Saturday, September 4, 2010

Princess Party

Izzy's friend Evie celebrated her 4th birthday a few weeks and she had a princess party! Evie, Izabel and Evie all dressed up as Disney Princesses and Tanner even got to be a dragon. They decorated crowns and had yummy snacks. I think the girls and Tanner had a great time!




Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Back to School/Work

I know I have been lacking a little in the blog department lately. I don't really have a good excuse since I have been at home all summer, but it's hard to sit and blog while the kids are busy having fun! Yesterday I started back at classes with Virginia Tech. This semester I actually have a class (through distance learning) that I have to attend every Tuesday night and another class that is all online. They are definitely going to be keeping me very busy. I also started back to work today. My job is super packed this year so my main goal is to not go insane. We'll see how it turns out come June :)

I promise to get some posts up soon about some of our summer fun! We've had lots of beach days and Noah and I just celebrated our 5th anniversary! I'll be back very soon!!

Sunday, August 15, 2010

We did it, we did it, we did it! - Updated

Update 8/17/10 - Both kids have slept all the way through the night for the past two nights! That's right, a whole 12 hours each. I know this is not the end of getting up in the middle of the night but I feel so much better today :)

I think we are finally diaper free when it comes to Izabel and it feels so good! Not that she's been using too many diapers the last few months, but now there are none sitting in her closet and she does not get one when she goes to bed! We finally let go of our own fear and sent her to bed in undies and she woke up dry. Then she did it again! I'm so excited for her because it must be so much more comfortable and she really feels like a big girl. She tells everyone she has super powers! Yay Izzy on meeting yet another milestone, we did it!

In other news, Tanner seems to be going through a poor sleeping phase. He's always been a pretty good sleeper and if he did wake up all we had to do was hand him a binky and he'd go right back to sleep. However, the past few weeks he has been waking up a lot and definitely not going right back to sleep. We've been letting him cry it out but sometimes (like last night) that doesn't even work. I know it's just a phase because we went through this with Izzy, but it still sucks. He's been really cranky during the day because he's not getting enough sleep! I think he is finally getting some more teeth. Any thoughts or suggestions for the sleepy people in my house?!?!



Friday, July 30, 2010

Aunt Theresa's Birthday!

Tuesday was Aunt Theresa's 20th Birthday so we had a little get together to celebrate! Some of the family and Theresa's friends came over. We had lots of food and played cornhole in the front yard. We had a really great time and it was nice celebrating with Theresa! We hope you had a great birthday and we love you very much!!!

Even Izzy and Tanner wanted to play!


Wednesday, July 28, 2010

All About Izzy


Well Izabel has been potty trained and wearing undies for months and months now, I'm sure if I went back through the archives I could find the exact time! She's been really good at using the potty at home and out and about for at least six months, but she's still been wearing a diaper at nap and bedtime. I think it was probably more us not being ready than her not being ready for the last couple months. I really didn't want to rush to wash her favorite blankets between nap and bedtime and I really didn't want to deal with accidents in the middle of the night! But for the last few weeks her diapers have always been dry so last week we started giving her rewards if her morning and after nap diapers were dry. She would wake up saying she was dry so she could get a snack. This week she has been taking her naps in her undies and so far so good! Maybe in the next couple weeks we'll get brave enough to let her try to go through the night. Since she shares diapers with Tanner it's not a big deal but it's coming soon!

Our sassy girl!
I can't believe how big our baby girl is! It really is amazing how much of a little person she is and how ready for preschool she is! She starts September 7th and other than some separation anxiety that I'm sure we'll have to deal with, she is going to love it so much! She knows all her letters and numbers up to 20. We are working on letter and number recognition now and association. She knows all her shapes, even crazy ones like crescent, pentagon, and hexagon and finds shapes everywhere! It amazes us when she calls out these crazy shapes and we have no idea where she learned them (thank you Team Umizoomi)! She loves to help me make things in the kitchen and take care of her babies. It's so funny when we hear her putting her babies to bed and telling them to sleep late! I wish she would take her own advice!

We are still dealing with some serious sibling rivalry. Whenever I have Tanner she runs over and wants me to hold her too. She'll push him out of the way and hit him when she gets mad or frustrated. Of course we're working hard to correct that behavior and she spends a lot of time in time out, but it's hard when we know she just wants some attention. We are trying to work harder at giving her one-on-one time with one or both of us a little more often.

Sometimes we catch her being nice and make a big deal of it!
She's still pretty picky with what she eats and some days she really doesn't eat anything. I'm working on some more sneaky recepies so that when she does eat at least she is getting lots of good stuff. She only weighs about 27/28 lbs with her clothes and shoes on but she's super healthy so it's fine. She loves watching her shows but I've been trying to limit the tv time and keep it off more often. She does learn a lot from the show she watches (i.e. shapes) but I don't want her sitting in front of the tv all day. We love to go on play dates and to Ocean Breeze. She also loves hanging out with Aunt Theresa and everyone she meets is instantly her friend!

She wants to be just like Aunt Theresa!
She is, always has been and always will be a blessing and an answer to prayer. We love her so much we feel like we could burst apart. Noah lays with her at night now and they read stories and she always says to both of us "I love you back to the moon and back". I love that she adds the extra back in there even when she says it first!

Monday, July 26, 2010

HOT HOT HOT! (Weekend Update)

It has been so unbelievably hot here! I mean temps from 100 up to 109 degrees over the weekend. It's so hot the kids have been extra cranky and we're all exhausted. On Friday we headed to Ocean Breeze with Aunt Theresa, Candace and Drew hoping to keep cool. The water was nice and actually pretty cool but it was still way too hot and the pavement was burning our feet! Since it was so hot we didn't do much else the rest of the weekend but stay in the air conditioning.

Saturday me and the kids went to the grocery store which sounded like a good idea until I got home and realized I'd have to carry in all the loads of groceries by myself. Saturday night Noah and I went out to dinner and a movie with Candace and Matt. It was so nice to have a date night with them and we had a blast! We saw Inception on Imax and I definitely recommend it. I like movies that you have to think about and really work at understanding so this was right up my alley!

Sunday morning we went to church where Rebecca St. James was leading worship. I was so excited! I've been listening to her since I was in middle school and I used her devotional books in high school. It was a great service. We came home and ALL took naps and then just hung around the house the rest of the day. It seems like the temps are cooling down so hopefully we'll get outside some this week!
Happy Monday!!!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

15 Months


My handsome little man is 15 months old! He's really starting to show more and more of his personality and we absolutely love him, he is a complete joy!

I took Tanner to visit Dr. Scott on Monday. He is 26 lbs and 31 inches long putting him in the 75th percentile. He is a super healthy boy! Dr. Scott was impressed with his language skills; he says mama, dada, hi, bye, uh-oh, and now thank you. He was also impressed that Tanner still takes two naps a day. Tanner got three shots and he was really mad at the nurse.

Tanner has started to get more picky with his eating. Now that he is walking all the time he seems to have better things to do than eat. He loves to play but gets so mad when Izzy takes the toy he is playing with. The sibling rivalry around here is terrible, but sometimes they play really nicely together in one of their rooms. I'm looking forward to more and more of that!

When I say that Tanner is a complete joy, I am not exaggerating. He is such a blessing and we couldn't possibly love him anymore than we do!!!