In spite of losing my wallet . . .

. . . we did have fun in Boston.  We took the T into the city today for a long fun day walking through the Common, Public Gardens, Newbury Street, and the North End.  Our main destination was Mike's Pastry for a selection of cannoli, but we had a good time eventually getting there.  The one downside was when I lost or had my wallet stolen.  Either way, it's gone and that's a bummer.  Anyhoo, here are some pictures of the kiddos around town.

 I'm sorry, I'm too tired tonight to sort through these pictures for the best, so I'm just posting all of them.  What a photogenic kid!

 

 

Edward's 1st Birthday

Happy Birthday, dear Eddy!  You are so sweet and wonderful and smart and adorable.  We are so grateful and lucky to have you in our family.  Can't wait for this next year with you! 

It was wonderful to have Grandma and Aunt Janeil with us to celebrate this gorgeous baby's first year.  Davy insisted that we needed to have a special birthday hat, but since we don't have one of those, we decided to raid the dress-up box and everyone got to wear a silly hat.

A little help to blow out the candle. 

We made a "healthy" rainbow cake.  The healthy part was carrots, sweet potato. oat bran and applesauce.  (It still tasted like cake though.)  The rainbow colors were kind of fun, but Eddy wasn't impressed.  He mostly liked the frosting!  We weren't upset when he stuck his fingers in the cake because it was his cake, after all.

Thanks, Aunt Katy, for the fun Mardi-Gras necklaces!  Davy loved them too, so they were a big hit all around.

Apple Picking

It seems that the quintessential New England Autumn activity is apple picking.  I grew up with apple trees in my backyard and my mom would make us clean up all those nasty apples that fall and rot.  Eww.  I think we got to wear gloves, but most of my memories of that chore are fraught with disgust and trauma from touching wormy apples.  So when we moved here and it was this big to-do I was really dubious.  Drive all that way, pay lots of money, pick apples and go home with more than you know what to do with?  Are you kidding me?  But we had a fun time going last year when we were waiting for Edward's arrival, and since we have guests I thought it might be a fun adventure.  Rain was forecast, but it ended up being the perfect day and we had a good time getting apples and making a pie and apple sauce.  Still have more apples in the fridge to do something with (thank goodness for that humongous freezer.  I can have pie until February!) but overall I think a good time was had at Honey Pot Hill Orchards.

I love Eddy's double-fisting action.  Both boys wanted to take a bite out of every apple in the tree, on the ground, in the bag.  I think I found little bites out of three apples when I was peeling for pie this afternoon.

Grandma and Aunt Janeil Are Here!

Grandma and Aunt Janeil are here for a week and my, are we happy to see them!  They got in early this morning after a very long and sleepless night on a plane.  We took it easy today, enjoying the perfect weather outside and playing hard in the yard.

Eddy's my ball boy, for sure.  He loves holding them, throwing them, chasing them, "catching" them. Sometimes (often) they end up under the car.  There it goes, rolling under!

Gotta go get it before Davy grabs it!

Aunt Janeil made a really fun game out of this walker.  Edward was beyond excited.

Davy helped gather lots of sticks from around the yard to make into a "fire."  Then Grandma and Davy were swarmed by mosquitoes, just like real camping.

Davy has been working very hard this week, earning a special toy that he has been wanting for a long time.  After many non-whiny pleas for Buzz, Woody (and Woody's hat, an essential accessory Davy never forgot to specify) at the toy store we frequent, I finally bought the toy but told Davy it was something he needed to earn.  We put the package on top of the fridge and I explained that he had to do lots of work before he could earn the toys.  He did several jobs every day, in addition to his other "family jobs."  He put a star by each job every day and after a whole week of waiting and working he finally earned his toys.  He has been so proud all day, telling Grandma all about the fact that he earned the toys (although the details of how he earned them are delivered in a more vague way.  We'll work on that with more consistency, and charts, and much smaller rewards).  He has show true ownership of these toys--carrying them around with him everywhere, being extra careful with them, and just loving them more--because he worked hard and waited for them.

Eddy has taken a little while to warm up to Grandma, but she's winning him over!  I love this little sequence:

More fun games that Aunt Janeil was willing an energetic enough to do. Edward wants so much to grow up and be like Davy.  I love watching him grow and seeing him learn and develop, but I also miss the little baby he was not so long ago.