Some of my favorite things

Jenna and Hunter took their very first bath together tonight.  It was so precious.  They love each other so much.  Jenna loved sitting up in her tub seat and Hunter put water on her little head with his hands.  I’ll just have to monitor how long the bath takes because I think Jenna was getting pretty cold while I scrubbed her brother from head to toe.  Had to dowse her with warm water!!

Jenna is also sitting up by herself really well now.  I love how she throws her arms up and down, hitting her belly, when she’s sitting up.  Like she’s saying “Yay me!!!!”

Hunter now gets to walk to the park instead of riding in the double stroller with his sister.  I love how he runs ahead of us on the path and stops when we tell him to because he’s getting too far ahead.  And I love how he stays close to the stroller when he realizes that Jenna is cackling at his goofy running and hopping.

I love how they have to see each other as we walk down the stairs together ever morning.  Jenna and I go down a few steps ahead of Hunter so that she can look up at him while he figures out which way he’s going to come down – jumping is the favorite these days since Jenna laughs and laughs each jump/step.

Jenna absolutely loves to sit in her high chair with 3 or 4 toys on the tray and either bangs them as loud as she can, or sees how fast she can throw them all on the floor.  It is a wonderful game to see how fast Mommy can then find them all and put them back on the tray, only to be thrown again less than a minute later.

I love that my son knows more than I realize he knows.  I thought he said something about a trapezoid on the way home from school the other day, but I wasn’t sure.  So today when we were playing with his magnadoodle thing, I decided to draw one and see if he knew what it was.  “Trapezoid” he said.  I told Daddy to come see how smart his son is and he repeated the feat for him.  He also named the typical shapes (circle, triangle, square, star, heart) as well as oval and diamond.  When I drew a hexagon, he called it an octagon, so they apparently have taught him the general shape, but he doesn’t know yet to count the sides.  The only word he recognizes is his own name, at least from what I can tell.  And Mickey Mouse, if I say the letters for him, but that’s cheating because I sing him the song all the time.  :)

I love nuzzling Jenna under her chin with my nose to make her smile or laugh.  She’s so ticklish and has the best giggle.

I love how Hunter puts the word “silly” at the end of most of his sentences, like “Don’t do that silly” or “That’s not right silly.”  I call him silly way too often apparently.

I love my kiddos.  What more can I say??

So much for that resolution

Did I say weekly???

I have been taking lots of pictures, but still don’t have an easy way to get them onto this computer, so you’ll have to wait to see Jenna’s “Sex in the City” dress she wore on Valentine’s Day, pictures of them swinging together at the park (multiple gorgeous days over the past few weeks, interspersed with all the cold and rain), and the adorable pictures I got of her playing with Hunter on her 6-month birthday.  Instead, you have to see old pictures from Christmas because that is all I have access to right now.  :)

Wow, what a difference a few days makes.  Hunter helped me decorate the tree this year.  I use a lot of unbreakable balls so I let him just stick them wherever he wanted.  Note the long hair, and then scroll down to the Christmas Eve pictures and you’ll see the butcher job I did on him.  It’s still growing out 2 months later.  It will never be as long or as short as the pictures below, that is for sure!

       

From decorating the tree in November to decorating cookies on Christmas Eve.  We all had fun with this, especially Hunter with his sprinkles.  He was pretty wired on sugar after all this….good thing we had already been to church that day!!

   

Can you guess which ones I decorated???  I’m sure you can if you know anything about Brent’s artistic ability, not that mine is that much better. 

And here is what Santa left behind.

          

        

The next picture exemplifies my world these days….Jenna watching Hunter’s every move, even if it’s him playing with her toys.  She just adores him, and he likes her most of the time too.  I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

Last but not least, Hunter riding his pride and joy later Christmas morning…

December 2009 videos

I know, I promised you more on Sunday, but I really did start this on Sunday, so I kinda came through on that promise.  I’ve been battling a cold and also, you’ll see that this is a very large file so it took some time just to publish the final product to my computer – who knows how long it will take to publish it here on the blog!  If you’re on a slow computer, not sure I would even try it if I were you.  And this is after compressing it as much as I possibly could!!

I still have Christmas pictures to put on here, but I have to go to the doctor now, so it will have to wait.  Hopefully, he will give me some good drugs so that I can function the rest of the day…

Let me apologize…

I am so sorry that I have neglected you, oh blog of mine.

So much has happened and so much time

Has passed without me giving you any news

Of what is going on with my little brood.

So please forgive me in this new year

And accept my promise that I will to you be dear

In two thousand ten, I’ll try once a week,

I will write to you and those who come to seek.

So this is going to be a lot of catching up. I’ve been taking pictures, just haven’t found the time to save them on one computer and transfer the good ones to this computer, etc, etc. I could give you a zillion excuses, but I'll spare you.

Sweet Jenna

I think I mentioned, at least to some of you, that Jenna got professional shots done when she was four months old. Here are some of the best ones.

I think I also mentioned in my last post that Jenna is still not consistently sleeping through the night. Here’s a no-so-brief history of her sleeping habits the last few months – we started her in the miracle blanket in the pack-n-play which was set up in the study so that it was far enough away that we didn’t hear her every move, but close enough that I could get to her quickly when she woke up during the night. We moved her upstairs in the pack-n-play after that and then she figured out how to roll over onto her tummy, even while wrapped in the “straight jacket.” So I took away the miracle blanket, but of course, she doesn’t like sleeping on her tummy and would roll herself over and then scream until I put her back onto her back. This was probably around 4 months old – since we were still having trouble with reflux (and still are) and Jenna always took great naps in her carseat, I decided to wrap her in the blanket and strap her into the carseat at night. This ensured she couldn’t go anywhere and also kept her nice and warm since it was getting pretty cold here at night.

By the way, I can’t tell you how many different places she has slept in that carseat now…her bedroom is right by Hunter’s and just upstairs from us, so she was waking us all up during the night, which was why I tried the gameroom since it’s far from everyone and I could just listen to the monitor. But the gameroom is bitterly cold when it’s as cold outside as it has been lately, so she’s now in her carseat in the pack-n-play in the guest bedroom, where the heater works nicely and no one can really hear her if she starts crying during the night, except me of course, with the monitor.

Well, I was content with only getting up once during the night with Jenna, but it was getting a little old and I was anxious to see what would happen when I started back at work – she continued to wake up between 2:30 and 3:30 every morning. So I took the blanket away last week, but still have her sleeping in the carseat in the guest bedroom, and she seems to be able to get her fingers into her mouth or something that is soothing her back to sleep when she wakes up. So for a couple of days last week, and this morning, she woke up around 5:15 for her breakfast and then she goes back to sleep until I’m ready to get her up around 7:30 (or later on the weekends).

Oh, and here’s a picture of her when she had just started finding her thumb when she sleeps. Apparently, at school, this is how she sleeps for all her naps, and I think she slept like this today for one of her naps as well since her carseat cover was in the washing machine.

I have a lot of cute videos of Jenna too – will have to put them together tomorrow though. She laughs at almost anything. She adores her big brother. I forgot how much fun 5-6 month-old babies can be. Something new every day – new consonants, longer periods on her tummy with those feet kicking like crazy (she’ll be crawling in a month or so, I predict), almost sitting up by herself, rolling all over the place…it’s so much fun.

Here are some random Jenna pictures from December – I think the onesie in the first two says it all…

Mr. Hunter

Most of the pics I have of Hunter are related to Christmas, which will come in another post, I think, since it’s almost my bedtime. But I do have some that aren’t completely Christmas.

This first picture is proof that my kid is from Mars…that is a rice cake he’s eating. He won’t eat 70% of what I put in front of him, but when Mommy was eating a rice cake “burger” (aka black bean frozen patty in between two rice cakes), he decided he wanted to try one and LOVED it. I haven’t bought another pack yet, but he probably ate 40% of my rice cakes in about a 30 hour span. He wanted them for every meal and snack…silly boy.

The week before Christmas, my wonderful neighbor, Kristi, had a pajama playdate at her house, and Santa’s elves showed up to play games with the kids and sing songs. It was such a fun time for the kids (and the moms, of course). Here are a few shots from that morning.

And looking at those pictures reminds me….scroll back up to the rice cake picture. Note the MUCH shorter haircut. I had forgotten how long Hunter’s hair had gotten and Mommy CHOPPED it off right before Christmas. I won’t go into the details, but it was a mistake and is finally starting to look cute again (a month later). To say the least, I will not be using clippers on Hunter’s hair EVER again. :)

My Creative Side

The same neighbor mentioned above, Kristi, is incredibly creative. She is a scrapbook master and I really wish I had the time and energy to do some of the wonderful things she does. She had a “make a plate” party in December (maybe it was even late November?) where her friend brought all her stamps and inks that she sells (I will have to get her link to post here – I’m sure I have it somewhere), and we got to stamp away on templates that she then sends away to make plates and bowls with. I ended up going to two of these parties because I had so much fun making the girls’ bowls that I had to make some for my nephews. Funny thing is, even though I specifically unwrapped the girls’ bowls so that I could take pictures of them, apparently I forgot to take pics and just wrapped them back up and put them under the tree??? So, aunts and uncles, if you don’t mind and can take pictures of the girls’ bowls and email to me, that would be super.

Here are the boys’ and Jenna’s. Hunter didn’t get one as I ran out of time (and Jenna was with me and wasn’t happy about me trying to make her sleep at a stranger’s house).

More tomorrow, I promise!!