Ilyena's Baby Announcement

Whoo's That Pink Baby Announcements

Shutterfly has cute birth announcements and Valentine's cards.

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Bean's Babies

Dam and I have been talking about the baby coming to our house for a few weeks now. Two days ago, out of the blue, Bean started calling one of his stuffed animals his baby. Many times during the day he asks me to wrap his baby up in one of his blankets and then he carries it around the house cradled in his arms. I hope that this is an example of how he is going to react to his baby sister when she arrives in two weeks.

Sledding

This winter we have received more than our share of snow. Even though I am pregnant and can't participate in many snow activities, Dam and I decided to take Bean to one of the local parks to go sledding for the first time. Bean loved it! We would have stayed longer, but the wind was so bad that after three runs Bean's cheeks were bright red. So we called it a day.

We're still learning

Today Bean decided that he would try to feed our leopard geckos his sandwich. When I explained to him that the lizards only eat meal worms he could not understand why they did not like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Breakfast with Santa

The hospital that I work at has an annual breakfast with Santa. I had been told by my coworkers that it was worth taking my family to. The breakfast was held in the hospital cafeteria and each family that had bought tickets in advance had a table reserved for them with their name on it. Of course those printing out the names decided that my last name was Valencia, not Valencic.

The only thing that I was apprehensive about was how Bean would react to meeting Santa. I have heard horror stories about little kids first time meeting Santa and I hoped that for Bean it would not be such the case. In the end we were lucky that the hospital had hired a Santa that understood little kids and spent part of the morning going from table to table meeting the children before sitting down in the big chair to hear the kids' Christmas requests. When Santa came to our table Bean was quite shy and hid, but later he was such a trooper as he told Santa about the crayons that he got to color with while he ate his breakfast.

100% Boy

When we bought our house, many years ago, the back yard was just dirt and a stump from an old oak tree that the previous owners cut down. Over time Dam was able to get grass to grow and we added a shed at the back of the yard. I received many suggestions on what to do with that old stump: dynamite it (I don't think that the city allows that Dad ;) ), drill holes in it and then pour motor oil in the holes or burn it. Well we burned it. Now that the old stump is a pile of dirt, a ring of stump, and a fertile area for mushrooms to grown. Bean has decided that it also is his play area.

How is it that if you have any dirt lying around boys will find it and play with it???

Watch Out for The ZomBEEs

Halloween was an odd one this year because of two things: one, it fell on a Sunday; two, I was pregnant. Originally we were hoping to go for a theme for our family. Bean at the time was obsessed with "Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog", so we were thinking of Dam to go as Dr Horrible, me as Penny and Bean as Captian Hammer, but since I was starting to show and making an authentic Dr Horrible costume was pretty costly we decided to nix the idea. The next idea that we came up with was for our family to go as zombies. Dam's costume was quite easy: get some old clothes and tear them up. Some where we got the idea to dress Bean up in a bee costume and zombie it up so that he could be a zomBEE. In the end only Dam and Bean dressed up for Halloween, but we all had a fun time trick or treating at the few houses around our neighborhood.

Pumpkins

Last year carving pumpkins seemed so easy. Maybe it's because I am prego, but carving one pumpkin completely wore me out!!! At least this year Bean is excited about the pumpkins and wants to participate. If you look at the post that I made of last year's pumpkin carving you'll see that Bean wants nothing to do with the pumpkin that I got for him.

Bean had a lot of fun poking holes in the side of his pumpkin.

Dam's pumpkin is on the left and Bean's is on the right.

Man's Best Friend

I seriously believe that every little boy should have a dog. Even if that dog knocks him down every now and then when it is overly excited. Bean LOVES Fritz. The nice thing is that Fritz is sweet enough to withstand everything Bean does to him.

Missouri Botanical Garden

For a few weeks this month our family was lucky to have Ariana come stay with us. (Ariana is Dam's younger sister). During her stay with us we went and visited the Missouri Botanical Garden. These gardens are a photographer's paradise. Besides housing two Chihuly installations there is a large Japanese koi pond and a children's garden for hours of exploration.

One of the Chihuly installations

Bean thoroughly enjoyed playing in the Children's Garden. There were multiple slides that he got to zoom down, two different towers that he got to explore, and a small river that had a side area that demonstrated how locks work (i.e. like the ones used in the Panama Canal). Bean wasn't too happy when we had to tell him that it was time to go. I'm sure he could have spent the whole day there if I let him.