Penn's First Halloween

To be honest, I hate Halloween.  I'm not really into dressing up (I mean I had the decade as I child where I absolutely loved dressing up, mostly as a prairie girl like Laura Ingalls Wilder, but once I hit middle school I was over it).  I don't like candy or giving it to my kids.  I hate scary stuff.  It's always stressful keeping an eye on the boys and getting candy out to the 150+ kids that storm our porch in a 2 hour period.  So, I'm relieved that trick-or-treating has been postponed here in Pittsburgh.  I have a few more days until I have to deal with it all.  The only celebratory thing I've done today is to put Penn in his cute onesie gifted from Aunt Leah.  He had to do a little photo shoot since it is his first Halloween and so we could have some pics for his loving Aunt Leah.  

Rainy Days

Well, perhaps you expected a blog post about Sandy, but thankfully there was almost no drama in our neighborhood.  We didn't lose power and our basement has stayed dry (by God's grace as you should see how ugly our basement is on a normal, dry day).  Our thoughts  and prayers are with friends all over the East Coast that have been affected.  

Although we didn't really get a shock from Sandy, we have had rain, rain and more rain since Saturday afternoon.  On Tuesday, with high winds and flood warnings, schools here were cancelled, including Koen's.  Poor Koen.  He was supposed to have his first field trip that day, which also meant he was going to get to stay full day.  He and his carpool buddy were so excited.  They were pretty crushed to see Sandy wash that dream away.  Thankfully Doug was able to help out on Tuesday morning with the big boys which made it seem more like a holiday or weekend day rather than a rained out field trip day.  So thankful for Douglas and how great a Daddy he is!  We had a low key morning.  Here's a pic Doug snapped on his phone while I entertained Penn on the floor and read the boys our 2011 photo book (they love the family albums!).  Like I said, it was a pretty chill start to the day.

Before 10am Doug took the big boys on some errands and for an hour or so they hung out at the church while Doug had a conference call and the boys played school in the kid's space.  He brought them home just in time for Tav's nap, so enjoyed a quieter (and oh so productive!) morning with Penn.  One thing I got done was prep for our dinner.  I tried a new recipe, which turns out, we all loved!  I made my friend's recipe of whole wheat chicken pot pie.  Here's a picture of the finished products (a big one and then two mini ones for the boys).  

Here's a link to the recipe if you are interested.  It was absolutely delicious.  I actually made the crust 100% whole wheat and it worked great.  Also, I used peas instead of kale this time, but I love recipes like this where you can switch things up every time you make it.
http://theyellowtable.com/comfort-food-whole-wheat-chicken-pot-pies-with-kale/

Today I'm trying another recipe.  Can't wait to try it as the house is filled with delicious Fall smells from it.  Here's about stage 2 of the butternut squash apple soup.  It's now pureed and waiting to be devoured.

While I was working on this recipe and Penn was napping, Tavin stayed busy with Play-Doh again of course.  He made lots of cookies for Daddy.  Tav's in great spirits today, but unfortunately is stealing deal with quite a runny nose and a cough from whatever awful, sustaining cold we are passing around and around in this house.  His nose, lips and cheeks are raw from wiping his nose on his sleeve, blanket or whatever else he finds before I can catch him and encourage the use of a tissue.

Although being stuck indoors can get really old (especially when Koen's around), I've enjoyed the simplicity of the last few days just playing, cooking and being all together.  Tavin and I had fun up on the third floor.  I built him a very nice train track and we also played his new favorite game, Brown Bear, Brown Bear.

After Penn had napped and eaten, he hung out in the exersaucer for awhile.

I took a video so you could get a glimpse of what it's like hanging out in the playroom with the two youngest Melder boys.  Pretty fun! (Oh yes, Tavin is still chattering it up and today he was very concerned about the safety on his vehicles).

I've been experimenting with Penn and his napping.  In the last few weeks we've had some swaddle-break-outs, so I started letting him try sleeping unswaddle every once in awhile (particularly when I don't mind if he sleeps lighter or wakes up).  He's actually doing really well with it and even can soothe himself back to sleep after being woken up.  Penn is hands down the best napper at this stage of life that I've had.  I'm so thankful!  He's such a blessing and it's a great bonus that he's also a great napper and sleeper.  Hopefully it will just last and last.  We'll see.  Anyways, I love sneaking in on him and seeing what he's doing while unswaddled.  He sleeps with his hands up away from his head and I've seen him hanging out in there just staring at his hands moving around above his head.  Today when I went to get him for the 1pm feeding, he was sucking his thumb!

Looks like we have another thumb-sucker on his hand.  Although it's a tough habit to break later on, it's a pretty great built-in buddy for self-soothing.  I'll take it.  And how precious is he?

Well, hopefully I'll keep coming up with things to keep these boys busy indoors.  Stay tuned to see if we find anything fun and interesting to do. =)

Phipps for Free!!

Despite the rain I took my little guys to the Phipps Conservatory today.  It was a special free admission day.  Spectacular to get inside to feel like we were able to enjoy the outdoors on this super rainy day.  I was particularly excited to have Tavin see the seasonal train display that was out.  Here are the pictures of him enjoying all the intricate scenes.  They did such a beautiful job.  It's all built around real plants that are the pretend trees, gardens, woods, etc. Very impressive!  Here's Tavin checking it out initially (in the background you can see a Phipps person actually working on the scenery with clippers, they keep it immaculate and perfect-looking with their little trimmers!).

Here's a part of the display that shows the Phipps Conservatory mock-up.  Such a cool building.

This is Tavin proclaiming that a train is on the way!

Here he is waving "hi, train!"  Can you tell he liked the outing?

Penn wasn't able to enjoy the outing at the same level as Tavin.  But he of course was very compliant and went with the flow of our little time out.  I was just so thrilled to do something that Tavin would enjoy for a change.  Penn was a good little brother to go along with it (just as Tavin has faithfully done for Koen for years).

Here's Tav patiently awaiting another train to pass by.  He just loved the whole thing.  We went around and around several times and he was happy to stay and just watch from one point or another.

Kyndal, Porter and Malone were able to join us and Porter also enjoyed the train displays.

Penn was really mostly interested in the architecture on the ceilings, namely the huge fans.  Here he is a-gazing.  

He also spent some time in the Baby Bjorn which kept him very content.  Not thrilled, but content (as seen in expression here).

After the majority of our time (which was a total of an hour and 10 minutes due to our tight timeline to get home to meet Koen) spent at the train display, we also visited the "Farmer's Market."  Tavin loved this!!  I wish we had had more time as he could've spent 30 minutes or so collecting foods, checking it out and putting it back.  

Thanks so much to Phipps Conservatory for a great morning out, especially for Tavin.  And thanks to our sweet neighbor, Megan who let us know about the free admissions day.  We were so happy we could take advantage of it!

Penn Unswaddled

This post title is supposed to be a play on something "unplugged."  Did anyone get it?  Oh well, I just try to keep the post titles clever, but after 1000 posts, I can sometimes be low on the creative juices!  Anyways, Penn has been swaddled any time he's had a nap in his crib since his birth pretty much.  There's been plenty of naps in his car seat, bouncer and other random places, but as for his real, solid crib naps, they've always been aided by the swaddle. Well, as of late, this little man is starting to move and groove.  He sometimes gets a sweet little fist out of his swaddle confines.  It's upsetting to him and so I usually just reswaddle him and hope for the best, but lately I feel like maybe he's ready to try sleeping without being pinned down essentially.  Since we had an opportunity for a quicker, informal nap (and this poor child was so, so tired from his morning at church) I decided to see if it would work.  Penn sucked on his fists and fingers and kicked around for about 10 minutes and then fell asleep hard.  When it was time for his next feeding I had to wake him up and this is what I found.  Passed out!  How precious!  I practically cried because the no-more-swaddle is just a sign of growing older.

But I was also proud of my little Penn pulling off a good little nap from which he had to be awakened (and might I mention that his brothers are not that quiet during the morning naps and he slept through that without the comfort of being swaddled up).  I swaddled him for his afternoon nap because that is his best nap and I'm not willing to sacrifice it to a startled awakening (and he loved the swaddle still because he napped over 2 hours and had to be awakened again).  Tonight I tried not swaddling him again for his pre-bedtime catnap, but he was having a hard time settling down and I needed him to sleep through bathtime for the big boys, so I caved and went up and swaddled him.  I found him sucking his left thumb!!  I was so excited to see he found it!  I'm sure it was somewhat of an accident, but he's been close in his finger/fist sucking/gnawing, so I figured it would happen.  This is exactly when Koen and Tavin found their thumbs and went for the unswaddled approach to sleeping, so Penn follows suit as well.  Stay tuned for developments, but I would think in the next week or two we will be phasing the swaddle out.

Super Fun Family Saturday!

Well, we were due for some great family time after Doug had been gone all week and Saturday was just what we needed!  We originally were supposed to do our family photo shoot for our Christmas card, but we had to cancel that due to the weather.  I would've loved to have gotten that done, but it was also nice that we ended up getting to have a slower morning at the house together.  We also had plans for later in the morning.  Tav's friend (and Nate & Megan's son), Alex was having his 2nd birthday party at the National Aviary.  Our whole family was invited and it was such a fun event.  Lots of friends, so many cute kids, the Aviary is a great attraction that I haven't visited since before Koen was 2.  It was a great experience all around.  Megan and Nate did such a great job planning the party (I'm guessing it was mostly Megan's doing).  Here's the party review in pictures.  Megan had fresh crayons and owl and penguin coloring sheets.

Part of the party deal is that a penguin comes to visit the gathering.  We had a nice educational visit from "Kaden."  

My big boys were quite interested in the cute little feathered friend.

Penn was confused as to what on earth we were doing, but of course he rolled with it as usual.

Koen sat with some other older kids that came as siblings to the 2 year old crowd and here is Tav at the birthday boy's table (Alex is hidden behind Nate's arm).

The party in the "igloo classroom" at the back of the Aviary was fun, but we also got to walk around the Aviary at our leisure, which was such a special treat.  The boys enjoyed it very much, especially the penguins.  Here they are in what turned out to be a pretty cute brother picture in one of the big open-air rooms (flamingo in background).

Doug staged a sweet little picture of me and the big boys. 

I got one of Tav and I.  He was being silly and I caught a unique face never before seen on the blog. =)

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the birds, but I couldn't resist these amazingly colorful little guys.

I had to showcase a little bit of Megan's well-planned work.  Look at these adorable penguin cakes.  Of course, totally fitting with the theme!  

Megan had also purchased these adorable bird placemats from IKEA (and she had matching napkins too).  So well-thought out!  The favors were in the linen owl bags.  It was a star-shaped birdseed mold.  We are waiting out the hurricane before we hang ours up.

We headed home in time for Penn's 1pm feeding.  Doug actually kept the big boys out on a few errands for another 30 minutes (ah, to enjoy peace and quiet during a nursing session, such a special treat after last week!).  Here's Penn enjoying some exersaucer time before Koen and Tav got back.  Big eyes!

The boys had a restful afternoon and then we headed out again for another family outing!  This time to Grant and Deborah's (Miles' family) for a pumpkin carving party.  Again, a review of the evening in pictures...  Penn hung out on Doug's lap for the majority of the time he was awake while we were there.  He was so excited about the food Doug was eating.  With every fork or spoonful Doug brought to his mouth, Penn watched its every move, swinging his arm anticipating it to arrive at his own mouth or do something, but alas, it was just for Daddy.

Koen and Miles played so well together.  Miles has a lot of dress up stuff, so they enjoyed being all sorts of strong characters.  Here they are eating their dinners as Spiderman and a Knight.  Sure, Spiderman can time travel to the Middle Ages, right?

Tavin loved playing in their play area/basement.  Here he is making and then delivering some soup to me (or "toup" as he calls it).

Deborah is another amazing party planner and although this was a low key evening, she had thought of everything.  She even had little pumpkins and supplies laid out for the little ones to work on while the adults did the carving of the big pumpkins.  Koen was so thrilled!

Tavin didn't venture outdoors for the pumpkin decorating.  He just kept on playing downstairs until the moment we left.  Hard worker!  Oh and it was so cute, he was humming while he played most of the time (definitely a family characteristic).

This shot just gives you a glimpse of how many kids were there.  These are the kids in the mid-range.  There were also 6 babies and Koen and Miles.  Packed house!

It was such a nice, relaxed evening with our family and lots of friends.  We left just before 7pm in order to get everyone home for a not-too-late bedtime.  Penn napped great there and then was just groggy on the way home.  I fed him when we got home and then it was like he was still in a daze and he was just snuggling me, so I took a few pictures from my phone.  The first one you can see how he's just snuggly, the second one is funny because he totally figured out my phone was behind him and he was staring at it.  Oh well, snuggly moment passed.

Such a great day!  Doug and I had everyone in bed by 8pm and then got to clean up and chill out before our big day, Sunday.  All around, a wonderful day.  Great to be back together!