Nothing like a Momma's Love

Gotta LOVE this video- being a Mom AND Animal lover-- makes you smile! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQhPMwMlm_w

My funny man

Next week Mason will be 20 months! OMG, where is the time going! That means 4 months from then, he'll be 2!!! Hopefully time will slow down before March comes though! This is going too fast! I think Mason must be going thru some crazy growth spurt, he's been eating a TON the past few days. I pack him a nice size lunch for school and always a good size snack so when I pick him up he can have a snack (he's usually starving by then) and usually the snack is almost never touched. This morning he ate a big breakfast, his entire lunch at school AND almost his entire snack, then came home and snacked all afternoon and again ate a huge dinner. BOY! He must be growing!
I cant get over how funny and silly Mason is. He cracks me up on a daily basis. He's been so funny with music lately. Anytime my phone rings, I can catch him boogying down. Several times a day he wants me to turn on his music cd in the playroom or radio disney in his room. And of course he wants me to sit and play with him while he dances all crazy like, he thinks he's so hilarious (where does he get that from?) and cracks himself up! I have got to get this on video, he's so funny!
I absolutely love this age right now. I can't get over the silliness and the fun with the constant personality. The tantrums don't bother me, actually time out really works best with Mason. Funny story about time out, Amy & Rilee were over this afternoon & we were trying to get changed to get in the pool and Mason wanted to play instead. After the start of a tantrum, he went into time out. Rilee decided she should be supportive of Mason and JOIN him in Time out! it was SO cute! So unfortunately, time out wasn't quite successful then because we all ended up laughing. If i only had my camera! Times like this just remind me of how much I absolutely love this blessing being called MOM!

I repeat...we are not polygymists

So when Amy and I are out with the kids we get asked (and have since they were newborns) "oooh are they twins?" and of course we always reply with "no, they're cousins" which i think is ironic, because looking at Amy & I you can tell we're related, i think they assume their twins because they're so close in age.
Anywho, when we're out with the kiddos whether its swim class, mothers day out, errands, playdates....the kids tend to switch parents- Rilee likes to hang out with me swimming or Mason will want to hold MiMi's hand while walking, etc. Since Gavin works at home, he has the ability to tag along for some of these outtings. When its me and Amy- it doesnt look so bad, but when its all 5 of us and Rilee calls ANY related male figure "DA" it doesnt look so good! I always call Rilee "Cousin Rilee" just so being in Texas, people wouldn't wonder and think we're some fashionable polygymists! haha!

Here's a few pictures from yesterday from our exciting trip to Costco. The kids LOVED that they got to sit next to each other in the cart. They were so funny and silly!

Loving the double cart


Being silly and funny


Rilee loves giving kisses and hugs to Mason! Its SO sweet!!!

Update on #2

So I still haven't made an appt with my OB. Maybe I'll do that this week. I know she won't see me until 12 weeks at least being Baby #2.
SO apparently what they say about the 2nd pregnancies being easier, is true. By this time with Mason I was REALLY nauseated (lasted about 2 weeks) and sleeping practically all day long. So far, I'm 8 weeks along and no nausea! Horray! I've been tired, but what's new, Mason wears me out! So honestly, I don't know if thats a pregnancy thing or a having-a-toddler-thing! lol There has been several times (especially while in CA) I had to remind myself I'm pregnant! So far this one is super easy, and not slowing me down, which is a good thing, because my life does not allow for much slowing down!
When do they say cravings start? I swear its too early, but the past few days Margaritas (which I can't have and which i NEVER drink anyway) sound REALLY good- actually anything sour and salty. Maybe I need more vitamin C. I remember most of the details of my pregnancy with Mason since it wasn't too long ago, but first trimester is almost a blur! (doesn't help that I found out I was pg half way thru it!) ha!
So knock on wood for me and hopefully things stay this easy! I've always heard that morning sickness peaks at 9 weeks, and thats when my nausea cleared with Mason- so if I'm still doing this good next week then I'll be in the clear!

Oh, by the way, funny story about when we were in CA. Gavin and I got in on Wednesday. The taxi driver made me pretty car sick on the way to the house, and I couldn't quite shake it for the rest of the day and even the next morning. I thought, ugh, maybe this is my version of morning sickness? When Sara and Kent got into town, while we were up in LA, Sara offered me a piece of gum & within a few minutes my ears popped and within minutes my nauseated feeling went away! HORRAY! so that was apparently from the plane mixed with a bad taxi driver. I felt great the rest of the trip! (except our landing coming home made me feel sick too, but bumpy warm plane rides do that to me!)

some california pictures

still waiting on one main man to upload some photos for me!


Celebrities in Disguise


Amazing things the ocean does to rocks


self portrait...I've never noticed Sara's pores so much.


One sweet ride sitting up on Ocean Dr


Me..caught off guard. I think I might have been cold. (when am i not cold...except when in Texas!)


GET A ROOM! We don't like any of that PDA here. Guess this posted isn't G rated.


Hey you kids! Get out of my sunset picture!


Sunkissed and Windblown!


Superman & Batman


I DO do dishes......on occasion. Maybe I'd do them more if I had these rockin' dish drawers.


Party Animals taking a breather.


The boys are gone...now let the fun begin! There's no evidence of the damage done. ;-P

WHO Does this look like??

Picture #1- Clearly we know this famous little face (okay not so famous, but in our family he sure is!)


Picture #2- Give you 3 guesses.

Not Gavin.
Not Me.
Can you guess?
Not Josh.

Aunt Amy! (Mimi)
Can you believe it? I saw this picture she posted on her blog and I couldn't believe how MUCH that face looks like Mason! Forget the hair...the face could be Mason!

Body Parts

Amongst many many new words, Mason has started naming his body parts. More specifically, his pee pee is a "Da-Da" and his boobies are "Ma-Ma". Now for those of you that know me, I'm a very modest person. I don't go running around the house naked. (Gavin might be another story) so *clearly* Mason notices differences. So my new attempt will be to not change or shower in front of him anymore! BOYS!!!!

We're home!

We just got home this afternoon. What a trip! We had a great time and wasn't ready to come to home, but once I saw Mason I realized how much I missed him! He seemed like he grew up a whole 6 months in 6 days!
We had an amazing trip. Dad's Beach house is great as always, amazing location and awesome views. (okay, and the house itself is not bad either! LOL)
So wednesday Gavin and I got in we headed to In N Out for lunch and went to pick up some groceries at Trader Joe's then actually relaxed for the afternoon before heading to Laguna Beach for dinner.
Thursday, I took a beautiful hour walk along Ocean Blvd and PCH, finally dragged Gavin out of bed so we could head to Imperial Burger for our favorite lunch and stopped by to see my parents best friends, Terry & Candy. Picked up Sara and Kent from the airport, got them settled in, went down to the beach for a bit before heading out to LA for the Craig Ferguson show. Even though we estimated an hour for drive time and to get there 30 minutes early (we were supposed to have reserved tickets, but that was a bunch of doo-doo) so we didn't get to see Craig- instead we drove all around Hollywood, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills to show them the sights (playboy mansion was one of them LOL) and then we headed to dinner at Spark and had a great dinner before heading back home.
Friday, Sara and I woke up and decided a nice exercise was in order after our big dinner the night before. We started out on my walking route, but 20 minutes into it took a detour to check out some possible photo shoot spots- and found a quiet beach with amazing rock formations and waves. We started finding some cool shells and rocks and before we knew it we were climbing the rocks along the coast towards the public beach. An hour & half later, we finally got back home! We were beat, but the climbing and walking felt great. After getting cleaned up we headed to Laguna Beach for some lunch and shopping, beach time and movies! we had a packed full day! The beach was quite a place for some people watching that day. The firemen & paramedics made 4 stops at the beach within a 2 hour time period. the waves were huge and the beach was packed, so made for some unsafe conditions. We saw 2 guys that had to be resuscitated and on our way into of the movies (right across from the beach) we saw the lifeguards & paramedics had their diving gear on and had just come in, so not sure what that was about, but scary. When we came out out of the movies, we noticed there were ALOT of people standing on the beach, and almost no one in the water, so we walked over to see what was going on. A few dolphins were swimming south to north the length of the beach and pretty close in, it was really awesome. We took it easy for the rest of the night since we had a packed day!
Saturday, we got up and out of the house early to head to the OC Swapmeet, but found that it was closed since the Fair was going on (BOO.) and instead headed to San Juan Capistrano and decided that I should educate all the non Californians on some Californian History- so we hit up the San Juan Capistrano Mission. We got there at the right time, we got run of the place and enjoyed the history lesson and the beauty of the mission. After, we headed (back) to Imperial burger for lunch. Gavin had to introduce Kent to all the best Burgers that California has to offer. Of course, Kent thought Imperial burger was the best at the end of the trip. In the afternoon, we headed to the beach, it was slightly overcast so the water was cool but we had some AWESOME waves so we had a fun couple of hours in the rather COOL water boogy boarding! We headed back to Laguna for some great italian for dinner and back home, where of course I was the first one to fall asleep. You can always count on me to be the first one asleep!
Sunday was an amazingly beautiful day- we started off the morning with a few clouds in the sky which was great for our photo shoot. Sara just couldn't NOT work while on vacation (but she did have some good reasons for it...BEACH.) so she set up 2 "Trash the Dress" shoots, so I tagged along with her and Gavin and actually tried my hand at some professional work. I'm definitely an amateur photographer, but I enjoy it. I think I might have surprised both Gavin and Sara with some of my ideas. :-) Still need to download those, so some pictures soon to follow! Sara and I sent the Boys off to In N Out burger for lunch and they dropped us off at Balboa Island for some shopping and fun. By the time they came back, the sun was out and and it was Beach time!! We hit the beach for more boogie boarding where there were HUGE waves, we're not talking the 10 foot waves that we had been playing in, some of these got up to 15 feet and got a bit dangerous. There were a few guys I talked to who seem regulars and have alot more experience that we do, and they even said some of the waves were a little too rough for them. My last wave for the day took me for a toll, it was a BIG one, we're talking 12 ft tall and it sucked me parallel to the wave and tossed me 360 degrees about 10 times. I called this a California Roll. After, trying to dig the sand out of my ears, i decided I was done so I joined Sara and Kent on the beach. Kent got a california roll not too long before I did and Sara just enjoyed her green tube in the safe waves. :-) We then headed to our small beach by the house and got some waves and watched a seal play around in the water (pretty cool!) We headed back down to the quiet secluded beach where we shot at in the morning and got some good shots of each of us in the sunset before heading over to Balboa Peninsula for dinner at a great little restaurant. Of course dinner was past my bedtime, so by the time we got in the car, I was out! Thank goodness for understanding hubby and thoughtful friends, they know when I'm tired, I'm TIRED and sent me to bed while they did laundry and got things ready for our departure today.

So we're home and getting back into some routine. Mason seemed to have a GREAT time with Mamaw & Papaw while we were gone, when we came in, I swear he looked at us like, OH YEAH, i forgot you were gone...WHERE were you???? So he got LOTS of of love and attention tonight!

So enough of my novel of our trip- we had a great time and lots of fun and laughs with great friends and food. We're looking forward to doing it AGAIN. (soon would be nice!) I'll post some photos in the next few days once i get mine uploaded, Gavin's uploaded and i get a peek at Sara's too! 3 photographers, 4 cameras, and 3 camera phones...phew, that's alot of pictures!

Hope you enjoyed my mobile blogging in the process of our trip! :-)
http://amcnosky.tumblr.com

This is what we spent the last 2 afternoons doing. Guess i should write it down in #2's baby book what I did early in my pregnancy :-D


We saw some amazing sunsets


A sign I always seem to photograph when in Laguna Beach everytime...no it never changes, but its something that always reminds me of Laguna


My favorite thing (even as a kid) on the beach, is to find tide pools and play and discover cool things :-)


More to come tomorrow!

My funny story for today...

the other day my dad brings over 2 pairs of binoculars that have been sitting around the house for some time. So he tells me to pack them and leave them at the Beach House.
So we're piddling around the house this afternoon, I pull out a pair and decide to go out on the patio. I look down at the beach (which is really close) and immediately see 1 of the 2 couples is in a total make out session. So i move on and check out the other couple on the beach with a cute baby, move onto the pelicans I can see in the water, look across to Balboa island.....so then i get bored and scan back closer to our little beach and oops fall upon the PDA couple again, and oh, hello sir- he's totally staring at me! like stopped making out while laying on top of his girlfriend and looks at me who probably totally looks like a peeping TOM! i swear i wasnt really watching them make out, i was seeing what else was going on out there! oy..... and i swear everytime i peeked out onto the beach, they were making out....gross. get a room!

Why Bother?

So how do you like my tumblr photo blog? Gavin calls it my blogging to go or mobile blogger.
So after Gavin filled his belly of his double double at In N Out, we headed over to Trader Joe's. Gotta love Trader Joe's. So I bought some chips & salsa, sunscreen, margarita mix and 2 Buck Chuck. (not for me of course) so we get back to the house and as I am putting away the groceries, I notice there are already 3 bottles of Margarita mix. There is also already 2 other bags of chips, and there is already another bottle of sunscreen. There is also 5 other bottles of 2 buck chuck wine. DOH. WHY bother? BECAUSE its alllllll organic. (okay, maybe the wine isnt.....wait......MAYBE it is...........)

So its still early in the afternoon as I have NO idea what to do with myself. I never even get this amount of time to THINK by myself, let alone figure out what I need to do. No laundry, nothing to pick up, nothing to clean, nothing to cook, no diapers to change, no phone calls to return, no where to be, nothing to do......what do i do with myself!!! Perhaps a nap?

Actually (this just came up in the last 2 seconds), I'm about to cut Gavin's lifeline because he just asked if there is apple store anywhere near by, so I think we're going to head up to the market to buy some floats for the beach! I must cut him from technology....before long he'll become an apple robot i tell you!

My tumblr

So I created a Tumblr account since it seems to be I take tons of photos with my iphone. I'll try to update it daily with interesting things and not of just Mason.
Save the link!

http://amcnosky.tumblr.com/

2 is better than 1?

SO we found out last week that Mason is going to be a big brother!! I didn't post anything yet because both Grandparents were out of town on vacation and we wanted to tell them in person. I figured that if I posted something, the grandparents might hear it through the grapevine and not from us- that's not a way to find out! So everyone knows now and we're excited, nervous, scared all those same feelings coming back again. I'm still wondering how its going to work with an almost 2 1/2 yr old and a newborn!

Due date is around March 5th and Gavin is hoping and praying its a boy again! LOL I'm okay with either really, just healthy is good for me! At first I wanted a girl (just like with Mason), but now thinking about it, being so close in age- I think I'd be thrilled with another boy, when they are older they can share a room (and Mom can have a craft room haha) and we have all boy things to start with. Maybe we should find out the gender and NOT tell anyone this time around, that could be REALLY fun!

As crazy as it is, we've finally gotten over the initial shock and I've started to remind Gavin of the lovely hormones. Hey, that's just apart of being a wife/mom, gotta do my job. Gavin has managed the baby shock really well (better than I thought he'd take the news of #2!) crazy boy had me fooled. He said he wasn't ready for #2 for another 5 years, but he's already talking room decor (boy stuff of course) and talking about having to buy 2 carts (SCCA nut head) in 4 years. Its crazy that with Mason, that was the first name i spit out, and we both loved it. I think we're set on a Boy name- Maddox. Our backups are Evan, Miller (yeah laugh alllllll you want!), Sawyer (yes keep on laughing!) and Kellen. Girls names are Kennedy, Evan, Leah, Quinn and Brynlee (but my friends niece is named that, and i cant be a name stealer, but i have always loved that one!) Maddox and Kennedy are my top favorites.

So i'm still unsure how its going to work with Mason. I worry about how he'll handle it, he's such an attention whore and definitely the apple of my eye, so I wonder how he'll react with Mom's attention on a new baby. He gets rather jealous, so we're going to have to work on that. I give him so much 1 on 1 attention and play time, maybe Gavin will have to spend more time with the new one.....or maybe Grandparents and all those friends who love to come over and borrow babies will rise to the occasion.

So here we go onto a new avenue, completing our family! Exciting and scary at the same time. I have to admit, I'm rather thrilled that I'll be 28 years young and DONE having kids! :-)

Playtime

Rilee & Mason are getting really spoiled with seeing each other several times each week, they get excited everytime they see each other! Here's a few cute pictures from playtime at Cousin Rilee's house yesterday.







Love this one! So sweet!

Where have I been?

we've had a BUSY week! With a busy work week for me this week along with our last week of swim class, MDO is out for the week while both grandparents are out of town we've been juggling all week. (Thank goodness MDO starts again next week!) So we've been very very busy!
Here's a few pictures from our 4th of July hanging out with Amy, Chris & RIlee at their pool.

Pretending to be Daddy

apparently Mason sees his daddy working the tripod too often. I think he's missing 1 thing.....the camera!

Uh OH!

Look what happens when you do laundry! Maybe Mason is telling me I shouldn't do laundry?

Swim Class

We started swim class yesterday at the local YMCA (for Mason, not me! I can swim very well thankyouverymuch.) In the class, there's 8 spots for kiddos, well Amy, me and her friends kind of hijacked the class, but hey it works right? In the class there's Amy & Rilee, Mason & me, amy's friend Stacy and her little one Eli, Amy's friend Liz and her little boy Reid, and Amy's friends Chris & Carly with their twins Charis and Price. We had a good time, today was better than yesterday. Yesterday was a little chaotic. Today we had a different instructor that did everything at the pace we needed for our crazy kids. Yesterday we had the kids wear these very annoying floaties (yes I know they are for their own good, but they are not good when the just slip and slide around the kids!) so today with the new instructor we didn't use them and I think Mason actually did better, he wasn't being distracted by the float! Today we only worked on 3 things (which yesterday i think the instructor tried to fit the whole 2 weeks into one lesson) the class is only 30 minutes long, so we were able to spread out our time accordingly. We worked on blowing bubbles which Mason had down great, for some reason Miss Rilee would NOT blow bubbles, guess we'll have to work on that one! Then we worked on going under water (tried to see if Mason would do it by himself, but we're not there yet) and then we worked on getting in and out of the pool correctly. Which I think was a HUGE bonus. There's a hand rail, but Mason didn't like it except to try to climb on it. But he did figure out getting in and out of the pool by the steps while holding onto the side and sitting down, he did great with that. We'll have to try it here at home soon. I was rather impressed today that Mason was listening SO well, he's not always you know! A few times he climbed out of the pool and kind of looked around like, 'hmmm where could i go now?' I'd call him and use my stern voice to tell him to come back to the pool, and amazingly....HE DID. Everytime!
Here's just a few pictures from our first class yesterday. Yes I was the crazy one in the pool with the husband running around the pool with his huge Nikon camera, telephoto lens and monopod. HA! I'm sure the YMCA thought we were crazy for bringing our own personal photographer. Hey gotta get pictures somehow, right?



Miss Rilee with her Momma. Rilee looks very concerned about something. Maybe she knew the kid next to her was peeing in the pool.


Hanging out on the edge of the pool working on our kicks