I was so excited for Seth’s party because he was old enough to “get it” this year. I didn’t want to tell him about it too early or else he’d be asking about it every 10 seconds.  So when I finally told him that we would be having a whole party just for him and the whole family would be coming, he thought about it for a few seconds and then said, “I have cake?”  He has his priorities straight.  Ben’s step-mom made the most gorgeous cake in honor of our little train theme:

She even made it fall themed with little pumpkins and leaves.  I was in love with it.  Seth was so excited about the “big train!” that he didn’t even realize it was cake.  That discovery came later.

First was presents!  Despite the fact that Seth usually says thank you about a thousand times a day.  I could not get him to say thank you for even one present.  He was however polite enough to look at the cards:

Course he’s been running around the house saying, “Big Train! Thank you Grandma! Thank you Grandpa!” ever since.  The train set was a big hit.  It works by remote control.  He loves it!

Asking Great Grampa for some help opening “a big truck”:

He’s been sleeping with this truck and bringing it everywhere:

And to balance out all the trucks and cars and trains Auntie and Uncle John got him an awesome kitchen.  Seth loves to cook!

And of course the main event:  cake!

And the cake tasted every bit as good as it looked!

Seth had a blast!  And then on his actual birthday Seth got to open Mommy and Daddy’s gift:


Happy #2, buddy!

We did a train theme for his party because he’s in love with trains right now.  Ben and I decorated while he was asleep and here’s a little video of him checking it out in the morning.  He was so excited!

How can it be that my baby is two years old already?!  Seth is getting to be such a big boy.  He’s a little chatterbox always talking and asking questions.  And always, always getting into trouble!  But so much fun! He sings most of the alphabet now and twinkle, twinkle little star.  Plus he can count to 17 or 18.  Can’t believe how fast they grow!

We had a little family party yesterday to celebrate and I’ll post some pics of that soon, but for today here’s just a few of the birthday boy.

I totally forgot the Autumn Bear.  I know I’m a horrible Mother.  The first year I take pictures every month and this year I can’t even remember the bear…sigh.

And compared to last year:

Enjoying the beautiful Fall day:

Our silly boy playing in the leaves:

Happy Birthday, Seth!

Saturday was such a gorgeous Autumn day that I decided to take Seth apple picking.  It was his first time going and my first time since I was a kid.   Seth was quite impressed that apples were actually attached to the trees.

Seth managed to fill the bag in about 20 minutes and then couldn’t figure out why the bag was too heavy to carry.

That’s a lot of apples!  Seth has been super excited about eating them, though, and keeps talking about, “Apples!  Trees! Pick them!”  There is lots of baking in my future.  We’ve already finished our first apple crisp.  I love the fall!

So we’ve (well mostly me with a bit of help from Jaime while Ben watched Seth) been busy redoing our basement to make it a bright, cheery, usable space again.   Here is the big reveal:

Basement playroom before(well a little bit during):

And the new playroom/guestroom now:

Doesn’t that bed look cozy?  Come stay with us! (Milo will move for guests.)And the basement office before:

And after - before furniture:

And with our computer desk and my craft desk (obviously I need to put up some wall decor in here):

The little kitchenette area:

And the bathroom which has no before since we had it put in when we first bought the house, but it got a new floor and some new fixtures:

So I know a little overkill on the pictures, but I’ve been basically living down there since July.  It’s so nice to be able to use the space and for it to feel like part of our house again.  And look, I managed a whole post that wasn’t about Seth!

Wow can’t believe how long it’s been since we’ve blogged! (well since I’ve blogged since Ben never does)  We’ve had a busy summer redoing the basement and starting on a big boy room for Seth.  We did get to go on vacation to the Cape, though.  It was the first year since I’ve been born that we rented a place, but we were lucky enough to find a really nice cottage in Onset with enough bedrooms for everyone. since we vacation with my sister’s family, too, and within walking distance to the beach.  We had only planned to stay one week, but the place wasn’t rented for the next week so we got it for a huge discount.  Unfortunately the guys had to back to work, but my sister and I stayed with the kids.  We also managed to have the two best weeks of weather out of the entire summer!  So of course we took way too many pictures, but here is our Cape adventure for ‘09.

The main activity at the Cape is beaching!  Here’s Seth pulling his own wagon of toys:

Seth loved, loved, loved the beach.  He had a blast playing in the sand and the ocean.  He was running around like a crazy kid, looking drunk as he could barely stay upright in the sand, chasing seagulls calling them “chickens” and just general silliness.  Seth also loved dipping his snack in the sand and then eating it.  He’s ridiculous, but he definitely kept us entertained.

Yeah, it took me forever to get all the sand out of his hair.  He also loved the water and had no fear.  He kept trying to go in as deep as Lena.

I looked everywhere for a nice light little chair for Seth for the beach and found one that you could actually wear as a back pack.  Though Seth was still a bit too little to carry it, so I wore it on my back.  I’m sure I looked extremely cool, too. Seth liked it, but not as much as my chair.

Seth loved having two whole weeks to spend with his “Lenie”.  Although the poor girl was tackled, had her pulled and was pinned down constantly by him.  She was really good with him though.  Here’s Seth playing in her bed:

And trying to fit into a lobster pot (excuse the shirt, Ben let him have some Trix cereal):

Seth also had his first boat ride on the Viking, the same boat we’ve been riding since we were kids, through the canal.  Seth loved it!

Then one day after the guys had left I decided to take Seth out to a grassy patch near the beach to get some nice pictures of Seth.  Turns out the “grassy patch” was some sort of suck your shoes off wetlands, also the huge grassy area was not big enough for my kid and he tried to run over the little cliff, without his shoes since they were sucked off.  So I had to chase him, also barefoot.  Seth than fell and was completely covered in muck.  And in my attempt to clean myself off when we got back to the cottage, I left Seth unattended just long enough for him to submerge my cell phone in a cup of water and fry it. So much for my gorgeous Cape photos.  These are the few I managed to salvage out of the exhausting attempt:

My sister and I also took the kids to the Cape Cod Childrens Museum.  Which is the best place ever for little kids.  It was the perfect setup for both Seth’s age and Lena’s age.  Both the kids had fun.  There was tons of stuff for them to do.  The place was laid out well.  And there were super comfortable chairs everywhere.  And I actually got to sit on them, which is amazing because usually I am just chasing Seth the whole time trying to get him not to break stuff.  The place was completely safe for him and was able to keep Lena and older kids interested, too.  They even had a little craft center to color and glue.  Magical.  Seriously.  We stayed for 4 hours.  Seth loved the music room…though he did quickly decide to play the keyboard with the drumsticks, but whatever he’s creative.

Then we took a gamble and went on a whale watch.  I thought this had potential for disaster.  My very active toddler stuck on a boat in open ocean for 3 or 4 hours with extremely large mammals in the water.  Seth, however, loved it!  He loved the fast, bumpy ride out.  He did some crazy dance the whole way accompanied by Vroom, Vroom and Choo Choo noises because, well Mama didn’t know what sound a boat makes.

He pretended to drive the boat:

And we actually saw whales, close enough to the boat and obvious enough that even Seth couldn’t miss them:

These three whales came right up to the boat and just hung with us for a while. Course Seth kept asking to “hold whales” and “reach them, Mama.”  He is still talking about them.  “Where whales go, Mama?”

And we even got to see lots of dives and whales’ tails:

It was an awesome vacation all and all.  It was so nice to be able to share all the great things about my childhood summers with Seth.  And it blew me away how much he’s grown since last year.  Here’s a picture of him riding the same ride at the Zooquarium this year and last year:

Crazy, isn’t it?!  Well a perfect end to a kind of cold, rainy summer.  And on to a hopfully beautiful Autumn!

One of my coworkers’ Dad has Season Tickets to the Red Sox game, 3rd row seats behind first base, and some years the station buys the tickets to take the staff.  This year they had an extra ticket so Ben got to come with us and we brought along Seth because he’s under 2 and free!  Seth had a blast!  He actually stayed in the seats and was amused by the experience the whole time, even through extra innings that went to 11pm!  Of course the Sox were leading most of the game, blew their lead in the 9th and then lost the game, but we all still had an awesome time.

All decked out in Red Sox Gear:

And his parents wearing matching Red Sox shirts Ben bought us:

Watching the game with Dada:

Once the Sox blew their lead people cleared out and Ben brought Seth to the front row where he pounded on the wall:

He even got a ball after the game was over:

Plus they carried him onto the field:

And the whole (tired!) family after the game:

 I’m so glad Ben convinced me to bring him.  Seth was beyond thrilled about getting a ball.  It was all he would talk about and he wanted to sleep with it, but the mean parents that we are wouldn’t let him, afraid he’d chew on it.  We want to keep it around so we can tell him the story of his first Red Sox game.  Thanks to LCTV!

 

For as long as I can remember our family tradition for the 4th of July is to have a big family cookout at the Cape.  This year that just wasn’t in the cards so we did our best to celebrate locally.  First we had a small little BBQ at my sisters’ and finally got to swim in the pool - our first time this season!  Seth loved it!

All the swimming tired him out a little and he rested on Dada.

 

After a good long nap we all headed out to a local carnival.  There were some fun games and activities for the kids.  By far Seth’s favorite was the train ride with Mama and Lena.

After checking everything out we grabbed some dinner and hung out at the blanket.

Seth won a little horn at one of the carnival games.

But as always Seth mostly just enjoyed running around and chasing Lena.

As the sun went down and it got cooler we took a walk around again to check out the pie eating contest (yuck!) and the band.

We stopped and let Seth play in the hay that they hid candy in, which was completely cleared out by that time, but Seth didn’t mind.


After that we headed back to our spot and waited for the main event: Fireworks.  These were the first fireworks Seth has ever seen and unfortunately, I didn’t do a very good job of prepping him for them.  Why it didn’t occur to me that loud exploding lights might freak him out, I don’t know, but Dada was very good at explaining them to Seth and soon he was enjoying them, saying, “Lights, Up, Sky, Boom, Lenie?”  I don’t know what the Lenie was about, but he loves his cousin and for some reason he had to ask about her each time.

It wasn’t the same as the Cape and we got stuck in over an hour of traffic getting out of the parking lot, so we didn’t get home until almost midnight.  But it was fun, the kids had a great time, and really that’s all that matters. And I have about 3 pounds of dessert leftover.  So ultimately a success!

Happy 4th of July 2009!

Seth loves, loves, loves to play in the dirt!  If he is outside for more than a minute he is sitting in dirt.  I got him a bucket and shovel to play with.  He just plunks himself down in our garden scooping up dirt and is in heaven. And by garden I mean the section of our lawn set aside for really tall weeds to grow, eventually we will plant actual vegetables in there, really!

One day we were out in the yard and I was busy working on getting our pool clean.  I walk over to check on Seth and he is eating the dirt.  Apparently it is quite tasty. And of course like any good parent instead of stopping him I run for the camera. Here he is after being “caught” by Mama:

With all the rain lately Seth hasn’t been getting much outside time, but this morning we finally had a little pocket of sunshine.  So after our walk we played in the backyard.  Seth was thrilled to discover that his bucket of dirt was also filled with water.  He had a blast mixing up some mud stew.  He kept looking up at me and saying “mixing, Mama!  mixing, Mama!”.  Of course when he had enough he dumped the bucket all over himself and decided to pull apart the pickets on the little fence that surrounds our “garden”.

He takes a lot of baths!  Today it was 2 in one day, but we love our dirty boy!

Ben, Seth and I spent Friday through Sunday of Memorial Day weekend watching my niece Lena so that my sister and brother-in-law could have a much needed anniversary weekend away, probably the last overnight kid free trip they’ll have before the new baby arrives in October.  Seth was so excited to get to spend the whole weekend with his “Lenie”.  I took both of the kids to park and wore the three of us out!  I had no idea how exhausting it would be to try and keep an eye on two kids at the park! But we had lots of fun and I got lots of pics.  Here are a few (I don’t put any face pics of kids on the blog without Mom’s permission, but I got lots of cute ones of Lena, too.)

Seth looking like such a big boy!

Feeding the chickens at the zoo.

Lena helping Seth with his lost shoe.  She’s such a sweetie!

And a couple of Seth going down the big kid slide all by himself!

 

Then Sunday we went to a fabulous BBQ at a friends house and Seth rediscovered watermelon, which he hasn’t had since last summer.  We had our own little BBQ just the three of us on Monday and picked up some more for him to enjoy:

Hope you all got to spend Memorial Day with loved ones, too!