First it was the Eye...

And now it is his ear. When I picked Ben up from daycare today his ear was HUGE! Like comically huge. Like only an ear Dopey or Dumbo could love. We asked him what happened and he said he hurt it in bed during his nap. Sharon and I are pretty sure he got bit by something during his nap. The swelling and redness did not progress any further down  his ear. I gave him Benadryl when we got home and put some after bite on it. I also put an ice pack on his ear after he fell asleep. He never complained about it hurting, but he would pull on it occasionally. Hopefully it will be much better tomorrow!

And THEN...he got a bug bite on his forehead. The after bite cleared that one up, though.

Poor Monster!

Poor baby Monster! She was the unfortunate victim of a walk-by spit up! Nick nailed her smack in the middle of the forehead, right between the eyes!

Cleveland Zoo

This weekend we headed over to Cleveland to spend the weekend with Auntie Dre and Uncle Kevin. We took a trip to the Cleveland Zoo, which was really cool. It is a really, really big zoo. It took us all of 4 hours to walk around but it could easily be a two-day zoo visit if you wanted to see everything. It was really nice because they have a ton of animals that the Toledo zoo does not. I got a lot of good pictures for Nick's animal book that will make it a lot different than Ben's animal book I made last Christmas.

This was towards the end of the day. Nick was already exhausted and out cold. He had hung out in the Moby wrap for a while and really enjoyed the animals. He got pretty excited looking at the monkeys and the fish.

Porcupines - there are 2 in this picture, but they are huge!

A very cool crocodile. It was swimming all over the place. I have never seen a crocodile or alligator move so much, even in the wild

A koala bear! Love it!

A tree kangaroo. The Cleveland zoo has a really, really nice Australia exhibit.

They had tons of kangaroos

Including one with a joey in her pouch! It was actually kind of disturbing. The joey had apparently hopped in head first because it's legs were sticking out at weird angles

They also have a very nice petting zoo. Ben actually pet the mininature horse. He wouldn't go near anything else. They also have camel rides (but I was too cheap for that)

And of course we had to stop and play on the playground

This is a lemur! I wanted to get a better picture of its crazy eyes, but no such luck. And I couldn't find the ones with the really big eyes - they were hiding outside somewhere

A red panda

Their giraffe just had a baby, too (there is a brand new baby at the Toledo zoo)

And we shall call this an elkhound! The plaque talks about sled dogs, but come on, if that doesn't look like an elkhound silhouette!

Checking out the seals from up high

This is a little baby grizzly bear! He and his sibling were born in February. They are the same age as Nick!

Taste of Maumee

We went to the Taste of Maumee on Friday which is part of the Maumee Summer Festival. A bunch of local restaurants serve food and they had a pretty decent band playing. We met up with Cameryn, Kevin and Tiffany. After making a mess of the strollers and themselves, we let the kids run around and play.

Cameryn was loving her smoothie

And was thoughtful enough to share her smoothie

They were totally facinated with the parking bumps. They climbed on them, used them as a balance beam, rode them like ponies - you name it

Some Upgrades to the Blog

I am working on some upgrades to the blog. I upgraded the posting software stuff and it now has this x-large picture option which I really like. But, with the way I had the blog set up, the pictures were cut off on the right hand side. So for now, I have changed the layout and am using a standard blogger view. I'd like to make some personalization, just haven't gotten that far yet. But I can post x-large pictures now!

Awww, Brothers

Pop-Eye

Ben was Mr. Pop-Eye earlier this week. We went to Sidecut park Tuesday night and the mosquitoes were terrible! I think Ben might have gotten a mosquito bite right next to his eye. His eye looked a little funky Wednesday morning, but I did not have time to do a full inspection. Then at daycare he and Ashlyn got into an argument (nothing new there) and instead of biting or hitting, what did Ashlyn do? Headbutt Ben, catching him right in the eye. And the result of these two things was Pop-eye.

As a side note: I have decided that head butting is a fitting form of 'retaliation' if there as to be one at this age. With biting, only the bitee feels pain, along with hitting. But with a head butt, both the head butter and the head buttee feel the pain which I think is appropriate, especially since in most cases both parties are at fault. But of course, there should be no violence to begin with, but 2 and 3 year olds are not exactly the best at practicing restraint.

Sitting Tall

Nick is getting pretty proficient at sitting. I wouldn't say he is good at it just yet, but he was doing significantly better today than yesterday. Though, he'd probably be much better at sitting if his brother wasn't always pushing him down.

The Unofficial Balloon Festival Shirt

I swear, I really do have more than three outfits for Nick, and not all of his clothes are hand me downs, but a funny thing happened on Friday. It wasn't until we were setting up our chairs at the balloon festival that I realized Ben had wore the same shirt when we brought him to the festival two years ago...Though, I don't know what happened to those overalls Ben was wearing. I'll have to look for them

Findlay Balloon Festival

Friday we took the boys to the Findlay balloon festival. After a few mishaps driving around Findlay, we arrived just as the balloons were taking to the air. Ben thought it was pretty cool and I was able to get a lot of great pictures that I hope to frame for the boys' room.

These were new to us this year - two bees, a boy and a girl. The girl bee took off, but the boy bee never left the ground

 Then daddy got Ben a blue snowball. Yeah, that was a spectacular mess.

 Then the balloons came back to the field for a glow. I have to say, this balloon festival is pretty awesome. The announcer guy was saying how other city's they go to charge as much as $25 a person or $15 a car. Findlay has some really good corporate sponsors so this is all free. They even had a movie - Toy Story 3 - playing on a giant screen after the balloon glow for the kids. They have even more stuff on Saturday, but we have yet to undertake a Saturday trip. Maybe next year

 The glow is really best shown in video.