Paul is 10 months old!

God, where does the time go?!  Paul will be a year old in just two months!!  I just love him to pieces!  He's all over the place crawling and cruising between furniture.  He loves "walking around" pushing his older brother's toy car around.  We went for his wellness exam and got his shots and some blood work done, we also got his stats:

Weight 21lbs 5 oz (down to the 25%)
Height: 39.5 inches (75% for that one)
Head Circumference: 18.5 inches

So he's growing and I"m shocked to find he has dropped so low in percentiles for weight, because all this kid does is eat!  Almost anything we put in front of him he devours.  He has two little teeth in the bottom front and he uses those suckers to nosh on apple wedges, bagels, orange slices, he eats like he has a head full of teeth!  He loves making noise and grunts and says mamamamama and dadadadadda a lot.  He'll clap on cue and wave and recently we got him to blow kisses but we can't get him to do it on cue every time.

One of his favorite pass times is chasing the cat and squeezing her.  Our cat either likes it a lot or is just incredibly stupid.  She will saunter past Paul with her tail in the air as slow as possible until she has his attention and then pretend to try and get away - but never actually runs off, she just kind of saunters a little faster.  It's like she's waiting for him to do this (see the photo to the right).

Paul has been at the home-based daycare that we started Peter at (well both boys started together) back around Thanksgiving last year.  Paul is quite happy there and now that all the issues with getting him to sleep at the school seem to have been sorted out I'm happy with him there too.  The staff there just loves Paul so much and I have so much confidence leaving him in the care of women who are clearly so very anxious just to hold him when we arrive each morning to drop him off.

Paul seems to have the same love of music Peter has and we even managed to catch him on video playing the piano with his little fingers all proper-like (that's the first video below).  The big-deal gift of Peter's birthday which we played down a bit, was this giant authentic African drum that was made by a man in Africa that is friends with a friend (did you follow that)...basically it's quite unique and damn nice!  Anyway, you'll see Paul banging on it in the series of videos below (the drum is taller than him).
:

Here's a series of 4 videos of him ...well, being him :)

Finally! My Mom's Photos of Peter's Birthday Party!!!

So, a little harassment in my previous post got my Mom moving on the photos from Peter's 3rd Birthday Party.  I was anxious to get them because she took so many more than me as well as some videos!  She claims her computer at  home isn't working and she wasn't able to upload them....I guess I believe her!  ;)  Below is a link to her pictures she took and a link to videos.

I've picked a couple of favorite pics and videos below:

And my favorite videos:

The kids helping Peter open Gifts:


and, a general video of the party:


All of the videos can be found here:


All of my mother's photos have been incorporated with the previous photos, they're intermingled and start with photos from before the party with the kids eating breakfast to the aftermath when everyone was gone...

Click here to view these pictures larger

Playing Catch-up!

I have desperately needed to put a new post up...sorry for my absence...been working and playing with kids, and nursing sick kids back to health and and and... In all honesty I do have a hard time complaining about work when so many people out there need jobs and so many others have REAL problems.  So...movin' on...

First, I promised photos of my 3 year old's birthday party and I know you have all just been breathless waiting! I blame my mother for this one not getting posted quickly (you reading mom?) - she took tons of photos that day and hasn't posted them yet!

The party was great!  It was my first Non-family-only birthday party for Peter and it was chaos.  Good chaos, but chaos non-the-less.  There were 10 kids and 18 adults. I served mimosas to the parents and discovered all the parents at Peter's school are friggin' awesome!  Not one of them shook their heads in disapproval of serving alcohol at 10:30 a.m. at a 3 year old birthday party instead they all immediately said yes when asked if they wanted one.  Love that group of parents!  We brought up all of Peter's musical instruments from the toy room in the basement (enough to fill a big storage bin) and brought up all of his mega sized rubber leggos - seems the instruments and legos were enough of a hit to keep the kids busy.  We then had cake/icecream and Peter opened gifts with the help of most of the other kids.  A couple of parents tried to stop their kids from tearing into the paper with Peter but since Peter didn't seem to mind I told them it was OK - let them have fun.

So catch-up #1, Peter's 3rd Birthday Party:

First, is Peter's pink cake.  He asked for this pink cake with sprinkles on top at least a thousand times.  He also requested the Spider Man on top.  So pink cake w/sprinkles and a Spider man on top it was!

Food was served.

There were decorations.

There were giant soft leggos....

Peter eating a chocolate doughnut.

Peter (with his best bud, Joe) - that's the chocolate icing from the doughnut on P's face.

There were parents and kids...

There were adorable babies...

There were Grandmas blowing up balloons...

There were adorable little girls...

More adorable little girls...

Of course there were adorable little boys too...

Oh yeah and adorable little birthday boys!!!

....with lots of balloons!

Oh yeah and there were little brothers too.

Finally.... there was....

...the polishing off of the cake!  :)

Catch-up #2 will be in the next post, this one was long enough ;)  the rest of the birthday photos are here:
http://kushnirgoldenfamilyphotos.shutterfly.com/1673

Streamers! Balloons! Party Hats!.... ho-hum

My son turned 3 years old on the 13th. Tomorrow, Saturday, will be his (and my) very first non-family-only birthday party thrown for him. I've been excited for months and dreaming up party theme ideas. I swear, if had no budget...what a party I could throw. I know.. I know... we all feel that way, but when my son decided he wanted a Spiderman theme I thought WOW!

How cool it would be to drape a giant spider web over the front of our row house! Cool huh? I even figured out how I could go about it and decided it really wouldn't be that hard! Black nylon roping, some tall ladders and willing workers...would be so damned cool. I could mirror that idea inside the house with a web on the largest wall in the house constructed for the kids to climb. Then I realized I wasn't She-ra and that the 3 hours of free time I have each day probably wasn't enough to organize it...but man I tell you I had it all figured out. Even had the neighbors picked out that I knew would be willing to help.

So, back to reality, I compensated for my dashed creative dreams by buying entirely too many Spiderman table cloths, streamers and dangling thingies. I'm sitting here tonight in the midst of figuring out where to put them (bec. you know I HAVE to use them all) and I'm stumped. I'm in spider man overload! I'm starting to think it might...just might... be a bit scary to a 3 year old. I mean look at him:

Spiderman can be scary to a 3 year old. Look at those eyes just staring at you, now imagine those eyes all over the room. Every where you look those eyes are there...looking at you. I think I better take a few down!

You know you can expect some birthday photos in the next few days!

Mom, Can I see your Nibbles?!

About two months ago during bath time my son stopped and gasped: "What that is dadda?!" My husband: "those are your nipples". We don't believe in making up cute names for our kids' private parts.

So fast forward to this morning, Peter is running around playing with his new toys from Christmas and I'm on the floor changing Paul's diapers (our 9 month old). I have Paul's footed one piece unzipped and my son says I see Paul's nibbles! Mom, you have nibbles? Yes, Peter I have nipples. Peter: Mom, see your nibbles? Me: I can't show you my nipples I'm busy changing Paul's diapers. An hour later I'm changing Peter's diapers, Mom, see your nibbles now?!

I can just see my son asking this out in public. :|

Because all posts must have photos...some cuteness from our DC Christmas (which was held yesterday on New Years Day)...