Santa Claus is coming to town....

TOMORROW!!!!!!

After weeks of anticipation, Santa will finally be coming tomorrow! We have spent the month reading Christmas books, singing songs and watching Christmas movies and we have all been on our best behavior for the past few days in hopes of making it to the "Nice" list (just in case we all weren't there yet).

We have gone twice this month to visit Santa so the boys could tell him what they want for Christmas (and so I could get the Santa pictures I love so much) and each time, the list has gotten longer and longer. By the second visit, Ryan even had a list ready for Dylan, which of course included trains. Luckily, Dylan warmed up to Santa the more we saw him - I think it may have been due to the pep talk Ryan gave him "Dylan, Don't cry, Santa's nice. If you cry, he won't bring you any presents."

As everyone who knows me knows, I LOVE Christmas and everything about it - spending time with my family, wrapping presents, the music, and all of the wonderful traditions. Now that Ryan is old enough to understand about Christmas more, I was happy that this year we could start a new tradition of leaving milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. Both Jay and I did that as kids and I remember one year, Michael being about the same age Ryan is now and completely freaking out about the carrots being eaten one Christmas. Well, since we weren't going to be home Christmas Eve, we left treats at both Omi and Poppy's and Gamma and Papa's house (hope the reindeer like cucumbers too- oops)

Now it is time to go to bed because if Santa sees we are not sleeping, he might skip our house! As soon as Ryan got in bed, he told me that he heard the bells from the reindeer and that we needed to go check to see if Santa came. haha. Can't wait for tomorrow!!!

First Snowman

On Saturday around mid-day, it started snowing (the first snow of the year). I was in Westchester and by the time Jay got out of work, the roads were bad enough that we decided it would be safer to spend the night at Omi and Poppy's house and drive home in the morning. Ryan was really excited about the snow and was begging to go outside and play because he wanted to have a "snow fight". We told Ryan that if he ate all of his dinner, he could play outside for a little while and that we could play more in the morning. Luckily, he finished his soup and we went outside because by the time we woke up in the morning, almost all of the snow was gone. There was just enough snow to make a snowman - Ryan's first ever - complete with a corn-cob pipe and two eyes made out of coal.

I am having trouble getting the video of the snowball fight to load but I am working on it.

Bear Mountain Ice Skating

It was a beautiful day out today and the forecast predicted a pretty warm night so we decided to head to Bear Mountain for Ryan's first ice skating experience and Omi, Poppy and Uncle Matt joined us. The rink did not have double-bladed skates for kids, but that didn't stop Ryan: as soon as he was all laced up, he stood up and started walking towards the rink.

While he was a little wobbly at first, he did great and really had no problem maintaining his balance. Until we hit the ice that is...

We had arrived 30 minutes into the session so at first I thought "Oh man, we only will have an hour". After one lap around the rink, Jay and I looked at each other and we were both thinking "This is going to be a very long hour". Because neither of us have skated in a long time, we were both pretty nervous about leading Ryan around the rink. I was petrified of falling on top of him and hurting him (breaking his arm, skating over his fingers, smashing his teeth to name a few of the thoughts I had in the first 5 seconds of the first lap). We realized the best strategy was to each hold one of Ryan's hands and just pull him around.

Uncle Matt, on the other hand, was really sturdy on his skates and when we needed a break, he skated around with Ryan in between his legs.

After almost every lap, Ryan said he wanted to take a break but as soon as he got off the ice, he turned around and said he wanted to go again.

As time went on, we all got better and more comfortable on our skates and even had a few races around the rink:

Of course, Ryan won all of the races and was really good at keeping his skates straight by the end of the session.

I think Dylan would have put on skates if he could too even though he had a fun time goofing off on the side.

As much fun as he had skating, the highlight of Ryan's night was watching the Zamboni go around. We had to stay there until the entire rink was clean and when we were in the car, Ryan announced "I think Poppy needs to ask Santa for a boni for Christmas". Not sure how Santa will pull that one off...

Pumpkin Carving

Continuing the family tradition that we started last year, we carved a pumpkin tonight to get ready for Halloween. By the time we bought the pumpkin, it was slim pickings at the store as you can tell by the back of the pumpkin - the front of the pumpkin looked great though and my 3 carvers were very cute too.

Once we started carving, we realized very quickly Ryan was going to need to be distracted since he kept telling Jay he "needed" to use the knife.

In his attempt to distract Ryan, Jay said "Let me cut the top off and then when we are finished, you can put it back on like a puzzle" and then for the rest of the night, Ryan kept saying " I need to do the puzzle now". Unlike last year, Ryan was happy to help scoop the seeds out of the pumpkin but Dylan seemed to have even more fun than Ryan did and kept trying to pull the pumpkin away from his brother.

When we were finally finished making the jack-o-lantern, we lit it and Ryan said he wanted to get all of his Halloween "friends" together. Of course, I was more than happy to take a picture of them.

I can't wait to enjoy the rest of the Halloween activities we have planned for this weekend with the boys- I see a lot of treats (and some tricks) in our future!!

Halloween Sneak Preview

Halloween is all the rage in our house right now. We have had a friendly "ghost" visit us each night and bring us spooky decorations and we have had endless discussions about our costumes, trick-or-treating, and candy. We have a party to go to on Friday night and on Halloween so each boy has 2 costumes: Ryan is going to be Mr. Incredible and Woody (from Toy Story) and Dylan is going to be a spider and a giraffe. Ryan told me he would like me to be a witch and told Jay that he wanted him to be a ghost - since walking around in a sheet probably won't be that much fun, I told Jay he should pick something else. When he came home with his costume, I thought it was great and looked great on him but we weren't so sure what the kids would think and decided to have a Halloween preview:

After we stopped the video, Jay kept the costume on for a while and by the time Jay took it off, Ryan said "Daddy, I like your costume". Hopefully, he will still like it and not be afraid: as for the other kids, if they get scared oh well - more candy for us!!!

Tailgating at the park

(from Sept. 13)

We really looked like the freak family today. We all get dressed in head-to-toe Jets gear and headed to the park so the kids could get in some play time (and hopefully get tired out) before the game started. Nothing exciting really happened, but the kids just looked so cute, I couldn't help but take a bunch of pictures. To our surprise, Dylan started sitting unsupported while we were there which definitely made for some great shots.

Rice Cereal

(from September 15)

On Sunday, Jay, the kids and I went over to Michael's apartment to watch the Jets game with him and Jasmine and my parents. We were waiting for Dylan's 6 month birthday to feed him his first real food (at our pediatricians recommendation) but since we were all going to be together, we decided to let him try some rice cereal a few days early. Dylan seemed very interested in trying the food and even tried grabbing the spoon out of my hand:

Unfortunately, the cereal was not a huge hit. I am pretty sure Dylan was even thinking "I waited 6 months for this??

And for those of you who like the videos, here is some documentation that our second attempt with the cereal was as unsuccessful as the first.

Next up: Bananas. Hopefully he will like those better

Crawling

I am so far behind on this blog and really need to catch up but there never seems to be time. Anyway, I owe Erika big time so here is one for you Er to brighten your day. This was last week

The Yankees sweep the Sox

Last night, for the first time in 24 years, the Yankees completed a 4 game sweep of the Red Sox. Of course, our household was thrilled and I think the sweep was due in no small part to the Yankees having the most adorable fans in baseball.

This weekend also marked Dylan's first time on the swings. Just like Ryan, Dylan loved the swings from the second he sat down. I really didn't push him too much (and had to confine Ryan to the neighboring swing so he didn't "help" me push), but Dylan did like it and smiled the whole time.

With summer almost over (it sure did fly by), hopefully we will get a few more weeks of warm weather, continued success for the Yankees and a lot more time to play on the swings!