Busy Bunnies

When did Easter become so fantabulous? It's like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Fourth of July all rolled up in one low stress holiday! There's the overnight visitor bearing gifts, the big family dinners, the candy-palooza (and apparently costumes, if you're Toddle Inn), and the outdoor celebrations and BBQs. I guess with kids, every holiday gets elevated and over-emphasized a bit, because the little excited faces that result from all the fanfare are just so darn cute! This year, action started in the Stockwell house on Thursday evening and ran straight through to Sunday night. All the excitement definitely wore the boys (and their Mommy) out - they each took mega naps on Monday (while I put the house back in order but should have been napping).

The fun began with a very, very, very cold Sea Dogs game on Thursday night. With temps in the low 40s and some kind of crazy wind chill, Ben jumped at the chance to stay home with Adam while Ethan, Uncle Pauly, and I bundled up and braved about 6 innings. Ethan was definitely more intrigued by the baseball action than he was last year, but was still most enthralled by the food. Thank god for the hot cocoa - that bought us a few extra innings.

Friday morning we did some traditional egg dying, which I am happy to report is getting a little more manageable and a little less messy every year.

Saturday we awoke to a mix of rain and snow (!) and realized the egg hunt/bbq we had planned for the afternoon was going to have to move indoors. It was a hit nonetheless - these kids don't appear to tire of hunting for plastic eggs, particularly if they're filled with candy.

This little monkey flew under the radar in traditional second child fashion - before we knew it he was knee deep in a wild sugar mania and literally bouncing off the walls. Oops. He wasn't the only one - if this picture doesn't sum up four 2-4 year olds who have had way too much sugar, I don't know what does:

They're all looking different directions, no one is interacting, and clearly sitting still is a challenge, and yet they are all still stuffing their little faces with the good stuff.

Before the egg hunt, we had each of the kids decorate a bag to hold their treasures. Clearly, one of our children is extremely Type A.

And maybe a tad bossy too.

But the egg hunt was really adorable. We had four different colored eggs (one for each kiddo), and they were all so good about finding the right eggs and giving others to their rightful owners. Ethan was the ringleader (or spoiler, depending on how you look at it), alerting the other kids to the location of their eggs with continuous shouts of "Hey ____, over here!".

Thanks to Ben and Uncle Pauly who hid all the eggs so well and then missed the egg hunt entirely while discussing fantasy baseball.

Despite our inability to locate him last week, the Easter Bunny did in fact hit up our house on Saturday night. We awoke to a trail of carrot crumbs in the basement on Sunday morning (to which Adam said in a worried voice "The Easter Bunny throwed up!"). The boys got loads of good loot from the big bunny and the uncle that loves to spoil them, including some sporty stuff that will keep us busy if we ever get a spring here in Maine. No pictures of the basket unveiling (boo!), or the whole family here for Easter dinner (double boo!), but here are some from yet another egg hunt we attended on Easter morning at Ben's cousin Carolyn's house:

"I don't see any eggs out here."

"Can I eat this?" We heard this ALL WEEKEND LONG. The answer was usually, but should have always been, "No".

Impossible to get a cute multi-generational shot.

Can you tell who is most excited about this egg hunt?

We need one of these.

Easter dinner was like a big old Christmas reunion, minus Auntie Gwen and family (we missed you guys!). The Magyar/Stockwells sure do enjoy eating and celebrating together, and we're so fortunate to be able to spend these holidays with both families. May the tradition continue!

Hopping Down the Bunny Trail

There's a lot of excitement about the upcoming Easter weekend in these parts. I told the boys I caught sight of the Easter Bunny in the woods a few weeks back, and ever since, there have been constant questions about whether I had seen him again, what he looked like, what he said/did when he saw me, where he is now, what he is doing now, if he looked "goofy" (?), and on and on and on. There have also been a few trips into the back woods to look for him, but no such luck. I suppose I could take the boys to the mall to satisfy their need for an Easter Bunny sighting, but the mall bunnies have always creeped me out, much more so than their Santa counterparts. So instead, we continue to search for the elusive bunny, plan how we will attract him to our house on Sunday (carrots, lots and lots of carrots), and partake in many pre-Easter festivities to get us in the spirit. The boys had their spring parties at school yesterday, complete with egg dying, an egg hunt, and lots and lots of candy. And as if they needed even MORE candy, today is "Halloween in April" day. I'm not sure who came up with this idea, but a.) the kids love it, and b.) thank god for the costume box because thinking about Halloween costumes on short notice in April is tough! After a few rounds of discussion (read fighting over costumes), the boys settled on these this morning:

But because I can hardly stand the cuteness of kids in costume, here are just a few more:

The runner-up cowboy costume

"What are these feet things?" Reminds me so much of this picture from 2 1/2 years ago...

"Peek-a-boo ROAR"

"We're trying to eat breakfast Mom!"

Sleepy lion

I can't wait to hear all about the boys' trick-or-treating adventures when they get home tonight. Oh, and raid the accompanying candy. Between all the parties this week and the multiple egg hunts we have planned over the next few days, we'll all be sufficiently egged out and sugared up once the big event rolls around on Sunday.

Wheels!

I might be wrong, but I think we now hold a record for the most number of wheels housed in a garage. There's the eight that are on our two cars, of course. Then there's the three strollers which add another ten wheels total. Two cars is certainly quite ordinary; three strollers is maybe one more than we need, but I would argue they are all very useful and important. Where we really go a little overboard in the wheels department is in all things related to kids' recreation. Our garage has turned into a regular bicycle rental shop for the younger set. In addition to a very ancient cozy coupe, a baby stroller (that is used as a lawn mower), a wagon, several ride-on cars, and a scooter, we now own four bikes for our two kids. And yet these boys STILL fight over who rides what! We had been wanting to get Ethan a "big boy bike" for some time now, so when we took our bi-monthly family trip to Walmart on Friday, he got to pick out some new wheels. Correction: Dad actually picked out Ethan's new bike, and was taking so long to decide on what we should buy that the boys and I left him there, took Ethan to his swimming lesson, had the swimming lesson, and drove back to Walmart, all in the time it took Dad to do his number crunching, comparison shopping, review surfing, and other analyses necessary before making any sort of purchase. Oh, and there was some back and forth via phone, text, and email during the swim lesson because the decider needed some advice. But I digress...

Ethan ADORES his new bike.

And maybe it was all the time Ben spent picking the bike out on Friday, or all the time he spent teaching Ethan how to ride it on Saturday and Sunday, but the whole biking experience is ALL ABOUT DADDY.

It's very sweet, actually, and nice for them to have an activity all their own. Like everything else that this boy tackles, Ethan takes his biking so seriously - yesterday he told me "I really need to work on my braking Mommy. When is Daddy going to be able to work with me on my braking?".

And to prevent future feelings of favoritism, or cries of "All you ever gave me were Ethan's hand-me-downs, scarring me for life!", Adam scored a new set of wheels too. So now in addition to the tricycle he inherited from Ethan and the Skuut we got him for his birthday (which he's not quite big enough for), Adam now has his very own "big boy bike" too. But for now, he's content mastering his new (to him) tricycle...

...and pushing his brother around when he decides he needs a break from learning to ride his new bike.

I see lots of long family bike rides in our future. Maybe Ben will spring for an adult bike (his current bike is circa 1989), or maybe he'll just borrow the Skuut.

Sick Day

This is what happens when one sick (but very much on the mend) kid is left to fend for himself for hours on end while his parents can't afford to take a sick day and go about their work as usual:

Admittedly, it could be so very much worse, but I found it hilarious that he decided to put his Pocahontas costume on before doing his Richard Scarry puzzle. There must have been several forays into the costume box, because he later told me that he had needed to put his dragon-fighting sword down in order to do his puzzle.

So did he do half the puzzle, decide he didn't want to be a knight anymore, and change costumes? Or was the sword a tip-off that knights aren't great puzzlers? Who knows what goes on in the minds of babes, but it sure was a funny sight to pop in on.

All joking aside, Ethan's been dealing with a stomach bug off and on since Saturday, and has been such a trooper! This bug has left only one Stockwell standing (yours truly, knock on wood), and let's just say that two of the three stricken men have handled it valiantly and without hardly a complaint, and the third, well... I am crossing every finger and toe that Ethan is well enough to go to school tomorrow - after pulling out all possible stops today (lots of TV, some crafts, all the "rainy day" toys, a new book and CD), there is zilch in the way of reserves for another sick day tomorrow.

Hallelujah

Yesterday I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It's not even worth writing about, other than to say that it was long, involved lots of time in many different airports, resulted in two large blisters on my foot (sprinting in heels is never a great idea), and led to a few rounds of very irrational tears. I do realize that in the spectrum of all that could go wrong in one's day, my day was a relative peach. I try to keep that perspective, and know how lucky and fortunate I am, but it's so darn hard when you're just having one of those days.

Anyway, the sun rose this morning, I kept sleeping for another couple hours, and everything was miraculously better. Sleep works wonders for a cranky spirit (and the opposite is true - I'm fairly certain that the irrational tears stemmed from the .5 hours of sleep I got the night before), as does seeing these faces and knowing I would get to spend the whole day with them.

Some long-awaited spring weather was the icing on the cake, and a little gardening, a run (in shorts!), and the first ice cream outing of the season made yesterday a forgettable memory.

Today was a terrific, wonderful, very good, not at all bad day.

Oh, and I would be remiss not to mention my husband, who had his own version of a very bad day yesterday. Not only did he have to talk me off the ledge numerous times, but he was home dealing with the stomach bug (Adam's, not his), a dead mouse, and an unexpectedly full day of solo parenting. And he even let me sleep in this morning.

Winter Wrap-up...Maybe?

About a week and a half ago, I suggested we take the snow tires off the car. It was certainly done snowing for this year, wasn't it? But my practical, realistic, and Maine-grown husband assured me we weren't out of the woods yet, and told many tales of April and May snowstorms of his youth. I rolled my eyes and agreed to leave the snow tires on another few weeks, and well, he proved me wrong as The Winter That Won't Quit dumped another near foot of snow on us on Friday. The good thing about April snowstorms is that the snow leaves just about as quickly as it comes, so we're almost back to where we were before Friday's storm...with only 10 or so inches of snow in parts of our yard(!). But enough griping about winter. It was actually quite pretty on Friday - those big, wet snowflakes that blanket everything in white. And it was fun to have one last (please?) cozy snow day - we made cookies and cleaned closets and snuggled and read stories. The nostalgic part of me thought about how much bigger and older my boys will be the next time a snow day comes around. Despite all the snow, the winter of 2011 was a fun one. Before we leave it in the rear view mirror, I found a few good shots that never made their way into a blog post. Many of these are from my iPhone, so pardon the picture quality.

First time snowshoeing and it was love at first stomp

Filling up at the Portland Children's Museum

Bedtime stories with Papi at the Duck House

Morning stories with Noni - reading All About Me, which was really all about Uncle Pauly, and apparently hilarious

Our new favorite rainy/snowy-day activity - this is about the only one that will keep my boys still for more than 5 minutes

Ethan, in particular, could play-do for hours. He's in his own little world, cutting out "cookies", building airports, or making little snowmen. In the picture above, he is making the exact same "serious face" that his daddy makes when he concentrates. Our little Ben.

Adam, on the other hand, is ready for spring. This boy has some serious ants in his pants, and these four walls are feeling a teensy bit too small for this monkey.