Party time

Friday was Brian's birthday and also my nephew Espen's birthday. Since Brian is in Texas we're celebrating his birthday next week, but we got to celebrate Espen's birthday yesterday which was fun. My parents got him this adorable tiny chair:

Pretty sure Kalena is going to need one of those when she turns two.

Amy made this ridiculously cute Elmo cake (or Memo as Espen says). It took 2 and 1/2 bottles of red food coloring to get the frosting red instead of pink. I had 2 slices because it was DELICIOUS. And then I discovered that when I consume red food coloring in large doses I break out in hives all over my body. Fun huh? That fact did not deter me from eating more cake today.

Espen and Kalena enjoying their cake. No hives there:)

Eric, Amy, and Espen.

Happy birthday!

Picture comparison

Will after 2 month shots

Kalena after 2 month shots

2 month check up

Will had his 2 month check up and shots this morning. He did alright; I actually think he cried harder when I was undressing him than he did when he got the shots. He is pretty sure that getting undressed or having his diaper changed is torture. (Or having his nails trimmed, my goodness.) Anyway, here are his stats:

Weight: 12 lbs 8 oz

Height: 21 1/2 inches

That puts him in the 79th percentile for weight and the 7th for height. That's right, 7th. He's just a short little butterball. The doctor said they don't worry about weight for breast-fed babies though. For comparison, Kalena at two months weighed 11 lbs 12 oz and was 24 1/2 inches long. Sooooo she may be the tall one in the family. We'll see.

2 months

As of Tuesday Will is 2 months old. He started smiling at about 8 weeks, but they're still hard to get out of him. He sleeps pretty well most nights, definitely better than Kalena did at this age. He has started having periods where he cries inconsolably though, which is something Kalena NEVER did. Feeding (nursing or bottle) always calmed her down. I think he does it when he's overtired (or overstimulated maybe.) But MAN. It's hard to know what to do for him. He cries if I try to nurse him, or give him a bottle, or give him a pacifier, or swaddle him, or rock him. He'll quit crying if you get him in the right position, but only for a few minutes. The problem is, the only thing that settles him down once he gets like that is to get him to sleep. And it is TRICKY to get him to sleep when nothing that normally puts him to sleep will work.

Anyway, here are some pictures. I was trying to get a smile, this was the best I got.

More fun with Grandma

For those of you who don't know, my grandma uses a walker. It's one of the kinds that can be used as a seat too (like this) and when she needs to move stuff around she often sets it on the seat of the walker and walks it around. For instance, if she's clearing the table after dinner she'll set dirty dishes there and then walk them over to the sink. Unfortunately, the seat is at a perfect height for Kalena to get to everything on it. So I wasn't surprised tonight when my grandma set the butter there to take back to the kitchen and Kalena promptly stuck her hand in it. And then licked her fingers of course. (She is my child you know.) What made me laugh was that my grandma's response was, "Stop that. You don't want to get your hands dirty." Ummmm, she's almost 2. Her hands are ALWAYS dirty. Which is exactly why nobody wants them in the butter. I guess my grandma is just more worried about keeping Kalena's hands clean than about keeping the butter germ-free.

Want more grandma stories? You can find some here and here.

I don't want to jinx it

I know you were all dying of anticipation after this post, so I guess I should tell you what that was all about.

Our house is under contract. FINALLY! If all goes as planned we will be closing on March 2nd. And I don't want to disappoint you Midlanders, but only Brian is going there for closing. If you want to see me and the babies you'll just have to get yourselves up to Colorado.

Maybe things are looking up for 2010 after all?

Probably being a second child plays a part

I don't take as many pictures of Will as I did of Kalena when she was this age. I'm sure that being a second child has something to do with that. Not that I'm any less fascinated by all the little things this time around, but having a toddler around means time that I might spend taking pictures now has to be spent making sure Kalena isn't dumping the bucket of oatmeal in the pantry, or fishing random stuff out of her mouth, or taking crayons away before something other than paper gets colored on. The other big difference I've noticed is that Will is a winter baby. In Colorado that means he spends like 90% of his time bundled in blankets. Kalena, being born during the Texas summer, spent most of her time in adorable onesies. It's a lot more fun to take pictures of a different onesie every day than to take pictures of a little face (cute as it is) sticking out of the same blankets all the time.

So I'm trying to make sure I take pictures when he isn't bundled. Because I know you guys don't want to miss out on this.

I put this picture in to show his eyes. I don't know how well you can see them, but they are deep blue and they've been that color since he was born. I know newborn eyes are usually a gray color but his were seriously blue right from the get go.

Found this gem in the old pictures

During all my sorting (which is still going on by the way) I found THIS awesome picture.

This isn't photoshopped or anything, I took this picture myself while I was working one day. (It's a pipe going in to an oil tank.) I have NO idea what happened that prompted someone to write this. I'll tell you what though, I was SO glad I had my camera in my truck because I knew no one would believe me otherwise.

P.S. Isn't it great that the "not" is underlined? Like someone might miss it otherwise?

MORE downfalls of digital cameras

Remember when I posted before about digital camera downfalls? (You: uhhh, no.) Well, I did.

Anyway, I got ambitious about scrabooking again. Not that I'm anywhere CLOSE to finishing with all those other pictures, but I thought it was about time to print some more. I started looking through all the pictures on my hard drive and realized that I have like a gazillion pictures on there. Apparently I am incapable of deleting pictures. In fact, not only am incapable of deleting them, I am paranoid about ACCIDENTALY deleting them. That would explain why I have mulitple copies of most of the pictures, sometimes with different names, sometimes in different folders. It would also explain why I have pictures of events that I wasn't even at. I mean, my nephews are cute, but do I really need a dozen pictures of Patrick at the zoo? No. Are they on my computer anyway? Yes indeed.

It's a mess. So today I'm working on sorting it all out and deleting some of that mess. Note to self: in the future, print pictures more often and DELETE pictures more often. Also? Maybe stop taking 8,000 pictures of everything AND insisting on copies of everyone else's pictures just because you can. Because let's be honest, I'm probably only going to scrabook about 5 of those.

Baby doll

The other day Kalena learned the word "baby." Or, as she says it, "be-be." She's said it about a million times since then. Today she wanted to carry around her be-be. In a bucket.

Back to that old country song life again

On Monday Brian's car broke down while he was driving back to work after lunch. The initial inspection showed that the timing belt was broken. We were hoping that was it, since that wouldn't have been too expensive to fix. But that wasn't all. OF COURSE. The engine is cracked. Which means it would have to be replaced. Which would run about $2,000.

Let me just tell you, spending $2,000 on a car that Brian only paid $6,000 for to begin with (and that was 9 years ago) definitely NOT on the list of things I want to do. So in just 6 months we've gone from having two cars that both ran just fine to having NO CARS AT ALL.

Story of my life.

Blessed

We blessed Will at church yesterday. Kirsta and Joe came down for the blessing, and despite a trip to urgent care for Patrick (ear infection and constricted airways) it was a fun couple of days. And now, pictures.

Here we are after the blessing. Kalena was mad because someone was holding Patrick. Obviously she is ignoring the fact that someone is also holding her. The grass is always greener I guess.

Brian with Will. As many pictures as we took we managed not to get any good ones of the blessing suit. It's all knit and it looks like it's got a little vest on it. Plus there's a bow tie. It's cute, you'll just have to take my word for it

Patrick and Kalena enjoying a little Finding Nemo while we made lunch after church. She apparently enjoyed that much more than the picture taking.

Help me out

I'm looking for recommendations today. I want to buy a double stroller, but I don't really know what I want. I DO know that I don't want to spend an arm and a leg, and I don't need a jogging stroller. I don't jog. Any favorites? Or any that I should definitely avoid? Help me out here!

Hopefully

Cross your fingers for me. That's all I'm saying.

Maybe it's because I took French in high school?

It REALLY bugs me when people use french words or phrases that they don't realize are French. It's not so obvious if it's just being said, but when people type out french words phonetically it is PAINFULLY obvious.

For example, today I saw this on a blog: "Zoot-a-lo!"

People. That is not some made up exclamation. It should be "zut alors" and it translates to something like "dang it" or "darn it."

Also, it's "voilà" not "walla."

Maybe I should mention here that it bugs me just as much when people screw up english expressions by just writing what they hear. I read this sentence in a book the other day, "I'd just assume leave things the way they are." That doesn't even make sense! I know that "just assume" sounds a lot like "just as soon" but the DON'T mean the same thing. A note here to the editor of that book-- um, isn't it your job to catch stuff like that? Yeah, I thought so.

So. What bugs you today?

6 weeks

When Kalena was 6 weeks old I was still recovering from a c-section and seriously dreading going back to work. Today I feel great and am loving being at home. Although, some days are DEFINITELY better than others.

Kalena was being nice enough to share her tiger. Don't worry, I didn't let her smother him.

Back on the Weight Watchers wagon

After I had Kalena it took quite a few months before I broke down and finally joined Weight Watchers. And then I got pregnant with Will after like a month of tracking points. I kept losing weight for the first six weeks of the pregnancy which meant the by the time people were noticing and complimenting me on the weight loss? I was 6 weeks along.

This time, no waiting around. The stakes are higher this time because Brian and I are competing. The prize? 24 hours of child free time that can be spent in increments to do whatever. I REALLY want that. So not only will I be weighing in for weight watchers, I'll be putting up a ticker here so I know the WHOLE INTERNET is watching me. Or at least the 5 people or so who read this blog:) Wish me luck!

Oh yeah, here's a family picture that will serve as the "before" picture.