Here are some various shots.

Colin, Hannah and Grandma enjoying a meal on the new porch. The weather quickly turned too cold for this, so we haven’t done it since.

Colin’s brand new sneakers. We went in one day to get measured and were told that his size 9’s would be fine for a bit longer. We went back a few days later because we decided to go ahead and get the new shoes and discovered that there must have been a full moon because there was no question that Colin is now a size 10…

Hannah will be a flower for Halloween this year. This is just her trying the costume out. We will have more pictures for the event itself later.

My mother knitted Hannah a beautiful pink flower hat that was a bit too big for her right after she was born, but now it fits perfectly. The crying in the picture is not because of the hat which she wore happily for some time prior to the picture. She was upset for some other unknown reason at the time I decided to snap some photos.

To keep Colin happy one of the very first things I did after we moved into the new house was turn the den into a train play area using all of his tracks, which we were never really able to do at the condo. That room now has his train table in it and is our main play area. At some point downstairs will become our main area and we will get a piano in there.

I tried very hard to get a smile, this was the best Colin would do. Mostly he kept saying cheese over and over looking away from the camera. Silly goose!

Our cousins John & Amanda Pool stopped by a couple weekends ago on his way to a conference in Spain and her way to her sister’s house in Brooklyn (both equidistant, basically, for homebody New Jerseyans…). We had fun walking around Hoboken and just catching up. John snapped some great shots of Colin while we were out and about. My favorite is the fountain shot, hands down, although the ATM picture is pretty funny. John might remember the actual quote, but Colin was saying something like, “I need some money, please!” as he walked away from the machine.

Colin is 36 lbs and 3 ft 2 in tall. He is still at the 95% of the growth charts, but at least he is now actually on them as opposed to way above them.

Hannah is 14 lbs 3 oz and almost 24 inches long. She is almost perfectly average. Above average beauty though…

While we were looking at Hannah’s growth charts we decided to check out where Colin was at this same time. Well, at his 2 month appointment he weight 16 lbs!!! By 6 months he was over 20 lbs. Whew, I remember he was big but wow. I like having an average sized baby.

Hannah is currently napping in her brand new crib. It takes up a bit more room than the co sleeper (which is being returned because Joe’s sister is having a baby in the next few weeks) but it can still fit next to my bed for easy nursing at night and goes to 35 pounds.

Water is on at the local parks so once Hannah wakes up we are off to get soaking wet in the sprinklers.

That: Matt will kill me, but I had to tell this story. He was sitting in the oversized chair with his feet up and Hannah sort of beneath him asleep on the bouncy. He farted, quite loudly, and startled the crap out of Hannah. So bad I don’t think she would have gotten back to sleep even if I hadn’t taken her to get her diaper changed and get ready for actual bed time. It was REALLY funny, poor girl being awoken by her daddy’s gas.

Finally, some pictures. The kiddos helped me cook lasagna last night. It was tasty even with the veggies I put in. I do recommend adding a layer of butternut squash to your next lasagna.

Here’s a link to the last posts with pictures of Colin wearing this costume. I’m surprised how well it fits. Maybe he will be Eeyore again this Halloween.

It is official though, he fractured his clavicle, aka collarbone. It turns out that even though it sounds terrible it’s not that bad at all. There is nothing they can do for it. If he was older they would put his arm in a sling, but there is no way he would be ok with that. He will limit his own activity based on his discomfort and we can give him tylenol to help.

In about 4 weeks he should be using all of his arm again, since right now he only uses from the elbow down.

Anyway, we were in North Carolina this past week and Colin decided that he wanted to sleep on the bottom bunk of one of the rooms instead of in his pack’n'play (which was fine with his mother and I because he is a bit large for that these days anyway, he has to fold himself up to sleep). We got really excited the first night since he seemed like he wasn’t going to wander away from bed and went to sleep very quickly. Cool! Big boy bed!

All was well until Thursday night. Indeed, Colin never had trouble going to sleep or getting up and wandering out of his bedroom or anything. Thursday night he had an issue with—and this never occurred to us—staying in the bed once he was asleep. Yeah. He fell out. Ouchies.

And tomorrow he’s going in for an x-ray. We thought maybe it was just “muscle pain” but the poor thing has been walking around like a wounded bird with his arm tucked in to his side. He’ll use his left (”ouchies”) arm, but heavily favors his right. And he wants to sleep all the time. Deb had a doctor’s appointment for Hannah Monday, so we figured since he wasn’t crying all the time (which we thought was a pre-req for a break) we’d just get him checked out then… Actually we thought he’d wake up the next day and it would be fine. Whatever. We’re bad parents.

All of that to say… Colin loves going to bed now! As soon as we got home we re-jiggered the crib into the toddler bed. He’s so proud of his big boy bed. And has been so excited to go in and go to bed. Such a little boy!

Random aside—as if this whole post isn’t a random aside—we watched Pooh’s Heffalump Movie and it talks about making friends and blah blah feel good movie. Anyway, we asked Colin who his best friend was, even suggested Ceci and some of the kids from daycare and he said “No, Hannah is my best friend…” Cutie.

While at the Aquarium we saw two big hippos, a bunch of penguins and seals and fish and turtles. The best part was the Shark Den. They had a tunnel you walked through where the sharks swam over your head and around you. Very cool and a bit trippy. The glass was such that when the shark was swimming over you it almost felt like he was swimming right towards you. You can actually swim with these sharks if you so desire.

It’s a very interactive aquarium as well. We didn’t do most of the touching exhibits, but we did go to Touch-A-Shark! Colin’s arms were a bit short to actually reach the sharks, he was also a bit scared. He did touch the water the sharks were swimming in. Perhaps next time he will actually touch the sharks, which feel a bit like the rays Matt and I swam with on our cruise.

The Easter bunny visited Colin’s daycare. Hannah got to come along, although she slept through it all. This picture shows the initial reaction of Colin when the Easter Bunny walked in. He wasn’t quite sure what to think. That is Hannah in the black thing sitting on the table.

Colin stayed mostly next to me, except for one venture out to sit next to his favorite teacher Miss Karla.

After several songs Colin finally warmed up and stood up to sing and dance a bit. His buddy Brandon stood up and was dancing around from the moment the bunny walked in, he’s not a shy boy (that’s him in the striped shirt and khakis).

The closest Colin did get was when the bunny handed him a balloon bunny. His favorite part was his snake Easter basket all full of goodies.

Sunday morning Colin hunted around in his diaper for the Easter eggs mommy and daddy had dyed the night before and the Easter bunny hid this morning. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and then going to the park for some serious chalk drawing.

The Canal Museum also had a big train section downstairs (the Coal part). I love this photo. You’d think from the look on Colin’s face that he had just smacked Hannah on the head and that’s why his smile is as big as Hannah’s frown is pitiful.

He had found a bowl, who knows where and whether it was clean, put a handful of chips inside it and gave me back the bag. He did for himself what I should have done for him. He’s a great little boy.

However, we are going on day 5 of the Nap Strike of ‘08. We are in negotiations to end it soon, wish us luck.

Each different exercise involved running through some cones and up a ramp and jumping off it. Colin was a little afraid and has trouble keeping his legs together during jumping, so this will be good practice for him. The little girl is Kate and the other little boy’s name is Jack. It’s a small class but I think at his age that’s a good thing.

Here the kids had to put cones right side up with only their feet. Colin did it the first try!

This was stretching, I believe they were stretching their hair and ears or something.

At the end of the class the kids helped Coach Juan clean up by putting the cones on his head and feet.

I realized I missed getting pictures of Colin actually kicking a ball, whoops! Next week for sure.