Best Daddy Ever!

Today we took Daddy to the Reds vs. White Sox baseball game for Father's Day. We weren't sure who to root for, so we each dressed as fans of one of his favorite teams. We hope Daddy knows how much we love him and what a great Daddy he is! He's the best! (Ben, quick... he's coming...hit "publish" and pretend like you're just banging on his keyboard...jfka;fjda;lfdja;lfdakl).

A Daddy Classic

The boys are at this awesome point where they're both small enough to throw easily, but they're big enough that they're not so breakable.

Luckily for me Jess has relaxed her "Something Physical Should Attach the Children to the Earth at all Times." policy a bit.

Starting to Come Around on This Utensil Thing

So each of the boys is starting to want to use utensils to feed themselves. Right now they can kind of use forks. Spoons are still a bit advanced. The need to keep them upright to keep the food on them is still beyond their skill level. (Although Duncan loves it when we let them try)

They both also have no interest in tiny plastic baby forks either. They'll throw them to the floor and demand the real thing like they see Mom and Dad using. Once they proved they won't stab their own eyes out we started letting them use them. Its fun to see how they go after the food differently. Matt stabs his plate randomly until food attaches itself. Ben, for all his bruiser tendencies, could not be more delicate while going after each tiny piece. Its also probably the most excited I'll every see any kid to eat a vegetable.

BTW if you're seeing this on facebook you apparently have to click "Original Post" to actually see the videos.

One Cool Dude

One Cool Dude, originally uploaded by wetzel9.

This is Ben in his best laid-back-beach-dude mode. This smile wasn't just a random millisecond captured by the camera smile. He strutted around the living room wearing that ear to ear grin for a good 10 minutes.

New Shoes

We got the boys new shoes for the summer. This was how they reacted when we first put them on. Its funnier if you imagine the Benny Hill theme playing as you watch.

Ben is His Mother's Son

So although we get both opinions, the general consensus is that Ben looks like Jess and Matt looks like me. I've had my doubts until now. I honestly think Ben looks like my brother and Matt looks like Jess's mom. That was until we took the boys to the Children's Museum. There they had their first encounter with a sandbox. And Ben made it known he's his mother's son.

A bit of background: Jess does not like to get dirty. At all. Her mother loves to tell us the story of when she was little and they were on a walk. Jess was in a wagon that tipped over. Jess let out a bloodcurdling scream. Her mom assumes that she's severely hurt herself. She thinks she must have broke something. She asks Jess what's wrong. Jess is standing there crying and she yells "I'M DIRTY!" Jess will spend all day working in our yard, planting flowers, weeding. She'll do all this yard work without ever getting her hands dirty. Like she won't even have to wash them. She can paint an entire floor in the house and not get a speck of paint on her. She'll roast a chicken and somehow manage never to touch the chicken itself. Its actually quite amazing.

So this was Ben's reaction to discovering that sand stuck to his fingers when he touched it. And the laughing you hear in the background? That's Jess.

Guess Who's the Morning Person Now

So Matt has kind of come around since his younger days. He seems to be the chipper one every morning. He's all smiles when we come in each morning. "Hey Guys, you wouldn't believe the dream I had last night! I was a cowboy pirate astronaut!" Okay, so I may be projecting. They're not quite talking yet.

Our Little Reader

Ben loves books. It took me awhile to find the camera. What you see him do with the two books in the video also happened with every book on the floor around him. We're still working on getting him to put the books back on the shelf.

Big Shoes

So both the boys are fascinated with shoes. During the day they will randomly come up to Jess or I holding their own shoes and sit down in front of us, waiting patiently for use to put them on. They will also randomly bring me one of my own shoes and gently set it on top of my feet. Then step back and wait for me to put them on. If I do this they will run to get the other shoe for me to put on also. This does not necessarily mean the second shoe from the pair. Next step will be teaching them the difference between a dress shoe and a sneaker.

But what they really like is when I forget to put my shoes away. On the *extremely* rare times when this happens the boys will try to step into my shoes. With a little help they'll get their feet into both of them. Then they'll just stand there, very excited to be wearing big shoes.

Brushing Teeth

We've been brushing the kids teeth, well, ever since they had them. Ben is eagerly awaiting the day when he gets to do it entirely by himself. As you can hear in the background, Matt not so much.

Ben is Sick

IMG_2811, originally uploaded by wetzel9.

We can always tell when Ben isn't feeling well because we can actually get him to sit still. He spent the entire evening last night sitting quietly on the couch. This morning is was Mom's shoulder.

Fun with Hats

I keep waiting for hats not to be fun. So far it hasn't happened.

Easter Egg Hunt

So we were curious to see how the boys would react if we sent them on an easter egg hunt. Would they even notice the eggs on the ground? Would they actually carry the baskets. Put the eggs in them? Or would they run aimlessly around the yard? Turns out the answer was yes.

They actually did a pretty good job of getting the eggs in their baskets. They even took eggs out of the other's basket while they weren't guarding it. This usually results in pushing and tears, but in this case the other would just go running off to find more eggs. Plus they had trouble keeping the eggs in their baskets, so there were always eggs scattered around for them to pick up. Basically a good time for all.





The whole set of pictures can be found here.

18 Month Pictures

I used to think getting them both to look at the camera and smile was hard. That was before they figured out that they could just get up and walk away.


 

Fun with Balloons

Matt is definitely becoming the little chuckle-head of the pair. Figuring out what makes him laugh is kind of hit and miss though. So far we have penguins, Frosties, and now Dad flailing wildly until he throws his shoulder out.

So where is Ben in this? Every now and then one of the boys will wake up early from their nap and manage not to wake up the other one. For an hour or so we get to pretend we only have one kid.