Daddy Turns 30!

This Valentines Day, Gabe turned 30... Noah didn't care how old he was (his guess was 5), but he did care that he had a school bus birthday cake and a party.  Noah picked out this school bus cake back in January and kept it a secret from Gabe this whole time.  He picked out some special decorations from Mardens and from our supply of random party leftovers.  He was really beside himself with pride and excitement for this party.  He was a bit disappointed when I had to tell him that "no, lots of kids won't be here", but he got over that pretty quickly.  The cake does have his signature "flags" on it... I am not sure that package will every run out.  

Valentine Fun

All of these little holidays are so fun this year.  Noah really understands them and learns lots about them at preschool, then is really excited to celebrate them at home.  James has no idea what is happening, but he gets so excited when Noah does... and he learned about chocolate this year... I think he is a fan.  He is a funny guy because he has learned that if it is something good, he needs to eat is really fast before someone else does, and if he always has one in each hand, it is to his advantage.   The kids and I had a very fun day between Noah's valentines day party at preschool and our mini valentines party at home... they were only a little crazy from all of the chocolate:)

Winter Plague and a Fun Trip to Augusta

Normally in the winter we are sick pretty much continuously.  The kids will have a runny nose for months, stopping just long enough so that we know that a new cold is starting.  As a product of the kids being in daycare and us working in pediatrics, it is just something we accept.  Well, this week has been a bit heavy on the illness, even for us.  Two Saturdays ago James started with a rash and I with a sore throat, then by Monday, I too had the rash... scarlet fever (strep throat with a rash).  By Wednesday Noah had it too... luckily nothing a 10 day course of Amoxicillin can't fix.  I thought, ok, everyone is on meds, we should be good for at least a week.  Friday night at 11pm- James starts vomiting (and not just a little) so he "slept" on my chest for the night. This marks the 3rd round of the GI bug for us this year. By Sunday James was looking way better (except for some diarrhea, but we happily take that over the vomiting), we had been extra careful not to spread germs, and we were preparing for our Superbowl party.  At 3:30 pm Gabe says to me, "I am not feeling well".  I thought he was kidding since we had been talking about canceling the party for the previous day... nope.  I immediately sent him into quarantine in the cellar and he emerged Monday at around noon... it was rough.  I did get to enjoy all of the Superbowl food we had made for 12 people all by myself:)  Here is to hoping that things will look up from here... or at the very least we will get a little bit of a break.  

When I sat down to write this post I thought that I didn't have any pictures, but to my pleasant surprise I did.  A few weeks ago Hillary braved the snow to come home for a long weekend from college.  After many delays and sleeping at Logan Airport she arrived and we got to spend a few hours bringing her to meet Holly in Augusta.  To kill some time we checked out the Augusta Childrens museum.  The word museum in this title is a bit misleading, but it was a fun little play space for the kids to enjoy for a bit.  They really liked the diner best.  Thanks for a fun trip Hill! 

January Snow

This has been an awesome year for snow!  Last year we would get some snow and then it would either be too cold to play in it or it would melt.  This year there has been plenty of great snow for playing.  It has really made me realize how fun it is to play in the snow.  To date we have made two snowmen, been ice skating several times, took the kids sledding (which they love!), and Noah's latest obsession has been building an igloo (I think from all of the Kipper and George he watches).  We have several of those snow block/sand castle block makers so it was easier than I thought;)  He and I spent lots of time building his igloo out back last weekend, but have yet to finish it d/t the FREEZING temperatures.  He does remind me everyday though that we have to finish it... maybe this weekend.  Noah is also really good at snowshoeing this year.  He went to the dentist last week and was telling the hygienist how to correctly snowshoe by keeping your legs apart.  

James too has been enjoying the snow, but can't yet snowshoe and isn't allowed near the igloo for fear that he would see it as a big tower of blocks to knock down. The bottom picture is of James's first black eye.  We were at a restaurant and he slipped trying to get into the booth and hit his face on the table.  How this didn't bleed is beyond me, and this is the next morning.  It looked way worse on day #3... we have been extra careful to prevent him from sustaining any other injuries until his one heals.  James has become much more vocal and communicative as of late.  He still isn't saying any more words, but he clearly understands everything you say.  He is very good with his signs and is often so observant that we miss things that he notices, dogs being the best example of this.  It is like he has a special radar for when dogs will be walking by our house, he will run to the window and start "panting".  He is also starting to copy lots of what Noah does.  The cutest thing is "counting".  I am not sure if I can describe it well, but instead of saying "one, two, three, four, etc" he will make a noise that sounds like he thinks he is saying the numbers in the same rhythm.  It makes us laugh in the morning when you can hear him in his crib "counting" to Noah... he usually gets up to about the 6 count.  He does the same thing when looking at books he knows that Noah usually counts things in and will point to what he is counting... cute.  

Florida Trip- 2011: The Rest of the Trip

The rest of our trip was filled with many adventures.  On Monday, we went to Tampa to visit the Children's Museum there which was fantastic.  I am quite sure the kids could have stayed there all day.  The pictures should speak for themselves.  Noah got a special plumbing lesson from some of the museum staff who were orienting there that day.  Other highlights of the trip included visiting the St. Pete Pier/aquarium, getting to be at the Dali museum on opening day (1/11/11 at 11am), going to the Children's museum in St. Pete, seeing Tangled at the movie theater, and playing mini golf.  Most importantly we got to spend lots of time with Grampy Grampy and Grammy Grammy. 

Our trip home was a bit less fun, and very typical of a "Smith Trip"... Gabe has never been on one of these trips I don't think. We were scheduled to fly back on Wednesday, arriving in Portland around 5pm.  On Tuesday evening we discovered that our flight was cancelled and the next available was Thursday late evening.  I had to be on call on Thursday starting at 2, so we began calling around.  We were willing to fly into anywhere in New England.  Finally, we decided on a flight into Boston early Thursday morning.  When we woke up Wednesday morning I called the airline again just to make sure there was nothing else.  They were terrific and booked us on a flight that morning getting us back to Portland earlier in the day than originally planned, we just had to go through Detroit.  We were so excited and started packing right away and rushed to the airport. 

The flight left on time and went smoothly.  We had only 25 minutes to switch planes which started our adventure.  If anyone has flown into the Detroit airport, you will appreciate this.  Our plane flew into terminal A and we needed to get to terminal C... it is a long way... We were down to 20 minutes when we finally got off the plane, we quickly asked a Delta lady where our terminal was, she told us and we were off.  I was carrying James and 3 bags, Gabe was carrying Noah and 3 bags... we took off running... this was by far the toughest feat of strength I have faced in a while.  We arrived at the empty gate with 3 minutes to spare, just to discover that our flight was CANCELLED!!  Why hadn't the lady told us that at the beginning?!?!?!? Ugh!  

This was at 1:45pm... for the next 2.5 hours I stood in line trying to get another flight/place to stay/etc.  Initially the best they could do would get us into Portland at 8pm on FRIDAY... that was 2 days away... what would we do with 2 kids in the Detroit airport for 2 days?  My time was rewarded, eventually, by them "squeezing" us in (aka overbooking the flight, aka forcing some other poor people into involuntarily taking a bump) on a flight that arrived in Portland on Thursday night. We found a hotel and got some supper.  We tried to take a positive approach- we thought we would have the whole day to explore Detroit, the Ford factory, maybe a children's museum... As it turns out it was 32 miles to either Ann Arbor or Detroit!!  It would have cost us a small fortune in both cab fair and car rental.  It was a mere 12 miles to the nearest movie theater or Walmart... again, not the kind of money we were willing to spend.  So, instead we played at the hotel until they made us leave, then we played at the airport for 6 hours.  The kids were absolutely fabulous through all of this!  Thankfully everyone cooperated and we, eventually, got our flight to Portland- arriving home at 9:45pm (after our flight was delayed another 2 hours) to an unplowed driveway b/c we had forgotten to give the plow man our keys... an appropriate end to our vacation. The bottom picture really sums up how James (and all of us felt) after the ordeal:)

Separate funny aside (especially for the Smith members of our family)- We did also have a small laundry snafu, I had packed enough clothes for everyone for one night, but not two (no luggage or stroller if your flight is cancelled). It became apparent that I would have to do laundry after several thing happened, 1- Noah had several accidents and had run out of clean underwear (and did not like going commando), 2- James had also had accidents despite us pleading with him to decrease the number of dirty diapers d/t our limited supply, 3- the final straw was when James spilled his breakfast all over Gabe and himself.  Amazingly the hotel did have a "guest laundry" which consisted of a coin op washer and dryer from the 50s, but still better than nothing.  

Me to the hotel manager: "I need some quarters for the washer/dryer"

hotel manager: "No, use the Pepsi machine around the corner, it will give you quarters"

(I did this and didn't lose any money, thankfully)

Me: "Do you have any laundry detergent I can buy"

hotel manager: "no"

Me: "ummm, you don't have any?"

hotel manager: "no"

Me: "Is there anything else I could use?"

hotel manager: "I have shampoo"

So, I washed our clothes with the shampoo which worked surprisingly well. Gabe was forced to stay in the hotel room during the entire ordeal because his only pants were in the wash... I can laugh about it now.  We were still short on diapers, but thankfully, with some patience, the Delta people did scrounge up 4 diapers for us when we arrived back at the airport. It will probably be a while before we fly during winter again!

Florida Trip- 2011; Lowry Park Zoo

 On somewhat of a last minute whim we cashed in our sky miles and headed for the sunny south... or so we thought.  We just kept telling ourselves that "It is warmer here than in Maine".  No beach days, but the day we went to the Lowry Park Zoo the weather was not too cold and at one point we even took off our jackets.  We all had a fantastic time at the zoo!  This kids loved the animals and all of the rides there, it was a nice combination of things for them. We got to feed the camels- as you can see from the top pictures, Noah was scared to death, but did it anyway, and James had a ball without fear and would have climbed right on if we had let him.  Noah rode on the banana ride and the train all by himself, which was nice progress for him.  James's favorite thing was the birds.  We went in after they had been closed for an hour, so the birds swarmed us.  Noah was begrudgingly held by Gabe while the birds ate his stick, James laughed and laughed as the birds climbed all over him.  I had to pin his other hand around my back because he kept trying to grab at them.  Noah's favorite part was riding on Grampy Grampy's scooter:)  One of the best things we did was to ride the camel, which both kids really were thrilled about and not at all scared!

January indoor play- 2011

The beginning of this month has been fairly cold with little snow, so we have had lots of time to play inside.  Noah's latest obsession is picking out which cake he wants for his birthday.  He gets this book out almost everyday and spends at least 30 minutes thumbing through  it.  Currently he is focused on the car cake, but since daddy's birthday is first, daddy may be getting a car cake instead... it is a pretty funny scene when Noah is looking at the cake book and James is jumping on the bed and falling all over him:) The top pictures are of Noah and James dancing.  James likes to take all of the puzzles out and dance around with a bucket full of puzzle pieces.  Noah has some fun new dance moves thanks to the "Just Dance" game on the Wii.  

James has recently started to "snore" which is one of the funniest things I have seen, but I can't for the life of me get it on video (I will keep trying!). It all started when he caught my dad napping (and snoring) on the couch.  He does it most reliably when he is in his car seat.  He will turn his head to the side and pretend to sleep, he starts making snoring sounds.  When you say "James are you sleeping?" he starts laughing hysterically, then turns his head to the side and does it again.   So, this is his new favorite game... pretending to sleep.