Moving

So, I've begun blogging again, but at a new address. The new blog is private, so if you'd like access, either shoot me an email or leave your address in the comments and I'll add you. Thanks for keeping up with our family, and I look forward to seeing you on the new site!

TTFN

After a recent start-of-the-year Relief Society lesson, I've felt strongly like I need to take a blogging break. I'm not totally sure why, but I trust it's a good reason. So, I'm signing off for the next while. Happy blogging, and I'll see you around again later!

Christmas :)

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the Christmas tree. My roommate my junior year of college and I had our first Christmas tree in our dorm room on West Campus, totally against fire code for old buildings like that. It also involved our first usage of power tools, but that is an entirely different story. I still have a piece of Luke's trunk from that year.

Every year since then, I've had a Christmas tree, making this year's tree my tenth since leaving home. Since getting married and having children, Christmas has become even more fun, and we've had a great season so far this year. But there was one thing missing. Every year, usually the night the tree gets put up, I love to turn off all the other lights in the house, plug the tree in, and put Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song" on repeat. For hours at a time. Something about looking at the tree all lit up and listening to my *favorite* Christmas song takes me back to being a little kid and reminds me of the magic of Christmas. I hadn't gotten around to it yet this season until last night. While both kids and Chad were sleeping, I turned off all the lights but those on the tree and turned up the music. Now, I'm ready for Christmas :)

Christmas is coming...

And Nathan is sooo excited! Nathan is completely loving the holiday season - he loves snowmen, Santa, "Santa dancing" (Christmas music), "lights in trees", chocolate treats, stockings, and the baby Jesus (who has accompanied us to ward Christmas parties, the grocery store, and Walmart). Nathan knows that Santa brings good little boys and girls toys and treats, that Santa says "Ho, ho, ho!" and Santa has also joined us on more than one trip and sleeps with Nathan at night.

So, we decided to see if Nathan liked the real thing. Now, I was a Santa's helper for four Christmas's in high school and college, so we had a decent idea of what might be in store. Nathan was excited all the way to the mall and all the way through the line, until we approached the big guy. Then he burst into tears. He wouldn't sit on Santa's lap, and the only thing he would say was, "Santa bye-bye!" over and over again. At least Emily did better. But, by the time we got back to the car, Nathan liked Santa again and was excited about Christmas again. Oh, the fickle emotions of the young :)

Things I Love...

When they share their favorite things, like their new dinosaur, with each other

Note he also has his "Jesus book" and his beloved buses

When they're just plain silly

When construction turns into consumption :)

How sometimes they can sleep anywhere and yet other times they won't sleep anywhere

Cuddly naps

How our new dinosaur joined us for dinner last night

Great big smiles :)

Yesterday was the ward Primary program. I love the program - funny kids doing/saying funny things, great music, and a sweet spirit you just don't get the rest of the year. Nathan also loves the Primary program. He kept climbing in my lap to get a better view of all the kids. He particularly loved the songs, and he enjoyed them so much he started to sing along. Nevermind that he doesn't know any of the words or the tunes or even when the sons ended - he sang along with great gusto. Chad up on the stand and everyone around us could hear him he was so vocal. Ah, the good times. Now we're off to finish up our fruit snacks and pancakes breakfast.

What a weekend!

Thursday night, Nathan came down with a 102+ temperature, sadly derailing an early (and marginally successful) attempt at potty training. He spent the rest of the weekend feeling fairly awful and requesting "Mommy burp!" frequently. That means he want me to pick him up and hold him like I hold Emily when I burp her. Thankfully, Chad's dad was in town this weekend, so he was able to help extensively. Emily loved talking, smiling, and snuggling with him, and Nathan appreciated some mommy time. We're keeping our fingers crossed that he's feeling better today.

Why, you might ask, was Chad's dad in town this weekend? Well, Chad was called to be the first counselor in our bishopric, and his dad came to ordain him as a high priest so that he could be set apart yesterday. We're quite nervous about this new calling (two under the age of two in sacrament meeting? by myself for the next ? number of years??? I do have to remind myself, though, that the second counselor in the bishopric has twice as many kids as we do, and their youngest is only two months older than Emily. It could be worse). We're also very excited about the opportunity that Chad has to serve in our ward here. So, it has been quite the weekend around here, and we're sad to see Randy leave today, but hopeful that Nathan feels better. We hope your weekend was a little tamer :)

Turning three months old must have really worn Emily out yesterday. A little after seven last night, I was holding her after her bath, and she started dozing off. I put her in her crib, thinking, what's the worst that could happen - she wakes up in fifteen minutes and it's a normal evening. She must have been tired, because she didn't wake up until 6:30 this morning. Woohoo! Here's hoping she has a repeat performance tonight :)

Happy 3 Months!

Emily turns three months today - time flies when you're tired. Actually, she's going to bed before ten these days, still sleeping until seven, and naps regularly. She smiles and loves to be around people all the time. She also loves her pacifier and won't go to sleep without it. She's a happy little baby, and we think we'll keep her.

Thanksgiving fun

For Thanksgiving, we joined the Henderson annual trek up to Leonardtown, MD where my Aunt Amy and Uncle Mark live with their family. They have a beautiful home right on the water and graciously made room for us for the weekend. We had a blast. Nathan loved having a large home around which to roam, but he especially loved Scout, their golden retriever. He had to give Scout a kiss before he would go down for his nap one day. Emily was cute, generally slept well, and smiled a lot. The food was delicious, the company was great, the weather was appropriately brisk, and all in all, it was a great weekend. We loved Thanksgiving!

Yikes!

Yesterday morning, I came into the laundry room to this scene. Nathan is trying to get into the raisins, one of his favorite foods. Nathan loves this picture because he loves his pajamas. He is currently saying "Dinosaur - roar!" over and over again while looking at the picture.

Emily continues to be super-happy, smiling and talking up a storm. Particularly after ten o'clock at night. Here she is, enjoying the Bumbo, quite possibly one of the coolest baby items ever. I promise it's Emily and not a recycled picture of Nathan - the blue doggy pajamas were due to laundry day.

She smiles!

The color is a bit funky due to our dying camera but she's really smiling!

Pictures

I said I'd do a better job of posting Emily pictures, and I've been failing miserably at it. So, here goes. Enjoy!

Snow addendum

I was watching the 5 o'clock evening news last night, and our snow flurry shower was the lead story, the biggest news of the day. They interviewed a woman, and right below her name, her identifying statement was "saw snow." I promise. Yikes. Heaven help us if it actually did snow around here.

Snow!

That's right - it actually snowed today. Now, the snow only lasted for about ten minutes and didn't stick to anything, but the frozen stuff actually came down, if only briefly. And Chad said he'd never see snow again once we moved here.

Sleep is a very, very, very good thing

This week, we're doing Baby Nap Boot Camp for Emily. She is ten weeks old today, and she still wan't settled into taking naps in her crib on a regular basis. Nathan and I both needed the break from holding her or listening to her fuss, so she's learning how to put herself to sleep and take naps without being held. It's not a fun week at all, but she is an excellent student and is quickly mastering the basics. She's already taken two 1 1/2 hour naps today and is down for her third at the moment. And, she's decided that 9pm is bedtime, so we get to go to bed earlier too. Yea!

With all this extra sleep in her system, she's become a much happier baby, talking and smiling up a storm. She's so darn cute when she smiles and talks. And she loves when you smile and talk back to her. Nathan is also enjoying happy baby Emily, playing with her and her toys.

Nathan found his dad's old swim goggles and decided that they were really cool to wear around the house. Seriously. And yes, my children do occasionally wear clothes other than their pajamas.

Emily, again

We had Emily's two-month checkup yesterday, and she is still a big baby. She is 11lbs 12 oz and 24 inches long. Chad and I keep scratching our heads - where on earth are these tall babies coming from? It's certainly not from us. She had her shots, which of course led to much crying.

The best part was when she woke up from her four-hour, post-shot nap screaming at the top of her lungs because she hurt from the shots. And, the new trim that the workman had *just* installed on the garage door got caught on our not-so-functional door so the door wouldn't open. So, I had two crying children (Nathan was sad that Emily was sad), the Infant's Tylenol from Nathan had expired, and I momentarily couldn't get the car out of the garage. Can we say frustrated mommy? All was eventually resolved, but it involved lots of sad babies. Everyone's fine now, and Emily's been sound asleep for almost ten hours now. Aren't sleeping babies wonderful?

We're still trying to capture that first, really cute picture of smiling, but this is what we have so far (and yes, that is still our amazingly horrible sofa. Estimated date of replacement is currently January).

Catching up

The grandparents departed on Sunday and Monday, and Nathan has been a little sad. It turns out Mom just isn't as fun as all the Grandma's and Grandpa's. He keeps asking where they all went. We're all recovering from colds, though poor little Emily is still very much in the midst of hers. She woke up so congested she could hardly breathe. The bulb syringe (snot sucker, as we call it) helps, but she HATES it. At least she slept from 9pm last night until 6:30 this morning. I was soo excited to go to bed before eleven. It had been awhile. Here are some pictures from this weekend, courtesy my dad. We still have to stage the official picture of Emily in her blessing dress. I'm waiting until there's less snot.

Halloween

With grandparents in town and Chad off yesterday, we went to one of the three state aquariums yesterday. Nathan *loved* it. It was a great size - not so small that you regretted the drive but not so big that Nathan got bored. He loved the outside portion.

His favorite exhibit was an underwater shipwreck with a number of large fish (including some big sharks) swimming around. It had floor to ceiling glass windows, and he loved being able to get right up to the fish. He ran along the window chasing after the fish, though here he was stationary.

For Halloween, Nathan and Emily both dressed up as kids who went to bed early. It was a repeat costume for Nathan, and I'm hopeful we'll get at least another year out of it.

Emily Update

Emily is eight weeks old today, and she's continuing to do really well. She's a great eater (and voider of everything she's eaten) and has even shown improvement with her sleeping. She now goes to bed at about eleven and sleeps until sometime between 6 and 7. She takes a great morning nap in her crib that's usually about three hours, and her other daytime naps are slowly improving. And her timing couldn't be better - with both sets of grandparents descending this weekend for her blessing, Nathan and I have a lot of cleaning and laundry to do today and tomorrow. Here she is looking cute, and yes, smiling :)