Pumpkin Patch and more!

Last week I took the boys to a local pumpkin patch. I had been trying decide if I was up to doing it by myself and finally just decided, the heck with it - let's go. We went to a smaller one that a local church puts on and we went on an overcast morning which worked out perfectly. There were not too many kids there so it made it easy for me to keep up with the boys. They had a make-shift train and a hay ride and several bouncy houses - just enough stuff to keep my boys entertained for an hour or so. The boys LOVE bouncy houses but usually there are so many kids in them that they really get "bounced" around. They had most of the houses totally to themselves most of the time so they loved it. After our trip to the pumpkin patch we hit Cosco for a couple things and enjoyed a foot long hot dog lunch complete with a free cookie from the bakery - what a great day :)

So back to my difficulty in doing crafts with James while John-Mark is around. Here is what I configured so that James could play with his play-doh for a while:As you can see John-Mark was trying very hard to get in on the action. Not the best solution but it worked for a bit - until John-Mark started realizing he could scoot the chairs out of the way!
Lastly, we have been dealing with James' face break outs for a while now and I am SOOOO frustrated! I took him to an allergist a couple of weeks ago and they did several allergy tests that came back saying he has a mild allergy to eggs, strawberries, nuts, dogs, and CHICKEN!! The first four things weren't a big deal because we have stayed away from those but the chicken threw me for a loop. What didn't show up was dairy which I feel certain he has had reactions to - so no more chicken for a while and we're staying off dairy as well. Unfortunately it seems things have gotten worse since we went! I feel like we got nothing out of that visit. He woke up two days ago with his face worse than it's ever been and we're feeding him only what they said. Sooo, we have put him on a pretty limited diet until we can get it totally cleared up and then start reintroducing foods and see what causes reactions. He's basically eating turkey, green beans, peas, bananas, grapes, and apples/applesauce. This is no fun but I am ready to get to the bottom of this and I feel like the dr's have no better ideas than I do so this is what we must do.
Luckily James face doesn't bother or itch him and he loves when I put lotion on him - he also loves to do it himself, as you can see from the above picture :)

Baby Update

So, I am down to under 4 weeks to go - 24 days to my due date to be exact! So far I haven't had any contractions yet - praise God - thankfully I usually don't have any contractions until my labor starts - and then they are over with pretty quickly - I am praying this labor and delivery follows like my first two - James was 3 days late and John-Mark came on his due date so I'm expecting to be pregnant a good 3 more weeks - which I'm good with - in some ways I'm ready - like I would love to be able to bend over and be able to breath at the same time and I'm sure Jeremy is ready for me to not need 6 pillows to sleep comfortably anymore - but I don't know if I'm ready for that whole 2 hour sleep cycle! Luckily the Lord gives you such a rush of love and excitement and adrenaline when a new baby arrives the sleep deprivation doesn't really kick in for a couple of weeks :) The boys and I have been keeping very busy these last couple of weeks with trips to the park, zoo, science center, play groups and more - so I'm sure they are both going to go a bit stir crazy when the new baby arrives and we aren't out and about so much - so please, any of you, feel free to come over and bring your kids for play dates - I'm sure they'll need it :)
Also, as you can see I added a fun little poll on the blog to guess the sex of the baby - surprisingly so far girl is in the lead - I think this is wishful thinking on most people's parts but we'll know soon enough! I am super excited about delivering this baby and hearing Jeremy announce "It's a boy/girl!" So fun!

Here are a couple fun pics of the boys from the past couple of days:

Jeremy's sweet Aunt Debby sent the boys a box full of clothes and on top was this Florida jersey - which good thing she did because we are out of Florida gear that fits the boys. Anyhoo - I was informed Saturday morning by Jeremy that he needed to be wearing it for the game that day and he wanted pictures and he wanted it on the blog - so here it is - as you can see he really wasn't too happy about wearing it and we transitioned to our Alabama gear before that game began :)Honestly, I was trying to get a good pic of him smiling but in this pic he had actually just told me "no" when I asked him to smile. Doesn't he look like he's 15 in this picture!!!! Jeremy says I'm crazy and the fact that he's sitting in an Elmo chair clearly says he's not 15 - ha! But he just looks like such a big boy! (On a side note, I will say that I'm getting used to how easy things are with the new hair cut - when he wakes up I never have to put water on his hair to get it to lay down and it never stands up from static when I pull a shirt over his head :))

Here he is smiling with Aunt Miche - she taught him to yell - "go defense" and "go Tim" which he made sound like a two syllable word - so funny how southern little kids accents are!James loves to watch his daddy mow the grass and he always want to ride on daddy's "tractor" - He had the best time Sunday afternoon working with daddy!I don't remember James EVER doing this! Poor John-Mark was just too tired to eat - I watched him kind of fade in and out for a couple of minutes before he just gave in and let his head drop and took a little nap - I guess turkey really does make you tired :)

Fingerpainting Fun!

James is at the age where he loves to color and paint and play with play-doh - these are all things that John-Mark loves as well -to eat :) I have an extremely hard time finding a time when James can do these things when John-Mark will leave him alone - since they are basically on the same nap schedule now there is no time when John-Mark is asleep and James is awake and when I try to "distract" John-Mark he makes a bee line to his brother anytime he can. Add to that my current huge stage of pregnancy and I'm worn out! So the other day I decided maybe John-Mark could handle a little finger painting - so I strapped them both in thier high chairs and let the fun begin -

Starts off well - both very focused on their masterpieces!

James telling me how much he loves to finger paint!

Ofcourse, we had to try and eat it - "do I have paint on my face?"

"How about now?"

"Well, if brother gets to put paint on his face then I want to too!"

So, after maybe a grand total of 15, 20 minutes tops of fingerpainting fun we headed for a bath. I would have let them play longer but they go through paint like crazy and just want more and more and after about 15 minutes we're pretty much out! It really wasn't too bad to clean up and it was a fun time for them - even it was brief! Someone mentioned I should get bath paints - I've never thought of that - I think they would love that - I'll have to check in to that!

Here's my little pumpkin all clean and enjoying some raisins - a new favorite!
And this is where I found my little monkey yesterday! He climbs on EVERYTHING!! (Side note - it's that time of year for one of my favorite things - little boys in overalls!!! Love it!! John-Mark wore his first pair yesterday - I could eat him up!!

I wasn't expecting this...

So, I had planned on doing a cute post about how much fun we've had having James in a big boy bed and being able to lay in bed with him and read each night and now even John-Mark is getting in on the fun-
Cute pics below:
Then....
Jeremy and I have been talking about how James needs to get his hair cut. This is something that I would ordinarily do on my own but Jeremy wants to take him to the place he gets his hair cut and it be this father/son thing so....
today I head off to the grocery store with John-Mark to pick up a few things (after I had locked John-Mark in the van and Jeremy worked for 45 minutes to get him out! He was fine - he actually took a little nap while waiting :)) Anyhoo - when we return and here comes by baby boy running to me


GASP!! Where's your hair?!? To which he touches his head and says "daddy!" with a big grin. I really almost cried!
I know I'll get used to it but it breaks my heart every time I look at him - He looks like he's 5 years old - not 2!!! As Jeremy tells me, it will grow back and when I asked him why he didn't tell me he was going to do this his response was, "because I knew you wouldn't want me to" hmm, then by all means lets go ahead and shave his hair! Guess I can use that $10 we saved on a hair cut on a nice lunch for the three of us at Chick-fil-A!
On a lighter note here is a pic of the boys in the ever popular cozy coupe - pre hair shave - they have so much fun in this thing together!