Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are the pictures I promised for ever ago.

So proud of his snowman

Making a snowball to throw for Porter

We celebrated Valentine's day yesterday. I made breakfast (french toast casserole) for us yesterday morning and Andy made dinner (BBQ chicken, mashed potatoes and corn) for us last night.  Nothing beats hanging out with my boys all day. Since it was so nice out, we took Aiden outside to play for awhile.  We built a snowman, threw snowballs and tried to take him sledding.  The sledding part didn't last long because he fell off face first into the snow after just a couple minutes of riding and he was done. Porter enjoyed being outside with us too. He loves chasing the snowballs. We all had a lot of fun playing in the snow. After dinner we realized we didn't have anything for dessert so we decided to take a trip to Coldstone. It had been way too long since had been there.  It hit the spot! YUM! Aiden had a few bites of ours and then was wound up from the sugar. I really wish I could have the amount of energy he has.  He didn't even take a nap yesterday and he just kept on going all day. He didn't want to stop playing at bed time either.  I have pictures from yesterday that I will try to post later.

As for the rest of the weekend, I went to Saginaw on Friday night and stayed with my cousin Erica. We had some shopping we needed to get done, and I had to go to the funeral home in Freeland on Saturday. One of our friends mom's passed away. Aiden stayed home with Andy and had a "No mama party". I guess they had fun and I enjoyed my night away.  When I got home Saturday evening, Aiden was excited to see me and I was excited to see him.  I can't imagine how excited we are both going to be in May when we pick him up from my parents after being gone to Aruba for a week.

I will try to post some pictures later.  I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's Day! TTFN

Poor peanut

Poor Aiden has had a cold for about a week now.  He has a runny nose and a nasty cough. He seems to be getting better and I'm sure the events that occured on Sunday helped him a ton. We got up Sunday morning just before 8. Andy took his shower while Aiden and I rocked and watched Mickey Mouse. We rock together every morning and it is one of my favorite things. When Andy got out of the shower, he made some oatmeal for him and Aiden. Aiden hadn't been eating much for the past couple of days because of his cold. While they ate, I took my shower so we could head out to Walmart grocery shopping when I was done. I got myself ready and they were done eating. Andy said he ate quite a bit so we were both happy about that. I took Aiden to his room to get him dressed.  He became kind of whiny all of a sudden and after he was dressed he wanted to "rockie mama". So I rocked him for a bit.  Next thing I know, he coughs and then I am wearing the oatmeal that we were 5 minutes ago so happy he had ate so much of, on my shirt. Didn't phase me. I was more concerned about comforting him because at 2, you have no idea what just happened or why. I felt so bad for the little guy.We got everything cleaned up and new clothes on both of us and back to the rocking chair we went. Andy decided he was going to go to Target instead of Walmart to get the necessities, which at this point include pedialyte.  Of course Aiden not knowing better is thirsty so I let him take a sip of water. Bad idea. That sip of water with more oatmeal  came right back up. Another pair of pajamas and another blanket in the laundry. After that we went back to rocking chair and he fell asleep. I kept rocking him and loaded up Netflix on the Wii.  I started watching season 1 of Grey's Anatomy, a show I have wanted to start for awhile, but haven't had time. Only got through 1 episode and he woke up and threw up again.  More oatmeal...really why were we happy he had ate so much? New pajamas and blanket again. Then back to the rocking chair. By this time Andy was back and had the pedialyte. We gave him just a very little bit and and stayed in. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes.  Time to try more. 10 more minutes, 20 more and we gave him more. It had been a little over an hour and Aiden gets off my lap and starts playing like nothing is wrong. "I'm hungry mama". I really do not want to feed him after the events of the past couple hours but I made him a piece of toast. He ate it, had some more pedialyte and says more toast mama. Really, can't we just wait a few to make sure the first piece is going to stay inside? But I made him another piece. He ate it with some more pedialyte. Andy made himself a quesadilla for lunch and Aiden wanted some of that but Andy puts hot sauce on it. So I made him one and he ate about half and then went and got a fruit cup out of the fridge and ate that. Everything stayed in, Thank God! I'm guessing he had too much drainage in his stomach from being sick and that is what caused the throwing up. He has been fine ever since. Never ran a fever or anything. And he still loves oatmeal as he has ate it the past 3 days for breakfast.

Christmas

This year Christmas was...well different. As always, we had so much fun spending time with both families. We were sorry we had to miss the Cook Christmas, but it was going to be way too much traveling. We were glad to have Allison and Anthony home and glad we got to see Mark and Pat Christmas Eve. We had good food and lots of great beer. We got to see a big chunk of my family at my grandma's Christmas Day which of course lead to a few drinks and euchre games (and for the record Aunt Sandy and I beat Uncle Gene and Erica, who are always running their mouths about how unbeatable they are :)). But with all the fun we had, we were also sad. We were missing someone and it was hard to not have him there with us. Andy did put lights on the tree out back that grandpa used to call Aiden's tree and now it is Aiden and grandpa's tree.

Another reason Christmas was so different this year was because Aiden is starting to understand the whole Sants thing.  He was so excited about Santa coming, he didn't want to go to sleep.  It was after 10 before he fell asleep and he was up at 6 am Christmas morning.  I got him to go back to sleep until 7 (luckily since it was after 1 when the rest of us went to bed). Then he was awake.  I asked him if he wanted to go see if Santa came and he was all excited, yelling yeah, yeah, and he ran upstairs.  When he saw all the presents, he stood in awe for a minute. Then he said "those Aiden's presents?" and I said yes they are.  Santa brought you lots of presents.  You must have been a really good boy. And he got all excited.  I told him he had to go wake up grandma (who I believe was awake already from all the excitement screams) and then they went down and woke up Aunt Allison and Uncle Anthony. It was so much fun watching him be so excited. He got just as excited at my parents that night when he saw all the presents. He kept saying open presents, open presents. To be a kid again...

Here are a few pictures from Christmas...

Merry Christmas

I just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  I'm sure we will have lots of new pics to put up after the Holidays and probably some fun stories too.

Naughty or nice...what do you think?

Leaves

I fell a little behind on blogging again.  I know everyone is really surprised about that. So lets go back a few weeks, before the snow came. Our leaves always seem to take forever to fall.  It seems half the trees in our neighborhood are bare by the end of October but ours never fall until at least mid-November. Once they all fell, we decided we needed to go rake them up. Last year, we gated off the front porch and left Aiden and Porter to play up there while we did it.  This year, we left Porter in the house and Aiden wanted to rake too. Once we got a big pile together, we told Aiden to jump in it.  He was unsure at first but then we showed him how and he loved it.  When we started to bag them again, he was mad because he wanted to keep playing. To be a kid again...

Sleep again

Since the time change, Aiden has been going to bed at his normal bedtime of 8:30 but he has been waking up between 5 and 6 every morning. You could tell he was always still tired, but it didn't matter, he still got up. I know it was because that was the time he always gets up (old time). We went to Grandma Marple's house Friday night and of course he fell alseep on the way there because it was dark and he was exhausted from not enough sleep all week. It took him awhile to wake up once we got there, but once he did, he wanted to play. So he didn't go to be until around 10 that night and he only slept until 6:15. The poor kid had dark circles under his eyes that morning. I left around 8:30 to do some shopping with Erica and Onie, and Andy sends me this picture around 1.

And apparently he didn't wake back up until around 5. He went to bed around 9 SAturday night and slept until about 8. Finally, he slept in a bit. And all of that sleep must have reset him for the new time because he has gone to bed at normal time all week and has slept until after our alarm goes off. This makes us all so much happier in the morning, except maybe Porter who rather enjoyed being fed early.

Frankenmuth

This past weekend, Aiden and I met my parents in Frankenmuth.  Andy had to work but I think he would have stayed home anyway even if he didn't have to work.  Bronners is just not a fun place for him...shopping + tons of people=crabby Andy. We left the house at 7:30 am on Saturday and were back by 3. It was a fun day though.  We got to do some shopping at Bronners before it got too packed. Aiden was amazed by all the Christmas stuff.  He really didn't get excited about any one thing, but his eyes were huge as we strolled him around. Grandpa took him through most of the store so my mom and I could shop. I have to say Aiden was very well behaved.  I was a little concerned about taking a 2 year old there but he didn't try to touch anything. Then we got to Zehnders a little after 11 and didn't have to wait to get seated. I love getting to Frankemuth early and beating the crowds.  It's so much more enjoyable. It was a very yummy lunch as usual and we ate too much as usual. Aiden loved the buttered noodles, but who doesn't? Dad and I went to a couple stores on Main Street while mom and Aiden went downstairs at Zehnders.  After dad and I got the couple of things we wanted, we met back up with mom and Aiden and went to see the horses that pull the carriages. Aiden loves all animals and was very excited to see these BIG horses up close. He even got to pet one which he thought was pretty cool. We thought about taking him for a ride but after the Uncle John's incident with the wagon ride and screaming, we thought it was way too expensive in case he didn't like it. Maybe next time. Aiden was asleep before I made it back to Birch Run to get back on the highway, and he slept the whole way home.