Another of our signature photos . . .

Just one we took at the park a few weeks ago.  These photos are making me increasingly nervous these days as Evan is no light-weight anymore.  

Keuka 2012

The weekend at Keuka is one of our favorites of the year: family, fun and food . . . that's what the weekend is all about.  I wish I could have been there to photograph all of the events, but here are the pics I was able to take on Friday and Sunday.  In the few hours I was there, I got so many cute photos.  Here we start with Brian, Evan & Morgan in the lake:

And Evan practicing his swimming:

And our baby girl swimming to meet her dad in the lake.  On Saturday, she actually jumped off the dock as Brian drove away in the boat.  They had to go back to "rescue" her because she would have just kept going trying to catch them.

 Morgan looking like such a cutie in her bathing suit:

The next series of pictures are from when I returned on Sunday.  Evan was in all of his glory because Uncle Cliff actually let him drive the boat.  The boat was on the slowest possible speed and supposedly, on Saturday, all Evan did was drive it in continuous circles.  Prior to this weekend, Evan was terrified of any sort of flotation devices.  We were worried he wouldn't put on his jacket and get to go on the boat.  But we called it his "special boat jacket" and that made it better for him.  He gave us no issue whatsoever:

This picture makes me laugh every time I look at.  He looks so proud and like he's really doing his best to steer the boat:

 And here I am with Evan on the boat:

 Morgan on the boat:

 And her turn driving the boat:

Now it was onto water-skiing time.  Here is Brian showing off his skills:

And Brian's photography of me skiing wasn't too great, but I was proud to get up on my skiis.  Of course, I've been sore ever since. I'm s out of shape.

 Here is Eric enjoying the lake scenery in the Baby Bjorn:

 And one last shot of Uncle Tommy sailing on Keuka:

 I'm ready for next year's trip already!

Jessica's Bachelorette Weekend

This past weekend, we headed up to the Finger Lakes in upstate NY for some family time and bachelorette fun.  This first posting will be show some pics from Jessica's bachelorette party.  I am matron of honor in Jessica's wedding and this trip was her last hurrah as a single woman.  We headed to Seneca Lake for a weekend of R&R.  It was perfection.  There are really not too many more peaceful places on this earth: 

Here was the view of our hotel at sunset from our outdoor dinner table:

 Our first stop Saturday was at Glenora Wine Cellars:

Jess taught the group about your "dominant nostril", which became the joke of the trip.  In case you were wondering, supposedly one nostril is more sensitive to smell than your other one and this is the nostril that should be used for sniffing wine:

 The ladies on the deck at Glenora after sharing a bottle of wine overlooking Seneca:

Next stop was Anthony Rd for a look at the grapes:

 The ladies at Anthony Rd:

So happy to be matron of honor for Jessica's wedding.  Just one month to go!

Eric is 5 months old!

Our little peanut turns 5 months old tomorrow! He continues to be our sweet, happy and easy-going baby boy. He is a great sleeper - going from 8:00 PM to 7:00 AM regularly. In the past month, he has consistently flips to his belly and sleeps comfortably there.  He likes to babble non-stop.  His daycare teachers laugh at how they will put him in his crib for a nap and he will babble there for 30 minutes before falling asleep.  I don't know what we did to deserve this sleeper, but we put him into his crib wide awake and he puts himself to sleep. I have never seen anything like it.  At this age with Evan, we had to rock him until he was dead asleep and tip-toe over to his crib to place him down.  Other than that, he likes to laugh when we sing to him.  I'd say singing to him is his favorite thing right now.  If he's in a bad mood, I just start singing and he'll giggle.  He must know how awful my singing is :)  In any case, the time is flying by since Eric joined our family.  I thought it went quickly with Evan, but this is going doubly as fast. 

Here is at his 5 month photo shoot:   

And here is compared to Evan at 5 months.  Evan was definitely more skilled at sitting up than Eric at this same time.  Where Evan could fully sit up on his own at 6 months old, I'm fairly certain that Eric won't be sitting on his own in the near future.  Eric's picture looks fuzzy b/c he was falling over as the picture was being taken:  

And we went to our local park this past weekend and I got some cute pics of Eric laying in the grass.  It's been a long time since I took some photos of him - in fact, I hardly had any from his 4 month to 5 month pictures.  But since we had a relaxing weekend at home, I was able to get the camera out:

And some close ups of his sweet little face:

This week is his last week at my work day care and I am going to miss having him nearby and being able to nurse him during the day.  We'll have to get into a whole new routine and I'm a little nervous about that.  Currently, Brian drops off and picks up Evan, gets home and starts making dinner.  I will be changing to do both pick-ups now and so I will somehow have to make dinner with both of the boys to care for. It's not going to be easy but I guess I'll figure it out. 

I recently found this old picture of myself at around the same age as Evan.  There's no denying the resemblance.  When Brian saw this, he said "aww, you looked like such a cute little boy".   My picture was also recently shown at a baby-picture-guessing contest at work.  And everyone said it looked like I was being decapitated.  The safety technology has come a long way on swingsets. 

And I have to tell this story.  Evan's vocabulary is literally growing by the minute.  It's amazing to me how much his speech has developed in the last few months.  But the other night was a first.  I got home from work and I had a skirt on.  I don't ever see Evan in the morning, so he was seeing me for the first time that day.  When I walked in, he said to me "Mommy, you look pretty."  We have really never really used the word "pretty" too much at home.  I don't know where he learned it or how to use it properly.  But it melted my heart.  He is entering a really, really sweet phase right now.  Some of the bumps we ran into when Eric arrived have definitely smoothed out.  For the first few months, being home alone with both of them was not something I was too comfortable with.  But tonight, Brian was gone at the Phillies night and it didn't seem as hard as it had in the past.  But I do want someone to please stop time because I am not ready for my babies to grow up!

Evan is going to be . . .

. . . Either a really good baseball player, as demonstrated by his hitting abilities.  He could throw a ball with pinpoint accuracy before he could walk.  And he can hit off a tee pretty well for his age. 

. . . Or a Howard Stern fan.  Brian has taught Evan to say "Ok boss, Whatever you say boss" when I ask him to do something.  If you've ever listened to the show, this will be familiar to you. He does it in his best "Baba Booey" accent, which means "boss" is pronounced as "boff". 

He's at such a cute phase right now . . . when his finger is not up his nose :)

Random pics

It's been awhile since I've put up any new pictures of Eric.  Now that I'm back to work, my free time for taking pictures and blogging is pretty much non existent.  But here are some pics of our little peanut.  First, sitting in his bumbo.  Evan was too big to really enjoy the bumbo - his thighs got stuck.  Eric, on the other hand, fits right in it.

And I love this outfit on Eric and he was happy to model it for me:

As for Evan, he has a new comforting tactic.  Everytime we get into a bad habit, I have to remind myself that this, too, shall pass.  Evan's latest habit is to stick his finger up his nose when he's feeling shy or apprehensive in a new situation.  And since pretty much any new situation makes him apprehensive, he spends more than half of his time out and about with a finger up his nose . . . and it's REALLY up his nose.  This is an older picture from the Blue Rocks game we attended a few weeks ago.  Hope this phase ends sooner rather than later!

Goshen Country Fair

Last night we headed out to the Goshen Country Fair for the evening.  Upon first arrival, Evan was terrified of one ride that was just a big loop that a roller-coaster would ride on (upside down ride).  It's not like we were asking him to ride on this - we just had to walk by it to get to the other rides.  And he was crying and saying "I don't like this."  When we finally got past the ride, he kept looking back at it like it was going to attack him. In any case, we decided to give some of the little-kid rides a try and we weren't sure how he'd react.  I'm pretty sure he wouldn't do any ride that we couldn't ride next to him on.  But he enjoyed the car ride and the carousel on which we could accompany him.  All I had was my iphone to take pics with but here are the few pictures we got:

 

In addition, the fair has cows, goats, sheep & chickens to look at.  He had a great time getting to pet the cows and laughed hysterically when they moo-ed.  Hopefully he'll get a little more brave on the rides as the years go on!