Happy 1st Birthday, Nate!

Today is Nate's first birthday, can you believe it? He is officially a toddler today. He drinks real milk and his carseat faces forward now (well, I may have cheated and done these things a few weeks early...shhh! :)). He definitely knows how to manipulate us with his cute little faces and each day we notice that he is doing something new and exciting. Best of all, we have started to notice that Nate will now stand up for himself a bit when a certain big brother takes his toys, pushes him, or does something else that doesn't float Nate's boat (much to Ben's chagrin, however!). Look out, world, Nate's one!

This morning we went to the pediatrician for Nate's one year appointment. He is doing great developmentally - on target with everything and very healthy. He is still at just around the 50th percentile for height and weight so he is growing steadily as well:

Height: 29-1/2 inches
Weight: 23.3 lbs.

He and Ben are having a joint birthday party on Friday morning so that's when all of the birthday excitement will take place and I'll certainly post more pictures after that. In the meantime, here are a few of Nate opening his gifts this morning. He and Ben each have a few small gifts and are getting one larger joint gift that we'll probably give to them sometime next week, between both of their birthdays.

OK, that's great that it's my birthday, Mom, but you know I can't function without my morning "baba" first. Presents will have to wait!


Alright, you caught me. They are starting to intrigue me...



Does this big guy always have to help me with everything?!?! I can't understand for the life of me why he is itching for me to finish my baba!

Yay! Everyone's happy - Nate's had his milk and is having fun opening his presents...and Ben enjoys watching (and asking if he can take each present and go and play with it alone!!)

Sesame Street Live

Last night we took the kids to downtown Philly to the Wachovia Center to see Sesame Street Live: When Elmo Grows Up. What a fun time! I had really been looking forward to this since I remember going to see Sesame Street Live as a little girl and shaking hands with Ernie and the Count (my first touch with fame!). When we saw that it would be coming, we decided that it would be a fun outing for us as a family - something fun to do to celebrate the kids' birthdays this month.

We decided to take the SEPTA train and the subway into the city instead of driving since we knew Ben would be thrilled to go on a train and it would also prevent us from hitting commuter traffic on our way in. They really did great on the trains and even though the ride home was longer than it would have been had we driven instead, we think it was a good choice. Added to the excitement for the day!

Here are the men waiting for the train to pull into the station.

And some photos from the show. What a fun time! All of the Sesame Street gang was there - Ben loves Elmo, Big Bird and Cookie Monster the best and Nate seemed to take a liking to Cookie and Abby Cadaby. Ben was clapping his hands and laughing throughout the entire show and Nate literally danced for the entire first act and part of the second act before he fell asleep on me. Not bad for someone who usually goes to bed at 7PM! We sat up against a railing, so Nate stood on my lap, grabbed the railing and bounced up and down during the music. So funny, all of the security staff were laughing! We had some special treats (Ben is still talking about the blue cotton candy that he had!).

One of the funniest moments for me was when Ben started analyzing the lighting schemas for the light boards on the ceiling in the midst of all of the Sesame Street excitment. For those of you who know Andrew well, he did all of the lighting for the theater productions at Lehigh so this just went to prove, once again, that Ben is just like his dad!

Tiling With Daddy

Andrew's been doing a lot of tiling around the house lately so Ben has, of course, gotten his own tools out and designated himself the carpenter's helper for each and every project. Here they are making preparations to tile our laundry/craft room, assessing the situation and removing staples and nails from the floor. So funny because Ben actually stores his tools right next to Andrew's in the "work zone" as they do each project.


Plumber's butt - lol!

Smiling for the paparazzi :)

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