Weekly Update

So pretty much something has to blow up next week because this is three weeks in a row! Woohoo!

All in all it was a pretty boring week. Brad was on vacation and we didn't do too much. It was absolutely fabulous!

We watched some tv.



... and we cleaned the house. This is actually a photo of miss L wearing her baby. She got this for Christmas and she LOVES it. She's been wearing her baby around a lot! You can also see Brad cleaning out the diaper champ. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!





We had a little New Year's Eve party at our house counting down to 6:00pm. We made shrinky-dinks as a little craft.



Sweet baby W spent some time unloading the dishwasher (mostly the spoons).







Miss L watched her shrinky-dinks magically transform in the oven.





...and while they were cooling Miss L and her dad decided to make a New Year's Eve cake with the play-doh cake decorating kit that she got for Christmas. It's very fun!



Sweet baby W did some cooking of his own.







Finally, it was time to eat our party food.



We counted down to 6:00, and then everyone kissed!





...and we clinked together our glasses of sparkling lemonade and wished each other good luck in the new year.



It's just so fun to do holidays this year. I can't even wait for Valentine's Day. She just really gets into whatever fun thing (counting down, for example) goes with the holiday and it is about a thousand times more awesome to experience this stuff through her than it ever was to do it ourselves. :o) It was definitely one of the best New Year's Eve parties I've been to.

At some point during the break we decided to start night weaning sweet baby W. He had gotten to the point of nursing every 1.5 to 2 hours and it was really starting to take its toll. We decided we'd put him to bed as normal, but when he woke up to nurse we would send Brad into his room to give him some love and rock him and put him back in his bed. When twelve hours had passed since we ate dinner (usually around 5:00 or 5:30) I'd go ahead and nurse him since he would be really hungry by that point. The first night was hard. He woke up every hour or so. We decided to give the second night a shot, but decided that if it was anything like the first night that we wouldn't try it for a third. Well, it wasn't! It was fabulous! Sweet baby W slept in four hour stretches and woke up to nurse around 5:00. The next night he woke up just once around 10:30 and then again to nurse around 5:00. Then... last night... he went to bed and woke up at 5:30! I can't believe that he's really sleeping through the night and in his own bed! It's funny but right now it feels really luxurious!

Here are some random photos from New Year's Day.







My goal for 2011 is to really learn my camera. Yesterday I was experimenting with aperture and so I was taking lots of photos. It's funny but sweet baby W is an easy subject for photos since he stays in a bit more of a single place while I'm shooting.



I love this face!



...and this one!



I love how you can almost hear him belly laughing in this one.



My camera shines a little light when it auto-focuses sometimes and sweet baby W squinted his eyes a bit when that happened. Ever since, he's been just making that face at me. It's really funny.



Please pardon the disaster that is my living room, but I was trying to decide on a photo idea I had and I set up the tripod in the corner of the room trying to figure out the best settings for the photo. I got a remote for my camera for Christmas and I'd been using it to take some photos. Miss L decided that she'd like to try it and she took lots of photos. The lighting is bad, but I just think these are hilarious.





We continued taking photos all night.

Of jumping...





...and of miss L popping out and saying, "CHEESE!"









This morning we got up and got ready for church. Miss L announced that she wanted to wear her "ballerina" dress and got it on all by herself. As we do each week we scrambled to get out of the house on time this morning and I had to stop and shoot a photo of all of it. There's a half finished clothing project on the floor, lotions and potions on my night stand, an overturned basket of clean white clothes (where we were searching for tights) and Brad trying to get sweet baby W ready to go. I think the photo pretty much says it all!



After church we came home and made muffins for breakfast this week. Miss L LOVES to cook and so she helped me out.



Sweet baby W slept through lunch and so he had his a little late while we were baking.



We didn't have chocolate chips in our muffins, but we ate a few to keep our hands busy during the boring parts. ;o)





Miss L is also very much into playing with the trains that her cousin K gave her. I think Brad actually likes it just as much as she does and they are really loving playing with the switches and cranes and all of that business. It has really been fun to watch!









See you next week!

Weekly Update

First things first...

I got a bit behind with sweet baby W's elephant photos (which wouldn't really matter had he not cut two teeth in that time!) so I'm just getting around to them. What a wonderful little boy he is. He's got his challenging moments, but for the most part he's just amazingly pleasant. He's learning to be a good playmate to his sister and loves to watch and follow her wherever she goes. At ten months sweet baby W had two lovely little stumps in his bottom gums and his top two teeth were so swollen inside his gums that we knew it would be any day when they popped through (and as it turns out, he got both of them in a span of two days the weekend after he turned 10 months). Teething is very hard on the poor boy and it has kept all of us up many nights lately.

Sweet baby W can now crawl in earnest getting anywhere he might like to go. He is more able to communicate now using both sign language and saying a few words. He can now say mama, dada, lala (lily), and nay-nay which he says when he wants to nurse. He's eating mostly table foods now and hardly ever eats purees. There's almost nothing he won't eat and he almost always finishes everything on his plate. He will crawl to my feet and grab my pants to get my attention when he is hungry and he simply cannot abide others eating without him. He hates having his face washed after meals and when he sees the washcloth coming tries to move his face away and grab the cloth.

At ten months sweet baby W finally started on a routine (stay tuned for the eleven month update coming in the next couple of weeks because this has since fallen apart). He wakes in the morning bright and early around 6:30, naps around 9:30, naps again around 2:00 and goes to sleep for the night around 8:00. He nurses twice at night still and loves no place more than his mommy's bed even though he's being encouraged to sleep in his own.

And now... the elephant photos!







In this one you can see his two teeth poking through those gums. We call them his hippo teeth and they are so adorable! He got these right after his ten month birthday.







What a cute guy!

Sweet baby W is in that stage of life where he can get around but he doesn't yet realize the dangers of crawling straight off of the couch. We tried to teach him that day to crawl off backwards. I'm sure we'll see soon if he remembers.



Then miss L wanted to try it too. She is so funny with sweet baby W. Sometimes she could care less about any attention he receives and sometimes she very much wants to be the baby too. This was a game for us to pretend to be teaching her to get off the couch safely.



The night before Christmas Eve we decided to break out the gingerbread house. My camera was out of batteries so we got one shot before it died. The shot is pretty indicative of how the whole thing went though. :o)



Maybe next year we'll be better at decorating and less into eating. :o)

Christmas Eve came and after a bit of shopping we got dressed and ready for church. My church allows me to play on Christmas Eve nearly every year and I enjoy it a lot! It also impresses miss L so I'm guessing I'll be doing it as long as they let me. After church we came home to have our traditional snack supper and open just one present before saying goodnight. Sweet baby W didn't care much about opening a gift so we saved his for morning and miss L picked out just one to open.





With such a happy girl on our hands we decided to take a few shots in front of the tree.







Then it was off to bed for the little ones so that santa's elves could do their work. Now Santa's gift was not hard at all to assemble and came together in record time, but mommy and daddy decided to get miss L a small trampoline to help pass the winter months and that took a LOT of assembly. I'm not sure I heard any swearing, but it was certainly exactly what you'd see in a Christmas movie of parents trying to assemble toys quietly for Christmas morning. Finally, after midnight everything was put together and in its place. (I'm not sure what in the world we're going to do when our kids go to bed later!)



A very short time later sweet baby W woke up and was ready to start his day. We headed downstairs to see what we could see. Both Brad and I were shocked to see how interested sweet baby W was in his stocking. Miss L was nearly four months old for her first Christmas and so was not interested in the least in gifts or stockings (and as a result didn't get much, but I guess this is one of the benefits of being a second child!) and I think we didn't think sweet baby W would care much but we were wrong!

He crawled over to his stocking.



Then he took a peek inside.



Oooh! A car!







Wait! There's more in here?!



The boy loves tasty new toys!



About that time miss L woke up and discovered her stocking.



She was very impressed that Santa brought her not just an airplane, but a whole airport!







We spent the morning opening presents and enjoying ourselves. I can't believe how blessed we are. What a wonderful lesson for me. I know that we have so so so much more than we deserve, but that's the point of Christmas, isn't it? Christ was born giving us a gift so far beyond what we deserve and even though he knew we didn't deserve it, gave it anyway?

It was a WONDERFUL Christmas.





















The rest of the day was just perfect. We played toys and took naps and ate McDonalds (yup.). We had our Christmas dinner in the evening in our pajamas. We missed our other family, but it was a good Christmas!

See everyone next week!