life's a beach - cousins

One of our most anticipated things about going down the shore this year is that Asher would get to meet his cousins for the first time!

A only has 3 cousins {all boys} - my sister's son, Owen and Drew's brother's twin sons, Alden and Mercer.  Asher met Owen earlier this summer, but he hadn't gotten together with Alden and Mercer yet.  That all changed last week!

Mercer and Alden are almost 3 and were super excited to meet "baby Asher."  I don't think I ever heard them call him anything but baby Asher - expect the once that Alden said he was coloring a picture for "baby Asher Wilkinson." 

Not to be confused with all the other baby Ashers that were roaming up and down LBI that week.  :o)

A & M were really sweet to Asher.  They were clearly a little perplexed as to what their relationship could entail since Ash couldn't really play with them, but the did show him their digger/bulldozer toys {the generosity behind this gesture would be more apparent if you spent any time at all with them.  The diggers are precious, precious toys}. 

They also enjoyed storytime with Aunt Emily and baby Asher before A went to bed.

Grandma Linda bought all of her grandsons matching shirts and hats, so, of course, we had to dress them up and try to get a photo.  We told the boys to sit close and keep Asher from falling off the step.

Mercer took this charge very seriously.  Thanks for keeping him safe, Mercer!

I probably took 50 photos and this was the best we could do.  Haha...I thought 1 kid was hard to photograph - try 3 at once!

Things really started to fall apart when Alden got distracted by his toes. 

Alden?

Um, Alden, look here.

Alden!  Look here!

Haha...great times.

All in all, the boys seemed to have fun meeting each other.  By next year they should all be able to run around and have fun together.

Let me leave you with some hilarious kid quotes from the week.

When we were reading the story together, Asher grabbed a page and turned it {completely a coincidence that he timed it right for when we actually wanted to turn the page} and Alden said, "Good one, Ash!"

I almost busted out laughing.  What a sweetie!  Thanks for the encouragement buddy!

Then later the twins came in to see Asher getting his bath.  Raegan {A&M's mom} and I were in the kitchen next door when we heard one of the boys exclaim, "Baby Asher has a penis!"

Raegan hightailed it into the bathroom and talked to the boys about their discovery.  She explained to me later that this was a helpful discovery because the boys believed that babies were {more or less} gender neutral, then "grew into" either being boys or girls.  A's "parts" convinced them that he is already a boy and will eventually become a bigger boy like them.

Kids are great.  I love it!