Big Boy Room

Well, it took him 45 minutes, but he's asleep.  In a big boy bed.  And I didn't even have to go in there once.  I'm amazed.

 I've been working for the last month or so on getting Kaeden's "big boy room" ready for him.  He has such a finicky personality that I've been a little nervous about how he would handle this transition.  We've been hyping it up and finally introduced him to it today.  He was pretty excited.... more about the new toys (trucks!) than anything else, but I'll take it.  

Here's the room.  He loves the book, The Little Blue Truck, so I decorated accordingly:

Kaeden was quite pleased with his new toys, particularly the trucks:

And, of course Ryan wanted in on some of the attention.  Here he is posing in front of the toy shelf and giving Kaeden a demonstration of how to sleep in a big boy bed :)

We gave him the choice about whether or not to sleep in there tonight, and he said he wanted to try it.  So, I tucked him in with his lovees to his big boy bed, and he looked up at me and said "nigh' nigh'".  I walked out of the room and didn't hear much of a peep out of him after that.  I am thankful that my parents gave us a video monitor for my birthday so that I can keep an eye on my mischievous one.  Eventually, we'll use the monitor for the new baby, but for now, it is coming in very handy for watching Kaeden!  So far, so good, but I'll be curious to see how he does in the long-term once the excitement and confusion wear off.  

For now, I'm so proud of my big boy.  But he's still my baby too :-)

Fire & Marshmallows

While I was on vacation with the boys in August (more on that some day, I hope), Mason took on the giant project of landscaping.  We had it all planned out before I left, but there were a few surprises when I got home, including...  a fire pit!  

 It's been a while since then, but now that it's finally really feeling like fall and getting dark earlier, we decided it would be a good night to try it out.  The boys were SO excited... especially when we made a special trip to the grocery store for s'more supplies :)  Kaeden talked about marshmallows for the rest of the evening.  

Here's Kaeden, checking out the fire building from inside, after dinner:

The fire pit:

Ryan, helping to keep Kaeden from getting too close:

Time for some marshmallows:

Somebody's ready to roast a marshmallow!

He didn't really get it close enough to the fire to toast, but he didn't seem to care.

And trying some s'mores too!

Kaeden's first ever s'more

S'more face!

 The funny thing was that neither of them really liked their s'more that much - Mason & I ended up eating most of them (aww, shucks).  The boys just kept going back to the marshmallow bag for more marshmallows... and didn't even bother to toast them!  Kind of defeats the purpose of the fire, but oh well.

And then they went insane, running around the yard, screaming at the top of their lungs.  Good thing we don't have many neighbors! 

All in all, a successful evening!

Pumpkin Patch 2012

Another fall, another visit to the Pumpkin Patch for our family.  This time, we had Uncle Bret, Auntie & Atticus along as well, which made it extra fun.  

Ryan's annual growth photo (Kaeden was not in the mood):

First stop: hay maze.  The boys just loved chasing each other through it:

Award for most loved activity (at least by Ryan & Atticus) this year goes to the corn crib.  They had two of them this year... one for older kids and one for younger.  Of course, they all had to go in the older kids one since Ryan was too big for the 3 & under one.  It even had slides.  So much fun!  

 

Ryan was in absolute bliss the whole time.  I think he would like to live in a giant pile of corn. 

Kaeden was not so into it and only agreed to enter if buffered by Daddy:

He did get in on a little bit of Ryan's craziness:

 

Still, they spent a good bit of the time watching:

 

And eventually, Mason took him over to the younger kids one, and he got a little more adventurous... but not much!

 

Next up was the slide.  Everybody liked that!

  

 

Sweet moment with Daddy

  And then came the hay ride.  Atticus was quite happy, waiting for the ride to begin:

We decided to try sneaking in a family photo.  The boys were a little distracted:

During the hay ride, we got out to explore the corn maze.  It was all going great until Kaeden fell and got a bloody nose/lip.  He deteriorated pretty quickly from there on out.

Even so, we took some time to check out the cotton field and pick some cotton.

 

And getting to sit on a big tractor revived Kaeden a little bit.

 

But it didn't hold him over long enough to get any kind of decent pumpkin photos this year.

 

Oh well.  

 Thanks for another fun day, Ganyard Hill Farms.  We'll shoot for 5 years in a row next year :)