Raising Watsons

Ben and Tucker read Polar Bear

He may hate me for this someday..

In this picture Tucker is showing Daddy how big his penis is gonna grow. Way to set your sights high, little dude.

In this first picture, I took off Emilia’s nice shirt because I had forgotten a bib.  In her little mesh baggy there is Abuela’s masa de puerco and some yucca.  She sat in Abuela’s lap nomming delicious home made cuban food the entire dinner.  I can’t remember the last time I saw my grandmother so happy.

My father (Abuelo!) gave Tucker a police SUV car with flashing lights and sirens.   He spoke about how a police car was his favorite toy from his uncle as a boy.  Weeks later and this truck is still in Tucker’s top five rotation.  He really really really loves police and fire trucks.

Did I doubt my mother’s ability to put the baby to sleep?  Yes.  Yes, I did.  But in her unorthodox way she summoned the wisdom from my grandmother stating that children love to sleep out doors and created this make-shift pillow cot for Emilia.  Did I nervously check to make sure she wasn’t face down in the pillow the entire time?  Yes.  Yes, I did.

Tucker, naturally, wanted to play-sleep outside too.

All the good hair.

On the other side of Florida at Grammy and Bumpa’s house we enjoyed Birthday party #1 with some fancy hats!

Afterwards we went out on Bumpa’s boat on a perfect South Florida day.

Emilia stayed home with Grammy where she played with new toys and surprised everyone with her new found love of potato salad.

Tucker’s 3rd Birthday party was at the Lomita Railroad Museum on a beautiful early March day. In case you can’t tell from the picture, it was train themed. All the kids had engineer hats and scarfs, there was a train cake, a goodie bag with: train whistles, train lollipops, train stickers and train shaped bubbles. Mom and Dad hand crafted train cars to hold chips and pretzels, which sat on the railroad track runner on the table.

The museum was really cool. The kids got to crawl all over a steam engine and a sleeper car. There was an area between the two trains where the parents could chat while keeping an eye on their children. The museum worker had a tape and would play train whistles and chugging sounds that the kids just loved.

After playing on the trains for a while, we all went to a little park across the street. The park was lovely and a perfect place for the kids to run around and play “red light/green light” which more or less ended up with a dog pile of kids on Ben. Our friend Carmen did face painting (which she had never done before but agreed to as a favor to me) and the kids LOVED it. Nary a child was seen without a star, rainbow or design on their cheeks.

It was a perfect day and a perfect party.

I wrote this blog but didn’t have a chance to link the video until much later.  The video says this was created on Jan 25th, 2013.

Two nights ago I thought I was filming Family Music Night, playing “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” which was requested by Tucker.  And then Emilia stood for what we believe was the first time.  At least, it’s the first time in our presence.

Emilia Stands

A collection of photos in and around Easter 2013.

tiny dancer

Easter egg dying

always sticking her tongue out.

Easter Sunday

And lastly, the Easter lamb.  One of the best one’s yet, the secret was putting some water in the pan and a bed of onions and garlic.

Tucker loves to read the Berenstein Bears “New Baby” book. Whenever we do and we get to the end he likes to improvise about the family and how the “big brother is there to protect the baby sister and stop her from putting things in her mouth”. To be fair, he does a really good job of informing us when she’s doing something, anything, she shouldn’t.

He’s also very attentive to her as seen in this one morning I had my phone handy.

Just another morning eating breakfast…

hey, where’d the spoon go?

I got it!

Aside from being Emilia’s personal retriever, Tucker also gives her his toys all the time.  All but the iPad, that he keeps to himself. 😉

Tucker loves to cook. He completely made kale pesto with me the other day, the rest of these pictures are from school.

First Tucker washed the kale and Mom stripped off the leafy part from the vein.

Next, he put all the kale into the food processor.

Tucker very carefully adds the olive oil.

Hits the button and PESTO!