Helping Daddy ~ May 13th

The kids were so much help to Daddy as he tried to work on the play-house. Ben loves to take the tape measure and just "measure" everything in sight. Java keeps watch over the lawn and Maggie.

Ben also really likes to use the hammer. This makes Daddy only slightly nervous...

Wrestlers ~ May 13th

These two are always wrestling. I am constantly concerned that Maggie is going to get hurt, but she continues to laugh, and, sometimes, she even tackles Ben. It's so funny!

Clean Popcicles? ~ May 8th

I know I'm a clean freak, but eating popcicles in the bathtub really is the best way to go. It's after dinner, and there's so much less mess! Unfortunately, now, Ben asks for popcicles every time he gets in the bathtub.

Binky is GONE! ~ May 3rd

Binky is finally gone for good! We took Ben to Costco a couple of Saturdays ago, and he "purchased" the Sunray Playset with his pacifier. In this first picture, he and Maggie are posing in front of the playset, and Ben is proudly holding up his ziploc bag of pacifiers.

In the second picture, Ben

is giving all the binkies to the sales clerk. She was so honored to be a part of his big day, and she graciously allowed us to include her in our pictures. There was only about a week of remorse over the spent-binkies. Now, Ben is a binky-free kid, and we were quite happy to make that announcement to the dentist today!

Toddler Trade-Off

My friend, Andrea, and I have agreed to do a toddler-trade on Thursdays. Every other Thursday, Ben visits their house for the day. On the Thursdays in between, his friend, John, comes to our house to play for the day. It is the best gift Andrea and I could have ever given each other. I don't know which days are better: the days that John comes over to play or the days that I get to spend alone with Maggie. These are some pictures from a day John spent with us recently. We walked to our neighborhood playground after lunch and then came home for naptime. I NEVER thought the boys would nap in the same room together, but after a full hour of giggling, they finally fell asleep for a full two hours! I took a picture just to prove that they actually napped. Oh, it's priceless!

Telephone Talkers ~ May 1st

Ben looks so dreamy to me here. He just loves to pretend to talk on the telephone. He is always picking up the little phone in his play-kitchen and calling Gram Linda to ask her to come over to play. This day's conversation went like this: "Hello, Gram Linda and Grampa Hank! Are you coming to my house to play today? Oh, you aren't? Bummer, dude! Maggie, they can't come to our house today. Bye!" Then, of course, Maggie makes her phone call and pretends to have the same conversation. Monkey see, Monkey do!

Lauren's First Communion ~ April 26th

Our niece, Lauren, made her First Holy Communion on Saturday, April 26th in Terre Haute. She looked so beautiful in her white dress and veil. This veil was made from Aunt Janna's wedding veil. All three of Janna's girls wore it, and it is being save for Maggie to wear as well. (Janna told me not to use my wedding veil to make Maggie's First Communion veil because her girls want me to save mine for their weddings.)





Janna also made a First Communion dress and veil for Lauren's American Girl doll. Such talent!

More sickness ~ April 24th

The Martin Family has done a really poor job avoiding sickness this year. Two kids in daycare two days a week has exposed us to our share of germs. I'm afraid that this time, Maggie may have picked this up during our magical visit to the swimming pool the previous weekend. By Wednesday, she had a high fever and had to come home from daycare. By Thursday, she was crying inconsolably almost non-stop. I took this picture of her just to show how swollen her little eyes were from all the crying. On Friday, after two full days of crying (screaming at that point), we took her to the ER (at her pediatrician's suggestion). We left the ER about 7 hours later with a diagnosis of "mystery virus." No one ever figured out what was wrong with her, but after being poked and prodded in every way imaginable (short of the spinal tap they were preparing to do), she sort of stopped crying. Once she calmed down, the ER doc decided it wasn't fair to put her through the misery of a spinal tap, so we just brought her home. She slept for three full days, and by the following Tuesday, she was back to good ol' Maggie again. Strangest sickness we have encountered yet.

Java's Embarrassment ~ April 21st

This is how Brian discovered poor Java as he got out of the shower one morning. The kids and I were already off to daycare and work, so when Brian stepped into the shower, Java saw her opportunity to do a little trash-can-diving. She loves to dig for tissues! Little did she know that Ben's swing-lid trash can would fight back, and she ended up with the lid stuck around her neck. Brian said she crept into our room so sheepishly and hardly looked up at him as if to say, "Don't make me ask you to get this thing off of me. JUST DO IT NOW!"

Indoor Swimming ~ April 19th

We have been wanting to try out the new Monon Center swimming pool since it opened over a year ago. We just haven't found the perfect cold and rainy Saturday to do so until recently. Maggie has never been to a pool, so we thought an indoor pool would be the best way to start. No fear of sunburn or sunscreen melting into her eyes. The kids had a blast. There was a toddler-sized water slide that Ben must have gone down 70 or 80 times. We're going to have to find some swimming lessons for Ben before summer because he has no sense of fear whatsoever!

Tea Party ~ April 17th

Maggie received this adorable tea set for her birthday. She and Ben have been having tea parties DAILY. In this first picture, you can see that Ben is showing her how to set up the "party." It cracks me up how she waits so patiently.

The good manners disappear sooooo quickly when Ben dives right in! He completely skips the tea cup and drinks directly from the pot. He always tells me that it's filled with "hot cocoa" and that he must drink it before Maggie gets any. Gosh, it's so nice how they share!

Basket of Books

This is how I discovered Maggie yesterday afternoon. She was sitting IN her book basket, taking in a few short stories before naptime.

Crash & Trash ~ April 15th

We have taken to calling our regular Tuesday play group "Crash & Trash" or C&TOT (Crash & Trash on Tuesdays). We are now bouncing among our four homes, and, each week, one home gets completely trashed when we all crash with our kids for a couple of hours. As our boys get closer to age three, the brawls are getting a little more common. But, they still look so cute when they all sit around the table together for lunch. There's no time to smile for the camera when there's food on the table! (clockwise: Ryan in red, John - aka: LJ, Ben, and Quinn)

Maggie's Party: April 12th

Maggie's 1st birthday party was a total success. This is the cake I made her. Green cake, pink frosting, cut in the shape of a flower (which you can hardly see), and green foam leaves stuck in the sides.

Maggie's first inclination was to pull the leaves out of the cake and poke herself in the eye with the pipe cleaners I used to plant them in it. It didn't stop her from enjoying another bite!


Maggie enjoyed her cake much more once we handed her a spoon. Ben enjoyed the chocolate cake he selected for everyone else to share. He loved this party hat so much that he wore it the entire day. He even came to our bedroom to wake us up the following morning wearing the hat! He looked so cute!

This is the only picture we got of the four of us the entire day.

Maggie got a quick bath after the cake, and she was ready to open some gifts. Ben and his cousins played upstairs (thankfully), so Maggie got the spotlight all to herself. She took the opportunity to shine. Smiled from ear to ear! Quite the little show-off!

Maggie's First Birthday, April 9th

This is how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Maggie looked on the morning of her first birthday. Ready to greet the day!

She and Ben spent the day at daycare. Here they are in Ben's classroom, and this is Maggie playing with the Lego-letters outside of her classroom. Every kids LOVES those letters!

By the time we got the kids home from daycare at the end of the day, Maggie looked like she wasn't going to make it another minute! No cake or big celebration on her actual birthday. She did muster up enough energy to open one gift, a baby doll from Aunt Amy's family.

Wedding Reception~April 5th

Brian's cousin, Nikki, got married yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of the bride and groom. I guess that's what the hired photographer is for...

After months of cold, yucky weather, we finally had a beautiful day, especially for a wedding. Ben and Maggie attended the reception with us. Even without an afternoon nap, Maggie held out until 8:30. She even danced a few dances with Daddy.

Ben, on the other hand, was my little dance machine. His cousin, Lexi, really wanted him to dance with her. They looked so perfect together in their coordinating browns - like they were prom dates. But Ben didn't want much to do with poor Lexi. He was Mommy's dance partner!

(My back is paying for this move today!)

Ben's mixer

Last weekend, I thought I would try to get a little practice in on Maggie's birthday cake before I did the actual thing. Ben was so excited to help me in this endeavor. He LOVES cake! As I was getting out all the supplies, he asked, "Where's the big red thing?" Brian realized he was talking about the big electric mixer, and he said, "No, Ben. Mommy is just going to use the hand-mixer today." Ben said, "But we need two more things." We didn't know what he was talking about, but (as toddlers often just need to do things in their own way) we allowed him to fish around in the utensil drawer until he was satisfied that he had the two things he needed. He pulled out two whisks and held them up in each hand saying, "HERE'S THE HAND MIXER!" Brian and I were floored. Our jaws practically hit the counter top. We could just see the little gears a'turning in his head. Our little engineer, already thinking like one. Hand mixer: now, is that creative, or what?!