Third Time's The Charm

We had our Ward Christmas Party on Saturday and I told myself that I wouldn't force a picture of Easton with Santa Claus but once Santa made his appearance, Easton seemed rather interested in him. In fact he was within touching distance on Santa several times. I waited until all the kids in the ward sat on Santa's lap before I attempted to put Easton on his lap. I was a little worried still, but I figured Easton saw that Santa wasn't all that scary and wasn't hurting any of the kids. I put Easton on Santa's lap and got this cute picture.

Easton on Santa's lap.

Close up of Easton's face this time on Santa's lap. He definitely looks a lot happier this time.

Easton checking out Santa.

Easton with Renee (one of the young women from our ward). Easton loves Renee.

School Christmas Party

On Wednesday we went to Nathan's school for the Christmas Party. It was really nice to spend the evening out with Nathan and Easton since it really hasn't happened for a while now. We ate dinner and talked with a couple of friends. It was also nice to see some of our friends and get caught up since we hardly see them because all our husbands are super busy with rotations. Santa also made an appearance and again Easton was not very thrilled to see or sit on Santa's lap. He cried but at least he got a little goodie bag to compensate for the scary old man that scares him to death. We have another Christmas party tomorrow and I'm sure Santa will make an appearance there too. I'm guessing Easton won't be getting anywhere near Santa so he probably won't be getting his picture taken either. I figure two pictures with scary Santa is enough for one year why push three when I doubt his feelings towards Santa probably won't change after three days. Maybe next year.

Easton on Santa's lap. I zoomed in so you could see up close and personal how terrified Easton is of Santa. What a sad little face.

Yesterday was probably one of the best days ever! Nathan had the day off so we spent the whole day together (no tests or papers to worry about-this never happens). We spent the day shopping for Christmas gifts, groceries, a pack and play (finally!), and we even had time to watch the new Batman movie while Easton naped. It was a great day and I am definitely looking forward to Nathan's Christmas break so we can have more days like this one.

Bobbing for Raisins

Yesterday while I was baking cookies I gave Easton some raisins to snack on before dinner. I had my back to him but could tell that he had dumped them on the floor. This is not uncommon behavior for him to dump them out and either put them back into the container and eat them or just eat them off the floor (gross I know but honestly what kid doesn't do this?). Anyways, after I had finished putting all the cookie dough on the cookie sheets I turned around to find this... Bobbing for raisins anyone? I have no idea where he picked this up from. Maybe he thinks he's a dog?

Latest Update

Easton is officially 18 months old and finally made his way into nursery. I thought Nathan would be excited for this day (as most parents are) but instead it turns out that he was missing his little buddy (or maybe snacking with his little buddy : )). In any case he lost his first child to nursery but will soon gain another to play with in about six months. I’m pretty sure most everyone knows that we are expecting our second child in June (another Gemini-poor Nathan) but if not…Surprise! Easton is going to be a big brother and we are going to be parents again! We are all really excited (well I guess I can't really speak for Easton since I'm not exactly sure he completely understands what is happening). The picture below is what we emailed to family to announce our wonderful news.

Thanksgiving was great! We got to spend the feast with a bunch of friends who like us don’t have any family in the area. Thanks guys! The best part was that Nathan got to spend the whole day with us. He was supposed to work on call that day but luckily for all of us they were nice enough to let him have the day off. He had to go in Friday early morning but got off a little before noon. Thank goodness for me because I was sick (and when I say sick I mean sick) all day Friday (morning sickness) so it was nice to have him entertain Easton. Easton and I did try the whole black Friday thing but that lasted a whopping 1 ½ hours with no success. We tried to get a GPS at Kmart but it turned out that we were almost an hour late for the deals. Apparently Nathan and I looked at the ad for Thanksgiving Day (not Black Friday) which started at 7am. Black Friday started at 6am. Next, we headed to Kohl’s to grab some kitchen knifes. Nathan actually went earlier in the morning to get them but because the line was extremely long and he only had 15 min before he had to leave for work he hid a box of knifes in case there were none left when I went to get them. Of course there were no knifes left so I called Nathan to find out where he stashed the box of knifes. As my luck would have it, those knifes were gone too. Easton and I were tired (I had to wake him up) and I was sick so we called it a day, hoped into the warm cozy bed, and fell asleep.

On Sunday we decided to decorate for Christmas. Easton was very interested in everything and more than willing to help out in anyway that he could. His absolute favorite was the Christmas boxes that we put under our tree. He could play with these boxes for hours if we would let him (he has started to ruin them a little so we had to put most of them away). Unfortunately with no boxes to keep him entertained he has moved on to tree decorations. I wouldn’t mind so much if they weren’t glass and I wasn’t afraid that he would break it and cut himself. We finally had to move the tree to higher grounds. Maybe it was a little too soon to bring out the decorations. Also on Sunday we had to take Easton's stitches out. Nathan had the pleasure of taking them out while I had the pleasure of holding Easton down. It was not as easy and as smooth as I thought it would be. Easton's wound had scabbed over his stitches so we had to remove the scab before we could remove the stitches. If that wasn’t painful enough, the stitches were so close to his skin that Nathan had to basically cut pieces of Easton’s skin off with his stitches. It was not a pretty sight. I hope we don’t have to go through this again. FYI Easton had eight external stitches not seven.

Video of Easton with the boxes. Not in the video but so far he has lined up all the boxes in a somewhat straight row, he has stacked five boxes on top of each other, and he is constantly moving the boxes from out under the tree to one side of the room and then back under the tree. He is a very busy little boy. Who needs Christmas toys when you have boxes?

Cali Trip

Overall, Easton and I had a great trip to Cali. I wish I could have documented the trip while I was in Cali because I know I am going to miss a lot of stuff, but unfortunately I couldn’t figure out how to download the pictures off my camera onto my sisters computer, so basically this will be a small glimpse (probably a long post) of what we were up to the last three weeks. Easton got to experience a couple of fun and not so fun firsts.

Easton’s first Jamba. We also rode a trolley around Victoria Garden’s (first trolley ride for Easton).

Easton and Aaron playing at a park.

Aaron ice skating. He is only three and is already playing ice hockey.

Easton’s first Birthday Party (besides his own). Happy 3rd Birthday Aaron! I got to help prepare the week before for Aaron’s party. My sister, Jana, goes way out when it comes to birthday parties. It was cars theme. For the kids there were balloon animals, football toss (cardboard with lightning mcqueen drawn and painted on it- this took me several hours to make and only several minutes for the kids to play with. What you don’t do for your nephew. I wish I had a picture of it because I’m pretty proud of it and how it turned out.), races (race cars made from cardboard and painted different colors. Again took several hours but fortunately my sister helped out with these.), cars piñata full of goodie bags, and goodie bags for the kids to take home with them. Jana made two lightning mcqueen cakes that turned out great. She did all this a week before she was due. How crazy is that?

Easton’s first real train ride (he has been on the metro but I don’t really count that). Jana and I were going to take the boys to see Thomas train but because my sister had baby Aiden the day before we were scheduled to do this, my mom filled in for her. Overall, we had a great time. There were several fun activities for the kids to do along with riding Thomas. There were tattoos, imagination station (several Thomas tracks with trains to play with, Thomas stamps, Thomas coloring, etc.), petting zoo, jump houses, video and story house, trolley rides, etc. The boys really seemed to enjoy themselves minus the petting zoo-some of those animals were scary. They constantly thought you had food for them so they would run up to you (some of them were taller than Easton) and basically stock you.

Me, Easton, my Mom, and Aaron on the trolley.

Me and Aaron feeding the animals. Aaron very timid.

Grandma and Aaron

Easton and Aaron waiting for Thomas Train.

Easton very excited about the train ride.

We also took the boys to see Santa. At the Bass Pro shop they were offering free pictures with Santa. Lets just say the picture tells it all of how much Easton enjoyed sitting on Santa’s lap. Ms. Claus was also there reading stories to the kids and singing Christmas songs. If you can't tell Easton is definitely crying like he did last year on Santa's lap. I guess Easton hasn't figured it out yet that Santa is the one who brings toys and goodies. To him Santa is just a scary old man.

Ms. Claus reading stories to the children.

Easton’s first and hopefully last time getting stitches. Last Sunday we went to visit Jana’s dad (Nate). While we were there Easton ran into the other room and must have tripped over the rug where he ended up hitting his head on the coffee table. Needless to say, I heard crying and screaming and ran into the other room to find blood coming from his forehead. I rushed him to the kitchen to get a towel to apply pressure. Candy (Nate’s girlfriend) took one look at it and told me he needed stitches. Nate took us to the ER and Easton ended up with four internal stitches and seven external stitches. It was really sad and hard to see Easton go through this, but luckily I had Jana’s Dad there to guide me through the whole thing. They say it is harder on the mother than the patient which is probably true, but still it is hard to be just a couple of feet away watching your son strapped down crying and screaming in what you think is pain (the doctors claimed he couldn’t feel anything-but I’m not entirely sure that was the case) and you can’t do anything but watch. That has got to be the worst feeling in the world- to not be able to hold and comfort your child when they are in pain.

Here are a couple of pictures from when we were carving our pumpkin. I know it is about a month too late but I forgot to post before I left for Cali.

Nathan carving the pumpkin.

Easton eating baked pumpkin seeds.

Final product. Scooby-Doo (dracula style).

Baby Aiden

So a lot has happened since I left Maryland for California to help my sister out with the delivery of her cute little baby boy. I will have to post later all the fun things we have done while here in Cali., but in the mean time I will post the most important thing that brought me here. On Nov. 10th my sister woke up at about 1:00 in the morning in pain and by 2:00 she was having contractions and started keeping track of them. By about 4:00 we decided her contractions were pretty consistent and called a friend to watch both Aaron and Easton while I took Jana to the hospital. This was supposed to be my mom's job (to be the coach) but because she was still in Washington awaiting her flight I was the one designated to drive and be coach. We dropped the boys off around 4:40 and drove to the hospital. We pulled into emergency and had to basically take a tour of the entire hospital to find the labor and delivery area. When we finally got there I handed the lady my sister's medical card and ID (at about this time we believe my sister's water had just broke and her contractions were probably about 1 min or less apart). It was happening so fast. We actually didn't even have time to fill out the admittance slips. The lady realized that Jana was going so fast that they called someone who came and wheeled Jana quickly to the first room, told her to get up and take her pants off, and then lay down on the table. Once she was finally on the table the mid wife (no time to call the doctor) told her to push and after 1 1/2 pushes and 4 min after I handed the lady her medical card, baby Aiden Tong-Min was born. He was 6 lbs 9 oz and 20 inches long. He is so adorable. I am just glad that I got my sister to the hospital just in time for the mid wife to deliver her baby and not me. I guess the day before a lady delivered in the parking lot. Thank goodness that wasn't me and my sister.

Jana, Aaron, and Aiden

Proud big brother