Keeping Watch

Well, I've had some friendly complaints for having neglected posting pictures of Barney lately (you know who you are :)) so here are a few photos of our furry friend with Nate. In fact, they are the very first solo pictures of Barney and Nate. Nate loves the activity mats so much lately and Barney always lays next to him while he is on it and keeps guard of his newest brother. What a big gentle giant our yellow doggie is!

Pizza

Andrew went through our extra freezer today and came across a frozen pizza...that has probably been in there for about 3 years. Yuck! It was freezer burned beyond recognition so we offered it to see if even Barney would reject it and lo and behold, being the dog that he is, he did not. We hardly ever give him table scraps so he looked as if this were his lucky day as he gently took his treasure out of Andrew's hands. Thankfully, Barney is very submissive so after we had our laughs watching the dog run around with an entire pizza in his mouth, he opened right up and gave it back to us without a fight after only licking some of the cheese.

Visit With Friends

Our family friend Audrey was in the area visiting her niece today so she stopped in to have lunch with me and my friend Aimee before getting to her destination. Both Andrew and Aimee's husband Chad grew up with Audrey's family. We had a good time visiting with her for a few hours and we all enjoyed watching the kids play together. Ben and Aimee's 3-year-old daughter Elaina are good friends and Nathaniel is younger than their Jonathan by 3-1/2 weeks. We haven't had the babies together for a few weeks so it was cute to watch them and to see how much they have both changed.

Jonathan and Nate resting together after a feeding on the activity mat. Nothing like a full tummy, musical tunes and hanging animals to look at! How funny is it that Nate has SO much hair and Jonathan is such a baldy. We love it!

Here, the big brother and big sister join in the photo taking. They both are very protective and gentle with their baby brothers.

A solo picture of Nathaniel resting. He loves these activity mats!

Finally, a photo of Audrey with all four of the kids. It's so embarassing but Ben has chocolate brownie AND marker all over his face! I had been preoccupied feeding Nate for the 20 or so minutes prior to this photo and did not realize what a Pigpen Ben looked like until AFTER we had snapped this photo!

Big Cheese!

As I was snapping photos of Nathaniel today, Ben, who usually has to be coaxed to smile for a photo, sat on our sofa and started saying "Ben...cheese!" and posing with his giant Elmo and Cookie Monster stuffed animals. What a character! Here are the results. Well, he did succeed in moving my attention away from the baby for a few minutes to take these photos...

"Maybe Nate wants Cookie Monster and Elmo to join him on the activity mat," thinks Ben...

"Alright, I've finally had enough of this photo-taking business for today!"

Playing Together

Nathaniel has been enjoying time on his activity mat more and more lately...and so has Ben! Yes, when the mat is out all of a sudden the mountains of other toys in our house become less intriguing and all Ben wants to do is to lay on the mat with Nate, talking to his brother and touching his hair. Is he reverting to baby-play you ask, because there is a new baby in the house? Well, possibly, but for the most part it seems that he just likes to play with his brother and finds it very amusing that they can lay on Nate's toy together.

Nathaniel is obsessed with looking at himself in the mirror. It keeps him occupied for close to 15-20 minutes sometimes! Ben, on the other hand, enjoys looking at the hanging toys. I'll bet that he doesn't remember how much he also loved that hanging monkey when he was Nate's age. It was his favorite!

So alert now that he is six weeks old!

Senior Citizen

Barney had his annual exam at the vet this week and now that he is six years old, he is considered a senior citizen! Just thought that he deserved a post of his own this week to celebrate his entering this new phase in life...

Still as playful as ever, even at six years.

Sand Table

To celebrate spring and the beautiful weather that we have been having, we opened up the sand and water table this afternoon for the season. What a fun time Ben had! It occupied him completely for a full hour and a half. Here he is playing hard, exploring the sand and water and getting filthy in the meantime!

Relaxing

It's been beautiful weather lately so here are a few photos of Nathaniel relaxing in one of his summer outfits.

Wide-eyed and chubby-cheeked.

All smiles!

Color Me Mine

Our playgroup took an outing to Color Me Mine to have the kids paint pottery this morning. You get to choose a piece to paint, add color and then leave it with them and they fire it for you in about a week. After that you have a glazed keepsake to display. The two boys in the group chose a football (Ben) and a motorcycle, while the girls all choose pretty figurines - cat, fish and seahorse. The kids all seemed to have fun, at least for most of the time.

Here's Ben in his gigantic smock that Mommy donated from her drawers. It was his first time ever painting!

Very seriously painting his football...and getting a little on his face in the meantime!

Mommy and Ben (with Nate sleeping through the entire outing behind us in his stroller!).

Anna and Teddy painting his motorcycle.

Caroline with her cat figurine and mommy Roberta.

Julia and her mom Nicole are painting a seahorse together.

Olivia and her mommy Kiera painting a Clown Fish.

The whole gang after painting and before going to lunch. We'll see how the creations turn out when we can pick them up next week.

Faces

Smile.

Annoyed. (just having been woken up by the camera flash!)

Cross-eyed.

Drowsy.

Sleepy.

Content with Dad and big brother Ben.