5 Months!

Adelaide is five months old! Almost half a year. When I think back on her newborn days, it seems like so long ago. It’s funny now when annual type things are coming up (Easter Egg hunts, etc.), I keep thinking about how things were different last year at this same time. Around this time I was sick. Sick. Sick. Sick. I remember Aedan and I not doing much other than hanging around the house. I felt awful and I don’t miss that at all! I’m looking forward to spring and summer with two little ones instead of being sick with one little one.

Adelaide, here is what you have been up to lately:

• According to our scale at home, you are in the 14 lbs. range. You have definitely gotten a little more chunky this month but you are still so small compared to Aedan at this age (you can read his 5 month update here). He was around 17 lbs.
• You still only take about 4 oz. per bottle. We were just getting to the point where you were taking 5 oz. at each feeding, but then you got sick and started taking less.
• You still wake up once a night. You eat and go straight back to bed, but still. You need to sleep through the night! We were giving you 4 oz. at night, but we cut it back to 3 oz. because you stopped eating in the morning. Then we decided to start feeding you before we got to bed around 10:30 and just letting you cry if you wake up in the middle of the night. The first night, you downed your bottle at 10:30 and woke up at 4:15. You cried/fussed for about 10 minutes and went back to sleep until 7:30…much less painful than I thought it would be!
• You take great naps. You take two long naps around 9 am and 1 pm and then a catnap around 4:30 pm. Then you go down for bed at 7:30 pm. You still sleep on your tummy and you go to sleep by yourself perfectly.
• You know how to roll from your tummy to your back, but you only do it in your crib. Sometimes you cry out of make noises during your naps, but you fall right back to sleep. I know you are really done sleeping when I look at the monitor and you are on your back talking. :)
• I have given you oatmeal a couple of times. You seem pretty indifferent about it. I think we are going to wait until 6 months to start you on foods. I think you will be more interested then.
• You love to watch Aedan play. The times you are awake when he is awake are so easy. You mostly sit in my lap and just watch whatever he is doing. He loves it when I narrate what he is doing to you. When I stop, he always tells me to make you “wook” at him.
• You have also started to notice Hiro more and more.
• You are good at holding big toys and grabbing the toys are your play mat. You try to bring stuff to your mouth but you are not quite there yet.
• You have gotten better about riding in the car. Although seems to be about a 30 minute limit. Any ride longer than that is not acceptable to you.
• You love your daddy. You flash him big smiles every time you see him and you love when he just carries you around.

Adelaide, you are such a sweet girl. I love watching your little personality come out more and more each month. Love, mommy

-Lauren-

Three Years Old–Survey

Last year I filled out this little survey about Aedan at two years old. This year I asked him the questions…

1. What is your favorite color? Red. Which is so true, he will always pick red if it is a choice. If he could wear a red shirt every day he would love it!

2. What is your favorite toy? Hammer. He was into tools at two and he is still into tools at three. Although he prefers playing with a real hammer outside vs. his play ones. He is actually pretty good with it and he is also good with a real drill…he will probably be building things on his own by four!

3. What is your favorite fruit? Strawberries. Still loves strawberries and strawberry flavored anything.

4. What is your favorite TV show? Fireman Sam. He loves to watch Fireman Sam and then he pretends he is Sam and puts out “fires” all over the house.

5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?

6. What is your favorite outfit? He has a couple of red shirts and he will always pick one of those if they are clean. Other than that he would just be happy if I let him wear t-shirts and underwear all day. He will not wear a jacket/coat. Good thing we live in Austin. The most he has needed is a fleece pullover.

7. What is your favorite game? Playing in the puddows (couch pillows) with Daddy. He LOVES this and would probably do it 24/7 if Daddy was available.

8. What is your favorite snack? Fruit snacks

9. What is your favorite animal? Lion. No sure where that answer came from, I would have said a leopard since he loves to act out Kung Fu Panda and he is always playing either the Panda or the leopard.

10. What is your favorite song? Playing my guitar. Whenever he starts singing, he always runs and gets his guitar. He LOVES music at school and usually pretends to be his music teacher.

11. What is your favorite book? Quick as a Cricket.

12. Who is your best friend? Mommy. No joke that is what he told me…so sweet!

13. What is your favorite cereal? O’s

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Fix the fence.

15. What is your favorite drink? Milk.

16. What is your favorite holiday? He didn’t have an answer for this one.

17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? num num and Buzz.

18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Waffles.

19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday? He love to eat fries and lemonade every night for dinner.

20. What do you want to be when you grow up? He said he wants to grow bigger and taller.

To see how his answers compare to last year, go here.

-Lauren-

Our Anniversary

Today is our sixth wedding anniversary! It is hard to believe it has been 6 years since we said I Do!

Unfortunately things have been pretty busy around here, so we aren’t doing anything special today. I am hoping to get a babysitter for sometime next week so we can go out and celebrate.

Jon was in Brazil from the day of Aedan’s birthday party until last Sunday. He was gone for 9 days, which was a really long time! I had some help from my sister and my parents since it was spring break, which was great. Unfortunately, when everyone left on Thursday, both kids got sick. Friday and Saturday nights were very rough…very little sleep for everyone. We were all very ready for daddy to come home!

Jon brought home another cold and I am not sure if I caught that or the cold the kids had, but I felt pretty awful all last week. Thankfully, everyone was back to normal by Friday so we enjoyed the weekend.

Being sick for a week, just put everything behind, including blog posts. But I am hoping to get back on track this week. So on Wednesday I should have the questions I asked Aedan on his birthday and on Friday I will have Adelaide’s 5 month (!) update.

-Lauren-

Three Years Old!

Today is Aedan’s third birthday. I can not believe it! How have three years gone by since we brought this little guy home from the hospital??

Last year I filled out this little survey and I am planning to do it again this year, but for now I thought I would just give a little 3 year update.

So Aedan, this is what you are up to these days…

• You go to bed around 8 every night, but sometimes you will stay up talking to yourself for up to an hour. I have to go in and remind you that it is time to go to sleep. It’s like you are having a slumber party with yourself!
• You wake up around 7 every morning, although I have your bunny clock set to 7:20 and for the most part you will stay in bed until it changes, then you fly out of bed and open your door to let us know your bunny woke up. Just this past week, you have started taking the baby gate down from your doorway. Guess it’s time for that to go. It cracks me up because you will wait until it’s time to get up and then take the gate down and let yourself out of your room.
• You eat like a squirrel. Honestly sometimes I think you maybe have 5 bites of food a day. If you do eat, you like cereal or eggs and waffles for breakfast. You love strawberry breakfast bars, strawberries, oranges and grapes. When you eat vegetables, you love carrots, spinach, asparagus and broccoli. I make a pasta and olive meal that you devour. We have it just about every week because I know I can count on you to eat it. You love the feta cheese and capers in it.
• You still love your milk, but we have cut down on how much you get. You get a cup in the morning, a cup before naptime and a cup with dinner.
• You nap from 1-3:30/4 on the days you are home from school and from 1:30-3:30/4 on the days you go to school.
• You go to school twice a week and after crying every.single.time we dropped you off during the first semester, you finally stopped. Your teacher says you are always happy and do a great job following directions. :)
• You love love love to wrestle with daddy. Every time he comes out of the office during the day, you immediately drop whatever you are doing and ask if he is all done with work. You two are  best buds.
• You have really started to do a lot of pretend play this year. It is so fun to watch. You love to play with your tools and blocks as well as all your Toy Story figurines and Legos.
• You still talk all.the.time. We have whole conversations now and you tell us all about anything and everything you think about.
• You are so good with Adelaide. You are very gentle with her and when she starts fussing, you will start talking to her or patting her. Just today, I was putting away some clothes and left her laying on your bed. I came back and found you sitting next to her just talking to her. She was just smiling away at you. She already thinks you are so great.

Aedan, I can’t believe you are three years old. You are such a wonderful addition to our family. I love watching your personality come out more and more as you get older. I look back at your baby pictures and just realize how much I have come to know you since then. You are so precious to me and I love you so so much. –your mommy-

-Lauren-

Aedan’s Birthday Party

We had Aedan’s birthday party on Saturday. We decided to have it at our house since the amount of adults still out numbered the kids quite a bit. We rented a bounce house and figured everyone would have fun hanging out in the backyard.

Except it was cold and rainy.

So we had lots of wet kids jumping in a bounce house (I’m pretty sure they still loved it) and a packed house inside. But Aedan had a blast and it was so great to hang out with all of our friends and family!

Jon’s parents spent Friday night with us and brought Aedan his first bike…he loves it. It has blinkers and a horn.

My parents bought him a play kitchen and he has been cooking for us ever since.

I took zero pictures the whole party so these are a few my sister took.

I think Jon has some more on his phone, so hopefully I can post some of those soon.  To everyone who came, thank you so much for helping us celebrate Aedan’s birthday!!

Two more days and Aedan is officially THREE!

-Lauren-

Pictures

Last week when I took pictures for Adelaide’s 4 month update, I decided to get a few with both kids and realized why it will be awhile before we pay to have some family pictures made.

It went a little something like this…

Then I decided to get a picture of Aedan holding Adelaide…got a few okay ones…

Then it started going downhill…

Then they both decided they were done. I know, my kids are pretty subtle about these things, but I assume they were trying to tell me they were done…what do you think?

Might just be my favorite picture of the two of them yet! :)

-Lauren-

YNAB

Jon and I have been using Mint.com for a few years now and it has been helpful, but a few months ago we decided to try out a new budgeting tool. One of Jon’s friends told him about YNAB so we decided to try it out.

It is definitely a little more detailed than Mint and requires some getting used to. You basically budget out all the money you get every month, so even if it goes into savings it still gets budgeted out. Then you have various categories that your assign budgets too. So for spending Jon and I each have a category, there is a kids category, a home category and a gifts category. We also have an eating out budget and a grocery/household budget. Every time we make a purchase we enter it into YNAB and assign it to the correct category.

At first it was hard.

It was hard to get into the habit of entering in every single thing and it was hard to stay within each budget. But we have been using it since September and now we love it. Jon and I have both talked about how it is actually more freeing then limiting. For example, I tend to not buy things to decorate our house because I feel like I already spend too much money at Target or wherever. But now we have a specific house budget. So there is money already allotted for that purpose. If I want to buy new throw pillows or curtains I can, without worrying about over spending.

It is also nice to be able to track our spending down to a pretty detailed level as well as working on saving up in certain categories. For example, we allot a certain amount per month in gifts and some months we spend it, but others we don’t. We are hoping to have enough by Christmas to just be able to buy gifts straight from that category.

All in all, it has been really great for our spending habits (or I guess I should say my spending habits since Jon is much more of a saver than I am).

What about you, any budgeting tools you like?

-Lauren-

4 Months!

Adelaide is 4 months old! Sometimes I feel like she just got here and other times I feel like she has been here for much longer. It was just about exactly a year ago this week that I took a pregnancy test. Before we had Aedan, there were many many months of negative tests and lots of frustrations. With Adelaide, we just started talking about trying in January, and then found out about her in February. Not what I was expecting! Jon was out of town when I found out, so I had to wait about 3 days before I told him since I didn’t want to do it over the phone. I thought about doing something cute and fun, but I ended up just blurting it out as we drove to dinner the night he got home. So here we are…pregnancy over (thank goodness!) and newborn stage over (thank goodness again) and now she is almost half way through her first year!

Adelaide, here is what you have been up to these days…

• You are 13 lbs. and 22.75 in. tall. You are so much smaller than Aedan was at this age. He was just about 17 lbs.! You are just not a big eater. Even when we were nursing you were not a big eater and now that we are on formula, you will not take more than 4 oz. at a time.
• You wear size 3 month or 3-6 month clothes and size two diapers.
• You have been waking up once a night for the past few weeks, but right before our 4 month appointment I made some changes and you slept from 7:30 pm-7:30 am just like that (I’ll have a whole post about it). Of course then we saw the doctor and I told him how much you were eating or not eating and he said we have to wake you up at night to get you to eat more…sigh. So we have been feeding you around 10:30 before we go to bed and you have been sleeping until I get you up at 7:30. Well except for last night…
• Because, you are getting TWO teeth. At 4 months! Crazy! I thought I saw them coming in, but I thought it was way too early. The doctor checked and said they are both about to break through. You were not too happy last night, so I am hoping they pop through soon.
• You take awesome naps. You sleep for 2-2.5 hours in the morning, and 2-2.5 hours in the early afternoon and then about an hour catnap in the early evening. You go down great and put yourself to sleep within minutes.
• You have 5, 4 oz. bottles a day and then one more before we go to bed.
• You are super smiley. We just look at you and you start smiling. :)
• You do a lot of hanging out in your bouncy seat or on your play mat. You have started to grab at the toys and will try to pull them to your mouth.
• You are getting better about riding in the car, but you are still not a huge fan.
• You have started to notice Hiro, which is funny because this is about the age that Aedan started to notice Hiro too. You give him a big smile when he walks by or gets in your face.
• You are still much more laid back than Aedan was. Earlier this week, we had a playgroup at our house and there were a bunch of people over when you woke up from you nap (well when I woke you up, since you kept sleeping even though our house was super loud!). Your eyes got huge when I brought you out, but you just kind of checked everyone out. Aedan would have lost it!
• You are not such a huge fan of being held by anyone but mommy or daddy right now. Although you did great with your aunt Emmie and Jordan.
• You love to watch Aedan play. You give him a big smile whenever he starts talking to you. He loves the attention too. Just about everyday he will say “Mommy, tell Adawade to wook at me…”. He loves when I tell you all about what he is doing and you love to sit back and watch.

Adelaide, you are such a joy to our family. We all love you so much! Love, Mommy

-Lauren-