Thursday, April 29, 2010

Josiah's Last Night as a Cubby & Twin Update

Last night, we had the closing celebration for Awana and Josiah has now officially graduated out of Cubbies. Next year he will be in Sparks. He told me in the car, "I'm excited to be a Spark." It will be a new thing for him as he will get to work through the book at his own pace instead of an assigned verse to memorize each week. After the kids sang some of their Cubby songs on the stage, we listened to the other group's presentations and then they had hot dogs and hayrides for the kid's afterward. Josiah also wanted to sit in Jesus' lap as you see pictured here. I am not sure Jesus would approve of him pretending to shoot guns in his lap, however. :)

This is another recent photo of Josiah with his "outdoor collection" has he called it. He and Daddy went on a nice long walk a while back and these are the things he found. Daddy is hoping to take Josiah on some hikes this summer and possibly a camping trip for just the two of them, so these walks are training for the "big hike" later. David says that he starts off the journey all bouncy and excited and saying things like, "I like to walk with you Daddy," and by the end he is walking noticeably slower and is complaining that his legs hurt. Daddy then distracts him by pointing out things along the way and they eventually make it back home again.

The boys jumped up into the chair together today to watch a show. Daniel is holding his Tag Jr. reader. He loves to play with this andd also plays with Josiah's Tag reader also now. I am guessing Daniel will be an early reader, as he is SO interested in books!! Daniel is saying a lot of things now. His "classics" are: I wan hunry (I want hungry), ug (hug), I wan up (I want up), & poddy? (wants to go potty). He actually does use the potty a little. He is able to pee a tiny bit and then dumps the potty chair pot in the toilet and flushes it and says, "Bye, bye pee!" If I had more time to work with him, I think he could be trained right now, but for now we are just letting him try this sporatically when he asks for it. I am hoping by the summer time we can start to train both twins, but we will see. It sure would be nice to have only 1 in diapers! Caleb has really blossomed with his speech these days too! He repeats most everything I have asked him to say, and though it isn't perfectly pronounced, it is clear he is getting the gist now! He says things like: I love you, hunry (hungry), rink (drink), cuse me (excuse me), and things like that.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Daddy's Three Sons

When Daddy comes out in the living room and lays down on the couch with a blanket, he becomes an inevitable boy magnet as our boys LOVE to play with their Daddy! Caleb especially loves to cuddle and he is the first to snuggle up to Daddy on the couch most every time! Many times Daddy creates a fort with the blanket and the boys have fun chatting with Daddy in the fort and "hiding" from Mommy. Mommy pretends not to see the very conspicuous "mound" in the living room and wanders around aimlessly "looking" for her boys who are giggling under the blanket by this time. We are very blessed with our sweet little boys and our boys are very blessed to have such a wonderful Daddy too!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Naomi's 2-Month Visit

This was Miss Naomi before I took her to her 2-month doctor's check-up all ready to go in her car seat. She has been smiling a lot now for us and is very conversational...that is lots of goo's and gah's and baby cooing sounds. She tries so hard to mimic our mouth movements! It is really cute to watch her! She loves it when we sing to her and just HAS to be around people at all times. She gets very irritated if she can't see SOMEBODY around. She seems to love her brothers too except when the younger ones poke her or pat her just a little too hard. Mommy has to guard Miss Naomi when the brothers are "loving" on her.

The doctor was pleased with her progress as she is gaining weight and growing, but she dropped a little below the 25 percentile for weight this time. This means I am going to be trying to feed her every 2 1/2 hours instead of the 3 that we were doing, and also the doctor suggested that I pump once a day to see how much she is getting at a feeding. She nurses a lot like Caleb did, taking the let down and then gets a bit fussy with her feeding after that, but she doesn't do that all the time. Caleb went to the bottle soon after he started doing this because I was overwhelmed trying to nurse both Caleb and Daniel being that I wasn't producing enough milk for two. So, this is new for me, trying to figure out how to make this little girl put on some weight! My mom told me that at one year, I was only 17 pounds, so perhaps she is taking after me in that regard. She is very busy and moves a lot, so that could be the case.

For the record, she is 9 pounds 5 ounces (not quite caught up to Josiah's birth weight yet--he was a whopping 9 pounds 15 ounces), 22 inches long (little below 50% for height), and head circumference is 15.5 inches (little below 75%).

My only concern at this visit was her seemingly small weight gain, but that can be easily fixed. It is likely she doesn't get as much hind milk due to her not sucking long enough or something, so with some adjustments I think she will do better by the next visit at the 4-month mark. I plan to go in for a weight check at the 3-month mark though just to make sure she is progressing nicely.

Random Conglomeration of Photos

I dressed Caleb & Daniel like this for church today and then after their nap they went outside to play. They were both standing on the railing on the porch and I was hoping to get a shot of them standing there from behind, but they got down to look at me instead, which is also cute.

Last night as I was bringing Naomi to her room to sleep, I glanced into Josiah's room to see him sleeping as pictured above. He really was asleep too as I heard his nose whistling a tune as he was sleeping as well. You might also note the plethera of stuffed animals on the side of his bed. I am surprised he has room to sleep with all of those. I have tried to get him to move a few off the bed, but he usually fights for each and every animal. He HAS to have the small ones 'cause he has to protect them and take care of them. How can you argue with that? And then I try to take away the big ones and he REALLY wants to have them too and has various reasons why.

It was a really nice day yesterday and Daddy took advantage of it to mow the lawns and wash the vehicles. Caleb's method of cleaning was to go dip his rag in the bucket of bubbles and walk to the car and barely touch the car and then run back to the bucket to dip his rag again. Not much cleaning done here! Daniel did a little better in that he was actually trying to wash the car, but then he saw a spot on the ground and tried to tackle that one too. This resulted in Mommy having to bring the VERY dirty rag inside for a cleaning. Josiah was a big help and was very excited to be helping!

This is our little tomtatohead Naomi at her best tomatohead pose, bright red in the face from crying and pushing her nightgown down with her feet to show us JUST HOW MAD she really is! This just cracks me up when she does this! Of course soon after this photo she was rescued and calmed down to her normal non-tomato-ey cute self.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Rare Moment Captured on Film

Here you see THE best picture of three squirmy boys and a sweet little baby with their Momma. Too bad we weren't actually dressed for the day and "presentable" Ah, oh well, you win some and you lose some. Gotta love the cheesey boy smiles though! Daddy really did tell them all to say "cheese" and this was the result. Great photo taking honey!

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Easter 2010

These are the picture highlights from Easter this year. Daddy got Naomi this cute little dress that says "So Precious" and indeed she is!

We couldn't get a group shot of the four children, but I got this one of the three boys in their suits. At church, people kept looking down at our handsome boys and were "Ooo'ing and Ah-ing" at them. They are quite a handsome bunch for sure!

Here is a close-up of Miss Naomi on her first Easter. She had some cute little sandals that Grandma bought too that matched her dress.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Naomi One Month Update

It occurred to me that in my last post about Naomi I forgot to indicate her weight and height stats from her one month appointment on March 25th. She weighed in at 8 pounds and 1/2 ounce (little under 25th percentile) and she was 21 3/4 inches long (around 60th percentile). Her head circumference was 14 1/2 inches around (50th percentile). She is a teeny, tiny little thing! Much more petite than her brothers! All the other check ups went well and she passed with flying colors.

Aquarium Outing with the Crew

During my mom's spring break from school, she wanted to take the boys to the zoo, however, the weather was uncooperative and so we decided to go to the Seattle Aquarium instead. We also met my brother Brent there for our little outing. Josiah is just crazy about fish, and so this was the logical choice! In fact, I think Josiah would have chosen the aquarium over the zoo anyway, so it worked out. Halfway through the excursion it started pouring down rain and the wind was blowing it at us sideways as we quickly rolled the strollers to the car, which was thankfully parked across the street from the aquarium. In the picture above, the three boys were looking out the window in one of the exhibits. I love how you can see their reflections as well in the window.

Josiah here is "schooling" a little girl on the names of all the fish. We learned about some fish in one of his books and he loves to find fish that he knows. Another random funny story about Josiah was that the other day I asked him if he wanted to hold Naomi and he got really excited, but then hung his head and said, "But my hands aren't washed....I pick my nose a lot. " I hid my smirk and said, "Well go and wash your hands then!" And he did!
Another funny one was that he informed me that he had a delivery coming. I asked him what was coming. He said he was getting a Pillow Pet (he has been wanting one for some time now). He said very dejectedly that he got the frog pillow pet, but he REALLY wanted the dolphin pillow pet. He then informed me that Caleb got the dolphin one. I asked him if he could trade Caleb for it. He said, "Caleb doesn't like the frog one." Then he very sadly said, "I guess my order is cancelled." I said, "How did it get cancelled." He said, "Daddy did it." (NOTE: Daddy in the past has said "no" to the pillow pet pleas.) I told him to go ask Daddy why he cancelled it. Josiah said, "I don't want to do that right now."
Lastly, another funny one about Josiah. My mom usually replenishes the sand in the sandbox each year as we can never seem to retain all our sand (boys dumping it random places) and/or it gets tainted with lots of water (thank you Pacific Northwest weather) from not putting the top on one or two times. Anyway, Josiah has been getting antsy for more sand and has been bugging them about it. One time on the phone, he was attempting to convince Grandma to buy it and Grandpa was on the phone and put the kibosh on that idea for the time being. Then the other day, Josiah (not knowing we had the sand ready to go) said, "I want Grandma to come over, but don't bring Grandpa." I inquired, "Why not?" "Because I want her to get some sand and Grandpa can't come." It is clear that Josiah knows what's what in that family!!
Caleb seemed to enjoy the aquarium though he was mostly a silent participant throughout the time we spent there. He did enjoy watching the divers clean the big fish tank though! He pressed his nose up on the glass and the diver waved at him.

Daniel was really funny, he went up to the fishies and started having a conversation with them. He also said, "Hi Diver," to the divers in the tank and chased one of the larger fish down the fish tank trying to talk to it. Needless to say, the larger fish had nothing to say back.

Miss Naomi came along to of course and did really well and slept mostly the whole time. She woke up right about the time we were ready to go and eat lunch and I fed her in the car and then joined the family for lunch at Red Robin. I am just loving her in this cute little outfit and the hat was handmade by our friend Liz from church. So, so cute!