May at a glimpse

This past month has held much for the Foote household. I have a slide show that covers it in pics and I'll give a few of the highlights here. In early May, NASA, about ten minutes from our house, had an open house. So, we loaded up the kids and went. We parked at the I-X center and rode a bus to the NASA grounds, a highlight in Ayden's book. There was a wealth of exhibits and hands-on things to see and explore. Ayden got to sit in a cockpit, which he loved as it included many buttons he could push and explore. We saw the gravity testing station, the wind tunnels, the sound absorbtion station, and much more.

The sound absorbtion building (clearly not it's technical name, but that escapes me for the moment), holds a special place in our hearts. While in this very quiet "building"/station, due to all the sound absorbing blocks, Ayden announces, "I'm poopy!" and begins walking rather awkwardly and bowleggedly. I look at him and wonder, is a puddle forming? He takes a few steps and a few drops follow him. Yes, we had neglected our child enough that his diaper was beyond the absorption point. We left our "mark" in that station, went outside and had to change him in the grass. (There were no public restrooms, only porta-potties.) It was a comical/tragic moment in our family's outing.

Along with Mother's Day, this month also held my mom's and dad's birthdays, which happen to be four days apart. Ayden enjoyed the birthday traditions immensly: blowing out the fire, singing, presents, cake, etc. My dad is out of town this week, and so he was gone for my mom's birthday, on Sunday. I offered to drive down and get Carrie at OSU so she could come home for the weekend and celebrate my mom's birthday with us. So, Ayden, Kieran and I left Sat. and picked her up. Sunday, we had the birthday party, which was wonderful. Then, Monday, my mom, Ayden, Kieran, Carrie, and I loaded into our taurus to take Carrie back. It was a fun trip, filled with many "challenges." On the way there, we stopped at, what I like to call, the most dysfunctional McDonalds ever. We tried one of their new hand-dipped ice cream cones, handed to me with chocolate dripping all over and down the cone. The brusque man who dipped it for me offered a gruff, "sorry" to make me feel better about handing this mess of a cone to my son. Then, Kieran blew threw his diaper, onesie, and onto his car seat, and this was only forty-five minutes into the trip! Although the drive home was also challenging, the day was nice overall. We got to have lunch with some of Carrie's roommates and meet her boyfriend Abe who was a hit with Ayden.

Kieran is make wild progress in the movement department. He rolls from front to back, back to front, lifts his butt inches off the ground, and protests if he's left in a room by himself. He's a social fellow and loves his brother dearly. He follows Ayden with his eyes whenever they're in the same room, and it's fun to see them enjoy each other so much.

Enjoy the rest of the highlights in the slideshow!

Our Boys

Ayden LOVES mowing the lawn. When Josh (or a neighbor) mows, he glues himself to windows and watches their every move. Lately, he's been using his Scoop toy (from Bob the Builder) and pretending it's a lawn mower. This past week, however, we went to my folks just as my dad was doing some mowing. Ayden was thrilled and went out to watch. He even got to help push the mower. Well, Ayden wanted to mow himself, so he went in, got his Thomas the Train suitcase, took it out, and pretended that was a mower. He followed in my dad's tracks and mowed the yard. Well, that was hint enough for us, and we went out and bought him a toy lawn mower. He loves it and now also dons headphones since he saw our neighbor wearing some protective ear wear while doing some heavy duty yard work.





On the Kieran front, we made huge progress today. I had to work this evening, and, typically, that means a difficult haul for Josh. While he gladly stays with the boys, Kieran poses a huge challenge because he is extremely anti-bottle. Well, today, Kieran took his bottle!! Hooray!

Kieran is starting to exhibit quite the personality. He rolls over in a hearbeat, gets very upset when he's sick of being on his stomach, does not sleep well from 12 (am!)-6, loves to be given a blanket for comfort, loves sticking his tongue out, drools a ton (like his brother did), and really loves his big brother. Here's a video example of typical Ayden/Kieran interaction.

During this clip, Ayden is singing over and over "I'm banging the drums."



No children fell off the couch during this video clip. It did end happily for all :)