How does a piggie eat?

When I look over and see this...

I remember to add "teach my kids manners" to my to do list.

move over sam, there's a new baby in town

he just seems to have been doing a lot of growing up recently. 

 learning some abc's.

 peeing in some potties.

 getting big boy hair cuts (which i actually can't stand.  i want his long locks back!)

not pictured...big boy tantrums  yikes!

my current favorite picture...hands down

brent said the worst part is how cute he looks.  i hope for sam's sake eva's hair grows fast.

Well what's Sam doing?

 he has loved hangin' out at the ball park.  i really think he'll miss it more than jackson.  his favorite thing to do was watching baseball practice (which is what he called every game.)

 holding eva, in the brief moments that they have patience for it at the same time.

 and growing up too fast.  i think being 2nd gets you in to cartoons/games faster than the first.  he loves star wars, spiderman, and johnny test.  at this age i think jackson was just discovering elmo and sid.

so....the boys drive me nuts when they're going to bed.  recently, sam seems to come out every 5 minutes or just scream.  last night i heard him just crying and frankly, i was ignoring it.  eventually i thought ok, that sounds like the persistent cry of being hurt or stuck.  When i walked in he had put the elmo potty seat (a smaller seat to put on top of the toilet for potty training toddlers) on his head and gotten it stuck.  oh sam.

Happy Birthday Sam!

He's 2! I really thought he looked the same as last year but now that I look again, he is kinda huge now. This is probably the last year of doing all the partying on Jackson's birthday and going low key on Sam's. We did get cute pictures of him though which in my book is how you prove a child had a birthday. Happy Birthday buddy!

part of his loot (backpack, coloring book, sunglasses) He is so different from Jackson when he opens presents. Jackson is all about the next present and ready to toss each gift aside. Sam was bothered when Jackson would give him his next gift because he just wanted to play with what he just opened.

Another view of Jacksons amazing candle blowing skills.

So this was on Jackson's birthday but its just a cute video of Sam.

He's tough

This is the story I was told this morning.

Apparently Sam was about a third of the way up our stairs. Brent said he saw him stand up and turn around but wasn't really sure what was going on. Then he tried to jump. He tumbled down the stairs, completely bewildered as to what went wrong. Are you surprised Brent? It was Sunday when you pushed his loving mothers arm out of the way so that he could try to jump from your parents fireplace. You let him jump 4 times before you told him to stop.

I'm not kidding

Sam walked up to me yesterday morning and said "I wanna poop poop." He says it often enough. I said "ok go poop poop and then I'll change your diaper." He waddled off then came back in the room with a full diaper. What!?! I actually have put him on the potty before when he has said that but he just acted scared and tried to get down. 20 months?

Sam is talking.

I couldn't believe it when it happened but I said "Sam, say cheese." and he said "cheese" in the cutest and cheesiest way possible. I was flabbergasted. My other favorite is "I-wan-pop-pop" (I want popcorn.) His first was diaper.

Daddy loves Sam

Sam is beautiful. Who wouldn't love Sam? Doesn't it kinda look like an engagement picture though? I mean besides the fact that its a daddy and a baby of course.

do you want to see sam?

i posted something like this yesterday along with other posts to be scheduled out but they were all deleted. did y'all have any problems with blogger recently?

this is sam. sweet. happy. cheerful. sam. he spends his days playing with balls. careful though, he will throw them. he is mostly walking these days. he started saying "uh oh" which he says in the cutest little way. his "oh" sounds like either a canadian or minnesota accent (i get them confused but its cute.) he loves to feel a part of things. when jackson and i were watching tangled last week sam would loudly laugh whenever we did. he loves to be thrown backwards. when you hold him, you must hold on tight because he will throw himself backwards so that you'll dangle him upside down. very nerve wracking.

not only can sam walk

he can roll!

Sam's 1!

He's so cute and fun. I've really enjoyed having a 2nd baby. First of all, we're all happier with Sam around. Sometimes I think having 2 kid is seriously easier than having one because it gave Jackson a friend. Sam is the perfect distraction for both me and Jackson to take a bit of the edge off when we've been around each other too long. I also found having a 2nd baby was so much more enjoyable than the first because I wasn't so paranoid about every detail. I could relax a lot more. Now it helped that Sam has been an extremely laid back baby. Before he was crawling he'd be perfectly content to sit in one spot on the floor for at least an hour. Yesterday at Jackson's birthday party he sat in his high chair for like 2 hours and never cried for anything. I mean we'd give him crackers when his tray was empty but he was happy just watching the madness. He, like most 2nd babies I think, is tough. Jackson will hit, yell, squeeze, intimidate with all he can imagine and Sam takes it. I know it's hard to know what aspects of a kids personality will develop into character traits he'll always have but, I imagine that Sam will be peacemaker in our home. Whatever he will be though will be amazing because I can feel the potential bursting out of him. While I'm terribly, ridiculously sad to be losing my baby to toddlerhood I know it'll be an amazing adventure for all of us.

ps. jackson has asked me several times today when he'll have another birthday.

p.p.s. i quilted that sign in the background and love it!

what a view

if you can't tell from the picture, he's laying over the bar connecting the front two legs of the kithen chair. he wasn't crying or anything. just stuck. his head was too heavy to pick up.

i'd say its a step

since he's never had anything but sips of water from a cup til now. its soy milk. if you were curious. odd huh?

he's on the move

i LOVED a happy stationary baby but its also fun to see him crawling.

Super Sam

it has a nice ring to it huh?(can you see kiki scrap in the picture? our house is littered with them)

so sam gets his bib twisted and i think it makes him look like a super hero and take gobs of pictures.

what if your son tells you he wants to be a super hero for halloween. when i ask which one he just keeps with the ambiguity and says a super hero. we have a cape with a J on (thanks Robyn) which he loves. the problem is thats exactly what his cousins were last year. exactly. i don't think he saw the pictures. should i let him and totally take the easy way out or should I try to persuade him another way?

the overdue post

The cutest, sweetest, and yes easiest stage ever. I dump a bag of toys on the floor and he's good....for like an hour. seriously, an hour.

Yes I know I'm lucky but there is still that girl inside of me that thinks "since he's so good my next will be a terror."

Sometimes my memory is my enemy

I remembered being miserable the first trimester with Jackson but not the 3rd. I was miserable the 3rd with sam and felt blind-sided. Why didn't I see this coming?

As is true now with feeding Sam real-ish food. I actually remembered not enjoying breastfeeding because I felt tied down and pouty that it was a job I couldn't hand off to Brent. (with Sam I've actually loved it.) I remember feeding Jackson and not thinking much of it. Maybe I was just so excited that Brent or I could do it. I'm so not enjoying feeding Sam. I guess I thought that since he opens his mouth to put EVERYTHING else in he'd just open his mouth for food. blah. so not true.

On like some where around the 10th time I fed him I gave him his own spoon. Every time he'd try to put his own spoon in his mouth I'd pop my spoonful of green beans in. It worked for a little but then he became less interested in eating his own spoon.

This is Sam after me trying to feed him for a solid 30 minutes. Notice how much we had left. I think he's grinning because he's recognized that he's won.

A vote

Sam or Hutch?

My sister-in-law Robyn is a natural at nicknames. They just roll off her tongue. They always sound cute and perfect and fun. Weird as it may sound I have a hard time saying nicknames. It's just not natural for me. I love the nickname Hutch since Hutchison is his middle name, it sounds cool and fun, and he certainly looks more like my side than Jackson. Whenever I try to say it though it sounds awkward. like I'm re-naming him or something. Can a kid be called two names? I love them both and can't decide.

As a side note--I love this age. so cute. everything goes in his mouth. always drooly. just a fun baby age.

Photo shoot!

I love this bumbo. (that's the seat that sam is sitting in.) I sorta justified buying it for this photo shoot but i love love love it! It's so much fun to play with sam in it. I love all of these pictures of the boys too.