Where is Pumpkin?

Sticking with the theme from Andrew's version of the "Where is Thumbkin", we spent the day in the pumpkin patch at Irvine Regional park. Despite the 80 degree weather, flip-flops and sunscreen, everyone was in the fall mood and got into the spirit of the season. We capped off a train ride around the park with a few laps through the hay maze, some cotton candy, a nice bike ride and, of course, some time browsing through the pumpkins. So how did the day go you, you ask? Very well, I thank you. Enjoy.

Owen's First Pumpkin

It's All Gourd to Me


I Found a Little One

It's for the Boys

Fairest of them all

Today we went to Irvine's Global Festival. It's an annual event at a city park with lots of food booths and booths set up by community businesses. We were sitting in the shade enjoying the Hawaiian dancers when a women came over to us to ask for sunscreen. We gave it to her without a second thought. Then she said "I just looked around for the fairest people and I knew I'd find some." Hmm, we may be the whitest people in Irvine - amazing.

Exhibit A

Here's the Saturday newspaper AFTER Eric has read it. I think its folded better now than when it arrived.

Day trip

When Eric and I were dating it seemed like we went on an adventure every week. I told him "you make every weekend seem like vacation." One of our first trips was to San Pedro to visit the Korean Friendship Bell. It's a quick thirty minutes away. The Friendship Bell is incredibly large and built on a hill top bluff park overlooking the Pacific. Last weekend we went there again with the kids. Last time I hadn't even noticed the big playground.

The big bell is in the big pagoda pavilion

Andrew Flying

Me and the boys

Andrew climbing


Riding the seal

Going down the slide

See ya!

Owen 6 months

Owen is six months old! He still is a happy, happy baby. He laughs and smiles very easily. He has another tooth coming in, right next to the first one. So he's drooling alot. His sleeping is getting much better. He took a three hour nap yesterday and last night only woke up twice, briefly at midnight, then at four. So the parental units are getting a little more sleep around here.

Owen is an ACTIVE baby. He army crawls all over the place and is just about to get up on his knees to start crawling properly. When we put him on the floor he can move, he makes a b-line to the toys, usually Andrew's toys. We've had to separate these two a couple of times. Andrew isn't always in a sharing mood.

Owen's six month doctors appointment is next month. When I rescheduled his appointment for the afternoon (now that my afternoons are free), the next available time was October 24th! So, I'll have some statistics next month. Two weeks ago we went to urgent care because Owen had a fever. He had an ear infection - he's better now. His weight at the time was 19.2 pounds. He's outgrown the twelve month outfits and is now into eighteen month outfits. (Andrew can still wear twenty-four month outfits, Owen may catch up soon!)

Owen's continuing with solid food. He's eating cereal in the morning, and pureed fruits and vegetable at lunch, then cereal in the evening. He loves to eat fresh fruit. We bought him a Baby-safe feeder that we can plop peices of fresh fruit into and he loves to chew on it. Strawberries are his favorite so far.

He's a great little baby and pretty fun to have around.

Typical Owen :)

First ride down the slide with Dad

What?

I'm going to get you!

Here I come!

Oops, I fell asleep at the table

Later!

Firsts

Owen fell off of the bed for the first time on Saturday! Ugg, this was awful. Owen just doesn't stay still anymore. Owen now hangs out on the floor. (He's fine).

Andrew 30 months

Did I say that Andrew was on fire last month? Well Andrew was just getting us warmed up for Month 30. Andrew is high energy all the time; High-energy-happy or high-energy-not happy. He's living in these two modes right now. Things are either REALLY GOOD, or things are REALLY AWFUL.

This past month, Andrew has finally taught us not to disobey Andrew Charles Commandment #1: Thou shalt not mess with my schedule. This past weekend we were on the go and we didn't let Andrew have proper naps and boy did we pay. We paid with Old-Testament style punishment: THE WHINING. The whining is really bad, the "my mama" said over and over again, or "my milk" over and over or just that unmistakable whining voice that makes you promise ice-cream for dinner if he will just stop with the whining. (I haven't done the ice-cream for dinner, but I'm not above it!)

I don't think anyone doubted for a second that Eric and Andrew were related, the resemblance is pretty incredible. So I liked to say that Andrew is Eric on the outside and me on the inside. And this has really been working for me because Andrew has been such a model kid. But we've been seeing a combination of a key trait of mine and one of Eric's that is producing a decidedly disagreeable concoction: Eric's perfectionism married to my impatience - eww, it's just as bad as it sounds. Granted, the "it's-not-the-way-that-I-want-it, but-I-am-too-frustrated-to-try-to-figure-it-out" monster appears most often when we have broken Commandment #1, but that doesn't make it o.k. Like last night. Eric and Andrew were playing with his train set. Eric had put the track together and Andrew as happily pushing the train along the track. Then the unspeakable happened; the little tunnel that goes with the track got out of alignment and overlapped the track a bit. Andrew tried to fix it but couldn't get the alignment quite right. This lack of order sent Andrew into full melt down mode. We tried to help but any attempt at fixing it was in his eyes ruining it even more. The only way to make it ok would be to turn back time to before the track got messed up. Like that's ever going happen.

Hmm, see the resemblance?

Mercifully, Andrew's meltdowns usually happen at home. On Saturday at Einstein's Bagels, Andrew was an angel, and a women came up to us and told us she thought so. Andrew can be a rock star in restaurants, he can sit at the table and eat his food just like a real person.

Andrew's vocabulary is exploding and more excitingly, his willingness to talk is increasing. He said hello to a neighbor we didn't know while out on a tricycle ride yesterday. In the past in this situation he would seem shy and wouldn't respond. Now he'll gladly talk or sing his songs out loud instead of wanting us to sing along too. He's also getting better on the phone (when not in melt down mode), and will talk and say hello.

Brotherly relations are getting, well, brotherly. Sometimes Andrew will fully engage with Owen and share toys or make funny faces to try to make him laugh. Other times Andrew will decide he's done playing with Owen and grab a fist full of his hair - like he did last night - twice. Andrew spent alot of time in time out last night.

The motor vehicle infatuation continues. The drive home from Kindercare is really fun because we always see police cars (we go right by the police station), fire-engines (we usually get stopped at a red light right next to the fire station), garbage trucks (no, we don't drive by the dump), and cement mixers (Culver Drive is STILL under construction). Andrew's so excited every time one drives by its like he's seeing it for the first time.

We're still plugging along with the potty training, nothing new to report.

At thirty months Andrew is definitely a handful, but the good exceeds the bad by miles. We wake up everyday so happy we get to hang out with him.

Still working on the yogurt eating

Cousins

Andrew and his tricycle

Why we live in Irvine

Irvine is safest city in Nation.

Its a big part of why we live in Irvine - and the school district kicks-butt too.

Owen's new tooth!

Yeah for teeth!

Disneyland

Before Eric and I had Andrew, we kinda made a pledge that we wouldn't be the kind of parents who took their kids to Disneyland and would instead only expose our children to culturally enriching experiences. I don't exactly know what we had in mind, Junior Opera? We were obviously smoking something. Now after actually having kids, it only took two and a half years to not only go to Disneyland but to buy the ANNUAL PASS too! We went last weekend with my brother and his family and had a great time. Most of the pictures are of us in line because we were on the go most of the day!

Here we are in the parking lot and the excitement level is through the roof! Here's my brother Scott, his wife Kat and Samantha (aka Sammie), Sammie's sister Cassandra (Cassie) is around here too, but not in the picture.

Where's Andrew? (hint, he's on Eric's shoulders in the middle of the photo). This is in the line to get in the park.

Here's Sammie and Andrew having a lot of fun jumping around.

Sammie


Scott and Eric

The elusive Cassie playing with the big earth ball


Owen in line for the Jungle Ride


Eric and Andrew in Toon Town

Andrew sings the classics

Andrew has a new song in his repertory: "Where is Thumbkin", but he's actually singing "Where is Pumpkin". That big crash you just heard? That was me falling over from the cuteness.

Firsts

Owen's first tooth has appeared! It's in the front, on the bottom.

On the bright side

You all know about the lack of sleep happening here at Casa de Capron, but this morning something happened that made it all worthwhile. So Eric, Owen and I were hanging out in the dark this morning at about 4:00 am just chillin' trying to get Owen to think sleeping for a few more hours would be A GOOD IDEA. Finally at about 5:30 we all fell back to sleep. 5:30 is dangerously close to the actual time we need to wake up in order to not have to bend certain laws of physics to get out the door on time. Predictably we slept through our alarm (which is set on radio mode, I guess we shouldn't expect so much from our NPR station). We finally woke up at 6:40am. By the time we emerged from our sleep comas Andrew was already awake. And I think what actually woke us up was Andrew singing over and over "A,B,C,D,E,F,G,...", he was singing the whole alphabet song to himself, correctly, as in the letters were in the right order! I pretty much exploded from the cuteness right then. See what we would have missed if we got up on time?

Changes

I made a big change at work. I'm now working part-time! I've negotiated an 80% schedule and will work 7:30 am to 2:00 pm. I think this will ensure that the stress level around here remains manageable. I'm very excited about this and the additional time I'll have for family and friends!

Working on our fitness

Eric and I bought bikes this weekend. It's time to bring exercise back into our lives. Since the kiddos are not quite of biking age, we got them their own rig. Here they are in their new bike trailer. They had a blast. Andrew did for sure and Owen fell asleep so we figure he was at least comfortable. Today we rode on the paved path from the edge of Newport Beach up through Huntington Beach. It felt really good to get out there in the sunshine and peddle.

A rare sighting...

I snapped this while Owen was napping, so he does sleep, just not in long, parental-rejuvenating stretches. This picture cracks me up because he is sleeping just like me, face-plant style right on the bed.

Owen 5 Months

Owen never sleeps. Yesterday Owen napped for probably 1 hour total. He still wakes up at night and can be up for a hour or so. This more than anything else has changed our lives the most since we had kids. At this age, Andrew could sleep for about 6 hours a day - two really good 3 hour naps. He still takes 3 hour naps. A parent can get a lot done during those naps. Now, we are always "on duty" even at night. The fatigue for me is pretty intense (and has impacted the blogging frequency, I've got about 20 minutes to finish this post before he gets up again!).

Owen doesn't seem to need it or want to sleep that much. So he's had a lot of awake time to work on some skills. Like eating spinach. He doesn't look to sure about it here, but he ate a ton of it!

He's been working out at the pool

He's getting ready to crawl

Hanging out at the zoo with Dad

Aside from being awake all of the time, Owen is a great baby, still very happy and super active. He's going to crawl soon, but even now he can scoot and roll all over the place. He's very big and has graduated from the bucket car seat to the next one up and is now in 12 month outfits.

Andrew 29 Months

En Fuego! Andrew has kicked things up a notch around here. He's louder and faster than ever. Sometimes in the car Andrew will just start making sounds like a train horn - whoo whoo, whoo whooo. Other times Andrew will speak in a really loud voice - just because he can.

He's got a few new favorite phrases:
"Its dark in there!". He likes to say this whenever a light is turned off and when we drive into the garage.

"Going through the tunnel!". He says this when we drive under overpasses, when he runs though our legs, and at playgrounds.

He's getting into counting things: 1 blankie, 1 car, 1 sippy cup - like he's taking an inventory of all his goodies.

He's now a runner. If there's open space he'll make a break for it. Its a little more work to be his parent now. Parking lots are the worst. He does not get it that they are dangerous so we have to man-handle him into the car.

The potty training is a frustrating experience. I just think he's not ready. We bought a training potty this weekend and we are keeping it downstairs so he gets used to sitting on the potty and we hope that once he goes a couple of times just by chance of sitting there, he'll start to make the connection between the feeling and going. So far its not going well. We've let him run around au natural and so far he's peed on the couch and the carpet but not in the potty. In fact he was sitting on the potty for 20 minutes, then got up and peed somewhere else. We've started to bribe him too. If he goes in the potty then he gets a Sally car (she's a character from the movie Cars). Regan is pretty much potty trained so I've gotten a little competitive and want Andrew to be potty trained too. But I think I've just got to relax and let it happen.

Andrew has just moved up into the "Older Two's" class at Kindercare. This was an easy transition since he already knew the teachers and a lot of his friends moved with him.

Andrew has developed a funky squishy-face smile. He whips it out whenever a camera is around, so getting natural photos of Andrew is getting harder. Heres the extra toothy squishy face:

Andrew in motion:

Conquering the big frog at the zoo:

"1 passie, 1 truck, 1 phone..."

1 pretty great kid: