Everything BUT the Birthday

So in recapping E's birthday I left out some of the other pictures and tidbits from the last several days or so.

Like Autumn tried on the generic Baby Legs she got from Santa:


I'm still trying to figure out when someone would actually wear these and can't come up with much other than maybe when she's crawling and it's warm out so she's not going to be wearing pants so much but might want some protection on her knees. I hear potty training in the cooler months would be another good time for these as we like to do the pantsless approach and do it in the summer. If it were colder we could keep her legs warmer with Baby Legs.

As it was, Dalton didn't want to leave her alone for the pictures but she didn't mind:




And the other afternoon the boys were constantly squabbling. So they sat on opposite sides of the table with these boxes keeping them from seeing one another and they each played PlayDoh so nicely this way:


On Sunday Easton had another birthday party...this time as a guest. Tabor's birthday is 4 days before Easton's. Last year they had their parties at the exact same day and time. We weren't really friends with them last year. The mom didn't talk to me much and so I thought she was stuck up (she's SO not) and must not have liked me for some reason. The only problem was, Easton has always adored Emily and Emily and Tabor have been best friends since babyhood. So, when the birthday party invites went out, Emily understandably chose to go to Tabor's party last year and not to Easton's. So this year, now that Tabor's family and I are friends I made sure that we planned around each other for their parties since they like each other AND have many of the same friends. So she had hers on Sunday. I took just Easton and Jason stayed home with Autumn and a sick little Dalton.

Easton had fun. I had fun. Jason said that while I was gone, Autumn held her bottle herself for the first time! And that night she put her pacifier in her mouth herself too!

A great skill to have!

Dalton was silly at dinner:


The next morning Easton had school and I hung with the two littler ones. I wonder if they're going to be closer because they spend slightly more time together? It's hard to say because Easton and Autumn seem to adore one another equally. And then there's the whole part of Easton and Dalton being super-tight. I guess we'll see. Maybe they'll all just be really close which would be nice, of course. Easton's just so much older that he's really more of a caretaker type for his sister (which is super sweet!) But right now I capture a lot of cute moments between Dalton and Autumn while Easton is at school:


Then Autumn napped and Dalton and I made our first green smoothie. We're big smoothie fans around here and I can "hide" lots of healthy things in smoothies. But this was our first time to try hiding veggies (specifically spinach) in one. Dalton's favorite color is green so I knew I could get him on board. Unfortunately, it didn't end up looking too green. Even with a few drops of food coloring. But Dalton was still okay with it:

We both gobbled it right up without batting an eye. Yum!

Dalton, Autumn, and I then headed to the "library truck"/bookmobile. We picked up a few things including a book with a CD. It was Ariel. That is Easton's favorite Disney princess BUT he won't watch "The Little Mermaid" because of the fire in the beginning and Urusula the Sea Witch. So, at first he was super excited to read along with the CD:

Then he turned the page and saw Urusula and insisted that I turn it off right away. :(

He's so sensitive to the scary things. I think it goes over a lot of kids' heads (like Dalton's) but Easton gets it. Even though he knows it's pretend, evil and scary bother him. Especially lately.

But after school we headed to Chick-fil-a. I wanted to make it up to him for not taking him on his birthday. So we headed over there for lunch and playing. We got a 6 pack nuggets kids meal for all of us to share. Easton ate two nuggets, Dalton could hardly get down one. They both had a few fries and I had the rest of everything. This is right after Easton said, "One down...one to go!"


After we finished, we went into the play area. The boys ran about:




And TumTums had some milk:


But at one point some kid who hadn't taken off his shoes was stepping all over Dalton. :( And then later I hear a frantic, "Ahhh! Mommy! Mommy!" from inside the tube slide. A different bully was hurting Easton somehow and he couldn't even get away. I didn't know what to do with Autumn on my lap and Easton in the tube slide. There wasn't a single other parent in there supervising their children. Just me. So I just encouraged Easton to come down and get away from that kid. He did but he was so upset. Another kid came over to tattle on that bully because he'd seen what went down. I think the bully was waiting in the tube slide and hurting kids who tried to come down past him. :( I was looking around the restaurant through the window to see if anyone was paying any attention at all but no one was. So I just kept saying things so the kid could hear like, "Let's leave. We'll go somewhere where you're safe and no one will hurt you. We don't want to play with mean people." I continued saying it as we walked through the restaurant so hopefully someone would see my crying kid and know that their kid had hurt mine. :( Poor E.

We left and drove down to the Children's Hospital where we like to donate toys around Easton's birthday each year. So we did that. And Easton wanted to go up to the top floor to look out the window because he thought we'd be able to see "the whole world". We saw what there was to see and came back down to watch this cool ball thingy that they always like to watch:


Then we went to Baskin Robbins for Easton's free birthday scoop. At the last second he changed his mind and said he wanted strawberry. So that's what I got. But here he is realizing he didn't really want it and is trying to get me to get him something else:


But I did not. Meanwhile, Dalton enjoyed Easton's favorite flavor: mint chocolate chip:


Then we went over to Target where Easton returned a duplicate birthday gift and, with some birthday money from PaPaw he bought this remote control R2-D2 he'd had his eye on recently:


We also saw Kaitlyn from school while we were there and spent a long time talking with her and her mom amongst the toy aisle before finally coming home for the day. It was a long one. And as I said in yesterday's post, we spent a long, but fun, time out of the house on Tuesday too.

Now today (Wednesday) we're mostly hanging at home. Easton had school and the two littlest ones and I headed up to Target to pick out Easton's portraits and picked up just enough groceries for tonight before picking up Easton and coming home where I plan to stay for the rest of the day. :)