Food, food, food. The center of our existence lately. Or so you would think from all of the pictures we have taken of us eating at our table, or somewhere else. The first table gathering was St Patrick's Day...always an exciting event for us. Jayson told everyone we met that day to kiss him because he's Irish. We listened to some great Irish music and had a "dance party". Aidan seems to have been born knowing how to do the jig. Jay always looks forward to this day because of the food... Colcannon, Irish Soda Bread, and this year, braised roast beef with horseradish sauce (with this pregnancy I crave only one thing more than cheddar cheese...roast beef sandwiches with horseradish!). By the end of the day I felt like the Irish Washerwoman.











Also, I've been trying different recipes for hot breakfasts that Jayson likes, so every time I make something clever, like pumpkin waffles, I simply must capture it on camera. Of course, Aidan still shovels in anything, regardless of whether it is edible, so that's nothing new. He has moved to a booster seat though, and gotten very creative with his hair-food relationship.









Notice the decoration Aidan placed just so (pretzels that have been sucked on are great because they have a glue-like quality)....













One day Jayson and I made great play dough creatures. His are the ones with the gigantic eye balls.









And....more pictures of the boys eating! For Jayson's birthday we went to McDonald's for lunch after school. It was Aidan's first Happy Meal, and I now understand why they call it that. He was delirious with joy over the fries and ate everything in sight. Jayson, as usual, ate some of his cheeseburger and left the fries to tempt me. Fortunately, Aidan helped to finish those as well.

Jayson's birthday was the most exciting yet! He's four and he asked me this morning if after four he would be eighteen. Sometimes I feel like that...the days are taken up with laundry and naps and activities that I feel like I've lost huge chunks of time. When did Jayson stop being a sweet, agreeable toddler and start becoming a twelve year old that tattles? And Aidan...I still call him Baby. When he sees himself in the mirror he calls himself Baby. However, at almost eighteen months and 35 pounds, he's anything but my quiet little bundle anymore. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for the basketball hoop and thank you Auntie Crystal for Little Leap!
























And one last shot of Aidan yet again enjoying food. We went to Noodles and Company where Aidan would have eaten anything, including the napkins, if we hadn't gotten him some yummy mac and cheese. Isn't he big using his own utensils and feeding himself?

It's official: We only produce boys!!! I will be the writer of "Little Men Two: the Mother That Kept Trying for a Girl". (In case you're not familiar, Louisa May Alcott, one of my favorite authors and one of the reasons I wanted to live on the east coast, wrote the original "Little Men: Life at Plumfield With Jo and the Boys"). We saw our little Charlie today and he made it very clear that he is and will remain a boy. We are really happy that he's so perfect...it was so relieving to have a non-dramatic ultrasound. We don't even have to go back for any follow-ups. I can't help but think though that he is a little naughty for not being a girl when I asked him very nicely to please be one. He seemed to make a big impression on the radiology tech too, she kept asking no one in particular why he was so active....he really wouldn't stay still at all and when she tried to see his face his hands would go right up to hide it. I don't blame him though, those techs are not very gentle and I can only imagine how that must seem to babies in their little watery cocoons. So congratulations to us! We are very good at making boys!

I'm going to stop announcing that each blog entry is a "catch up" entry, since these have become the only kind I write anyway.

We've been having (too) brief bouts of warm weather, followed by freezing! In February we had three marvelous days of warmth so we scrambled to get outside. One evening the boys and I picked up Jay from work and had a picnic at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial on the National Mall. It was so nice to get some fresh air, and the boys got good and dirty. The squirrels were friendly with Jayson, probably because he fed them most of his dinner.

Valentines Day was fun for us all, and started early in the week. Jayson had a party at school and we realized that gone are the days of paper hearts glued to doilies...he cashed in! Some kids brought individual boxes of chocolates for each of the other children. Jayson was not one of them, although he was one of the few who actually wrote his own name on each card he gave away. It was painstaking and what seemed like hours long for both of us. It was nice to have the actual day fall on a Saturday...we had a big breakfast and exchanged cards, then Auntie Crystal babysat for us while Jay and I had a night out. That was the first time we've gone out for dinner on Valentines since we started having kids! Auntie Crystal must never move far from us. If she tries, we will hunt her down. We will find her. I love these pictures of Aidan...it was probably his nap time, but he always has that bit of sleepiness in his eyes. Everywhere we go people say "oh, it looks like it's somebody's naptime!" Seriously, this kid could not get any more sleep. Maybe it's from overeating at every meal. Maybe it's that "I feel like I just ate Thanksgiving dinner" expresson.






Jayson took pictures during Aidan's swim class and some of them actually turned out! Aidan is a natural in the water, unlike the rest of his family. He has no fear and spends the entire time trying to wriggle free from my grasp or breath the water into his lungs. When I actually do let him go under he fortunately remembers to hold his breathe everytime. He even jumps in all by himself and bouyantly floats right up to the surface! (fyi Mom, these images are hard to see, but if you click on them they should get bigger for you.)





We had another big snow storm during the first week of March (hopefully the last of the year) so I took Jayson out in the snow for some sledding fun. He loves the snow the way Aidan loves the water. He could play in it all day without any regard to his fingers and toes. He loves to pretend like he's a snowplow driver and when he starts to get tired he "wakes himself up" by burying his face in the snow. Itseems to work, but after he did that enough times, I was worried that he might lose the tip of his nose, so we called it a day.





Finally, we spent last weekend outside again and it was lovely! 70 degrees! After Stake Conference on Sunday we went to Great Falls National Park, and the falls were so unremarkable that we left without taking a single picture, but we did get some good ones of Jayson and Aidan being boys (Jayson is learning a lot from Aidan as to what this entails, and he's also a very good older brother because he stops Aidan from doing all of the crazy things that he would never try, like eating rocks and dirt, or jumping into the river.) We were finally forced to leave when two geese tried to eat our children and Aidan was only too willing to find out what that new adventure might feel like.







As for the last few pictures, these are some that require their own explanations. I have been particularly exhausted with this pregnancy because I have been trying to keep up with my running. I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat (or at the drop of my body on anything stationery) and Jay just could not resist taking some snaps of what he has grown very accustomed to seeing around the house lately (warning...these are not at all flattering, so if you don't like casting your eyes upon unbecoming images you had better skip these):



And now some cute ones of the boys. It's funny that Jayson can look so much cuter in his picture with brownies all over his teeth than I looked sleeping. Childhood beauty. Or is it pregnancy blahs?