Quinn had his first drop-off playdate yesterday.  I went in to drop him off and thought he’d be a little skeptical but he ran off to play without even saying goodbye.  Lila, on the other hand, was distraught at the thought of her brother going somewhere without her.  She cried so much that her hair and shirt were soaked with tears.  But Ryan and I enjoyed spending some one on one time with her at the farmers market and cheered her up with a freshly made donut.

Donuts are definitely the way to this little girl’s heart!

Later in the day we went to the zoo, thanks to a viewing of We Bought a Zoo the night before.  The kids favorite part?  Watching the geese go down a small current.

The fun day ended with an evening at our friends’ house while this motley crew built a rabbit trap and chugged juice boxes.

By the end of the day, Lila had acquired a new bruised bump on her forehead (to add to her previous two), a rug burn behind her ear (I honestly have no clue how she got that one), and some scrapes under her eye.  All in a day’s work for a two year old!

At dinner tonight:

Quinn: Mom, do you know another way to say I love you?

Me: What do you mean?

Quinn: Well, here’s another way.  You are the best mommy in the world.

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And then later in the evening, I got my first unsolicited “I love you, Mommy” from Lila.

Lots of love in our house tonight!

Not quite sure if I should categorize this weekend as a failure or a success.  My first thought is success, considering we had a great time at a few picnics, got our backyard in shape (shout out to my parents for their amazing help), and ate all of the required food items for Memorial Day weekend- watermelon, hot dogs, s’mores, and beer.  Oh, and lobster…freshly steamed.

The failure, however, comes in our potty training disaster.  Basically, this is the only thing that made it into the potty this weekend:

Mommy and Baby Lightning McQueen.  Not exactly what we had in mind when we talked potty training.  After four hours with twelve underwear changes, we decided to call it a valiant effort.  Lila was mad, we were frustrated, it wasn’t working for anyone.  So we are going to try again at a later date, armed with more underwear and better bribes.

In the meantime, we’ll just continue to watch our big girl grow in other ways.

Seriously, when did Quinn go from this chubby cheeked baby:

to this boy…with a mohawk?

Quinn walked into the hair dresser last night, sat down on the couch, and when asked what he wanted done to his hair said (without missing a beat), “a mohawk”.  It sounds much cooler when it’s someone else’s kid who wants a mohawk, but I played along.  We compromised with a faux hawk so that if we don’t spike it up, it looks like a normal (albeit shorter than his norm) haircut.

When we got home from the haircut, an envelope with his soccer pictures was waiting at our door.  We opted for the trading cards because, well, they’ll be good memorabilia when he is famous some day.

*sigh*  The cliche is true- it really does go by so fast!

I mentioned that I didn’t take any photos with our camera over the weekend.  Lucky for us, we have some friends who are quite skilled in the photography department.  They sent a bunch of pics of our weekend, and I wanted to share a few of them.

Driving Miss Daisy…

Brownie, the guinea pig, and a very confident looking Quinn…

Lila and a llama, which she was all about thanks to the Llama Llama book series…

Thanks Meghan and Donnie for the top notch photos!

I had been looking forward to this weekend since it was planned four months ago when my college friends and I decided to get our families together for the weekend.  It’s become increasingly hard to figure out dates for us to get together, as all of our families grow and get busier, so it’s always a treat to see everyone together.  We decided to have a sleepover, kids and all, at Jeni’s house.  Which equals 7 adults and 5 kids, ages 4 and under.  Thankfully she has a large house and a lot of land, so there was plenty of room.  The weekend was super fun and I wish we all lived closer to each other.  Unfortunately, our camera has some dirt on the lens that needs to be removed so the only pictures I have are my lovely phone photos.  But take my word for it that we had a blast that included a trip to a farm, a lot of food and drink, a rocking bonfire, and kids that thankfully slept in until after 7:00 for us.

Lila, woman of mystery, ready for the fun to begin:

Five day old bunnies at the farm:

The kids were able to check out a slew of farm animals and hand-feed some animals.  They all loved it.  Quinn held a brown guinea pig named “Brownie”.  He looked into the cage and saw a white guinea pig and, based on the name of the brown guinea pig, he asked our guide if the white guinea pig was named “Whitey”.  Unfortunately it was not…it’s name was Sylvester… but I love the way little minds think.

The kids were filthy after the farm so we stripped them down, filled up a baby pool with soap and water, and gave them a communal bath.  But not before they ran around the yard with blindingly white bums hanging out.  It was cute and we snapped a few pics to embarrass them with in about 10 years.

Being a country boy, Thomas has a sweet little John Deere.  He wooed Lila with rides around the yard.

We forgot to take our couch picture of all the kids together, so we did a  porch picture without baby Lucas, who was napping.

After the festivities ended at Jeni’s we came back to our house and went to Quinn’s soccer game.

His biggest fan:

Quinn enjoyed his larger than usual cheering section.  We ended the afternoon with some outdoor yard work and both kids are fast asleep- sure signs of a great weekend!

We had a perfect mix of fun and work and kid time and adult time this weekend.  The weather was amazing on Saturday so we took advantage of it and worked in our neglected front yard for the day.  Our first project was to fill in one of our flower beds with rocks.  Which sounds totally ridiculous and why would we even do that?  We did it partly because the bed in question was empty thanks to our failed attempts at growing anything in a bed that barely gets sun and doesn’t get any rain due to the roof overhang and also because we had a need for a seating area other than our front stoop.  So we dug out the dirt, put some weedblock down and filled in the space with small rocks.  Pocono blend rocks, to be precise.  The kids had a field day and spent hours playing in the rocks.

I love that they have a new area to play in out front because sometimes it’s just nice to sit out front and be able to wave to the neighbors who walk by and observe the neighborhood.  The only downside to the rocks is that they are dusty and the kids have been covered in it from head to toe.  Hopefully after rinsing the rocks off a few more times, we’ll be able to get rid of some of that extra dust.  Here’s the finished product… Now we just have to remember to water those potted plants…  Also, see the grassy plant in the bottom left of the picture.  Three of these have sprouted up in our remaining flower beds.  We can’t remember if they are intentional plants or weeds, but we’re pretending they are real plants because they actually look ok.  And that should give you an idea of the kind of gardeners that we are.  :)

We also did some weeding, defining, and mulching of our intact flower beds.  We worked in the morning with the kids outside with us, and then during their naptime in the afternoon.  I have the weirdest sunburn right now but it’s so satisfying to see the finished product.  And it makes our side yard and backyard look even more pitiful so we definitely have a lot more work in store for us! Later that evening we went out to dinner with some friends sans little people, which is always a nice treat.  Today was pretty low key and I’m not going to lie- I played the mother’s day card a number of times: picking up after Fenway on our walk, going back to bed to read mid-way through the morning, changing diapers, dealing with arguments.  I also told the kids that there was a law in place that there was no whining, crying, or fighting on mother’s day.  I felt completely gluttonous to use my mother’s day card so much… but I have no shame.  And I’m ok with that.

Igot some nice mother’s day loot, including:

Quinn’s confidence in his snuggling abilities is surprisingly based in truth- he is a wonderful snuggler.  He comes into our bed every morning to snuggle with me and if I’m already up, he begs me to come back to bed so he can snuggle with me for a few minutes.  Such a love.

I also got this sweet keychain of Quinn dressed up as a clown with sunglasses on.  Cause, ya know…  I really don’t even know what to say about it.

Lila made me a little picture frame with her handprint in it and a wooden flower.  Apparently she caught on that the potted plants that she gives me usually don’t make it so she decided to give me something that I couldn’t kill.  She’s thoughtful like that!

Both kids also gifted me with an epic 3 hour family nap and I woke up at 4:30 completely confused about the time- and slightly panicked that we slept away the afternoon.  But then I pulled the mother’s day card on myself and convinced myself it was ok to do that because it was mother’s day.

After a dinner of sushi(adults) and spaghetti(kids), we put a cherry on top of our weekend by roasting marshmallows and making smores.

Giant marshmallows:

Mesmerized/terrified of the fire:

campfire stories with baby, baby cheetah, baby dolphin, and baby fish (notice a trend with Lila’s toys?):

toasty:

Quinn opted to eat his raw and deconstructed- he’s a trendy foodie like that.  Or he doesn’t like his hands getting sticky.  You decide.  Lila opted to not eat hers at all, which is very unlike her.  I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed mine.  It was a lovely way to end a lovely weekend.  It’s barely over and I already want s’more. (sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)  And that, my friends, is where my cheesey post title comes full circle.

Wishing all of the moms in our lives a very happy mother’s day!

I’ve noticed a trend on other people’s blogs of posting a collection of their iPhone photos for a week’s time.  And I figured since I haven’t taken any pictures with a real camera in over a week, this was a good time to steal that idea.  Although the camera on my non-iPhone stinks so I present:

Our week in mediocre Android phone photos:

Cheesey McCheeseALot after soccer practice:

Followed by this picture where Quinn looks way older than four…and I don’t like it!

Not to be outdone by brother, here is Miss Cheesey (with the added flair of a nose scrunch):

On Thursday night, Ryan had the brilliant idea to gather some friends and have a picnic at a nearby park.  So we did just that- us and two other families met a local park and had a pot luck dinner.  We grilled, played, explored, and had a great time.

Other activities included trying not to let the kids fall into the river or impale themselves with sticks (success!)

And shouting words of caution as we kept our fingers crossed that no one would fall off this giant boulder (success again!)

We had some uninvited dinner guests in the form of a rooster and a chicken.  Apparently they just hang out in the pavillion and walk around the grounds.  I was very thankful that they left us alone…I have a bad history with poultry and other fowl.

The night ended abruptly with a thunderstorm.  Most of the kids weren’t phased but Quinn was terrified.  He was absolutely positive that he was going to be struck by lightning and was begging me to take him home.  Poor guy was shaking.  But no one got struck by lightning and we made it home before the downpour started.

Post-picnic Pudloski pile-up (alliteration woot woot!)

Over the weekend we went to a baptism in Ardmore (shout out to Baby Jack!) and then spent the night at my parents’ house before coming back to Harrisburg early on Sunday morning for soccer pictures and a game.  Soccer pictures= longest ordeal ever.  It took about half an hour for the team picture.

Rumor has it that some of the kids in the back kept falling off the bleacher.

The game went well.  Some of the kids just aren’t into soccer, or aren’t sure about going after the ball, which is perfectly fine considering they are four and five years old.  But Quinn does not lack confidence (as anyone who has ever met him knows) and he has no problem attacking the ball.  So he and this rockstar soccer girl on his team scored about 98% of the approximately 30 goals his team scored.  The other team scored the other 2% on their own goal.  Luckily no one keeps score, although it was pretty obvious to everyone what team won.  I’m hoping next week the teams are a little more even for everyone’s sake.  At least this week Quinn didn’t do a dance whenever he scored, so I think we are making progress in the sportsmanship area.

I’m glad he is having such a good time, because that is what is really important to me at this point.  As we were leaving, he said to the head coach, “Excuse me, Coach Chris…”  At this point I really wanted him to stop talking because whenever he starts with “excuse me…” it often leads to something embarrassing.  But instead he followed with, “…thank you for the soccer.”  :)

To end my mediocre picture extravaganza…

Lila in a box!

We took a little jaunt to OCMD for a weekend o’ fun with some friends who graciously hosted us at their beach condo.  They have a son in Quinn’s class at school and the kids played well together.  It was a really fun low-key weekend: beach time, fishing, eating, drinking, shopping, Angry Bird playing, sand castle building.  All of the essentials.  The weather could have been a tad better, but can’t do much about that.

The men decided to be all macho and do a Polish Bear Plunge.  Get it?  They are both Polish so instead of Polar Bear it’s Polish Bear.  Hardy har ha…

These boys just ran around the empty beach, chasing waves and looking for treasure.

Lila loves the beach and was happy just running around, falling every six steps, filling her bucket up with sand and rocks and shells.

Despite numerous cautions from me not to get too wet, Quinn ended up with soaking wet jeans thanks to being on the losing end of races with the waves.  He ended up running around in his sweatshirt and underwear.

A sand castle was built…

And the boys found an X in the sand and started digging for treasure.

They found the “treasure” that I had buried- a silver key on my keychain that had not been used for years- and were quite excited that it must be the key to the treasure chest.

Unfortunately upon burying the key again, they forgot to mark it with an X and couldn’t find it again.  But they spent a good chunk of time digging in the sand looking for the key so I’d say it was a successful treasure hunt!

The next day we went back to the beach for some fishing.

It was pretty chilly and ended up being too cold for Lila, who spent the majority of the time on my lap huddled under a blanket.

In between our beach times, we kept busy with a trip to the boardwalk.

I would say it was nice to have a free activity but we got suckered into playing a boardwalk game where Quinn won a stuffed cheetah.  And in order to avoid constant crying and fighting over the cheetah, we also had to win Lila a cheetah.  So we spent $10 on 6 dart throws and walked away with two cheetahs.  I wish I could say that it curbed the bickering, but Quinn swears that one cheetah has more spots than the other (which is completely false- they are identical) and the one with the extra spots is his.  And Lila always seems to have that cheetah which results in tug of war and whines and cries.  But I digress…

Back to fun times and smiling faces…

And then there is this lovely mermaid…

A beaut, don’t you think! 

We also did some outlet shopping, the guys had a guys night out at some local bars, and we spent plenty of time just chilling out in our pjs.  All in all, a super fun weekend at the Bay Princess!  And now that we’ve had a taste of the beach, I can’t wait for our week-long trip this summer!

Quinn’s obsession with Angry Birds continues…

This morning he insisted I put a ponytail in the front of his hair so he could look like the black Angry Bird.  Then when he got to school, his teacher made him Angry Bird eyebrows.

If he starts launching himself into people, we are going to have to call it quits, but for now his transformation is pretty harmless.