Two Months: Caroline

Dear Caroline, 

I barely blinked and here you are at two months old. You are still as cute as a button and as sweet as can be! And of course, you're loved to pieces. 

You are eating around every 3 hours these days and you still sleep a lot-- more than I ever expect! I hope this means you'll be sleeping in on Saturday mornings in no time! At night, you'll give me about one 4-5 hours stretch of sleep. But even when you wake up, you go right back to sleep after eating so it's not too bad. You mostly sleep in the basinet in our room, but you're starting to sleep in your crib more often because you are just so noisy when you go back to sleep after eating. You like to be swaddled snug as a bug to get good sleep, either than or snuggled tight. 

The best thing that's happened this month is that you have started sharing some smiles and our whole family is completely smitten with them! You make the sweetest like squeal sound when you smile and your baby talk is so, so sweet. Jackson loves to talk to you about kindergarten. He'll announce he's home from school and lay down on the floor and try to get you to smile. Isabelle proudly boasts that you are "her baby!" whenever we go out and if someone else is holding you, she makes sure they know that they don't get to keep you! 

See what I mean about people being completely smitten with you?!? :) You are so, so loved girlfriend. I'm so glad you belong to us! 

Six!

I say this every time a birthday rolls around, but these birthday surveys are my favorite things that I do for my kiddos here on the blog... even when they happen to be a month late! This is the 4th one I've done for Jackson. Many things have changed, but there are a couple things that have remained the same throughout the years!

* After Jackson listed what he was going to be when he grew up, he said "Well, God might have other plans for me. But, right now, this is what I want to be when I grow up." As fun as it has been to discover his unique personality, to laugh when he says funny things, or boast with pride when I've seen him do nice things for others without being prompted-- as cool as all of those things are, nothing else comes close to the pure joy that fills my heart to see God working in his little heart and for him to grow in his understanding of who God is and God's will in his life. 

You can check out past birthday surveys here: Age 3, Age 4, Age 5

Jackson has had a fun year full of playing t-ball, basketball, and soccer. And also running, running, and running (because he's determined to become faster because being the second-fastest runner in his class isn't good enough). 

He graduated from pre-K and started kindergarten. He became a big brother again and spent his birthday money on a new fish! Jackson won't hesitate to tell you how much responsibility he has to keep up with in taking care of TWO sisters, a cat, and now his fish on top of "working really hard" at school. 

This age is fun. Jackson is super fun to hang out with and is really good with conversation (as long as you ask him something other than how his day was at school). He is an excellent helper for me and actually completes chores in a decent manner! He's old enough to tag along with some of our errands and activities and it's neat having him involved in some of our hobbies. He even went in to work for a half day last weekend with Derek. My favorite thing is that he's old enough to play some "real" games, like Sorry and Memory, so I can take a break from Candyland! :)

Jackson is my super sweet and sensitive little man! Earlier today, he was talking about his birth story (my kids are all obsessed with talking about how they were born lately!) and then he walked over, hugged me, and said, "I'm sorry you were so hungry all day!!!" Bless his heart. Jackson snuggles are the best and I'm hoping that he'll never outgrow Mama snuggles. 

He is absolutely hilarious, too. My favorite thing is when he'll tell us about something funny that he and his friends laughed about at school and to us, it'll make no sense, but he'll be cracking himself up. The funniest time is when he informed us that all of the kindergartners have a new phrase for passing gas: "Pushing the gas tank." His favorite joke that he came up with himself: How fast can you count to 10 by tens? And while you're still trying to understand the question, he shouts out "ten!" and giggles that you were too slow. 

Oh! And Jackson can read! It's fun to read books together. It never ceases to be exciting to watch him learn new things.

It's been so fun to be your Mama, Jackson! Love you buddy! :)

The middle one

I feel like Big Brother and Little Sister have gotten quite a bit of headlines here on the blog as of late with Jackson's birthday and welcoming Caroline into the family. This gal needs her own post, too. I'll tell you what-- Isabelle keeps me on my toes. I hardly ever know what to expect and she makes me laugh about a million times a day. 

Like yesterday, on the way to church she asked what God looked like. I told her that we can't see God, but he reveals himself to us in his creation. That answer wasn't good enough-- she wanted to know what God looked like. So I told her about how God revealed himself to Moses and then Moses' face was so radiant, he glowed. And then she asked, "So God is like a glow stick?" 

And today, when I asked for her help to change the sheets on my bed, she compassionately asks if I had an accident last night. Nope, sweetie... It's just time to for the heating blanket and the flannel sheets!

We went to the store the other day and she was wearing her super girl jammies and a wolverine mask. She told a man that he had girl hair (a ponytail) on Veteran's Day. Derek is constantly telling her, "You don't have to talk to everyone!" because she's a stranger to no one. 

At almost every meal, she's "not hungry" for whatever we are having, but then asks for chips/cookies/crackers on repeat because her tummy "isn't full for those things". She never takes a full bite of anything; she eats everything in nibbles. I don't particularly care how she eats, except that it creates a million more crumbs. And then she frequently ends up biting her own finger and that is a very sad time in our house. 

She pronounces except like "b-cept" and she called the Genie from Aladdin "eu-genie". There are countless songs that she refuses accept the right lyrics. She will repeat any phrase from a Daniel Tiger episode for weeks. They are always practical and have good concepts-- it just gets old.  "When you're awake, you can play, sing, or imagine anything." "When something seems bad, turn it around. And think of something good!" And if you are ever alone with just her, she'll talk your ear off the entire time.

Lastly, she never, EVER gets tired. She tells me this every day.

Belle is super fun to hang out with these days and she's such a big help to me! Maybe we're leaving the "terrible-ness" of the 3's behind as we gear up for her 4th birthday here in a couple months!

Pumpkin Patch 2014

 One of my favorite fall things activities is visiting the pumpkin patch! We have a several around the city and I enjoy exploring new patches, but this year we headed back to one that we visited a few years ago. We had tons of fun! 

I found the best pumpkin in the patch!

Our weekends were super busy in October and so we went on a weekday when Grammy was able to join us. We packed a picnic lunch, stayed for several hours, and really enjoyed our day!

Fall Family Pics

For awhile after Caroline was born, I wasn't blogging much because it just didn't have anything really going on. Plus, I barely even used my computer for three weeks. Then, we found ourselves quite busy with a lot going on and so I finally had blog material... but no time to make it happen! Things have settled down again and so I've got a lot of catching up to do! 

About a month ago, right after Caroline was born and the weather was just fantastic, we met up with a favorite photographer of ours to do some family pictures! It was so wonderful working with Nicole. I have to you that during the photo shoot, I thought the entire thing was going terrible (fake smiles, hyper children, fussy baby!). I mean, I was in tears. And look at the magic she captured! When she started posting sneak peek pics on her facebook page, I was in tears again because I loved them so much. (Hears looking at you post-partum hormones!) 

Here are some of my favorites! You can check out the full session on her blog. 

I wanted to go through and write out what I love about each of these pictures, but I am sure most of it's pretty obvious. I love the real smiles, the sweetness of a newborn, the visual representation of our bond as a family!

What are your favorites?