Happy Birthday Nathan!

Kara and I were pregnant with Johanna and Nathan at the same time. Even though she was a couple thousand miles away in Pennsylvania it was still so special to share that time with her. I had Johanna then a month later (and one day!) we were greeted with spunky little Nathan.

Yesterday while Grandma was watching the birthday boy the kids and I along with my friend Katie and her daughter met at the park for some fun.

Nathan is so polite and sweet to his cousin. Here he was patiently waiting for Johanna to climb the stairs. He even said excuse me in his little voice that I love, I couldn't help but giggle at his adorable manners.

I wanted to get some pictures for Kara of our little play date but these kids were having so much fun I only seemed to get a bunch of their little rear ends!

JJ was there too :)

 The highlight for both kiddies were the swings.

Weeeeee!

Then we tried to big whopper swing. JJ and Nathan both reminded me of my Dad sitting in his recliner chair, they sure were cozy.

 Sharing the lady bug rocker. Of course by the time I got there to snap a picture they were starting to get back up. But boy were they having fun!

 After a little while I needed to take Johanna to the restroom for a bathroom break so we all started walking toward the rec center. Johanna was lollygagging a little and to our surprise Nathan turned around and ran back toward her to grab her hand. It was the sweetest thing ever!

They walked across the field hand in hand. Nathan was so proud of his chivalry. It was so precious!

 

 After our potty break we sat inside for a bit to eat our banana chips and teddy grahams snacks I'd brought along. We were relaxing right next to a huge window looking into the indoor pool. Nathan kept going over to the glass to look in on the swimmers. He then went up to Grandma and asked "Me go swim-min too?" after Grandma told him we can try and go next time when we bring our bathing suits he proceeded to try me then Katie. Poor little guy really wanted to go swimming! Kara, looks like you may have to take a trip to the indoor pool sometime soon :)

Thanks for sharing your birthday morning with us at the park Nathan! We love you so much!

25 and 8 Months

Happy 25 months (Okay, I know I promised to say 2 years from now on...) and 8 months to my two little ones! Wow, look how much little man has grown. And sissy too for that matter.

Just think, Johanna was JJ's age now, or a month away I can't figure out the math, when we were first pregnant with him. Nope, not pregnant again ;)

Although I must say I love these two being so close in age, they are such good buddies! It has been tons of fun and I can only count on one hand the number of days resulting in tears. And that's on my end, I don't have enough hands to count their tears, ha!

Such love :) And yes, that's Ernie in the background getting into more mischief.

"I love you, Momma! I love you so much!" -Johanna

"Hi Em-a-wee!" Me: "I'm Momma, silly goose!" Johanna: "No.... Em-a-wee, your name is Em-a-wee!...hee hee hee hee!!!"

There isn't much new to report for miss Hannie besides her usual expanding vocabulary. Potty training has been our biggest project for the month and I'd say she's pretty much daytime trained! She goes all day telling me when she needs to go and does great in public. She can't stay in the car for too long though or she does have accidents. 30 minutes or so is as far as I like to push it. She wears pull ups at night because although she was able to stay dry if we tried, it wasn't practical for us to cut out liquids past 5 with dinner at 6 and wake up at 2am to take her to potty. We have cut our bedtime milk though so that was an accomplishment! I sent her to school in her pullup since I knew it would be too hard for her to tell her teachers she needed to go. Her teachers are great with accommodating them though and made sure to take her to the potty several times. She had no problems and even went poo on the potty at school! Not that you needed to know that.

JJ is crawling crawling and more crawling. He is desperately trying to climb the stairs but hasn't figured it out quite yet (thank goodness). He stands on everything possible including furniture, people, animals you get the picture. As soon as he gains the strength he will be walking that's for sure, it's way too hard to be the youngest sibling and cousin he knows he's missing out on all the fun! He loves to make silly noises especially raspberries. He has also figured out how to clap and loves it when we cheer him on. Oh and he loves to dance! He will bop up and down to different beats, particularly the theme song to Jake and the Neverland Pirates and the Fast Food song from Johanna's music cd. And yes, there is an actual song about fast food and it is hilarious. He is still nursing tons and I don't mind at all, can he stay my baby forever please? He eats 3 solid meals a day and has been experimenting with different textures and various finger foods. He can make a "I want that" grabbing motion by squeezing his fingers to his palm when he wants something. Oh and there's this little problem with biting. His top teeth are coming in and he likes to get those chompers on anything. Just yesterday he crawled up to Daddy and bit his toe. Little stinker! Even though you like to bite you are still the sweetest little baby I've ever seen.

 

Dear kids: stop growing! Love, your Mommy

4 Babies 1 Bathtub

I don't think I need any captions for these priceless photos!

 

Felt Board Fun

I'm a blog-a-holic lately, aren't I? We've just been up to so much fun stuff lately I want to document it all. Today Johanna and I worked on an art project, a Christmas tree felt board. Yes, pinterest inspired. Talk about a cheap project! So we had the plywood left over from something else and the brown and green felt were from halloween costume leftovers. But the rest of the felt was all purchased for 3 dollars and with tons to spare. Hobby lobby, greatest store ever!

I love this project because it incorporates so many different teaching opportunities. We've got shape recognition (rectangles, squares, triangles, stars and circles) color finding, pattern matching and a couple alphabet letters too.

It was a lot of fun watching her pick up on it so quickly then try it on her own.

 

 Yes, she had to pile everything into one spot. I was a good Mom though and only told her once the presents go on the bottom then stuck with wow, it looks great! hehe

 She was so proud of her creation.

And the best part of this project is she can do it all over again and again!

I heard some rustling later on and low and behold I caught Ernie getting into some mischief...

He flipped the tree upside down and was sneaking off with a nighttime snack.

 

...Pretty sure this shelf elf idea was created more for dorky people's entertainment setting them up like myself rather than the actual kids finding them, haha!

Little Helper

JJ is Daddy's little helper. When he woke up from his afternoon nap he found his Dad downstairs working on our latest IKEA storage unit. I could barely contain him in my arms while he wiggled frantically to get down and help.

Hey Mom! Look at me, I'm a big boy!

 He has been having fun knocking blocks over which makes me laugh every time. I can't build them fast enough!

Remember how much Johanna loved her giant mickey and minnie Christmas decorations?

The love is still there!

It's Christmas Time

We've had great weather this Thanksgiving week which was perfect for setting up the house for Christmas. Jeff spent Saturday putting up the Christmas lights and I greatly appreciate it, thanks honey!

JJ was ready to help too. He loves being with his Daddy.

He kept staring up at the roof at Jeff, I could just tell he was thinking what in the world is my Dad doing up there?!

 JJ has been wearing tons of hand-me-downs from his cousins Tyler and Nathan. This one was perfect for the day, a pair of warm and fuzzy first Christmas jammies. I'll be sure to repay the favor, Kara will have tons of girl clothes or even MORE boy clothes come their next little one.

 

When Johanna woke up from her nap she had to go outside to see where her Dad was. When she saw him on top of the roof she was very concerned at first.

"Woah! Dad! What you doing?! Daddy's so high up there. Daddy come down?"

After I reassured her that he was okay and he was putting up our Christmas lights she felt much better.

We took three trips to the store to complete our lights. The first to Target to pick up some lights and the second and third to go get the stuff we'd forgotten the first and second time out. Johanna got to pick the colors for two bushes.

 "Johanna get pink and JJ get blue?"

Look, I was there too :)

Finally after an all day affair between naps, lunch, more naps and three trips to the store we were done.

Ta-da! I love this time of year. All the neighbors out putting up their lights, families walking down to the park to play football, the air crisp but not too cold yet. Christmas is coming!

I've been patiently waiting to take our little shelf elf out and this morning he got to make his first appearance.

Johanna wasn't sure what to think of him.

After we read his story she quickly picked up on the fact she couldn't touch him or he would lose his Christmas magic. "No, no JJ don't touch."

We had to name him and we all decided on Ernie.

Johanna is still working on her potty training. She has had some awesome days one being a whole 36 hour stretch of no accidents (and some not so awesome times) but she is getting better and better! Here she is proud as can be in her little dress up outfit. I love that little girl!

Singing "A Dream is a Wish your Heart Makes," such a princess ;)

 

The weekend is almost over and I'm exhausted. Is it nap time yet...for me?