Yeah I Know, They're Pretty Cute

This was quite the eventful weekend! My cousin was married in the Salt Lake Temple and one of my old college friends was also married the same day in the Winter Quarters Temple. Naturally there is no possible way for me to go to both. Perhaps one day, they'll be able to invent something so that I can split myself in two. *sigh* Anyway- My parents came to town for the wedding and stayed with us for the weekend. I love it when they come! I wish we could live closer to them so that A and E could spend more time with their grandparents. Maybe one day. While they were here and not doing wedding business, we had fun spending time together. A was quite enamoured with grandma and grandpa. Cept, he calls them both 'tam-pa?'...translation, "grandpa". We went to the Bean museum at BYU and looked at all the animals up there. Then my parents took him to cabelas where he got to look at all the fishies! I guess they have a huge fish tank there. When they got back, they told me that once they got to the fish tank, it was feeding time and the staff dumped a load of goldfish into the tank. . . haha. I'm just glad A isn't old enough to ask why the other fish are eating all the goldfish! My cousin got married on Saturday and we had it all worked out so it would be perfect and easy, but come on, when do perfect and easy every really go together? M got very very sick Friday, so I went to the wedding with my parents and the two boys- who I will have to admit were very dashing in their white shirts and green ties. The ceremony was at 4:20, got done at about 5. I had my cousins watching my kids during this time. When I got out, one of the girls there said that E pretty much cried the whole time. yep- that sounds about right, the baby that never fusses has to freak out the one time I need him really not to! At least by the time I got to him, he was asleep. Luckily she didn't have to suffer too long. Then when the happy couple came out of the temple, it was FrEeZiNg outside, beautiful weather the whole week and then it rained on her day. :( We took pictures for about 5-10 minutes and then had to drive to get my car. My parents had to be at the airport by 7 I think and I kind of needed a car to get home. You'd think that finding a parking spot close to where you need to be would be fairly easy. . . but here's the thing; you've never driven with me! This man gave me directions to the Conference Center underground parking--couldn't find it. So not wanting to waste time I just found a side street and parked there. Little did I know that I'd parked a lot further away than I thought! By the time I walked clear over to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (JSMB) where we were to have the dinner celebrating my cousins wedding, it was past 7. I didn't get to say goodbye to my parents. Not exactly something I like missing out on. Before I go on, don't get me wrong, I had a great GREAT day. It was so special to be with my family and see my cousin bonded together with the love of her life. I love how busy my kids keep me and I even enjoy my lack of directional skills, because if I had not have gotten lost, I wouldn't have enjoyed the nice walk through Temple Square! And now- moving on. The dinner in the JSMB was excellent. They had us assigned at different tables so we could get to know the different families. I was paired with the young married couples. And ALL of them seemed to be VERY baby hungry. haha. I asked A at one point to say 'please' and he did. Then he said 'thank you' to me while signing thank you and they just ate it up. He said his big "Amen!" at the end of the prayer. I heard everyone go 'Awwww... Ooooo... oh how cute!' One guy told me he wanted to just eat up his fat little cheeks. As a mommy, it just makes me so happy that other people enjoy my boys as much as I do. A has this new face thing he does- I'll have to record it and put it on here one day- but what he does is gets his little hands scrunched up into fists then flexes his face muscles so his head shakes. It looks SO funny. Most of the guys at the table got such a kick out of it, that they'd copy him so that he'd do it again. During the two hours that we were at the dinner, A did his best show in order to get attention. A few of the girls told me they wanted to steal him, one guy was like "if I had to babysit any kid, this would be the one." After the dinner a few women I didn't know came up to me and said how much they loved watching my boys and me. The thing is, watching two little boys alone is pretty dificult. However, I wouldn't have missed the wedding for anything. We got home close to 11. As soon as I got everyone packed in the car, they crashed. I was pretty jealous. I'm not gonna lie. Once we were home and settled, I crashed on the couch. What a wonderful day for my family and especially my cousin! I'm glad I was able to be there.

These pictures down here are separate from the story above. We just got them over the weekend and I wanted to show them off. This was E's 6 week photo shoot.

Baby toesies.

Hi Mommy

Precious time with his Daddy

A gracing us with the best face he wanted to display


My little angel

Sweet big brother

My favorite one of E I think

Oh A, A, A. What would we ever do without you. :)

My piece of Heaven

These photos were all taken by M's uncle Dan Hixson. He's a great photographer. http://www.danhixsonphotography.com/
Thanks Dan!

Oh- also you'll notice there's a light band on some of the pictures. Thats my scanner, not the actual photo.

Saturday at the Park!

As you can see Ethan is beginning to help hold his bottle. This photo is somewhat deceiving, because he really doesn't keep his hands there, its just when he's really excited about his food, his hands seem to fly to his bottle! He is still a very pleasant baby! The photo below is when we went to the park and McKay caught him rubbing his face and I thought it was fun little picture of him. He will be three months old tomorrow. How time sure flies!

We stayed at the park for about an hour. Its just the small one right by our house. I do wish it was a little nicer and had grass instead of cement and rocks. haha Ayden didn't seem to care and honestly I just love being with my family and I can't get enough of the nice weather!

Being inside does strange things to your face.

This is a little out of order. Before we went to the park, Ethan got a nice bath and I haven't really taken many bath pictures of him.

Ayden spinning the broom like his Daddy did. He was actually pretty good at it.

I have no explanation for my face. I'm going to hope I wasn't trying to smile and McKay just caught me in the middle of one of my sentences!

Loving the teeter totter.

We tried it with McKay on one side and me on the other holding Ayden, but he kept asking to get "down?" . . . "all done" . . . "down?". So of course I got down, because its no fun to play with a toddler that doesn't want to play with you. I assumed he'd get down and go to the slide or something, but he ran back and said "up?"

He just didn't want me on the teeter totter with him. I was worried that he would fall off without my help, but as you can see, he did a really good job. McKay was at the other end just pushing his side up and down while Ayden sat contentedly.

For the most part, this is where Ayden lived while we spent our hour at the park. Standing at the top of the play place, throwing the ball down the slide and then waiting for me or McKay to toss it back up to him so he can throw it back down the slide!

Great fun when you're only two and don't want to go down the slide yourself!
And this last photo is just because I thought it was cute. He has all of his teeth in but the few in the bottom front! As most of you know, when you see Ayden, he usually looks like this... big smile on his face, ready to entertain and of course, get attention.

Two words

This sucks! . . .

Snow should not exist in APRIL! It makes people like me crazy. I hate it.

At least Ethan is making the most of his day.

EaStEr

I'm not so good at uploading my images to photobucket, so I'll put them here. These are much more recent and easy to see than on photobucket anyway. As you can tell we had a fun Easter! Ayden watched me do a couple of our eggs and then of course wanted to join in. But he hasn't quite grasped the concept that eggs are delicate and that the words 'soft', 'careful', and 'do not throw' actually mean what they mean. So naturally that ended us with six cracked Easter eggs that were enthusiastically chucked into the dyes. I finally wised up-yes it did take six eggs to get the idea! So I helped him put the eggs nicely into the dye.
He wasn't as happy with this idea, because he didn't get to do it by himself anymore. But for the sanity of everyone else, it was totally worth it! Once Ayden realized that when he put the egg into the dye it came out another color, he was thrilled! He'd tell me what color he wanted to put his egg into next. I did have to remind him of what colors were out there. He was most
interested in 'lellow' and 'ornge' I did a couple eggs on my own in the blues and greens and once I took them out and let them dry for a bit, Ayden would snag them and throw them into his two

colors of preference. I am just so glad that we had paper plates and paper towels laid down... and not to mention that our table is a hand-me-down. It made things a lot less stressful! Once we actually finished the eggs, we got to stare at them for about an hour. He was so proud of his creations. I had to fight to get the eggs actually put away.
As you can see half of the eggs are in his colors and the other half were dumped in his colors and luckily were saved so that we didn't have an all yellow and orange egg Easter. Which honestly

wouldn't be all that bad, I just like my cold colors over my warm colors. Anyway- all in all we had a good time and an pretty easy clean-up considering I was dealing with a 22 month old!

Sunday was a pretty great day too. At first he didn't really get why he had to go around and pick up all of the eggs. And to be honest, if I hadn't been raised with the same tradition, I would be thinking the same thing he was... "So what's the point of all this?" I opened one of the plastics eggs he found and there was candy inside for him. That changed his mind very quickly as to the value of egg hunting!

He would find an egg, come over to me to open it and eat what was inside. After doing this for about 5 eggs, I figured it can't be all that good for him to be shoveling candy down his throat that fast, so I would just take the eggs and put them in his basket. He was not pleased with this and tried to hang onto every egg he found. I eventually had to pry the eggs he'd already found out of his hands and put them in the basket so he would go collect more. There's only so much his little arms can carry and that's about 1 egg per hand. haha It really was a ton of fun to play with him. We did eventually get all of the eggs into his basket and then of course he dumped them all out, because naturally that's what little boys do.

Here's a few pictures of his after the hunt adventure.

Putting eggs into the basket... or so you'd think.

And then another picture of him after he'd found all his eggs and dumping his entire basket out, because like I said before, this is just what has to be done if you're a boy. Actually I think if I was a little girl again, I'd do the same thing. And now I'm just rambling. I hope you liked the pictures and I hope it gives you a fun picture in your head of what Easter is like at this Kunz residence. And even though you don't see Ethan in

these pictures, he was
definitely there, getting
eggs dumped on him.

"Get out! Get out!"

So earlier this week I had the wonderful pleasure of folding all the clothes! I've come to accept that probably for the rest of my life, this will be an under appreciated task that I do. One of the things that I like to do when I fold clothes is keep Ayden distracted. If I don't he liked to test what happens when he grabs a folded shirt and throws it. "What will the shirt do if I do this?! How many can I test before Mommy runs over and stops me? Maybe if I kick them they'll look different from when I throw them. Oooh I can destroy more before Mommy gets to me if I kick them and throw them!" This is how I generally imagine his train of thought going, if I was his age that's what I'd be thinking! Anyway- I have learned that if he's busy with something else I can actually make progress on the clothes and I don't want to toss him across the room as much, since he's not ruining everything! As far as I see it, it's a win-win situation. So on this particular folding day, I took one of the clean bedsheets and made a fort for him. He was

pretty excited and extremely hyper by the time I'd finished. He'd run in and out at a mile a minute. If I poked my head in, he'd laugh hysterically. Or if I crawled in he would run around in circles inside the fort laughing. It was pretty cute. There were some times when I would try to crawl in and he wasn't interested in having visitors... so he'd run at me, swinging his little arm and saying "Get out! Get out!" Of course he can't really say 'get' so it sounded more like "det out!" but I got the idea. :) I even tried to put Ethan inside for a second and Ayden got even more upset about that over me coming in. So in order to maintain the peace, Ethan and I evacuated the fort and chilled outside, folding clothes. Feeling under appreciated. :P Ok, not really, but it was a fun couple of hours, I will admit.

Another fun first

First lets start with some new pictures of Ethan! He is getting SO big and expressive. These are the first pictures I've taken of him giving me a big smile. Although he has been grinning and cooing at us for about 3 weeks and we LOVE it. I think I've mentioned that. What parent doesn't love seeing their baby being to show personality!? He is definitely my little monkey. I'll blame McKay for that one!

I'll have to admit that the beautiful weather has a way of making me feel so good! I get to go outside and let Ayden throw rocks at everything that moves or doesn't. He's not a prejudice thrower either. You can be Mommy, brother or that one tree over there. I also get to watch him run away from the quail screaming because for some unexplained reason- he is terrified of them. He'll usually run to me saying 'Save you!' I think he means "save me", lucky for him I get the idea. He clung onto my leg today as we watched them so I could show him that they are not scary. I'll have to admit that I don't think he really

believed me. The entire walk home, which is only 3 doors from the park to our house, he hung onto me and cried when they'd try to run past us. The closer they got- the shriller his petrified screech became as well. There was one point where he completely froze and I had to nudge him with my foot to get him to move forward, which in turn just caused him to wrap his little hands around that leg. I'm just glad this walk was very short. Anything longer and we'd still be outside running from the quail.

oh- and here's an "exciting" first. We went shopping for food on Saturday and Ayden decided to throw his very first ultra-huge tantrum right in the middle of the frozen foods section! I tried not to laugh, because whatever he's upset about is a very big deal to him and I don't want him to think I'm laughing at him. . . even though I kinda am. Yes I know- I'm a mean mommy. I haven't ruined my kids yet though. Mckay and I did finally figured out what he was so incredibly upset about... Cereal. yes, you didn't read that wrong. He wanted to carry the cereal bag. Mind you it's one of those huge bags that is about as long as he is. So- not wanting to fight this little battle in the middle of the store, we conceded and gave him the cereal bag. He could barely carry the stupid thing! It got left behind many times when we would stop to get something and he'd set it down to take a breather. :) If I went back to go get it though, he'd throw himself on the ground facefirst and cry like someone had just told him his life was about to end. He just had to get it himself. There were many points throughout the store when I would have to go back to the middle of the aisle and pick him up by his arm because he'd just lay down dead center of everyone. Carts were trying to maneuver around the 2 year old who firmlyl believes everything was put on this Earth to please him. Which of course at this age is how he is supposed to think, but when he displays his thoughts all over the grocery store floor. Its gets annoying to Mommy and bystanders. Because the cereal was so heavy for him, I tried to give him something else from the cart to carry, but he was not to be fooled! So needless to say, we had a very long trip in the grocery store with Ayden. Everyone was smiling at him when he was walking around carrying the bag, some lady thought he was just "SOOO CUTE!" I bet she wouldn't have thought that if she could see what happened when we tried to take the cereal away.

A's thought process

I apologize for those of you that have to read this... actually nevermind, because you really don't have to ready this at all.

A has been sleeping in his toddler bed and has been doing great with it. The only thing is, he won't get off the bed. He had a phase where he would crawl off, no problem... but now he seriously won't get off unless I help him. M says when he's around A doesn't care and will get on and off the bed without hesitating. This morning I was determined to not help him. So I opened his door and told him to come down for some cereal. And I went downstairs myself waiting for him to come down. He sat up there at the edge of his bed for about 45 minutes, just moaning and crying and asking for me. I don't get it!! Its barely off the ground! and if he really does get off the bed with M, then why the heck can't he crawl off with me! I went back upstairs and showed him how to get off. But no-- he just stood up and held his arms out so I could pick him up. There's no way I'm going to get outsmarted by a two year old, so I set him down and turned his little body around so he could slide off the bed. It took him maybe a half a second to slide off. What a waste of his time- he sat up there for 45 minutes crying when it took him no time at all to just slide off the bed! I seriously seriously don't get it. I don't understand what sort of logic is running through his head. Maybe he counts it as a victory since I was in the room with him, right next to the bed and right next to him. lol