Adisyn Is 6!

Wow! Adi is 6 years old! What a big girl! Adi started 1st grade in August and she's loving it so far. She heads to school at 8 and has breakfast and then her class starts at 8:30 and ends at 2:20. She then goes to an after school program until we pick her up sometime around 5. It makes for a long day for her and she is usually pretty darn wiped out by the end of it.

She lost another front tooth and has a very cute gap on the top. She's enjoying soccer, singing cheers to me (C-C-CHI, I-I-ICO, CHI, ICO, Gooooo Chico is now stuck in my head), learning cursive, playing with the neighbor kids, and being a big sister to Holden. She has developed a little sassy attitude over the past few months, but for the most part, she's such a delight to be with. She has a zest for life and is going at it full speed ahead. We love you so much Adi!

We celebrated her birthday with our nephew, Gavin, over at my parent's house on the 15th since Gavin's birthday is September 17th. Grandma made them yummy (and yes, vegan) cupcakes. Then on Saturday the 19th we had her birthday party with some of her friends -Dominic, Brayden, Lucca, Siena, Braden, Graysen, Jacob, Lauren, Holden and Sidney. She had a blast!

Opening gifts on Tuesday at Grandma's and Grandpa's house

Cupcake time!!

The cupcakes I made for her party on Saturday to go along with her Madagascar Escape 2 Africa party

Dominic giving big smiles while eating his pizza. Such a cutie!!

Having tons and tons of fun in the giant Cheetah bounce house, compliments of Gran and Gramps!!

And having tons of fun in the pool

9 Months

Holden is 9 months old! Wow - I can't even wrap my head around that. Let's see, he is now crawling and when he sees something he wants, he can go so fast! His little crawl is just too cute because he pushes off with his left foot instead of using boths knees. Sometimes he slips on the hardwood floors and does a faceplant and I feel so bad for him. He loves to pull himself up to standing on everything, including tables, chairs, stools, the floor length mirror, cupboards, the couch, and yes, the bathtub. Holden does not like to sit much, especially in the bathtub! He loves to stand and play with the faucet, or even do what we call "jumpy, jumpy", which is where he bounces up and down.

He now claps his hands and we are working on waving bye, bye and signing the word milk. He's still quite the screamer. Screams when he's happy, screams when he's tired, and screams when he's mad. Our poor baby still has pooping issues. He's only going about every 3 to 4 days (which is actually an improvement) but he is still having a hard time going. Dr. told me to cut out cereal, bananas, and applesauce. I try to get prunes down him every day, but I think he is on to me now and he's over the prunes. He loves to sit and eat anything that he can feed himself, like puffs and cheerios. Changing his diaper and clothes is becoming quite the challenge lately. He screams and cries and rolls over. I can't figure out what the big deal is, but he hates every second of it! Oh, and his sleeping - not good. Fights it and fights it. It's actually pretty cute to watch him babble on and on and roll all around just to stay awake. When he does finally fall asleep he only stays down for an hour. I get him back down and he wakes up anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes later. I used to let him cry for a few minutes and he would go back to sleep but not lately. He now stands and cries until we come get him. He just loves to sleep with mommy and daddy. And we don't mind it too much either. :)

It's been a challenging but very fun first 9 months! We love you so much Bubba!

Matching grandpa

The dishwasher is so cool

Oooohhh, look what I found. These make a great loud noise!

I don't need baby toys, just give me a box and I'm happy

Loves to stand at the door and look out back

8 Months

Okay! I know this is a whole month overdue, but better late than never right? Holden's 8th month flew by pretty quick. Poor little dude was sick for half of it with some virus that he picked up from our neighbor, Lauren, who goes to daycare with him. It lasted a good two weeks and it caused an ear infection. His first of several I'm sure. Then mommy got the virus and let me tell you, I have never, ever felt that sore in my life. I felt like I pulled every single muscle in my body. At the worst of it, I couldn't get out of bed and couldn't pick Holden up. I forced myself to do both of the above, but it was hard. It was the weirdest feeling ever. My forearms were so sore that I couldn't write, grasp things (including the steering wheel), unbuckle Holden from his car seat, you name it. If that's what Holden was feeling while he had it, oh man, no wonder he was so upset. Poor baby. So, sorry for the hiatus from the Blog, but all better now! So let's see, at 8 months Holden was starting to "creep" and getting quite frustrated that he couldn't quite figure out how to crawl. He would lift up and then his belly would fall back down. Stay tuned for his 9 month update where I will have much more to share.... Napping with dada

Oh cool, what is this?!


Look at me mommy!



Loves to rip up magazines and play with my cookbooks

I think he's over it. Actually, he cracks me up because it seems like he is always checking his toys out to see how they work. He's always looking under them and turning them around and exploring them. Silly boy!

Happy (Surprise) Birthday Lance!!

We pulled it off! On Friday, August 21st my friend Courtney and I had a surprise birthday party for Lance! We had been planning for over a month and there were so many times I almost spoiled it. What a huge relief to have it all over. We had such a great time though. The party turned out wonderful (thanks to Courtney and some friends who made it all possible) and Lance was completely surprised! He later told me it was the best birthday party he's ever had! What a sweetie.

Let me give you the play by play for how we pulled it off...the party started at 6:45 on Friday night. Lance had baseball practice that night but Mac helped me out by calling an early practice. Earlier in the week he told Lance and Chris (the other baseball coach) that he wanted to take them out to dinner for all of their help. I had already told Lance that I had plans with the girls that night because Kimberly was in town. So Mac picked Lance up and then brought him to Courtney's house at 7:45. Lance had never been to Courtney's house before so Mac pulled it off by saying they were stopping by a buddy's house for a beer. Mac sent me a text when they were about two minutes away and at that point I had everyone come into the kitchen. Mac rang the doorbell and someone answered and Mac came in first, followed by Chris and then last but not least, Lance. When he rounded the corner he saw Holden and I first and we all shouted "Happy Birthday Lance"!!! He was totally shocked. Right before we shouted, Holden was playing with something on the wall and knocked it off and it made a very loud crash and then we all yelled, so he got very scared and started crying. Took quite awhile to calm him down, poor thing.

It was a great party and we had so much fun! Happy Birthday sweetie! We love you!

Here's Emerson at the beginning of the party climbing in the coffee table!

Satia, Holden and Auntie Megan.
Holden was super tired and not a happy boy that night.


Joe and Reece

HJ and Mommy shortly before Lance arrived. See those things on the wall? That's what Holden knocked off right as Lance was walking in the door!

Lance walking in, right before seeing us in the kitchen...

He sees me and Holden and we are yelling "Happy Birthday"!

A big hug from Courtney. Notice Holden crying and reaching for mommy.

Satia and Courtney preparing to serve the homemade ice cream cake - yummy!

HJ sleeping on Auntie Megan. He slept on her for almost 2 hours!!

Standing Up

Holden just wants to stand and stand and stand! He could care less about crawling and doesn't seem too interested in walking either. But he sure loves to try to pull himself up to stand. The other evening I plopped him in his crib to play with his Rainforest crib toy while I cleaned up the bathroom (that's a whole other story...a poopy one, too) and when I looked in the room to check on him, this is what I found.....He pulled himself up and was standing in his crib and he was so happy about it!

Earlier that same day I caught him pulling himself up at the couch. The little turkey is so determined to do this and so I have to keep my eye on him at all times. He has already bonked his poor head on the table and his crib a few times.

'Look at me mommy!!!'

Fun With Cousins

School starts this Wednesday for Adi so I wanted to take her on one last little trip. Last Tuesday, August 4th, we went to Roseville for the night. Late Tuesday afternoon, Meg and I piled the kids in the strollers and with cocktails in hand we walked to the grocery store to buy food for dinner. Erich and Meg are re-landscaping their backyard and they had a pile of sand on the driveway and the kids had a ball playing in it while dinner cooked. Needless to say the kids were a very sandy mess as well as the house! The next day Meg worked in the backyard and I busted out the face paints and painted the kids. Well, actually Adi only wanted her hand painted, but Evan wanted a cool tiger face. Holden woke up in the middle of it so I was holding him while painting. It was too hard to hold him and paint Gracie's face, so Adi took over! Adi and Evan had a few fights, including one right before we left but as we were pulling away they were both yelling "love you" to each other. We had a lot of fun!!

The Sand Pile

She's such a crack up!!


HJ loved cousin Gracie's princess car!

AARRRGGGHHHH!!

Adi painting a rainbow on Gracie's cheek.

She ended up painting both cheeks and her arms!

Tags

So....Holden loves tags! He loves to study them and pull on them and even shove them in his mouth. If he's playing in a toy such as his exersaucer and all of a sudden it gets really quiet, I'll look over and sure enough he's checking out a tag. Funny thing is that someone invented the Taggies toys for this exact reason. These are little toys and books that have tags all over them. Well, Holden doesn't want much to do with these toys at all. He much prefers the real thing. Silly boy!