Fairway

Our weekly trips food shopping at Fairway have become little away-from-home adventures. In addition to shopping, we watch the lobsters, talk with our friend Elias at the fish counter, have a snack at the cafe. If it's warm enough, we walk along the waterfront and check out the boats in the water, the Statue of Liberty and the old trolleys and trolley tracks that run along the water. This week there were lots of seagulls hanging around. Logan thought one in particular was funny and watching us. I think it probably wanted the bagel Logan was eating.

Here are a few pics from last week's trip.

Early Spring

Crocuses have been blooming here since the end of February. In the last week or so, daffodils and hyacinths have bloomed and the magnolia trees are flowering. A few days ago we decided to go for a walk around our neighborhood to look for flowers and insects. And we found this snail on the sidewalk! It's shell was beautiful. We watched it for quite a while before we decided to look for spider webs. We didn't find many webs, but with such warm weather these last few weeks I suspect we will find fresh webs very soon.

Recent Fun

Grandma visited for a few days at the end of February. Our days were full of train play, card games, lego building, interesting conversations and lots of snuggles and hugs (mostly for Grandma).

These pics below show what we've been up to. Tinkertoys. Elaborate train tracks and stories about trains. Gibson feeding himself (he does not like help). Gibson playing with trains. A trip to Ikea where Gibson wanted to ride in the cart (his first time since I'm usually wearing him).

Gibson Is 1 year old

Gibson turned 1 on December 26, 2011. We celebrated by having a banana cake with cream cheese frosting. He seemed to enjoy the cake.

His first year of life has gone by so quickly.

He's a sweet baby that loves most solid foods, the dishwasher and playing with kitchen utensils. He's crawling, cruising and definitely on his way to walking. He loves to watch Logan play and seems to enjoy toy trains and jumping on the mini trampoline. He signs quite a bit, mostly "more".

Visiting Oma and Opa

Opa's 70th birthday was a week or so ago and Paul, Logan, Gibson and I drove down to surprise him and celebrate with he and my mom.  As expected, it was a long drive and Opa seemed pretty surprised.  While my dad was at work on Saturday morning, Paul, Logan, Gibson and my mom ran some errands for my dad's surprise party.  Once Opa came home, everyone except Oma headed out to the local airport to maybe see some gliders and to visit Ivine's farm.  No gliders were flying but Paul got to see the airport Logan and I mention often.  The weather was beautifully warm and Logan got some time to chase butterflies, pick chicken eggs and find a cool insect!  Ivine was so kind to bring Logan a dozen eggs later when she came to Opa's party.

Opa, Gibson, Logan with Green Pig that I won from a claw machine earlier in the day, and me

Logan and the chickens

Logan found a cool caterpillar that we brought back to NY

Logan picking eggs

As time goes by

As much as I would like to blog more often, getting the computer out, logging on, uploading pictures and writing here hasn't happened as much I would like so there winds up being really long stretches of time when I haven't posted about what we've been up to. Then when I do get some time to post, I'm amazed at how much stuff we have been doing in a relatively short period of time!  Here's a bit of what's been happening here....

Water play in the sink.  Logan sometimes plays here for hours.  

Paul reading "A Bug's Life" with Logan, Gibson and our friend Vera.

Gibson in the wrap while Logan digs for grubs in the garden.

Playing Minecraft with Paul.  Sometimes they play World of Warcraft together too.

Check out what Gibson can do!  What's not to like about the dishwasher?

We got these "capsules" from Michael's craft store.  We put them in warm water and small foam vehicles emerged.  

Snuggling with Paul while watching something on TV.

Brothers

Logan has been an older brother for almost 11 months now and while I figured he would be awesome at it, he surprises me almost daily.  He is really protective of Gibson.  Logan LOVES to give Gibson kisses and hugs. Being 5, he sometimes he isn't gentle.  When I remind him to be gentle he'll mention how cute Gibson is or how cuddly he is.  Logan often brings Gibson a toy, even when Gibson is napping, so that when he wakes up he'll have something to play with.  A few weeks ago we were getting ready to go somewhere in the car and while Logan was choosing things to take with him for the car ride, he chose something for Gibson.  Super sweet.