Spanish Schoolhouse Bike Parade

This is Chilren's Week at SSH, and tomorrow they are having a bike parade. Oliver and I decorated his bike with his favorite things: turquoise and zebra striped crepe paper.

Unfortuantely I wasn't able to go see the parade as I was having an intense pain in my hip and I went to the doctor instead, but I was told it was a grand time had by all. Fortunately, my pain has since ceased and my hip/back pain is 100% better!

Spanish Schoolhouse Carnival

Oliver's school had a carnival and fortunatley, Clayton was able to clear his schedule so I volunteer, so I was able to pass out popsicles to 82 cute little kids! :) The carnival had a bean bag toss, face painting, temporary tatoos, dinasour egg dig in sand, bubbles and popsicles. I snapped some shots of Oliver's class enjoying the carnival.

Oliver showing off his ladybug and zebra. :)

Later that day...

Miles was out of my sight for a couple of minutes and I could hear something going on, this is what I found when I went around the corner to the kitchen. He had gotten this bag of wipes off the dining room table and was having a grand ole' time. I wouldn't mind so much if he didn't LOVE to eat wipes. Silly boy!

Easter Sunday

I took a few family pictures on Easter Sunday before we went out to brunch. I was happy with the way this one turned out! I hope you all had a Happy Easter!


The Emergency Alarms were on (again) before bed tonight and so we gave Oliver Tornado Hair to lighten the mood. Looks pretty good! :)

Easter Bunny Saturday

Thanks to a great suggestion from a friend, the Easter Bunny came to our house on Saturday this year so we could keep Easter Sunday focused on Christ. Oliver raced around the house and found all the eggs within five minutes. He was a great big brother and brought all the ones with puffs to Miles, and kept the ones with chocolate for himself! :)

Miles with his Easter Puffs

checking out the Easter Basket

My big boy in Heaven with his plane book!

Such a cute picture of Miles crawling to his Daddy!

Daddy reading another airplane book from the EB.

Hey, how come I didn't get any candy?

Oliver crashed later that day!

My cute cousin Robynn brought over this Jelly Bean Tree for Oliver and I to make together. It turned out cute! Thanks Robynn!

Dip-dyed Easter Hands...I mean Eggs

notice the hands

His hands were completely dyed by the time we finished and I Googled it and found that you can use a mixture of baking soda and vinegar and the fizzing action scrubs off the dye. Surprisingly it did a great job and after several more normal hand washes, I'm happy to report that his hands were completely dye free by dinner time. What a fun age for things like this! :)

Miles Brown Royal is Ten Months Old!

My baby is not so babyish anymore, I guess he is almost a toddler since he has been cruising everywhere and walking with a walker for the last week. I took him to the doctor for an ear infection last week, and he weighed in at 20 lbs. 14 oz., how does that happen in three weeks? At his nine month appointment he was just 19 lbs. Must be all that food he is eating!

Miles LOVES to eat. In fact, Oliver said to me just the other day, Mommy it seems like a big part of your job is feeding Miles and I. YES! We spend a lot of our time in the kitchen, but a full tummy keeps Miles happy. :) He loves yogurt. He will beg for it whenever I even say the word yogurt. He also loves meat. He seems to like flavorful things, not so much on bland. He doesn't enjoy pasta (such a change from Oliver), but he will try anything he sees us eat. Just today Oliver was snacking on some cheese crackers on his way home from school and Miles was BEGGING his big brother for some. He LOVED them, no big surprise there!

Miles signing is really progressing. He signs now include: more, all done, fan, light, and I swear I saw him signing eat while he was begging Oliver for crackers today. He also waves bye bye and hello whenever he hears those words uttered. So cute! You're really lucky if he gives you a kiss, they are few and far between but his little open mouthed kisses melt my heart. He even wants to give them to Oliver! He also started babbling this month. Lots of bababa's and I have heard dadada a couple of times, but not to refer to Daddy yet. Squealing is still his preferred form of vocalization, he has excited, happy, content, sad, and frustrated squeals that all sound a lot alike!

Still a great sleeper. He started taking two big naps somewhere around 8 1/2 months, usually a two hour and a one hour which has cut his night time sleep down to about 12. However, these last couple of days he is trying to take just one nap which means he is back to about 14 hours at night.

He loves to make Oliver & Mommy laugh and will do things over and over again to elicit laughs. Peekaboo might be his favorite game, though he does like lap rides and patting hands too. He loves to follow Oliver around and do whatever Oliver is doing. He is so patient and really tolerant of toys being taken from him, although he is starting to protest a bit. He is also really tolerant of his big brother carrying him around. He seems more of go with the flow type of baby, not so strong willed; perhaps that just comes with being a second child.

Last, I don't think I have mentioned in any posts how much this baby LOVES his Daddy. Despite Clayton being so busy at work and traveling more often, Miles never ever hesitates to go to his Daddy. He just lights up when he walks in a room and wants to be right there with him. I think it has something to do with seeing how much Oliver loves his Daddy. It makes me happy!

Before I get to his monthly photo shoot, I just had to post these pictures. This is one of Miles favorite things to do lately, he loves to see the view from upside down. Silly boy! :)

And now onto my big walker baby:

a small melt down in the middle, but he recovered quickly

so cute from the back too!

We love you baby Miles! :)

Bicycle riding

Oliver has a bicycle parade at school next week, so we have been practicing his bicycle riding skills on our driveway. Oliver has never liked riding his bicycle very much. A cold front blew through and the weather was a little cooler this morning, so we decided to take advantage of it and go for a walk. I suggested Oliver ride his bike, and although he resisted, he agreed it would be for the best so he could practice for his parade next week. And as it turns out, he LOVED it! You should have seen this kid go (you can in the video below). He was going so fast we couldn't even keep up with the stroller, he had to keep stopping for us. All his previous experience with bike riding has been on our driveway which although it is long, it does have quite a bit of an incline, so he is either going too fast down or having to pedal uphill and constantly turning. So glad he LOVES bike riding as much as I do. Now we can go for bike rides as family with our new wee one in the wee rider! :)

Check out Oliver's bike riding skills in the video above

After we arrived home from our walk, Oliver wanted to play in a little dirt patch where the grass is not growing in our front yard. Miles wanted to play too, so I put some socks and shoes on him.

He wasn't a big fan of the shoes.

You may be wondering, are they in their PJ's? Yep. Miles always stays in his PJ's until his first nap, and Oliver wanted to stay in his too even for our bike ride. That is one battle I chose not to have, so yep, they are playing outside in the dirt in pajamas. :)

I think Miles enjoys playing outside in the dirt just as much as his big brother does!

My little walker

Miles has been cruising for a while now, and he loves to walk while holding our hands. Over the last two weeks he has been working on mastering this skill. He now walks behind a walker and will do it over, and over, and over. He LOVES it! :) Check out the video below:

Old Loves

Every time we bring out a new toy for Miles(an old toy of Oliver's), Oliver is drawn to it. I don't know if it is because it is like new again or if he remembers loving it as a baby, or maybe it's both. The thing I love is how it brings these two even closer. Oliver LOVES playing with Miles and his toys even more than he loves playing with his own big boy toys.

This morning Oliver was rocking on the horse Clayton's Uncle Hank made for him when he was a baby, when Miles crawled up to him and Oliver asked him if he wanted to ride too. I set Miles in front of Oliver and they rocked this way for about 10 minutes. LOVE it! :)

What is in that tree????

We've been having some problems with our garage door lately and we had someone come fix it yesterday (different story, but I am SO happy not to have to operate it manually any longer!), so we had parked our Bumpy Rider (aka the 4Runner) in front of the house so the repair man could work on it without our vehicle getting in the way. After he finished, Miles was still napping, so Oliver and I walked on the side of the house to go get the bump back in the garage. As we were approaching the front yard, I noticed some unusual flying activity going on around our little Juniper Tree in our front flower beds. As we got closer, I noticed they were bees. And as we got even closer, I saw this...

Do you know what that is?

It is a massive, huge, disgusting amount of BEES!

At first I called it a hive, but I was informed by a beekeeper that it is actually a swarm.

another close up

from a different angle. YUCK!

I had actually been a little nervous that given Oliver's affinity to Winnie the Pooh stories, DVD's, etc., that he had not developed a healthy fear of bees since Pooh never gets stung by the bees. I was wrong. I am happy to report that he was made very nervous by this quivering mass of bees (maybe happy isn't the right word, perhaps satisfied is a better choice).

So what do you do with a huge pile of bees hanging in your tree?? I started with the City of Plano Animal Services and they quickly re-directed me to some actual beekeepers. The beekeeper's wife I spoke was so nice and informative. I began with letting her know that we have a hive in our tree. She so nicely let me know that it actually wasn't a hive, it is a swarm. Apparently there must be a hive somewhere close (within a mile) that has outgrown it's capacity. The bees then raise a new queen and a portion of the bees leave with the old queen to go to a new hive in a new destination, this is called a swarm. You can read all about it, like I just did here. The beekeeper told me that they could come and remove the swarm for $100, or we could just wait and the bees would move on in a couple of days. We decided to wait. A couple of hours later, we got a phone call from an acquaintance of the beekeeper I spoke to who just so happened to need a swarm of bees and asked if he could come by later to pick it up. I got really excited to be able to watch the process and perhaps get some good pictures with my superzoom camera. No luck. The bees left on there own. At least I got these pictures before they left, and now I have a cool story and a greater knowledge of Africanized Honey Bees. Fascinating!

Oliver Clayton Royal is 4 1/2 years old!

Wow, four and a half years already? Really? Happy half birthday little guy!

A few things about the half-birthday boy:

• about to finish his first year of preschool at Spanish Schoolhouse
• started speech therapy at Beaty Early Childhood Learning Center and is doing really well
• LOVES airplanes and wants to be a pilot when he grows up
• is a FANTASTIC big brother and would do anything for his little brother
• LOVES his family very much and is such a little snuggler (mommy loves this!)
• enjoys reading stories while drinking warm milk several times per day
• is routine driven, change is difficult
• is very passionate about everything he does
• moved up to level 2 at ASI Gymnastics
• favorite color is turquoise
• favorite food is ANYTHING chocolate
• is willing to try more adventurous foods
• sleeps in a big boy bed with an alarm clock and gets himself up

Since the birthday boy loves chocolate and planes, he received some of each to celebrate the day!

Chocolate cupcake from Meringue Bakery (thanks Groupon)

UPS plane to go with his UPS trucks and costume