This first picture has the children in one of their most favorite places to play. Coincidentally, it also happens to be one of the loudest areas in the house - next to one of the vents. Quite frankly, other than the fun of making noise...loud noise, I can't thing of the overall appeal, but then again...do you need more appeal than loud noise? 
I'm not sure why I picked this one out, but it was just so fun to see the boys playing with those big foam numbers and letters. Micah is actually getting really good at numbers. He recognizes all of his single-digit numbers. But, as with many toys, Micah wanted to take them apart and stack them on top of each other, and Noah simply wanted to eat them....
This picture shows, if nothing more, Micah's desire to have neat and somewhat symmetrical fun. He insisted that I take a picture of this "tower" so that he could see it in the camera. Funny boy.
Micah received his first bicycle for Christmas, and he has been riding it every day since. He rides it around the "big circle" (his words) of our upstairs living area. 
These were just a few shots of the two riding their respective "hogs" together. 
And concluding our normal pictures, here's Micah (you can't see him because I buried him in all of his buddies). I had gotten him up from his nap and started playing by tossing his "buddies"1 into Noah's crib across the room. We made a game of it, but the fun (for Micah) came when I reversed it and started tossing them back onto his bed. He first tried to catch them, but then when I threw a stuffed Junior (Veggie-tales)2 that hit him like a rocket, he thought that it was fun to be the backboard, as it were, for his buddies to hit first before they landed on the bed. 
Here's Noah's crib - notice the "pouting chair" in the bottom corner. Consequently, Noah likes to stand on it, grab the back, and shake it so that it almost falls over backwards. 
Now here's the picture of the day, week, month.... Yesterday, the boys were down for a nap (which is just code for playing and being silly in your respective beds in a dark bedroom) and Stephanie was getting some stuff done around the house. Well, I don't think that they were in their beds for too long when Stephanie, downstairs working on laundry, heard a loud thud...silence...screaming. Noah had somehow unhooked his aquarium from his railing so that he was able to get just a little bit of a boost. He then must have climbed as far as he could and then toppled over the side. This wouldn't have been nearly that bad if the afore-mentioned "pouting chair" hadn't been sitting where it was. You see, Noah took a face dive (not a nose dive, but more like an "eye-ball" dive) right onto the arm of that chair. That is how we think he got those cuts that he has on his face (from the edges of that chair).
We (I) were mostly worried about the possible eye damage that could have occurred if his eye had been scraped, pierced, or otherwise seriously injured in the fall. Well, to make a long story short (somewhat, anyway) Steph ended up taking him to the doctor, which was our second spur of the moment trip in 72 hours (oh yes, I'll get to the first one), and we were greatly relieved to find out that his wounds were most likely superficial (Praise God!). What ended up being the worst thing for that evening was that we had to wake Noah up every few hours to see if he was (a) responsive and (b) that his eyes were dilating at the same size so that we could determine if there might be a concussion.
As to our first trip to the doctor, the short story is that Micah was riding his little red bike around the house and he decided to drive up a pile of folded blankets. Well, as all plans of this nature are sure to experience, there were a few complications. Namely, it wasn't as easy to drive up a pile of blankets as he probably thought. Well, Micah tumbled down and the bike crashed on top of him. It didn't look to bad, but after Stephanie picked him up to calm him down (he was somewhat hysterical), she noticed that he was bleeding...a lot. Some part of the bike had caught him at the base of his skull and cut him. And if you know anything about head wounds, they bleed, and they bleed a lot. As it turned out, after a trip to the ER (and a reward lunch of McDonalds for being so brave) his cut was very small, but with all of the blood and the fact that it was a head wound, we couldn't be too careful.
One really great thing about both of these experiences was the reaction of the grandma's. Now, if you know me, I love to give both of them a bit of a hard time about...well, anything really. All in good fun, of course. Well, on Saturday, Cindy volunteered to come over and help. And she did come to the hospital and take care of Noah while Micah was being examined. Then, on Monday when we were trying to figure out what was going on and to ask for prayer for Noah (before we knew how serious anything was), Mom (I can't call her Jill...that's just...weird) offered to come up and help out. She kept this offer open until the all-clear was given from the doctor. We are really blessed with family that is both able and willing to help out in times of need. Praise God for our families.
Oh, and by the way - in case you didn't know, I was at work on both occasions. I was unable to do anything except try and be a calming and reassuring phone presence for Stephanie. I don't know which is worse - being home and having to deal with it all, or being at work and unable to do anything. Whew, what a crazy weekend.
1 Micah has called all of his assorted stuffed toys "buddies". The title has been applied to many-a name for various companions (Buddy Bear, Frog-Buddy, and others...I am sure).
2
