong muscles. He just preferred to sit and play, or better yet, to be carried around by his mama "joey-style," as I like to call it (think: kangaroo). How apropos that his middle name is Joseph :).

One month ago we moved into our new house, or rather our old farm house that still is in need of several home improvements, including new floors in 4 rooms. The kitchen was basically a concrete subfloor so needless to say, it was dusty. The other rooms are not as high traffic so we did not notice the mess so much from those but the kitchen is a different story; we spend so much time there. So, once we moved and were now living under construction, I started to really be thankful for the fact that Nate was sedentary. Immobility really seemed to be a blessing!

I spent a month keeping slippers on Ben, making sure he did not play on those floors that were not yet finished and cringing whenever he would run through the kitchen and drop something on the floor. All the while Nate sat still where I put him and played on the finished floors and area rugs with his toys. He sat still and watched Ben and Barney run through the kitchen (usually laughing hysterically at their "show", with frantic Mom close behind!) and never dropped a bottle or a piece of food on the dirty floor.

This weekend Andrew came very close to finishing the tile in the kitchen. He only has two more nights of work to do but the floor is more or less tiled at this point. Because the high traffic path from the kitchen is no longer dusty, I have started to do a very thorough cleaning of the floors in the entire house, knowing they will not instantly get dusty again. And what better weekend for Nate to start crawling! But he did. Does this show God's perfect timing or what?

So, after 11 months, Nate is on the move with full force. He's all over the place and Ben both loves and hates it. The possessive toddler is starting to get a little bent out of shape that "Baby Nate" can now get his toys and in fact, goes after them frantically. On the other hand, Ben thinks it's funny to watch Nate crawling and has fun with him on the ground. They really seem to play with each other now. Actually, today I was sitting in the family room while Ben played alone (Nate was napping) and all at once he turned to me and matter-of-factly said "Ben likes to play with Baby Nate now." Ha ha!

What we think is hilarious is that Nate's crawling technique is one of those exceptions all of the parenting books state: he does a fast commando-style crawl without lifting his belly too far off the ground. It's really humorous!

Here are some photos of the recent guy on the move, as he makes his way from his bedroom down the hallway to the playroom when I announced that it was bedtime tonight!

Ben heard the ruckus and decided to join in. He was half changed for bed, hence the PJ top with the jeans!