just because...

exersaucer fun!

my parents bought this for miles for christmas and he just loves it! i love it too since it lets me get things done! since he enjoys sitting so much he stays in this for quite some time now. he is starting to think that the playmat is just for babies.

brothers

i finally was able to catch ethan giving miles a hug, he usually does it so quickly by the time i get the camera, he is done. i was just about to miles down for his nap (and yes, we still swaddle him) and ethan came in to give his brother some goodnight hugs.

wordless wednesday: jammies

outdoor fun

after a week of everyone being sick, it felt nice to get outside and enjoy the warm early spring weather we were having. ethan wanted to play with his sidewalk chalk for a bit, but then he got much more interested in what he could find in the grass. there were these little, tiny purple flowers growing that he loved. he kept picking them and bringing them to me - so precious! after a while he wanted to take his shoes off and i just loved how cute his toes looked against the grass. i am really looking forward to spring when we can spend a lot more time outside! especially since miles will be older and will be able to handle the wind more...it bothers him a bit now when it is especially windy, so that really limits our outdoor time since there always seems to be some sort of breeze around here.

wordless wednesday: sleeping baby

look who is sitting up!

miles really enjoys getting to see the world from his newest position. i've been propping him up with the boppy and he just loves it. he can sit there for quite some time playing with his toys.

a new haircut

well, it was LONG overdue for ethan to have another haircut, so we just went for it this past sunday right before naptime. we figured if it was really bad at least he was going down for a nap and we could all get over the trauma then. he did really well, though lance and i did not. cutting too long toddler hair on a squiggly little boy who is overdue for a nap is not the best combination. just like his first hair cut, lance used the clippers and i used the scissors. all in all, i think it turned out just fine. he actually looks quite cute! we are really going to try to not wait as long in between...i think if the hair had been shorter to start with, it probably would have gone a lot better. here is a before and after!

happy valentine's day!

being a mom and being crazy about blogging, i really wanted that perfect valentine's photo of the boys. you know, the one where they were hugging or holding hands or something equally precious. of course, nothing like that happened this weekend. poor miles ended up catching the cold that has made it through the family and it seems to have been toughest on him. and ethan spent a lot of the weekend either naked or in training pants as part of our potty training efforts. neither made for that perfect picture i wanted.

lance knows how crazy i am about getting pictures of everything and some days will just grab the camera and take some shots. i feel like his pictures summed up the weekend and what valentine's day means to me...just a day to be spent with the ones that i love.

for the font lover in all of us

if you know me, you know that i love fonts. i am particular about the ones that i love and the ones that i hate. a friend and architect i used to work with found this film on his tivo, watched it and thought it might appeal to a few us he knows that are nerdy enough to get excited about fonts. while you would think a 90-minute film about one single font would be boring, even to a font lover, it is done in such a way that it keeps your attention. it was enjoyable and entertaining and it was really amazing to see how many people (corporate, goverment and otherwise) use this font as part of their identity. i loved how emotional the designers in the film got about their love/hate relationships with the helvetica. even if you just catch the preview of the movie on youtube, you'll still find yourself looking for that font wherever you go.

craft for the day

thanks to cindy for posting this great craft a few weeks ago. it was finally something that kept ethan's attention! it also fit in with our february theme of the letter "R" and red since we used red yarn and made a rope of cheerios. ethan did start by putting the cheerios on the yarn, but before he long he started to sample the craft materials and then decided that that was more fun than anything else!

just like daddy!

lance was at drill this weekend so his cover was still out in the kitchen. ethan found it last night and decided it would be fun to give it a try! it is the longest he has ever kept a hat on since he was little. he really missed lance over the weekend and i guess he just wanted to be like him.

happy 6 months, miles!

miles is 6 months today! he started off his 7th month with a bang...just last night he sat in his first restaurant high chair and did great (i didn't have my camera with me so no pics.) he can also sit by himself for 10-20 seconds without toppling over! he loves it!

some of his favorite things right now:

1. oatmeal! it is definitely more popular than the rice cereal. soon i am going to start adding some fruit to it.

2. the bumbo seat. thanks to mee-maw and grampies for shipping it out to us! he loves it and ethan thinks it is fun to see him sitting up too!

3. eating - he knows what is going on either when i get ready to nurse him or he sees a bottle. goes crazy and grabs for the bottle. he can almost hold it.

4. still a fan of his toes and will grab for them the instant he gets undressed and especially if he is diaper-free - i guess it is just easier to reach them that way!

5. he has started sticking his tongue out. so cute! he also loves to blow bubbles and his cereal.

some of my favorite things right now:

1. the big open-mouth kisses he has started giving me. if i pick him up or take him from someone he lunges at my face and gives me the sweetest (and messiest) kisses. he also snuggles right into my chest. i love it!

2. his smiles. after he wakes up and we bring him in the bed with us, he just gets so excited and starts grinning away.

3. when he wakes up after his nap. i love this time to quietly nurse him and snuggle. ethan is usually still asleep so it is nice and calm.

4. how chunky he is! i know he may not be a huge baby to some others, but compared to ethan, he is a chunk! i love seeing his big belly and chubby thighs.

5. how much better he is sleeping now that he is in his own room. since moving in there he has been waking 2-3 times/night (usually 2) instead of a lot more. plus i can't hear every little thing so i don't go running in there all the time either.

happy 25 months, ethan!

another month has gone by. ethan's vocabulary is really building and i can understand quite a few of the words he says now. he talks in sentences (2-4 words) pretty regularly. it is so fun to have little conversations with him. he also loves to use his new found vocabulary to tell us what to do. the other day, he was very adamant that i get dressed instead of staying in my jammies (odd since he loves his jammies!) and was particular about the shoes he thought i should be wearing.

some of his favorite things right now:

1. his new favorite book is chicka, chicka, BOOM, BOOM. he calls it the "coconut tree" book and wants to read it before each nap and at bedtime. it must also accompany him to the crib.

2. still on our thomas the train kick. his favorite character is definitely gordon, but he is also a fan of percy and harold or "helicopter" as he calls him. he loves to make up stories about them and i often hear him repeating different characters names and lots of babble. it is so cute to listen to.

3. blankie and lovie. he has named his little taggie blanket lovie. most mornings he brings lovie down to breakfast. he tends to leave him at the house, thank goodness i don't want to lose him, but occasionally he'll take him to the babysitter's house. he also has a favorite blanket. it has a little silky tag on it that he likes to hold it by.

4. the letter "R." he can recognize the letter r now (in capital letter form only.) i know this is in part due to the chicka, chicka book because he started pointing it out there. but the other night, he pointed it out on the wal-mart bag and i was amazed that he recognized it in a different context. he was also happy to point out the "w" and the star on the bag.

5. waffles and chocolate milk. he still loves his morning "coffee" and his favorite breakfast food is now waffles. we still struggle quite a bit to find foods he likes and to get him to eat, but breakfast has always been a meal he tends to do well with.

some of my favorite things he is doing right now:

1. he loves to give kisses. he will come in for a kiss right on the lips right now. even though it is messy, it is so sweet!

2. he is such a good brother with miles. they are starting to interact a lot more and it is so fun to see. he will run over to miles when he is crying and either pat on him or give him his binky.

3. i always take miles out of the car first and bring him into the house and then come back out for ethan. just as i walk up to his door he gives me this huge, cheesy grin. every.single.time. LOVE IT!

4. he pats my back when he gives me a hug. melts my heart!

5. he gets so excited when he hears lance come in. and he notices when he is gone.

wordless wednesday: bathtime!

ethan update

ethan has been in his upstairs bedroom since saturday night and he loves it! he is always asking to go the "new room" as he calls it. he has slept just as well as if he had been downstairs. he never really played in his old room even though there were some toys there, but he has been playing in his new room quite a bit. he must just feel like it is his own space.

it is also nice to have him upstairs where he has his own bathroom. downstairs just has the powder room and our bathroom and i never really was able to set up a space for him. now he has a little stool and loves to climb up and brush his teeth each morning and night. luckily the little daredevil monkey hasn't tried anything crazy with his crib again. i am hoping that that was just a fluke and we still have more time with the crib.

i think it is time to move to a bed!

i went into ethan's room on saturday to find him climbing up his crib like a little monkey. we decided it is time to get a bed for him and try that out. since ethan was going to get a new bed and give up the crib, we decided to that miles should finally get his own room. poor little guy has slept in our bed, the living room and the main part of our master bath (the toilet is in a separate room) so it was about time! we only have one bedroom, other than ours downstairs, so we had been reluctant to put either boy upstairs. we picked out a bedroom for ethan yesterday and moved some of his toys, his play table and his crib up there. we plan to use his crib in the bedroom for about 2 weeks until the bed comes in. then we'll start the transition and let miles have ethan's old crib. ethan really enjoyed playing in his room last night and slept as well as he did in his downstairs room, though he did wake a bit earlier. hopefully he'll do just as well tonight! we'll see what happens when we switch to the bed - i am NOT looking forward to that! ethan is in LOVE with his crib and will play in there for hours, so i am not sure how smoothly things will go.

having miles in a room is so nice! i love being able to rock him in the glider and then put him in a crib. it reminds me of when ethan was little and i would nurse him and watch out the front window of our house. after putting miles down for his nap today i told lance it finally seems normal. i hated not having a "place" for miles and it was so hard for me while i was pregnant with him to not be able to set up a room. now, even though i didn't get to set up a new room, it just feels right with him in the room that i always thought of as the nursery.

i'll be sure to take some pictures of ethan's room once we get the bed in there. he is addicted to thomas the tank engine so we found this tent thing that fits on any standard twin size bed and turns the bed into thomas. we didn't want to go with a thomas bed that we'd be stuck with - i don't think he will find thomas nearly as cool when he is 13 - so we figured this is a good middle ground. i had dreams of that cute pottery barn kids room decorated to look like a rustic camp bedroom, but obviously that isn't what ethan wants, so i'll have to just deal with it and go with thomas (FOR NOW!!) and do what i can with his room. it won't be forever!