Kyler naps for quite a bit shorter than Jaden each day. So we have at least an hour of "just us time" everyday. The other day he handed me the camera and said cheese, so I guess he was in a picture mood. I was really trying to take some great shots, but as soon as the camera was pointed at him he wanted to use me as a playground. Standing on me is one of his favorites!


Here he knocked me over and is now laying on me.

Guess he thought that was funny! Gotta love those blue eyes!

I'm so glad that he loves to play!

How many?

Just to see if you are really paying attention....how many birds do you see in this picture!?

Here's a close up by the bird seed to help you out! Guess they really like that food! And the boys sure love watching all of them as well!

More Help

I love this age. Kyler really LOVES to help. As you saw in the other post, with helping to unload the dishwasher. Another thing he really enjoys helping me with is the laundry!


And yes, he is giving his "blankie" one last hug before it gets washed. He sure loves that thing. At least he'll put it in on his own!

Discovery Gateway Children's Museum

What a fun Museum! I can't believe we haven't ever been there before! Thanks for setting this up Noel! If you guys see pictures you want, let me know and I can email them.

These 3 are such good buddies!

My Little Helper!

So this is what the utensils drawer looks like after Kyler has helped me unload the dishwasher! I remember when this is how Jaden would "help." I love it!

Our backyard birds

Back in June when we first had our trenches dug for the backyard, we began housing birds. Here is a mommy and baby. They hung out in our yard all day. She would fly away and get a worm and the baby would freak out running all along the fence trying to call for her. Finally she would return and call back to it and they would eventually find each other. Even if the baby had gone to the other end of the yard all the way around the house. Kinda fascinating to watch. Guess I am a bird watching geek!


It was actually very interesting to watch, but it's call was so annoying and distinct! You could be in the house and still hear it.


During this time we also had a mommy robin building a nest outside our dining room window. Very cool to see her build this in a day!

This is the daddy robin on our neighbors rooftop and the mommy nosediving down to the nest! Kind of a cool picture I think! :)


When the nest was done the mommy just sat and waited, while the daddy brought worms. Not like we know, but we called this one the daddy because it had a cool "hairdo."

So neat to see this right in our backyard.


A couple weeks later her egg hatched! I couldn't get a picture of the baby bird on the first day because his head was so wobbly it didn't stay up for very long to get a worm. But it was so fuzzy and looked huge. So I think these pictures are of it on the second day.

They grow WAY faster than kids!

Quickly, there was no room in the nest, so the parents took turns on the roof and finding worms.

And yesterday, not even a week later, we saw the baby flew to the fence. It saw another bird and tried to catch it. Went into our neighbors yard and was gone. I thought it was funny that later I saw the daddy on the fence with a worm looking around. I think he was confused as to where his baby was. He left to get food, and when he came back the baby was gone. Bye Bye Birdie.

Then yesterday we found another bird. A baby finch. This one seemed trapped in the trenches. It couldn't fly out so I made a ramp and ran it around the trench and up into the garden area. I thought this would be a nice cool, shaded place for it to figure things out. Little did I know he would have friends coming to look for him!


They would fly from the tomato cages down to the ground and call out for the baby. And as soon as he would be near them they would fly up to the fence as if to say "follow me, do it like this, it's not hard, you can do it." They would do this several times and then fly away.

I think they are bringing the baby back some food, because they keep returning. Hopefully he learns to fly soon. I feel so bad scaring him when I water the garden. So there you have it. Our backyard bird sanctuary. Kind of fun huh?

Good Messes!

Gotta love a good mess once in a while. Here the boys are enjoying some ice cream cones OUTSIDE before bath time.


I seriously think that Kyler just liked having the coolness of the ice cream on his face because he loved just having it sit on his chin as he was desperately trying to lick it like his brother. Too cute not to grab the camera!

Jaden is such a cheeser! What a handsome guy.

Here Kyler is showing me his "Uh oh" AKA MESS! Good thing we had baths afterward! Bring on the heat, we have plenty more ice cream cones to come!

Full of Surprises!

On the way home from the grocery store today Jaden said that he wanted to ride his bike when we got home. When we pulled around the corner onto our street he saw that his friend Misha was learning to ride hers without training wheels. He quickly stated that I needed to take his off, so that he could ride like Misha!

And Jaden did it again! He blows me away with some of the stuff he is able to do. Only about 2 minutes later, he was riding a bike all on his own.

I guess he knew he was ready!

A little pressure from several friends being able to ride now too probably helps as well! Way to go Jaden. I seriously can't believe it!

Fun Find!

We were working kind of late in Jaden's room trying to get some closet organizers put in. (pics to come later) It was well after their bedtime, but they were being pretty good, so we kept working. When we were done this is what we found in Kyler's room!

So many of the books were piled on top of one another. Jaden had been reading to him for at least a half hour. It was fun to see him do a lot of the same things I do when I read to Kyler. This book below has pictures of animals on the back and I always point to each one and say "What does a cow say?" Then wait for Kyler to say "Moo." "What does a puppy say?", etc, etc. Kids really seem to pick up on so many things we do. It was fun to see Jaden acting so grown up.

What an awesome big brother!