playgroup field trip #2: live animals!

We've been waiting for the weather to get nice to head down to the Central Park Zoo for our next playgroup field trip... and the weather couldn't have cooperated more! It reached almost 80 degrees in the city today -- the perfect day to head to the zoo. We figured we should probably take the boys to see live animals this time around (that is, instead of stuffed ones at the museum!).

We had a great time wandering around the CPZ. It was totally packed that day because it was Spring break and the weather was so nice, but we were able to see everything we wanted to see and the boys had a great time. The pig, the sea lions, the polar bear, and the monkeys were all big hits. My little bro was on Spring break too, so he came down for the weekend and hung out with us. So nice to have uncle C. with us!

checkin' out the monkeys

waiting for the sea lions to be fed

(there was a lot of pointing)

Noah sharing some teddy grahams with Christian while they wait

2-year-olds and puddles... gotta love it!

hooray for the zoo!

Noah sings

Noah has become quite the little singer lately. He LOVES to sing song after song and even make up his own little songs -- I usually have NO idea what he's talking about and he could literally keep singing all day long if I was there to prompt more song ideas!

I was able to catch some video footage of him performing the other day.



If you listen closely, you can catch some of his own lyrics that he threw in there -- I'm pretty sure there's a "mommy" and a "ball" in there!

you know you live in Washington Heights when...

your almost-2-year-old starts stomping on the floor whenever he hears Reggaeton blasting.

whoops.

(it's spring in the 'hood and everyone's celebrating... especially our downstairs neighbors.)

birthday weekend: a little slice of heaven

I celebrated my 29th birthday this past weekend with a fabulous baby-free trip to the Catskills with Jon. It was amazing. On Friday we tried to squeeze in some quality daddy-mommy-Noah time at the Bronx Zoo, before ditching Noah at gma's house on the way up to Olivebridge, NY where we rented a little modern mountain house for the weekend.

The weather couldn't have cooperated more. I was so worried that the whole weekend was going to be a wash, but the storm ended up coming through on Friday night and then left us with an almost too-perfect day on Saturday! We woke up late (like 7am -- sick, right?), went for a nice "country run" (which felt like 10 miles with all the hills -- I really need to get off the treadmill and run outside more!), and had a lovely breakfast (that I didn't cook!). We spent the afternoon at the spa (the perfect b-day gift), headed out to Woodstock for a little stroll through the town, and then went to dinner. I couldn't get over how quiet it was -- and actually had a hard time getting used to all the frogs croaking (a far cry from Reggaeton blasting, but still an unusual sound that takes some getting used to!)

It was so nice to have some time together (away from our little noodle) and soak in some nice country air. I definitely felt refreshed after my spa trip and some much-needed R&R. We were so worried that Noah was going to be super resentful that we ditched him and really take it out on us when we got back. But I could tell he had a great time with gma, gpa, and uncle "Caw-noo" (Caulin) because he still can't stop talking about them. Apparently there were a lot of trips in "hee-haw's cah" (gpa's car) and a lot of time spent throwing things down drains and heating vents -- sounds like the perfect 2-year-old weekend to me! (thanks again, gma, gpa, & uncle C!)

here are some pics from our weekend:

eating some Arthur Ave. pizza

admiring the zebras

our little mountain house -- I miss it so much already!

ahh, the spa!

soaking up that last bit of fresh air!

I'm diggin' 29 so far. I think it's gonna be a good year... it's definitely off to a good start.

Noah and "Wexi"

Noah had his first official "dinner-date" on Sunday. We had the Copes over for what has become our traditional semi-annual-post-General-Conference dinner. Now that there are 3 kids between the 2 families, it can be really hard to actually have some adult conversation at a dinner party. Between feeding the kids, referee-ing the sharing of toys, changing diapers, and answering the multitude of questions that seem to come up in the minds of pre-schoolers little heads while you're trying to have adult conversation -- the evening seems to be over before it even begins. But this time around things went really well.

Noah pretty much followed Lexi around the whole time and wanted to do whatever she was doing. This is definitely new for him. He usually tends to stick by mom or dad and requires us to do the entertaining. But they even went in Noah's room for awhile and played really nicely together -- it was fabulous! (I'm ready to hire Lexi as a babysitter.)

We set Noah and "Wexi" up at their own little table and Noah even allowed Ella to sit in his high chair (this was huge)!

He's definitely starting to realize that he's a big boy.

(no dating until you're 16!)

the tortoise and the hare

This week for playgroup we had a lesson about "fast and slow". I thought it would be fun to read the story of the "Tortoise and the Hare" and have the boys act it out. So, I pulled out the bunny ears we made for Easter and then made a tortoise shell out of posterboard and some rope.

I honestly didn't think they'd even be interested in doing this, but we tried it anyway. To my surprise Noah LOVED the tortoise shell. Christian was a good sport and wore the bunny ears. He chased Noah down the hallway and pretended to sleep, while Noah crawled along and won the "race". Meanwhile Eddie hung out at the finish line and cheered them on.

It was really cute. Noah then decided that he wanted to be a tortoise for the day.

Here's a pic of the duo playing trucks after the race: