Summer So Far

I'll just be honest---I'm having a hard time getting motivated to do much of anything "extra" these days. Thus why the blog has fallen by the wayside. I'm always so tired, then I can't sleep at night, so I'm even more tired. If only I could just lay around eating bon bons and watching my stories all day, maybe I would blog more often. But that's not reality. My reality involves chasing/settling disputes between two two-year olds and an almost one-year old, keeping up with our house, bills, cleaning, cooking..........you know, life. So at the end of the day, I would rather sit in the quiet and stare at nothing. True story. My days are so full of noise, I don't even really like the TV to be on much. So, blogging is slow now. But I'm sure I'll come around. One day. :)


In the mean time, here are so photos to try to catch up on our summer and some big mile stones we've hit around here.



A glimpse into the everyday. Its been so hot, instead of going to the park most days, I fill up the pools, get out the sprinkler, bingo bango, hours of entertainment. Or at least 'hour' of entertainment. Whatever. And, notice there's definitely a girl pool and a boy pool. I love that the boys are crammed into the teeniest little pool. Harvey does so love his Sam. Such a sweet bond they're forming.











Little stinker. This was Harvey shortly after he watered my Blackberry with the hose. Looking quite pleased with himself really. I was only a little mad----I ended up with a much nicer phone in the end. :)




Running around naked after bath. Always a favorite past time.




Harvey got his big boy bed! The transition has gone well, minus a few instances like tonight. Last I heard he was banging on his bedroom door screaming for mommy. Sorry buddy, mommy's watched a lot of Super Nanny. I'm not coming in your room 453 times a night. Should be interesting what we find when we go check on him before bed.












Charlie also got a room in our house. Lucky guy. I'm going to have to take pictures sometime when the lighting is better. But for now, here's our little (big) guy at 29 weeks.






Harv was a huge help while we were putting the nursery together. Broke in all of Charlie's new toys, sat in the baby swing (yup, all 35 pounds of him), checked out all of his baby blankets. Quality control.




And of course, the pool. We're there every chance we get.









John and his baby.......wait........




There we go. John and his baby. :)


Lots of little stories I want to document soon, before I forget. But for now, I'm going to sit and stare at a wall and then go to bed and not sleep. Sounds great, right?

A Day At the Zoo

A couple of weekends ago we took a trip to the zoo. We wanted to get out there one more time before it got too hot, and we did it just in time. Since then its been in the 90s every day. Trust me, Harvey and I were hot enough as it was.

Naturally, I forgot to bring my nice camera, so I was left with only my poor Blackberry camera. But, that's better than nothing!

The meer cats.



Petting some baby goats. Never mind that this goat is peeing while Harvey is petting it. And right after this photo, he began to do some other business. We quickly moved on to some other, less leaky animals.




I love this photo. They were standing looking at the tigers when a plane flew over just as I took this photo. Harvey is ob-sessed with planes. Apparently there are some things boys never outgrow.



Stubborn boy would not sit in the stroller. He was h-o-t and tired. You can kind of tell how red his face is and his hair was soaked.



Finally, he just sat down in the middle of the walkway with is big bottle of water. After that he accepted some assistance from the stroller.


And here are a few random recent photos from my phone that were too cute to not post on here.


The same day as the zoo, we set up his little pool on our patio. He loved the pool but absolutely would not put on a swim diaper, nor would he take his clothes off. Its been a long road but he's finally swimming in a swim diaper AND swim trunks. Thank goodness. No more Dora/Diego swim diaper wedgies running around the public pool. :)



Some nights you do what you gotta do to keep the peace. Even if that means he eats dinner on the counter.



And I leave you with this.No comment.

Second Birthday Highlights

Only a few weeks late. :) Here are some sweet photos of Harv on his big day/weekend. 'Twas a long one for sure! And one where I didn't take enough photos. That's always a bummer.





He got all of the Dinosaur Train dinos. They all talk and interact with each other. Not gonna lie, they are pretty fun. The funny thing is, shortly after this photo I took that big dino he's so excited about and made it growl and open its mouth in his face. He still whimpers every time that dinosaur comes too close. Who knew it was that easy to damage a toddler?

These next few are when everyone was singing 'Happy Birthday' to him. Do you think he likes being the center of attention or something?

He kept looking around the room to make sure everyone was watching him. He's such a ham!

The Day Before Two

Tonight I tucked in my sweet baby one-year-old for the last time. Tomorrow he will wake up and be two years old. Not so much a baby anymore. Not that he's been acting like a baby for quite some time-----the tantrum he threw (over and over again) during dinner proves he's ready to be a full fledge toddler. Oh, but poor mama! I'm not sure she's so ready for him to be so "big".


As I've done the last two years, here are some photos of Harvey on his last day as a one-year-old. I would drag out my photos from the past two years, but we've switched computers and it seems like so much work right now. Maybe next year. :)






















I'm sure there will be plenty of birthday photos to come! Stay tuned..........

Easter

A week and a half later. But, better now than next month.


And maybe I don't exactly have photos from actual Easter Sunday. We literally went to church and came home to spend the rest of the day together. And Harvey spilled a boat load of milk all over himself during our little brunch, so no photos of him in his Easter gear. However, the day before we went to an Easter egg hunt that our church put together, and I got a ton of photos there.

By the way, a not quite two-year old+ egg hunting= a little bit of chaos. But he LOVED it!










John and I each threw an egg in his basket, hoping to get him pumped up to go get some more. Instead, he sat down immediately, right in the middle of the field to see what he had in his basket. I went and got him two more eggs, but the those kids had the field cleared in no time!!








And then he discovered there was candy in those eggs. Oh man, was he ever happy!









And then there were Krispy Kreme doughnuts. His whole life was made. (Note the sunscreen not quite rubbed in all over his face. Sorry Harv!).



Oh man, what a happy (and dirty) little boy. Such a fun little family outing.

Art Time With Captain Harvey----and Other News

Man, I'm really hating my love/hate relationship that I've had with my blog lately. I think of all kinds of things to talk about, updates to post, photos to edit and put on here. But then I don't, then I keep falling further and further behind, then I don't feel like getting all caught up, so I go longer and longer...........and here we are now.

I have some photos to share (from March 2 apparently-----quite timely really), but I really don't feel like getting all caught up on everything that's been going on for the last couple of months. So let's just hit some highlights, shall we?

Harvey LOVES the alphabet and letter recognition---he's crazy about it. Counting? Nah. Colors and shapes? Nope. What letter is this? Now we're talking!

John turned 30 and we took a trip to LA, just the two of us. So fun!

Harvey will be 2 in less than 2 weeks. Let's not talk about it.

However, I think he knows he's about to be 2-----the attitude/defiance/craziness has hit an all time high. And I know this is just the beginning. Can't wait for baby bro to get here so Harvey can really lose his mind! (Oh, and I'll most likely lose mine along with him).

Clore 2.0 is a boy, Charlie, and he'll be here at the end of August. Everything looks healthy so far! And he already looks large and in charge like his big brother. He's measuring about a week and a half ahead already. Life with two little boys is going to be insane. In a fun way I'm sure. :)


Ok, back to my March 2nd photos. :) I took some photos to show what art with Harvey is like most days. Homeboy likes to eat, so you put something that's even remotely edible in his hands, he's gonna to go for it.



Starts out innocent enough.




Let the taste testing begin!



Here, you shuld has dis one to twy. It tasteses wike puwrples. So nommy!



Oh man, I wuuuuuuv marwkers!!









Sowwy, I can't hears you?!



You says eat more da marwkers?? I fought you always twy to tells me not to eats da marwkers? But if you say so...............



Haha, got you! Man I wuv arwt times!

Catch Up

Hopefully this is the last time I feel the need to play catch up on here. And with a new baby coming, I'm totally sure I'll constantly be all over this blog. I'm certain there will never be anything else more important than writing on here. Ha! So I'll make no promises, but I think I'm going to try harder to stay caught up.

The problem right now is that I've allowed so much time to go by, I'm all out of practice, and there is SO much to catch up on, and so few photos to show for the last few months. Blogs aren't much fun without photos. I've been about 12 shades of burned out on taking photos of everyday life. But that's going to change my friends! Someday anyway. :)

I have been super busy working on spring photo shoots. Check out some of what has kept me away from this blog for awhile: . So many cute children and families, so little time. And now that it's spring, it's so fun to go out and shoot photos all afternoon. Just gotta get big Harv out there soon.


We've hit the 16 week mark. We'll find out 3 weeks from tomorrow if Harvey's getting a little sister or a brother. He doesn't want either. He wants a big sister to boss him, drag him around, sing silly songs. Bad news buddy. You're the big brother. He's always super jealous of little babies, but endlessly entertained by big kids, especially girls who want to mother him. Again, tough break.


Here are some fun updates in a list, because I'm lazy. And I'm currently creating lungs and unfused eyelids, so cut me some slack.

*Harvey's current favorite toys: his Buppy (bunny/puppy I guess) and his Buhbuck (his blanket). I love the names kids give things.

*He's super into dinosaurs, trains and airplanes. He's officially a boy. And I love "Dinosaur Train" on PBS. Perfect combo. I taught him to walk around the house and scream "All aboarddd!". Love him.

*He's a big time mimic-er these days. He'll repeat just about anything. So be careful. The latest---"yuv you". So sweet.

*He randomly knows some letters. We didn't teach him this. I'm thinking all those hours of Sesame Street when mama was feeling super sick/had a migraine are really paying off. We went to a bagel place before church on Sunday, and he was standing in the window where there was a decal. The word was "breakfast" and it was backwards to us on the inside. He pointed and said "E. K. Stars.". Uhhhhh, yup, that's an 'E' and a 'K' (and there were some stars on there as well. John and I will take the credit for shape recognition :)). How the heck did he know that?! I've since tested him and he clearly knows the e and the k. Thanks Elmo! Didn't know puppets could do my job for me. So glad I'm off the hook!


*We set up his basketball goal on our screened in patio, so he's constantly begging to go "ow-side". He ate dinner outside on Sunday night when it was in the upper 40s at best. He doesn't care. He loooooves to sit out there and stare. Then hurl himself out of his chair to go play ball. He's definitely a boy.

An Explanation

It's been almost a month. A whole month with no Harvey blog updates. My apologies.

But I have reasons. Excuses. Really good ones. But because I know you didn't come check the blog to just hear from me, here's Harvey with a special blog post.




I has a wittle secret to share wif you............





Oh man, is a good one!







Oh man, I'm so cited I almost can't control myself!!




Ok, deep breaf. Gets it togever.





I'm gonna be a big brudder.


Baby Clore number two is coming at the end of August. :)

See, I told you I had a good reason for being away.