Wednesday, May 1, 2013

21 Months and Nearly 9 weeks

Finally a photo of all 3 kids! Little Cora is 21 months old today - ha, she isn't little at all though. She is a tough little girl who loves her brothers. She has yet to really show an interest in the alphabet, (this is killing me) but she does know the letters C, X, and O. Ok, small steps. Cora lives to eat. She is funny about eating too. She ate nearly 1/3 of a Spinach and Feta pizza yesterday - like crust and all - for lunch! For dinner, we had pasta and peas, a family favorite and she ate all but 3 pieces of pasta. Then, Colin got home, filled up his plate, and sat down to eat. Cora was "all done" so she was up roaming around (read: messing up all the toy organizing I had just finished). Oh, wait, Daddy has food now? Yes, the exact same food you just ate. Up in Daddy's lap she has to be. She then proceeds to eat his food, wants his fork (which isn't an option) and eats until she is "all done" (meanwhile poor Colin is just trying to eat something). Wait, he is getting seconds, oh, she wants more. Not, more of the exact.same.pasta that is on her plate - she will scream and cry and pout - not eating those 3 pastas - only daddy's. Sigh. Strong willed child. But so sweet.

She loves lo lo (lotion). She wants to put it on all the time. This is funny to me because I never ever use lotion. She still copies everything Connor does 90% of which is dangerous. She calls herself "Ora" but she can clearly say "Coggie" so we aren't sure why she drops the "c".

Cora is a little mommy. Always strapping her babies in the stroller, swing and bouncy. She loves to play in the kitchen (the play kitchen and the real one). I've noticed both big kids tend to eat even more when they have made it themselves. So we have been cooking in the mornings. This makes dinner time easier and faster. When they want to eat. They want to eat right away.

Cora wears a size 5 diaper and is wearing 24 month clothes. She says "off" when she means off and when she means "on" so it can get confusing. Plus she says it constantly so I basically despise the word "off". "Opie" is still her version of "open" I think it is her second most spoken word. After "off".

A funny after the fact story from last week: Connor has swim lessons on Friday afternoons. Not the best time to be across town but I needed swim lessons and so Friday is the day. Connor gets out of school at 2:30 and swim lessons start at 4:15. Not really worth driving home, disembarking the van (yes it is similar to getting off a cruise ship every time) and getting back in. So I strap Corbie in the ergo baby and sit Cora in the stroller. Corben sleeps. Cora kicks. Connor walks. We walk from school to the park. Swing and slide for 45 min and have a small snack before walking back to the car, loading up and going to swim. I thought Colin was going to meet me and let me take the little kids home while he stayed at swimming. So I leisurely sat in the parking lot while Connor changed clothes and got his towel and goggles and we chatted about his day. I didn't wake up the baby to change his diaper. I was hoping he would sleep until we got home. I didn't put back on Cora's shoes because shoes aren't necessary to ride from there to the house. And since we have a garage and mud room, shoes aren't really essential at all. Well unless Colin wasn't coming. At 5 minutes before Connor is supposed to be in the pool he texts me that he is "leaving now". As small as Birmingham is. It isn't that small. Panic. I texted him to go back to work. No reason to come at that point. Corben rudely awakened. Diaper changed. Bottle mixed. Cora shoes on. Stroller out. Pack up. Hurry inside. Sign in. Connor to the potty (naturally). Hurry down the hall. Made it just 2 minutes late. Now 27 more minutes to feed Corben and keep Cora out of the pool. Totally relaxing. Ha. 4:45 - out of the pool. Change under the towel because I'm not pushing a stroller into the tiny locker room. Go the back way home to avoid "traffic". Call Colin and tell him to stay at work at this point I'm a ragged rock star and have it under control. I tell him we are eating leftovers. Yum. Easy. Done. At home I start the big kids bath. Corben finishes up his bottle in the bouncy and I scrub Connor and Cora. I'm snapping pictures on my phone. All is good. I'm basically watching a tennis match looking at Corben then looking at the tub. I can touch all 3 kids at once that's how small the bathroom is. Baby, big kids, baby , big kids, ba . . Shadow in the water, big kids. Scream poop! Cora out. Connor out. S*#! Literally. Bye bye rock star. Apparently kids do this all the time but it has never happened to us. And Colin almost always does bath. Arrggh. After cleaning and cloroxing and feeding the kids I decided I needed Mexican. My go to stress relieving meal. I would actually eat Mexican everyday. So some tequila queso and veggie quesadilla with spinach and goat cheese capped off a crazy day. For future reference - this is the "I am about to poop in my bath face" Corben is 9 weeks old tomorrow and had his 8 week/ 2 month appointment today. He is 10 lbs 7 oz and 22.5 inches long. 50% for both. He is continuing to learn his new schedule and keeping it as well as a 9 week old baby can. I'll admit that I have been so lazy that to keep him "on schedule/ routine" I will fake him out and pretend that he is getting a bath - but just put him in the water. Really, that is so lazy. He is already in the water - how hard is it to scrub a little soap - too hard for this mama unless I know he is super dirty. For Comparison: even though they aren't exactly the same age at the measurements - which drives a comparison crazy! Connor at 10 weeks: 12 pounds 13 ounces (75th percentile) and 24 1/4 inches (90th percentile) Cora at 6 weeks: Weight: 10 lbs 10 oz. (75%) Height: 23 inches (90%)

Sunday, April 28, 2013

2 Months

Corben is 2 months old. Wow! It is almost May. Where has the year gone already? Don't get me wrong, I am soooo ready for Spring to be gone and Summer to arrive. The pollen is absolutely awful. Awful, yellow, awful. But, since it is still Spring for a little longer we planted some seeds Colin's mom sent the kids and enjoyed a beautiful Saturday followed by a rainy Sunday this weekend. Corben is definitely getting bigger. How much bigger, we aren't sure. He has his 8 week appointment a little late - later this week. He is on a great schedule (as I type I am afraid to jinx it but I want to remember so . . . ). He eats 4 times a day, 8 am, 12 pm, 4pm and 8pm. He gets about 7-8 ounces at each feeding. He has slept through the night 3 of the past 4 nights. It may take him awhile to get settled but he has been sleeping great once he is settled so we are very thankful. The book Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old is just amazing. Words cannot describe how much we love this book. Corben is starting to smile more. I didn't really capture the big smiles in his 2 month photo shoot but he is showing off those dimples more often. We love the dimples. He is in a size 2 diaper. I put him in a rogue size 1 earlier today and he let me know that size 2 is the right size by peeing out of the size 1. Thanks! Size 2 it is. Connor and Cora still love "the baby" and fight over who is going to "hold" the baby first. Cora actually wanted to hold him instead of eating - she loves to eat so she must really love her baby. Baptism coming up next weekend so we will have lots of friends and family in town to celebrate. More pictures to come.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Cannot.Stop.Laughing

Took these photos of Cora holding her baby yesterday. I didn't even check to see if they were good because I needed to get Corben to safety once she was "all done". I was flipping through some photos last night and just cannot stop laughing.
 Corben must be thinking . . . Mommy, you are letting a baby who sucks her thumb hold me! Are you crazy?

Thursday, April 11, 2013

6 weeks, 7 hours, 8 dresses

Corben is 6 weeks old. That seems about right to me. He wasn't sleeping in his bed, pretty much at all - especially at night 1 week ago. And, on the eve of 6 weeks he slept 7 hours straight, woke up at 4 and then slept from 5 (when I finished feeding him) until past 8 am. Wow. What a difference a week makes. In preparation for our getaway for an upcoming work retreat (and to reward my body with a horizontal sleeping posture again after 6 weeks of a banana in a chair), we started sleep training (merely trying to get him to sleep in a bed) last Saturday night. We are roughly following Twelve Hours Sleep By Twelve Weeks Old by Suzy Giordano. This book is so smart and worked with Cora so we are confident it will work over the next few weeks. To celebrate Corbie's accomplishment (and to prepare for summer/ retreat) I indulged in some retail therapy with Caitlin, Michelle and Corben. Result: 8 dresses. I admit that after kids I tend to binge shop. Not shop forever and then go and buy 5 pair of shoes or 8 dresses. This works for me - I mean, who knows when the next time will be that I get to go shop - could be next week, might be this fall. So, Corben slept the morning away in the Ergo Baby and then snoozed more during our delicious lunch at Seasons 52. This place was such a surprise and so good! Honestly from the outside it looks fairly lame. What kind of name is Seasons 52? Um, I'll tell you - it is smart. They apparently change the menu with the change in seasons. Ding Ding. How did I not think of that on my own? The Spring menu for lunch had all items UNDER 475 calories. Yes, please. I had an artichoke flatbread pizza - so yummy. Caitlin and Chelle each had a sandwich that they enjoyed. The little extra were the tamale tots Cait ordered. Mmmmm. Gonna go back for some of those soon. The atmosphere was a little stuffy - sort of decorated like Flemings (dark, steakhouse feel) which didn't really jive with the light menu but it did help Corben keep sleeping while we ate - so who cares, right? I even got a dress for Corben's baptism! I know it looks like he is sleeping on his stomach. He can roll over! Yikes he is getting so big already!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Easter Ants

Corben is sleeping in his bed (gasp!) so I have about 4 minutes until I have to leave to go pick up Connor from school (so not enough time to mop the floors which so desperately need a scrub) and only enough time to rant about our Easter Ants - which I somehow forgot to mention in my last post. I hate ants - I really hate pretty much all bugs of all sizes and to make myself happy, and thus the rest of my family (who have to put up with me) I spend LOTS and LOTS of money to keep the bugs away. By LOTS, I mean I think I roughly spend close to 1K/ year to keep away bugs. As such, I do not feel like I should have to spend ONE.MORE.DOLLAR on any sort of bug spray. Period. Now, to justify my spending I will disclose that it includes a Mosquito spray for our yard which is 100% necessary as there is a creek that runs behind our house and before we subscribed to the Mosquito Spray I got 12 bites in 10 minutes (bugs LOVE me). After the spray there were 2 bites the rest of the "season". With 3 little ones, it is so worth it to not have to lather up with bug spray everytime we want to go outside. It takes us long enough to get ready to go anywhere without any lotions. Some of the bug budget goes to Termite Bond - which is of course a no brainer. So, I'm not totally crazy but I was super angry when I had just had the bug man out to spray his quarterly spray and the ants arrived. We have wood floors so they aren't easy to spot and then they got into the sink and the counter surrounding the sink which is a nice dark granite - and I'll be honest -- I actually considered changing our countertops to light colored granite because the ants were so hard to spot and I couldn't figure out where they were coming from. I took EVERYTHING (which was a ton of stuff) off the counter and cleaned each item and set it on the opposite counter for 2 days to monitor the affected area. It was painful to squint at the dark granite and try to find the suckers. ARRH. I didn't have any ant spray (see above reasoning) so I used Pledge all-purpose (but mainly to clean furniture) spray. It made my floors shine a little bit too - and I thought it killed the ants. But no. I had to break down and buy ant spray - which did solve the problem (so far) but I'm not happy about the $2.50+ that the spray cost and I have a call into Terminix to get back out here and spray outside again. This is why I pay you the big bucks! A sweet photo of the baby who is now awake and good timing because I have to go get Connor.

Monday, April 1, 2013

20 months

To celebrate 20 months, Cora cracked her head on a side table and is likely to wake up tomorrow with a black eye. Not the best way to start Spring. Luckily after the shock wore off she was fine and up to all her usual dangerous antics. Surprisingly she wasn't being dangerous when she got hurt.

At 20 months Cora is wearing a size 5 diaper and 24 month clothes. She is learning even more words. Pink is her first color that she learned. She also knows purple. But her preference is pink. She is now wearing a sleep sack to nap and at night. We call it her princess dress. She flies into bed (since she can't walk) and seems to like it. She still hates the first few minutes when we leave the room but the crying is shorter every night so we are making progress and she is staying safely in bed.

Cora loved my spaghetti squash I made this month. Connor did not. He is still a good eater but is becoming less adventurous and has specific things he doesn't think he likes. But he still eats veggies so ill take it. I let Cora eat yogurt with a spoon all by herself. She loves it. I like it because it frees me up to take care of Corben and she feels like such a big girl!

Cora is still smitten with Elmo and loves her Minnie too.

She enjoyed hunting eggs at the country club and again at the indoor hunt on Easter at my parent's house. She learned quickly that some eggs had prizes inside. She shook each egg and carefully listened before trying to opie (aka open) it. She didn't waste time or energy on empties.

The country club egg hunt was advertised as 12:30 but they started at 12:15 so when the Gambles showed up as our guests at 12:22 the hunt was over. First, the egg hunt has never been on time much less early EVER. Second, who starts early at a kids event. Third, it was billed as the largest egg hunt and clearly it wasn't because some kids didn't get eggs and the hunt lasted less than 7 minutes. I'm not happy with the club and they will likely receive an email from me. Oh and to reduce the cost they changed the advertised menu to include no veggie options - even X'd the Mac and cheese. Luckily the Gamble kids had another egg hunt later that day and didn't mind missing the hunt. I did get some photos with the Easter bunny (sans Cora) who hated the big bunnies all week. Of course there was an employee with the bunny who was in almost every photo because she wouldn't move. I managed to get one without her but I've included others to illustrate my frustration.

Can you see the arm?

Head?
At least she is smiling?


Success!


Selene and Kelly at lunch - Kelly with the token bunny the club tried to appease the kids with after they missed the egg hunt. Um how are you supposed to split a bunny 4 ways? At least they tried? Im still mad though - can you tell?

Easter lunch was super delicious. Thanks mom! The kids were spoiled by all relatives with baskets of toys and candy. Even Corben got lots of goodies.


what must Corbie be thinking?



In other news . . . I started April off with a dermatology visit. Yet another weird skin issue after baby. This time instead of my arms my face looks diseased. Super dry and patchy but hopefully the lotions will work their magic.

Connor had his second swim lesson last week. After the first lesson I was a little worried but Connor was committed to learning and he did "awesome" (his word and mine). He really improved w/o any practice and is eager to go back. Yea!