Party Time!

We celebrated Andrew's first birthday with a low-key, semi-last minute get together. Such is the luck of a second child :-(
We had a nice time anyway!



Drew is not a huge fan of cake, but I made cupcakes by request. I held the cupcake OUT of his reach until we had finished singing Happy Birthday.





Drew with his "lil mommas", Amelia and Lilly.



Drew is really a connoisseur of ice cream sundaes (homemade, sonic blasts, mcflurrys, etc.). After he finished his own sundae in his highchair, he started cruising around the kitchen to take care of everyone else's leftovers.



YEAH!!!



Anna is high energy and sometimes a real handful. My cousin, Stephanie, passed on some great advice as to how to approach this "dilemma". Every morning, we ask ourselves, "How are we gonna wear her out today?" and try to plan activities that involve incredible energy expenditure. On Wednesday, we met Kristen and the kids at an indoor bounce place full of different kinds of spacewalks.

Drew's favorite thing to do is "jump jump jump". So what if Anna's nose gets in the way?



Peter and Drew had a lot of fun in the blow up ball pit. I didn't know these still existed!


Peter is high-energy too!



Drew LOVES to make sure his immune system is still working!



Both kids conked out on the way home and slept all the way until the next morning.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!



On Sunday, we drove down to NO for Father's day dinner with my parents and Stephen. First, we went by the house to see the progress. Uncle Stephen was VERY entertaining. He and Anna jumped on the beds, threw grapes, and danced.



Grandma gave Drew a taste of the Hughes Family drink of choice.
He fits right in.
I am still the only Black Sheep.



Grandma giving me a stern talking to on the merits of posting photos of her previous action. She seemed convinced that I would misconstrue the events and show her in a bad light.
Cause I've never done that before.



While Stephen picked some stuff out of Drew's hair, I maintained my innocence. She was not convinced.



Right, Drew?



So then we had a small dance party, in hopes of wearing out these two turkeys before dinner.



No such luck.

I have a video, but blogger won't let me upload it. I will look into other options.

Big Boy's B-Day

Andrew turned 1 on Saturday. Anna helped him open his gifts.



A musical choo-choo!




Which, Andrew quickly reminded Anna, was his!




Andrew also got to turn around! The entire ride home, he kept looking around, not knowing WHAT to think!




Nanny and Poppy got a cake for dessert. We'll have a celebration this weekend with more family and friends.




Drew seemed too far away from the cake in his high chair, so I moved him to the table and we started singing "Happy Birthday".




When it was time to blow out the candle, he just reached over to the cake and grabbed a big chunk out of it! Didn't foresee THAT happening...




So we put him back in his high chair. This is when he was getting excited about being able to eat an entire piece of cake!




But once the cake and ice cream was set in front of him, Drew didn't seem to know what to do!




Good thing Anna was there to show him!




We've got little monkey man here doing exactly what his big sister did!



Peek a boo!





Obviously, we had to throw both of these hooligans in the tub.




Where they got into even more shenanigans.




We LOVE summer!





This is where Drew shoved an entire half of a peanut butter sandwich in his mouth. See the excellent use of pouching going on?



I swear, we really do feed this boy! Apparently first and second breakfast is not enough, because he pulled the box of cheerios down and dumped them out in 2.73 seconds!







I have a video of Anna doing the same thing here.



Anna has taken swim lessons at Crawfish Aquatics during the past two weeks. It is where I swam on the Master's Team in 2006-7 and taught lessons during the summer of 2008. They get results! We are so proud of her!



Here is a video of her swimming!





And a video of her jumping in and "saving herself"!




Yay Anna!

The Puppy and the Frog

Fritz has a penchant for anything stuffed that makes noise (and pretty much everything else he thinks that we don't want him to have). One morning he went for the frog:



Andrew tried his hardest to pull the frog away from Fritz.



Then he tried a different approach.



Here's what Drew did when he realized that he wasn't going to win.



Fritz knew he was in trouble and tried make himself look like the victim. "This frog here just jumped into my mouth, see, and uh, made me clamp my jaws down around him..."



We had peach cobbler with whipped cream after Sunday dinner. Andrew really whipped the cream.




We had graduation one evening last week. Here are only some of my AP Bio faves. I truly enjoyed each and every one of the 34 students in my class!



Anna loves to "jump" Andrew, and he loves it too!



As you can see, he's still teething. Almost all 4 molars have popped their way through. It's been tough for our Roo man. I was about to buy stock in baby ibuprofen.



Last Sunday, Drew took his bath at Nanny and Poppy's. This is an outfit of Shaun's that Mary Jane saved, so we put it on Andrew and did a little photo shoot.



Mary Jane took an almost identical photo with Shaun almost 31 years ago.



And this is a typical occurrence too.



Anna and I went to the dentist and she did a great job.
The dentist told her to keep up the good work!



Yesterday, Nanny picked up Anna to go to Target and Chick-Fil-A. When Mary Jane asked Anna if she had everything, Anna told her, "Yes, I have my purse and my credit cards."
(She has the fake cards that get sent by the credit card companies in the mail, and puts them in an old wallet of Mary Jane's)

While at Target, Anna pointed out MANY items that she wanted. When Mary Jane said, "Anna, you want an awful lot of stuff. Who's going to pay for all that?"
Anna responded, "I have credit cards!"

At Chick-Fil-A after ordering, Anna told Mary Jane that she was going to pay for lunch, because she had credit cards. Mary Jane said, "Thank you Anna, but your credit carts are just pretend."
"NO, they're REAL!" Anna insisted.
"Ok, Anna," MJ said consolingly.

Shaun and I were about to leave to drop Drew off at Nanny and Poppy's so we could go out for dinner and a movie. Shaun started getting distressed because he couldn't find his wallet. We tore the house apart, called places we had been, looked in the wash, through the garbage, etc. Finally, I called MJ and Carl to ask Anna if she had seen Shaun's wallet.

"No, I don't have Daddy's wallet," Anna said distractedly.

We continued searching. I finally went into Anna's room, where I saw another one of her play purses. Inside was an empty wallet.
Shaun's empty wallet.



We called MJ and Carl again, and asked them to take a look inside of Anna's play wallet.

Mystery solved.

"Anna, why didn't you tell me that you took Daddy's wallet?" I asked.
"I didn't take his wallet, I just took his credit cards!" she responded.

Big Hungry

This is what happened when Andrew got hungry and we didn't feed him fast enough.

"Andrew, do you want something to eat?" Obviously, he is communicating.

This is the look I got when I told him that toilet paper is yucky.

Since the toilet paper didn't cut it, he tried going for the camera (and/or me)!






Here he's got Fritz's golf ball. Fritz LOVES to chew on it, so I guess Drew thought that it would be a good idea?





When I finally got Drew dressed and fed him real food, this is what he did to the banana.




Yep, he's got HALF of it pouched in his mouth. When any would ooze out, he'd just push it back in.

Andrew has discovered the joys of "on and off". He is very impressed with himself.

Here are a few cute ones that I took on Mother's Day after dinner.

This is the face he made when I told him that eating Poppy's sandals was yucky.


Anna went swimming in her pool. Originally, she was naked, but we told her that she HAD to wear a bathing suit. So, she pulled this one out from when she was about 2 years old. It is on backwards. She is also wearing her winter hat and old tap shoes.


I said, "Anna, that suit is too small. Look how low it is on your chest!"


She responded, "But it covers my nipples, so it's OK!"





Eating cupcakes after Sunday dinner:

Whoo hoo, we're ready for the summer!!