Sunday, May 5, 2013

Easter 2013

As Miles gets older, we have noticed his memory gets longer and longer. (He still sometimes reminds me about the particular gifts that Santa brought him for Christmas). So holidays are starting to mean more and more in our little family. I had plans to do a really great lesson about the true meaning of Easter the week leading up to Easter Sunday, but life got in the way. I did watch some Bible videos with him on the computer that he still talks to me about, so its a step in the right direction.

We did decide to have the Easter Bunny come to our house on Saturday instead of Sunday. This might not always work because of Chris's schedule, but it did this year.

The Easter bunny actually did a really great job hiding the eggs instead of just placing them in plain sight where a toddler could find them.



I think he was pretty excited about the whole process while Hannah was pretty content to just hang out.















The baskets were found on the porch with the appropriate amount of things for little boys and baby girls. The Easter Bunny really felt like adding to much work to his busy week wasn't worth it.




And then I found these ears leftover from Miles first Easter and couldn't resist.

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I think cheeks run in our family.

Happy Easter!



Hannah: 8 and 9 months

I've been suffering from some serious lack of motivation when it comes to blogging these days, but I mostly blame it on the fact that we bought a new computer (Chris finally got his Mac), and it's not as intuitive as people make it out to be. But, let's get back around to pretending like I am good at documenting our lives.

























Somewhere in between 8 and 9 months, Hannah started crawling which made home life so much easier! She could get to what she wanted making us less needed in here daily life. Don't get me wrong, she is still needy, but less so. Crawling has not been as exciting for Miles though because little sister can now get to his toys before he has the chance to decide what to give her. We've had lots of time outs after he hits or kicks her to get her out of the way.

She eats pretty much anything you put in her mouth. And lots of it. Especially bread. Or ice cream.

She still naps twice per day and goes down for the night around 7 or 7:30. However, she is still waking up twice per night. I might die. I know I should probably make her cry it out or something, but I'm too lazy to get around to it. Seems odd, right. You would think that laziness would lead me to sleep more and feed her less, but I know that I'll have to listen to her cry. And I also know that if I feed her, I can be back to sleep in 10 minutes.


At 9 months, she is still a pretty happy baby. She was a true champ on our trip to Disneyland. However, I could not get a picture with the numbered sign because she grabbed it as soon as I put it down.



She crawls with incredible determination, but also has developed an interesting technique. At first I thought she was doing it only when wearing a dress, but its become her thing. Love her.





Saturday, March 16, 2013

Miles and the extraction

For a few months now, I have been talking to Miles about taking away his binky because he is a big boy. We started putting one binky at a a time in the trash on trash day to go bye-bye in the trash truck (one of his favorite things). And then I told him that when he had one more, we could go to a store to put his binky inside a new animal. Sometimes he would get really excited about it, telling me he wanted to put binky in a giraffe or elephant or hippo. Sometimes he would tell me that we should put Hannah’s binky in the animal.

Two weeks ago, he had his last binky and I thought it would be a good idea to at least take him to Build-a-Bear to see what it was about before we made the final extraction. But while we were there, he was so excited, that he told me he wanted to put binky in a puppy. So we did it. Chris wasn’t quite on board with the whole idea, but Miles is almost three, so I knew we needed to do it.

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I have never seen him love a stuffed animal so much. I couldn’t get a picture that wasn’t blurry because he was hugging it and swinging it side to side.

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And then we went home for naptime in which he didn’t nap, but it was hard to determine if he wasn’t napping because of the binky or just because it wasn’t a nap kind of day, he’s been having more and more of those lately.

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The first night was definitely hard. He screamed for Daddy for about an hour before I went back in there to calm him down. And every night since then has been fine, but naps were a bit harder to come by. He went 8 days without a nap before I finally suggested to him that he take a nap in a pack n play just like at grandma’s house. That’s all it took. He only did that for a few days, and since then, he takes naps as regularly as he did before.

Tantrums have gotten a little worse because I think there’s still a little bit of residual emotional trauma going on, but he’s almost three, so it’s part of life. He has become a mouth breather at night, so we use a lot more chap stick now. And, I think his teeth have already started to come down a bit more.

But major parenting milestone accomplished.

Siblings

We have really enjoyed watching Miles and Hannah interact more and more as she gets older. I especially love to listen to her squeal at him in the back of the car as he sings, or yells, or makes faces, or sometimes throws things at her. Every time I try to take a picture of Hannah, Miles insists on being in it, but he hasn’t really figured out how to sit still next to her and not look like a goof. But I’m looking forward to when they can play together all day and keep each other entertained. Like ALL day.

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Hannah: 7 months

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Food: eating lots of solids, cereal puffs, and yogurt melts (the remnants of which you see on her shirt).

Sleep: Mostly two solid naps during the day, and then goes to sleeps about 7 pm to 7 am (with two, sigh, feedings in there).

Transportation: still only rolling over to get around

Hobbies: drooling, giggling at Miles, chewing on anything within her reach, being cute

And now, folks, I am caught up on Hannah's updates.

Hannah: 6 months

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Way back in January, Hannah hit her half birthday. A think we might have let her have some ice cream that night, but any digital proof of such trip is on Chris’s phone.

At 6 months, Hannah had mastered sitting up (for the most part). I just had to make sure she was always sitting on the carpet so that when she fell over, her head had somewhere soft to land. Her rolling over is still her only mode of transportation, but she would definitely prefer for me to just move her to where she wants to be.

She is absolutely enamored of Miles and everything that he does. And he loves to make her giggle, which sometimes means we have to go into the hall at church because they both get kind of loud.

Sleeping at 6 months has finally leveled out probably because I finally got around to making her cry it out to get herself to sleep. I was kind of tired to going in there every five minutes to put her pacifier back in. It only took a couple of days, so I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to it. She now takes two naps per day: 9 am and 1 pm. She sleeps with her binky an  her pink elephant blanket, which she usually rubs her face in.

She eats like a champ! Annoying so, actually. She is very demanding for her three meals and precisely the right time. Sadly, it still hasn’t made her sleep more at night.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Hannah: 2, 3, 4, 5 months (i.e. I’m a lazy blogger)

Because I had a suspicion that I wouldn’t be as dedicated to blogging Hannah updates, I copied my cousin’s idea to photograph Hannah on each new month. So even if I don’t remember what was going on at each stage, at least I have proof of the changes she was making along the way. And if I were better at it, I would edit these to look more professional. But we all know how that ends.

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But because I fee like I should do some updating, here’s what I do remember.

At 2 months, Hannah was only waking up once a night to eat and I was so spoiled. But don’t worry, that didn’t last. I also started to notice how much more vocal she was compared to Miles.

At 3 months, she started rolling from front to back. But then she forgot that she knew how to do it.

At 4 months, she started rolling from back to front, but forgetting how to go back, would start screaming until someone rolled her over. Fun for Mommy at naptimes. I kept telling myself that I was going to make her cry it out, but kept finding excuses to put it off.

At 5 months, she was getting a bit more consistent with her naps, especially her morning nap. I also started giving her some solids because she went from only waking up once at night to waking up three or four times.

And that’s as much as I remember, sadly.

December 2012, Christmas

This was a wonderful Christmas for our family because we were able to spend it in our new home, and Chris was home for Christmas Eve night and all of Christmas day.

On Christmas Eve, we let Miles and Hannah open two presents: their ornaments and pjs. Miles was not pleased with that, so we picked another that we knew was a book from Chris’s parents. And he LOVES it. Like, we’ve read it EVERY day since Christmas.

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And I think Chris was super excited that I wasn’t laid up in bed with morning sickness this Christmas, so I could actually help play the part of Santa.

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And I think Santa did a really great job picking presents that Miles would like. He also wrapped some new boots and a wallet for me without even telling Chris that we was bringing them. That Santa is so great!

On Christmas morning, Miles got delayed playing on his road and then with every toy along the way. In fact, Hannah had to take a nap while Miles was still working his way through the presents.

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And then here’s the best picture we could get on Christmas Sunday.

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December 2012, a visit from friends

In the beginning of December, some good friends of ours from Charlotte came to visit for a week with their two beautiful daughters. Emerson was born just after Miles and those two spent a lot of time together during their first year of life as Chris and Natalie finished residency. We were so excited to see them again, especially because they had their second daughter, Kenley, just after Hannah was born last year.

We tried to do some fun Colorado things (weather permitting), but also spent a lot of time hanging out at the house since they were four nappers to think about.

We took a quick trip to Garden of the Gods on a chilly morning, but out Colorado boy refused any hats, gloves, or thick coats.

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Here’s the two babies “playing” together.

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And then we attempted a Christmas craft for the toddlers.

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Thanksgiving 2012

Because we moved into a new house (with a double oven), we decided to host Thanksgiving for my family (including my cousin and her family from Utah). I didn’t take many pictures because having a baby and cooking a 22 lb turkey takes a lot of time, but we had so much fun and were so grateful to spend the day with so many loved ones.

Uncle Steve holding Hannah (whose showing a little belly).

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Caleb and June (with cousin Kim in the background) and their son Wyatt who did not want to sit still for a photo:

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A very cold cornhole game:

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Matching pjs:

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And the best part:

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Halloween 2012

Better late than never, right?

This Halloween was so much fun because Miles was old enough to understand what was going on, but not old enough to pick his own costume. And Hannah was young enough to just sit still and look cute.

In the beginning of the month, we went to a local pumpkin patch with some friends. Miles seemed to enjoy most of it, except when he realized that he had hay on his hands.

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And then before Halloween we let Miles paint his pumpkin because we knew that carving it would only result in more work for us. This child barely tolerated the paint on his hands, so the stringy insides of the pumpkin would be too much.

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We wanted to do a family theme with costumes, but then I remembered that I’m too lazy for that. So we had a donkey (generic, not Eeyore) and an elephant.

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Happy Halloween, you know, three months ago.