A Belated Post...Hayrides, Pumpkins, and Family

So I meant to post these pictures earlier, but it's taken me awhile for me to download them from Chris' iPhone. We enjoyed a fabulous visit in October with some of my siblings and Aiden especially enjoyed some playtime with cousin Jack:) Hope you enjoy these photos!

The Rogers Family

Look Mama! (Pointing out things on our hayride:))

Lots and lots of pumpkins

Helping cousin Jack pick out their pumpkin

Jack and Aiden

Finding his way through the corn maze

I am off to enjoy a few quiet moments of doing nothing, a rarity with my neverending to-do list! Which means I am putting this computer away...I am so frustrated with it as I am working on cleaning out my iPhoto, moving photos to a hard drive, and making space for new photos as the baby is close to arriving. Sounds easy, but instead this whole process gives me a HUGE headache so I'm going to take a break from this neverending task and watch some unproductive television instead and prevent a meltdown before the week begins! Happy Sunday night:)

Another Part of Home Tour: Our Bathroom

So this isn't the most exciting room to show, but I wanted to continue our home tour with the bathroom. We moved from our Connecticut house with relatively spacious 2 full bathrooms and 1 1/2 bath to 1 small full bathroom and 1/2 bathroom in the basement. So we have to be creative with space and keep it simple and I am very happy with the end result:)

Our vanity area! We purchased this storage tower from Target which is awesome for holding my bathroom items, Aiden's baby supplies, and bath toys!

Our new shower curtain and bath mat are featured here! This is one of the only rooms in the house we have not painted and instead of repainting, we decided to get a few items to spark this brown bathroom up:)

Hope you enjoyed another part of our tour! Our week is flying by with days at home our little toddler bug, Chris keeping busy at work, and preparing to meet our baby boy very soon. I hit full-term this weekend and I am starting to feel it, finally, with a wave of massive exhaustion (or it could be the late night hysterics that are suddenly occurring-YIKES!).

Our Weekend In Review...

Besides our adventure in trick or treating, as shown here, we had a great and BUSY weekend!

A BIG milestone for Aiden, he has moved to a big boy bed!!!! On Friday, I put this fabulous Ikea bed together for him and we moved him into his own bed:) We wanted to move the crib to the baby's room, if possible, so we decided it was now or never. The bed is twin sized, so he looks like a little peanut in it, but so far...the transition has gone relatively smooth! We added a toddler rail on the side so he won't fall out, which he loves. The rail has a spot for his water, books, and a mini-nightlight. He also has to use a little step stool to get in and out, which our little monkey climber loves. I love his bed...I spent many hours on this quilt and am excited that we are finally using it! We follow the same routine as before...brushing teeth, bath, pajamas, and reading books with our little boy. Instead of reading in the rocker, we now read his books in his bed:) And I have to say it is pretty comfortable!

So you can see, we have moved the rocker out of the room for two reasons. 1. We can use it for our next precious babe:) and 2. Aiden was climbing in and out of it WAY too much and doing some dangerous moves in it! So it needed to go before we had a major accident! Instead, we changed that side of the room into a reading corner and a play area:)

Aiden LOVES his bed! The first few days he would beg for a nap all day long! He climbs in and out of it all day long-taking toys and books up there with him. The first two nights were amazing, but the third night was not a charm. He was in and out of bed screaming for over an hour until the tough love came out in me:) I used the Supernanny method (after googling what to do) and just kept walking him back to his bed. I have used this technique for naps and bedtimes this week and so far, he has done quite well. I probably have only had to go in there about five times all week to remind him to go to sleep!

As you can see, even with the doorknob cover on...he can still open the door! So that was a bust of a product to buy:) Usually he is either opening and closing this door from the bed or playing with his noise machine instead of sleeping:) He likes to take random objects into his bed, which sometimes I have to go in and confiscate, today was his electronic cell phone! At the moment, Aiden is napping and I think he has like ten stuffed animals in there, the books we read before nap, another cell phone, a camera case, and his pacifiers. If it makes him happy and gets him to sleep, then I do what works!

Another big project for the weekend, we cleaned out our garage! If you saw it before (right Dad?), you know that this is a huge improvement! We can now get a car in there!!

We also carved our pumpkins:) Can you tell who did which one?

Chris worked through another weekend on the house! He started painting the baby's room and is hoping to finish in the next couple days. He also blew our leaves for the fall pickup which happened on Monday. Aiden LOVED watching the leaf blower and running through the leaves. Here is a shot of our little man astonished at the leaf blower:

Looking at all the leaves:

And last, but not least, I am feeling bigger by the day! About a month to go, here I am with baby boy #2! We can't wait to meet our little boy and are working hard on getting things done around here so we can enjoy the precious newborn days with our baby.

Trick or Treat!

Yesterday was our first Halloween experience in Cranford, NJ and our little boy LOVED it!!!!!!

We didn't realize it, but Halloween here is a whole afternoon/evening affair. Trick or treaters started coming before 2:00 in the afternoon-YIKES! Our neighbors warned us that we should expect around 300 visitors and boy, they were correct. I bought 400 pieces of candy in bulk and we used at least 3/4ths of the candy. While Aiden napped, Chris worked on painting the baby's room while I passed out candy to the first of our trick or treaters. Once, Aiden woke up and had a snack, we quickly got him dressed in his outfit and ready to go! A few of our family members saw Aiden's opinion of his costume...everytime he saw it, he would run away and say "No, No, No". So we have been preparing him for Halloween and even did a practice run at home on Saturday night letting him have a small box of Nerds for fully putting on his costume. I was surprised on Sunday, after just a small battle, how he decided his costume was pretty neat and wore it the WHOLE time we were trick or treating.

While we were waiting for Chris to clean up from painting, Aiden helped me pass out treats. He loved greeting our guests and putting candy into their bags:

Then, we headed out for Aiden's first experience with trick or treating. We just hit our block, but with a toddler who wanted to walk on his own, it took us quite awhile! Here is Daddy and Aiden as we start to head out:

Mommy and Aiden walking between houses:

Trick or Treat!:

Yeah! Aiden was so happy to get some candy:) He loved getting the candy so much. He would put his bucket down in front of other trick or treaters on the sidewalk and sign "More" to them hoping they would give them more. Let's just say that some houses gave us more than our share because Aiden was just too cute in his "trick or treating"!

Walking with Daddy:

Heading home with a Snickers in his hand:

Our little elephant ready to have some candy!

We had such a fun time and I can't wait for another Halloween to come!!!!

Happy Halloween!

Hope you have a fantastic Halloween! Love, The Rogers Family

He's So Active!

And no, for once, they aren't talking about Aiden:) I am getting kind of nervous as baby #2 is going to make an appearance around early December and wondering how in the world are we going to handle our two little boys? I went in for a ultrasound today for our new doctor so they could get their own records on our little bug and both ultrasound technicians commented, "Oh, isn't he an active one?" as the little one squirmed and kicked and moved all around! At the same time, Aiden is wandering all around the exam room with full force and energy. I told Chris that this baby is WAY more active than Aiden was in the womb and they have confirmed my fear! Anyways, everything seems to be looking good for baby #2...they estimated that he weighed about 5 pounds right now, he is head down, and he was as cute as can be!

We have had a busy day so far and it's only 3:15! Aiden was up before 6 am (for the 3rd day in a row) which means snuggling and Barney in bed until 7 am when we drag ourselves out for the day. This waking up is not easy for a pregnant mama who is up ALL night long:) Aiden and I quickly got ready to head to Lowe's to TRY and fix our broken toilet. I spent an hour last night researching our one piece toilet on ways to fix it after Chris' first major attempt failed after realizing that this toilet is really special, and not in a good way. I am hoping we can get it fixed before Chris tries to put in a whole new one-this just scares me! After our quick trip to Lowe's, we walked dogs and picked up Chris back at home before our doctor's appointment.

After our doctor's appointment, I took Chris into Jersey City to give him a shortened commute to NYC so he could get to work quicker. This led to Aiden getting an hour nap in the car which means NO NAP this afternoon!!!! So instead of eating our usually healthy lunch, I treated Aiden to a happy meal with sweet tea and we are now anxiously awaiting the movers to pick up all the leftover boxes (they were supposed to be here an hour ago)!

At this moment, Aiden is pretending to cook in the kitchen. There is a coffee filter in the coffee pot and he is stirring marshmallows in a pan on the floor. There are toys strewn all over the house, laundry needs to be folded, the house needs to be clean, a bed needs to be constructed, the lawn needs to be watered...and it all might just have to wait until tomorrow because this mommy needs some REST before the real commotion begins!!!!

Look Who's A Big Boy!!

Someone is eating at the table...

But don't let this picture fool you! This boy is becoming more and more independent by the day or is trying!!!!!! He has been having this crazy toddler stubbornness to get into his highchair every meal, so I thought let's move him to the table today. Let's just say that about five minutes after this picture was taken-the entire bowl of Cheerios and the milk was on the floor with only a few bites eaten. So yes, it wasn't the most successful move! Aiden just wants to do everything on his own. Walk on the sidewalks, talk on the phone, carry his own keys, turn on the sprinkler, read his books, hang on to the dog leashes, brush his own teeth, comb his own hair, dress himself, etc. Sometimes he is successful and sometimes not-which always makes for some interesting and exhausting days!!

And we wanted to wish everyone a Happy Halloween weekend:) This may be the best and only shot that you see of Aiden in his costume. Every time, we pull it out he says "No! No!" and runs. So it may just be a relaxing night at home passing out candy in our monster pajamas:)

More pictures to come from our fun weekend with family once I get the photos downloaded!