Christmas is Almost Here!

Big Trip to the City

This weekend we went with our friends Jen, Darren and baby Grant on a trip uptown for lunch and to watch the Singing Holiday Bears. We always refer to him as Baby Grant but since he’s almost exactly a year younger than Sean I guess we should start calling him Toddler Grant ;) But it’s fun to see the difference a year can make!  Sorry that the pictures are a little cloudy, I’m finding more and more that we have little finger prints all over the lens (and the windows, the wine fridge, the oven, the fridge, the dishwasher…).

What? Us? Rip off these ornaments? Whatever gave you that idea??

Sean loved riding the escalators.  He’s actually really good at getting on and off: 

Dylan is exhausted from all the excitement! Wonder if we’ll ever get a family picture when he’s awake?!

Dylan is 6 Months

…and some change! Time is just flying by but Dylan is in no rush.  He seems to have a really easygoing personality, which I think contributes to the fact that he rarely rolls over, tries to sit up or do anything more than just hang out and smile:

This is how he greets us each and every morning.  You’re sure to get off on the right foot if you see this every day!

Oh – and I was able to get a good picture of his eyes today. It looks like they’re slowly turning brown but are a really neat mix of dark blue, gray and brown right now.  Again, this seems to be a trend with Dylan – no rush, it’ll happen when it happens :)

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Success! After a very traumatic trip last year to see Santa, I’m happy to say that our 2011 visit was so much better!  We met Julia and Lucas for our 3rd annual trip to see Santa today and, I can’t believe I’m writing this, not one tear from any of the 4 kids (who are all under two and-a-half). What a wonderful way to get us all in the Christmas spirit :)

Be Thankful

Pop Pop, GG, Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Mats came to visit us for our first official Thanksgiving in Charlotte! We had a wonderful couple of days and celebrated all of the many blessings in our life for which we are thankful. Here’s our Thanksgiving in pictures!

We fried our first turkey and it was amazing :)

Spent a lot of time preparing food and the Thanksgiving table

Played a few games of cornhole (Dylan was a great cheerleader!), went on a few walks and played on the swing set

Celebrated Pop Pop’s Birthday!

Watched football and relaxed (our Hokies and Ravens didn’t disappoint!)

Of course we missed our family who we couldn’t be with but they were in our thoughts as always.  We all have so much to be thankful for!

Dylan is 5 Months Old!

Some special things about Dylan this month:

• Both of his bottom teeth came in last week!
• Now that his teeth are in he’s back to smiling and laughing all the time
• He still does the “sneeze ‘n sigh” – he’s done this since the hospital and it’s still so cute
• He always has his pointer finger pointing… we call it his Thinking Finger
• His head sweats a lot, especially when he has a bottle
• He still likes an abnormally warm bottle (we usually have to pop it in the microwave 1/2 way through a feeding… ah the things you do with the second child – I would never have put Sean’s bottle anywhere close to a microwave!)
• Along with his bottles, he’s also eating rice cereal, sweet potatoes and bananas (bananas are his favorite!)… next up are carrots and peaches
• He is starting to be fun for his older brother… Dylan has starting laughing at Sean which makes Sean ‘act a fool’! haha
• But the best thing is when you take his clothes off for bath time. He does this low belly laugh when you take each arm out of his shirt like you found the best tickle spot ever.  It is SO cute but SO HARD to get on video!

Here’s one of the outtakes from his 5 month “photo shoot” – you have to laugh when you hear yourself telling a 5 month old “Focus.  Dylan, focus.  Hey! boooga boooga booga. Hi! Dylan! Dylan, focus Dylan. Can you smile? Smile Dylan. F-O-C-U-S Dylan!”…… and on and on… :)

Random Videos

Halloween 2011

Maybe I should title this post ‘Best Laid Plans’ because once again life got in the way of my oh-so-perfect Halloween plans.  But I think our family rolled with the punches and had a pretty good time anyway.  So here’s how our Halloween Weekend 2011 Extravaganza went:

Friday: John and I went to our neighbor’s annual party, John as a gangster and me as a ghost.  Since Grandma Leigh came to visit we even got a free babysitter! As I’ve been writing a lot at work lately… No exceptions noted. (Ah, how my inner dork always finds a way to shine through and never lets me down).

Saturday: The perfect day planned.  We were going to get up, have a great breakfast, get dressed in our costumes and head to our community clubhouse for a Halloween bash full of cupcake decorating, costume contests and confetti.  Ok so I added the confetti part but let’s just say it was going to be glorious.  First part of the morning – just as planned.  A nice scrambled egg and toast breakfast for Sean and a bottle for Dylan.  I’m even feeling extra lucky and go to Jazzercise.  When I came back ONE HOUR later, chaos had set in.  Sean was on the sofa with boogies coming out of his nose, he was crying, sneezing, coughing, you name it. He just wanted to watch TV and be miserable.  It went downhill from there, we had to give him cold medicine and the poor kid fell asleep on the sofa (and if you know Sean this never happens). So my plans for the party went out the window quick. Now our only chance to get them in their costumes was actual Halloween night.  Not good odds with a baby and a toddler.

Sunday: Sean seems to be doing much better.  I, on the other hand, start to get a runny nose and sore throat.  Score.

Monday: Halloween.  I wake up like one of those zombies from the Thriller movie. I decide going to work isn’t an option and I scare Emmi when she shows up in the morning with my pathetic look and talks of everyone getting sick. I progressively get worse and see that Dylan’s starting to get a runny nose.  I head to CVS to get nose mist, a nose suction thingy and tylenol for him.  I can feel the excitement that it’s Halloween radiating everywhere except for our sick house. Evening arrives and John comes home to find us scrambling to get Sean and Dylan in their costumes while I try putting some makeup on so I don’t scare the kids.  We end up getting just a few pictures before we have to take Dylan out of his costume – can you believe he barely fit into the 3-6 month velcro lobster? haha. But I have to say, sick and all, Sean and I got to go out trick-or-treating for his first official year and he loved it.  He knocked on all the doors, said ‘Trick-or-Treat’ and ‘Thank You’ at each house.  He loved watching all the kids running around in their costumes and begged me to go home and get the wagon so we could keep going! He got lots of candy which I think John and I should have polished off by Saturday.  John and Dylan stayed home to hand out candy – they almost ran out which means a record number of kids for our street!  So all in all, not as planned but turned out ok.  In other words, exceptions noted however control environment appeared to operate effectively throughout the course of the day.

 

{Getting ready to head out // Leaving one of our neighbor’s houses after getting some candy looking so grown up}

{Showing Daddy all of his candy and relaxing to some Chuggington after a long night of trick-or-treating}

Tuesday: I’m surprised John could even stay in the house long enough to get ready with how sick I was.  Dylan had boogies from ear to ear so we had to do a lot of suctioning.  Sean - the one who started it all! - was feeling good and had only a small stuffy nose leftover from the cold.  John was running around with his shirt over his nose and trying his best not to touch any of us :)

Wednesday: I finally head to work and Dylan seems to be getting better too.  Whoa what a week!!

And that brings us to today.  Aaaahh Thursday. The day before Friday. TGIF. Fingers crossed for a healthy and uneventful weekend ahead!  And just as I write this John comes in and says ‘I think the cold is hitting me…’ RUN FOR THE HILLS!!

Gramma-Wee Visit

Grandma Leigh (or “Gramma-Wee” as Sean likes to say) came for a visit last weekend. It was a great visit and Sean was happy to have his Grandma here to spoil him!

Grandma took Sean to the mall where they got their pictures taken in a photo booth.  The first picture is hilarious. SO SEAN! You can see him figuring it out in the first 3 pictures and by the 4th he finally gave a smile!

Happy Halloween?

Don’t worry – this was taken a few weeks ago when we were getting the decorations out.  More happy Halloween photos from today to come!! :)

I’m a Little Teapot

Dylan’s 4 Month Checkup

Dylan had his 4 month doctor appointment yesterday.  He’s doing great and is right on track for his age.  He hit the charts at 24 inches (25th percentile) and weighed in at 15 lbs 11 oz (50th percentile).  So basically, short and stout.  Just like his mom ;) 

Fall Fun

Well I guess you can tell I’m back at work by the long time between posts!  We have been busy and I have a lot of pictures to share.  First we met up with Jen, Darren and Grant to pick some pumpkins.  Sean was very excited to see Grant as usual :)

We’ve been busy with Dylan, too.  He is now big enough (this is, of course, debatable) for Daddy to sit him on top of the TV… something we started with Sean when he was a baby.  As I’m writing this I’m realizing how times have changed.  Yes, this is what we now do for fun on a Saturday.  But I digress…

We also pulled the exersaucer up from the basement which thrilled Sean since it’s basically a new toy for him as well.  We also tried Sean’s shoes on Dylan.  Judging from his smile, I think he liked it!

This past weekend was time to decorate pumpkins.  We took a different approach this year - instead of carving them we had more toddler-friendly designs.  Sean loved it for about 5 minutes and then the rest of the time he ran around the table while John and I finished them up.  Oh the attention span of a 2-year-old.

Finally, Emmi has been working with Sean to learn how to peddle his tricycle but he’s had a hard time understanding how his feet move the peddles.  So, we figured out that duct tapping his feet to the peddles works like a charm! Can you see the smile on his face in the picture below?!  Don’t you remember the simple bliss of riding your bike as a kid? Makes me want to dust the cobwebs off of my bike this weekend.

I have some good videos from some of the days above that I’ll try to share soon.  Thanks for stopping by.  Stay classy.

Pssst….

You should now be able to leave comments! A few people have told me that they haven’t been able to leave comments on my posts (bummer!) and I think it was because I had it on a weird setting.  I’ve changed it now so comment until your heart’s content! I’d love to hear from you.  Thanks so much for following!

All Aboard!

This past weekend our family of 4 took our first trip together (minus Polly this time, but it was for the best – trust me) to Chesapeake to see John’s family.  Dylan got to meet his great-grandparents Mamaw and Great-Grandaddy Bryant and Great-Mamaw Ward!  It was really exciting to introduce Dylan to the rest of the family and so nice to spend a relaxing day just hanging out, watching football and catching up. 

It’s times like these that you realize how hard it is to live so far away, not just on us but the rest of our family.  But one of the things John and I realized on this trip is that it does get a little easier to make visits like this as they get older.  We let Sean stay up late in the hotel to watch Shrek and eat pizza with us the first night (TV and pizza… healthy, I know) and he acted like a crazy person the second night when Uncle Marshall and Aunt Megan came back to hang out.  It was nice not having to race around and get him fed, bathed and into bed by 8 (which is exactly what we had to do with Dylan – I think he turns into a pumpkin after 8:15).  Instead, we could hang out together and enjoy the trip and our family time together.  But all in all, the boys did a great job, both slept through the night and took their naps during the day, and we are thankful that everyone took time to spend with us over the weekend.

{Right after we arrived at Mamaw & Great-Grandaddy’s house}

{Boys being boys… riding around in Grandaddy’s collection of chairs and scooters and dressing Sean up like a little football player}

{Hanging out, watching Tech beat Miami (gobble gobble), and eating eating eating!!}

Dylan is 4 Months Old!

I think this month is going to be very busy for Dylan.  As he begins his 5th month, he’s slowly starting to eat some rice cereal, likes sitting in his bumbo chair more and more every day, is getting very good at holding his head up and is rolling over from tummy to back. It all appears to be making more sense to him and he seems ready to keep figuring things out so he can start keeping up with his brother!

Dylan and Sean are getting excited for Halloween.  Here they are wearing their Halloween outfits last week.  For the first time ever, Sean asked to hold Dylan for this picture. It was so cute!

You can tell Dylan wasn’t so sure… he was giving me the weird ‘Weekend At Bernie’s’ face in the first picture.

And you know I can’t resist to compare the two… here are both of their 4 month pictures. I think they have the same smile but most of their other features look a little different.  I guess only time will tell!