Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Christmas with the Silvers

Merry Christmas! We're staying home this year, since Mike works tomorrow and we both break out in cold sweats trying to imagine lugging 2 kids under three, 2 carseats, a portable crib, and presents ANYWHERE!! Normally I wouldn't be updating this right now (or for a few weeks, who are we kidding?) BUT both the kids are taking naps and Mike is running all the boxes and gift wrap to the recycling drop-off near our house (look at us being so eco-friendly). So I was left to my own devices with a juice glass full of champagne (tres European, no?) and the digital camera.

So here we go...


Candy canes! The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.


Wesley playing with the rattle Santa brought him.


Aidan's new scooter! He's been saying he wanted Santa to bring him a skateboard for weeks now, so he was pretty excited to walk into the living room and see this.


Wesley enjoying all his gifts in his own special little way.


After 47 takes, we managed to get a photo where almost everyone looks happy to be there in our fabulous hats made by Aunt Allison.

Merry Christmas!!!

Friday, December 21, 2007

More pictures

Sadly, I have no time for witty commentary, since Aidan is most surely getting into something dangerous and/or messy at this very moment. I'm sure you'll all shed a few tears over that... but here are some more pictures for your viewing pleasure :)











Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Family of four!

As most or all of you know, we had our baby boy on October 30, and it should come as no surprise that I'm just now getting around to posting about it! At least this time I have a good excuse for slacking off, right? This whole two kid thing is complicated, I'm finding out.

I went over my due date (October 20) so I was scheduled for an induction at the new Intermountain Medical Center on the 30th because I really wanted an October baby (I am such a planner). I was so miserable and tired of being pregnant, and I kept hoping every day that I would just go into labor. No such luck!! My appointment on the 30th was at 7:30 AM and so naturally, I woke up at 5:45 that morning in labor. FINALLY!

My midwife had office appointments until around noon that day, and I had to have some meds before they could break my water so Mike and I hung out in the hospital room all morning playing UNO and watching TV while I had contractions. They weren't too bad until around 11:00 and then stuff started getting crazy! They were pretty much coming on top of one another and it hurt a whole bunch... back labor isn't pleasant, people!

Well, my midwife never got the chance to break my water... she actually barely made it in time to catch the baby (literally -- she ran in after I had already pushed once). It was very dramatic -- the room wasn't completely stocked with the things the staff needed (that's what you get for delivering at a hospital the day after it opens...), my IV popped out while I was pushing (think horror movie bloodbath), and it turned out this little one was posterior which hurt a whole bunch.

So after just 8 minutes of pushing, Wesley Patrick Silver arrived at 1:13 PM on October 30. He weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces and was 21 inches long.





Monday, October 15, 2007

Say cheese!


It remains to be seen if I'm ever going to be able to take another picture of Aidan smiling normally, but oh well :) He's discovered the joy of hamming it up for the camera...

And here's Aidan painting his pumpkin yesterday afternoon in the kitchen... quite a little artist. He had a lot of fun and couldn't stop saying, "Wow! Wow!" over and over again. Thank goodness for paintbrushes, right? He got the paint on his fingers a couple times and we had to take breaks from painting to clean him up because it distressed him so.



Soo... that was my last update until Aidan's little brother makes his appearance. Let's hope for sooner rather than later, shall we? Now that Mike AND my midwife are both in Salt Lake City, I'm sure we'll all have to sit and wait for a couple weeks... but who knows? We can always hope, right? :)

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Overtired kid = long day



Yep, he's asleep. I'm soooooo glad he's asleep.

Monday, September 10, 2007

First day of school (sort of)



Today was Aidan's first day at his Mother's Morning Out program, which we enrolled him in for the school year... he goes to a local Methodist church every Monday from 9-12 and he's in a class of about ten other 2-3 year olds with two teachers... it's like a pre-preschool, I guess. They have crafts and circle time and lots of unstructured play, and it's really for socialization. He even has his own cubby and hook!

Naturally, I was a wreck leaving him there for the first time. And rightly so -- apparently every year there's one or two kids in each class that really struggles for a while, and I just KNEW it was going to be Aidan (especially with his recent voyage into tantrum discovery). I stuck around for about 20 minutes outside the classroom listening to him cry "Mommy Coming?" feeling slightly sick to my stomach, but sure that he would calm down... I had to meet Mike to drop one of our cars off at the mechanic though, so I finally left... only to get a call an hour later -- yep, he was still crying. I guess he stopped crying for goldfish cracker snacktime, but started up again afterwards... and he refused to do the handprint craft with the other kids.

He stopped crying right after they called me, which is why I didn't pick him up early... but I still felt crappy. Ugh. I hope this gets easier for him AND me!! :)

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Random

I miss my bangs, I think. Mostly I had to post to get my curtains out of the #1 slot on this blog, because I'm really worrying that you're all staring intently at them and can somehow see all their flaws. :) And since our card reader broke and we can't get photos off our digicam until we go buy a new one, I was left with no other option but to do a photo-less post.

Anyway... should I get bangs again? Feel free to weigh in on the comments section. I really need to know, this is a big deal to me and I'm uncomfortable making any serious decisions without lots of input when I'm pregnant. I don't need to make another mistake like the "wedding-registry-bedding-and-bath-floral-everything-rampage-of-doom" or the "rodeo-princess-pregnant-perm-mishap-of -2005."

Oh, also. Just so it's out there in the universe for reference, siblings, read on... Christmas 2007 is as follows:
Anna --> Jo
Jo --> Anna
Buff --> Pat
Pat --> Buff

That is all. :)

Saturday, August 11, 2007

She's crafty!

Well maybe I wouldn't go that far... but I did finish my very first sewing project EVER, with the help of my 2005 Christmas gift of a sewing machine (thanks Mom!) and my 2006 Christmas gift of a big cute bucket o' useful things for sewing (thanks Nancy!!). It only took me this long to get brave enough to try and actually use them. I started with baby steps... last month, I threaded the machine and then walked away for a few weeks -- it was a little intimidating, okay? Not to mention everyone thought I was crazy because my first project was 2 panels (the whole matching factor comes into play first time out, that's scary!) on slippery material with a row of BEADS under the little pole pocket thing, hello!! You might not be able to see them, they're not giant softball-sized beads or anything... but they're there. Ooohhh, yes... they're there.



Okay stop looking... really, don't look too close. I'm counting on the fact that people probably won't come in and inspect my work. Let's move on!!


Here's an update for all those who aren't lucky enough to see us on a regular basis (hardy har har). This is my 28-week belly, which actually looks bigger when it's just my bare belly but I'm not going to do that to y'all. Or me, really. Let's all pretend that my pregnant face does not look more roundy-swollen than usual, okay?




And then because I think I might get in trouble if I posted without a picture of Aidan, here he is "helping" me get ready for a show. I walk away for 2 minutes to grab some catalogs and I come back to find he's removed 2 of my boxes of jewelry and has taken their place in my suitcase... he's playing with my mirror stand, too. Silly goose.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Aidan's a big boy now

So it's official... as I type this, Aidan is (hopefully) asleep in his new big boy bed. He only came outside of his room once, though I'm sure we're in for a transition period and I bet it won't always be this easy (especially at night, that kid will stay up until 9 pm some nights in his crib just chattering away because of how light it is outside, even though he's absolutely exhausted).

I wanted to share a picture of him from this morning from right when I put the bedding on his new mattress set. We're leaving it on the floor for now since he's an all-over-the-place sleeper and I doubt even bedrails could contain him right now.



He was really excited about it, jumped right in this morning and when I asked him if this was his big boy bed he said, "YES!" so at least we have that going for us :)

Oh and by the way, the air conditioner man came today and confirmed that indeed, yes it is unusual for your AC never to get your house down to the set temperature and consequently run all day long. A new valve and a freon refill later, and it's a Pioneer Day Miracle! (or a Stephanie's Birthday miracle, depending on the side of the family you're in or your state of residence)

UPDATE: Success!

Friday, July 20, 2007

What are you, 2? Sheesh.

Aidan turned 2 this past Tuesday -- I can't believe it, yikes! He's just grown up so suddenly, I feel like I blinked and he turned into a big boy. He has started talking more, too... it's always "dan [fan] on" and "garbage truck" (with a french accent) and "chips! chips! chips!" (gee, I wonder where he got that inborn obsession with deep-fried junk? Hmm. MIKE. )

I have plenty of pictures since I never seem to have time to post and people are always telling me that I'm lazy (in much nicer words of course). SO prepared to be visually assaulted with wrapping paper and festivities.

We're setting the stage... oooh, ahh... look at the craziness that was his birthday party!

Considering there was something like 10-15 children there I thought it was pretty under control. What you don't see is the 2 pools, the little tikes toddler playground and the big kid playset.

And here's the birthday boy, stuffing a chip into his mouth. Aww, tender. I found out later that the chip eating was a big trend for the day. Grandpa Williams apparently caught him double-fisting the chips, after stuffing approximately 40 of them into his mouth. My son.


As if the potato chips weren't enough, here's Aidan having some cake with Daddy and his Grandparents Silver. I don't think he was a big fan of the cake, even though I painstakingly decorated it myself and then neglected to take a photo of its wonderfulness. Did you know that whipped frosting gets really runny if you add food coloring? Also, for your future reference, red food coloring turns the frosting pink (not a super manly color for a car) and if you try to add yellow to it to hopefully save it by turning it orange... well, don't hold your breath unless you like neon pinky-orange cars. Sigh. 1 trip to the grocery store later for new frosting you've learned your lesson and the car is now a pale blue and you hate decorating cakes.


We didn't open gifts at the party, since it was basically a BBQ in disguise as a birthday party since this is the last year that he won't care... but later, after a much needed nap and much grumpery, we opened some presents. Here's his new tricycle from mom & dad... and what's this here? He's eating a chip... is anyone surprised?


Here's Aidan playing with a neat little car that you shake up a few times and then put down, and magically it zooms across the floor. He was a bit afraid of it at the beginning, and then he thought it was pretty cool... and I think now we're back to being scared. Ever since the Tickle Me Elmo incident of Christmas '06 he's been a little wary of things that move on their own. ;)


This is Aidan "sawing" into his water-doodle mat. He looooves the tools, won't put them down. The mat has a water-filled pen and when you draw on the foam squares (covered in fabric) it writes, but as it dries over the next minute or so, the writing disappears... so it's pretty fun too -- once you turn it over to the side with the fabric and stop jabbing the water pen into plain foam and complaining about how it doesn't work right.


NEXT DAY, round 2 of gift opening (I said there was much grumpery involved). Here's Aidan opening a present with help from his new tool. It turned out to be a fun little RC police car for toddlers...


Which Aidan was (surprise!) scared of, no matter how much Mike "demonstrated" and "demonstrated" and "demonstrated" for him. You don't see Aidan here because he's started crying and has run away from the toy that moves by itself. I'm sure he'll grow into it, and hopefully by the time he does Mike will not have totally drained its batteries. :)


Here's Aidan opening his neat little handmade alphabet book from Grandma Silver which is full of "numbers" (letters don't exist yet)


Tired? Yeah, me too. Aidan finished up the day by zoning out and watching his new Sesame Street DVD about counting. Isn't that a nice photo? ;)

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

It's a boy!



Just wanted to share that news with y'all! Isn't he cute in a weird fetal kind of way?

We're definitely having another boy, and we might have to name him Aidan too because things could get ugly here, real quickly. Boy names are not something Mike and I agree on. Wish us luck!

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Hardest. Thing. Ever.

I'm typing very slowly, as my fingers are swollen and sore from 2 hours of insane manual labor that should have only been attempted by someone with a graduate degree in Engineering... I'm talking about assembling a play kitchen.



What? Are you laughing? Psh. I'd like to see you try.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Hellooooo world!

Hey, I'm Aidan. And I'm cute.



I like grapes, books, dancing, Elmo, and especially cats. They love me too, can't you tell?



Mom kept putting off updating this website, she kept whining about something called "morning sickness" but I got tired of waiting. Sheesh. The people have a right to see pictures of me, you know? :)

I'd post more pictures but this "morning sickness" also apparently makes Mom's shutter-finger very lazy. I'll see what I can do and get back to you.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're awful!!

I'll just get straight to the point and post some pictures for y'all...

Here's Christmas:


Aidan is obviously disgusted that he can't hire someone to open his presents FOR him...


In his new PJs and slippers with a couple cool toys (calculator did belong to mom... DID belong.)


Aidan in his cool chair with his kitty cat, who he couldn't face another day without.


Now, to more recent activities!


Aidan playing in his cool new toy (thanks Kristy, miss you! Even though we love having it, we'd love playing with it at your house even more!)


My cute boy!!

So there you have it... no time for words, as I am a very busy and important person who has to run and do busy important things (like clean my kitchen).

xoxo