Our trip, part three: Corie and Pat's wedding day!

It's taken me a while to continue posting pictures of our vacation to Alabama!

Here's Corie after getting her makeup done that morning. She looked so pretty!!! By the way, Friday and Saturday were both so nice for me, because I got to leave my boys and actually do girly things with other girls (the bridesmaids' lunch, hair appointments, Corie's makeup appointment)....all by myself, without worrying about Drew getting fussy, hungry or tired.....and without worrying about Grant throwing a fit and embarrassing me! Like I've said before, I love my boys more than anything, but I had reached the tipping point before this vacation. These two days were such a breath of fresh air for me! And Dean was so good at carting the boys around downtown Birmingham.....which I know was not easy!

Anyway, here's Corie getting ready before pictures.....

Corie and Mom......
The ceremony took place at the front of the hotel, on this little circle drive. It was a perfect place, and the hotel was just beautiful.....perfect for a wedding. They got married up on these steps.....

Aren't her flowers and ring amazing?!
The boys stayed with a babysitter during the ceremony. They were both so tired, and neither did very well. So we picked them up after the ceremony was over (we could hear Drew crying from the cake room, which happened to be next to the babysitting room). We thought Grant would have a lot of fun at the reception, but he was very clingy to Daddy. They were both pretty out of sorts.....I guess that's what four nights (up to that point) of going to bed at 10-11pm will do to little kids! Anyway, here's a picture of the two of us.......
.......and a not-so-successful attempt at a family picture!
Steve and Jennifer!! By the way......I keep meaning to post this.....they got engaged a little over a week ago! So it was exactly a week after Corie's wedding. We are still waiting to hear when they're getting married, but we're so happy for them! This was a really cute picture of them....
One of Corie's bridesmaids, Stephanie, held Drew towards the end of the reception. He did really well for a while, but here he's not too excited about seeing Uncle Steve! By the way, all of you Bryan people.....doesn't Stephanie look like she could be Melissa and Rebecca P's sister?? Just something that struck me the first time I saw her....and never got over how much she looks like them!
Corie and Pat rode off in her Dad's old Packard.....this is actually how Corie and her dad arrived at the wedding too (Dad got her out of the car, then they walked down the aisle). Very cool! Grant was playing with Staci (Dean and Corie's cousin), and she's telling him to wave goodbye. I thought this picture turned out so cute!

Girls and boys

Grant pretty much understands the difference between girls and boys; if you ask him (for example), "Is Jacob a girl or boy?" he will usually say the right thing (sometimes after thinking about it for a second!). And when he's referring to his teachers or some other girls, he'll usually say "she" to refer to them.

But he hasn't quite grasped the concept of sisters and brothers yet. He knows that his friend Jacob has a sister named Catherine (he'll ask, "where's Jacob?" then right afterwards, "where's Catherine?"). Today we were in the car and I asked him, "what's Jacob's sister's name?" He said her name. Then I asked, "Do you have a sister?" He said, "Name's Drew." Then I asked, "Is Mommy a girl or a boy?" And he said, "No, you're Mommy." So I guess I am neither!

Also, Drew has been so chatty this weekend.....today he said very clearly, "da da da da!" Dean happened to be right there in front of him, but I really don't think he was calling Dean "da da." If Drew is anything like his older brother, he won't say much of anything for another 7 or 8 months!

Today.....

....my little(st) guy is seven months old! It's amazing how lately he's changing a lot; he's developing some characteristics of an older baby....like......

If he's awake when I lay him down to sleep, he'll turn in his crib and cry as he watches me walk out of his room (one of the saddest sounds in the world, and one of the reasons why I've been nursing him to sleep if I can.....even though I know it's probably a mistake!).

If he hears something that's interesting to him, he turns his entire body to find where it's coming from. As an aside, it's so cute when babies kind of jerk their heads very quickly, and without much control. Then for a second afterwards you see their eyes trying to catch up and focus! I noticed this with Grant and now I'm noticing it with Drew. Very random, but I think it's so cute!

He's not quite crawling yet, but he can lunge for an object, then get himself back into a sitting position (but not if he's completely on his belly). And he's learned how to get onto his hands and knees and rock back and forth.....

He loves his big brother more and more.....he always gets excited when Grant comes near him.....sometimes he'll shriek and turn towards me and grab me (he thinks Grant's going to come tickle him!). And he definitely likes to instigate playtime now.....if he's laying on the floor next to Grant, he'll always roll over and start grabbing Grant's face or hair, while laughing!

Related to this.....on Sunday, the four of us went to Home Depot to look at options for countertops and backsplash for our kitchen. Grant loves Home Depot and he likes riding in the little racecar shopping carts. Well, we figured Drew is now old enough to sit with him. They looked so sweet sitting next to each other.....Drew kept trying to reach over and grab Grant's steering wheel! Then he'd turn and try to mess with Grant's hair or face. Grant actually took it well.....he was annoyed but didn't freak out too badly. It was one of my favorite sights of my kids up to this point......

He has started trying to drink out of our cups too.....and yesterday he actually succeeded in taking a couple of sips from his sippy cup (we've tried a couple times before, but he's always just chewed on the plastic).

He doesn't have separation anxiety yet (like Grant did by this age), but when he's tired, he only wants Mommy. Last Sunday at church, he did fine when I dropped him off. But once he got tired, he wouldn't stop crying until I showed up after they paged me. Once I took him, he immediately calmed down and sat there happily in my arms!

His second tooth is starting to pop out today! So now he'll have his bottom two front teeth.

He's making all kinds of gurgling noises and some consonant sounds, but I don't think as many as Grant was doing by this point.....

I can't leave him on top of a couch or bed for more than a few seconds.....this morning he fell off the couch when I walked into the kitchen to grab something (I don't know why I didn't just take a second to move him to the floor in the first place!). And....while we were at Dean's parents' house last week, I laid him down to sleep on the guest bed (a double bed), and I put pillows all around him. I came in to check on him about 45 minutes later. When I opened the door, I could hear crying but there was no sign of Drew (but the pillows were all still there). I went to the side of the bed, then I looked UNDER the bed and there he was, facing out, completely under the bed! We figure he must have fallen off, then scooted backwards to get underneath it. It scared me to death, but he stopped crying as soon as I picked him up! Grant could sense the drama (I was holding him when we went into the room), and he explained everything to Dean when he got out of the shower!

Our trip, part two: the rehearsal dinner.....

We have successfully completed two days now since Dean's been back at work. It has gone okay....for some reason, I'm always nervous when I'm about to have the boys all to myself after Dean's taken some time off (almost as if I've never been alone with both of them before!). But Grant definitely prefers Daddy right now over me! He asks where Dean is during the day, and when Dean's home he acts like I'm not even here. He wants Dean to play with him and help him with everything. Oh well, at least Drew still likes me!! :)

Here are some more pictures from our trip.....here's Dean with the boys before the rehearsal dinner (you can clearly see in this picture how Drew is losing a lot of hair, except on the sides! It looks funny and people have commented a few times that he looks like a hassidic Jew!). You'll also notice that almost every picture of Grant from this trip shows him sucking on his pacifier. He was tired and wouldn't stand for it to be taken away from him almost the entire time.

Drew fell asleep for a few minutes here, a few minutes there. But the restaurant was loud and he had a hard time staying asleep. Dean and I (and his mom!) ate in shifts!! Not the most ideal situation, but we didn't really have any other options!
I think this is such a cute picture of Corie and Mom. Look at these desserts (apple cobbler and chocolate cake).....they were AMAZING!! Dean and I had to leave when they boys reached their final limit, and I only got to eat a few bites of mine. The sacrifices we make for our children..... :)
This is Memaw (Dean's grandmother) and his Aunt Janet:
Of course we get in the car to drive back to the hotel, and Grant cheered up and was in the greatest mood! He even took his paci out and smiled for the camera while I took pictures of him! That stinker......
I was going to also post pictures of the wedding day, but it frustrates me that blogger loads all of the pictures at the top of the post, and it loads them backwards (or LIFO, in accounting speak!). So you have to drag all of them to the right place. If anyone has any tips on how to avoid doing this (aside from planning before you upload), let me know! Anyway, I will post wedding day pictures the next time I have a chance. Now it's time to watch 24 (we didn't get a chance to watch it last night)......

Trip to Alabama, part one: on the road......

First.......congratulations, Corie and Pat!! You've made it through one week of marriage!!!Corie looked so beautiful on her wedding day.....more about that later.....I have to break up our trip into sections or else I will have a REALLY long post!

We are back! We had a really fun trip to Corie and Pat's wedding in Alabama. It was our first trip as a family of four....we DROVE over 700 miles to Birmingham, stopping in Baton Rouge on our first night. I was really unsure how the car ride would go, since Drew is not a big fan of his carseat. And I was even more nervous about staying in the hotel rooms, since Grant has never done well outside of his own bed and his own room. We had some really late nights......about 10-11pm was the normal bedtime for Grant. Yikes! He is the master at using stall tactics to stay awake. But we survived and had a great time. And Drew learned the art of falling asleep in his carseat quite well!

A couple of pictures from the first couple of days on the road. I sat in the backseat between the boys for some of the trip (thank you, minivan...I never could have done this in our Pathfinder!). It allowed me to feed Drew and try to keep him happy when he started getting fussy. Grant asked to watch Lightning McQueen ("I wanna watch Li Queen!") every time we got in the car. We were thinking today that he probably watched Cars, on average, about once per day on our trip. That boy stays completely glued to the TV when that movie is on......I'll point out school buses or tractors (things he loves to look at), and he will barely turn his head to glance at them, before darting his eyes back to the screen. He has even started quoting lines from the movie!!

Some pictures from the first couple of days on the road.....

Here's Grant at our hotel room in Baton Rouge making coffee! He loves helping me make coffee in the mornings, and he had SO much fun with this little coffee maker.
Watching Cars the next morning.....

We stopped at a National Park in Mississippi to take a break. Most of our stops were very ill-timed (once we stopped basically on the side of the road for twenty minutes to let Grant get out and run around, and so that I could feed Drew. Then we got back on the road and two miles later passed a city park with a playground that would have been perfect!). Anyway.....this was actually a good stop, because it had a beautiful lake and this playground. The boys had fun!
Later that day, we drove into Tuscaloosa and Grant had fun playing on campus. Here are some pictures from the quad.....so pretty!! As an Aggie, I must admit that Alabama's campus is a lot prettier than ours!
Okay, more later on the actual wedding festivities.......

Mister Cutie

Some recent cute pictures of Drew.....
He chews on his gums all the time now, and loves to make blowing/sputtering noises with his lips:First tooth! You can barely see it poking through in this picture (taken a few days ago). Now it's a lot more obvious.
Here he's trying on a baptismal dress that has been worn by many generations in our family. He wasn't in a good mood and didn't enjoy that experience very much!
A few other silly pictures.....

New haircut

Grant and I both got haircuts a couple of weeks ago. He did GREAT!! It was his first professional haircut since last April, when he was about 16 months old. At that point, he was extremely nervous and didn't enjoy the experience (to say the least!), even when he sat on my lap.

This time he was wonderful! We told him he might get a lollipop if he did well, so maybe that was a motivator (he saw the jar of lollipops when he sat down). But he wasn't nervous at all! He just sat there patiently while Lita cut away, and he didn't even get nervous about getting it blow-dried at the end. With our difficult child, it's good to know that at least haircuts (hopefully) won't be hard anymore! I've heard about a lot of kids his age who go to those haircut places designed for kids, and they still won't get their hair cut, even when they get to watch movies and play with toys!

Here's our handsome little man afterwards:

Spider webs

Aren't these so neat?! One morning about 10 days ago, it was very foggy outside and the dew droplets settled on these spider webs. They were so thick that they caught my eye when I was standing inside (about 30 feet away). The boys and I went out to look at them and take pictures. Spiders must spend so much time building these.....they look just perfect! Such an amazing creation. We watched Charlotte's Web recently, and part of me was looking for a message the spider was trying to send to us! :)

Quick update

No pictures.....I have had so little free time to do much of anything in the way of blogging or pictures in the past two weeks! This week the boys and I spent a couple of nights up at my parents' house, just to get some time away. Dean is working long hours at work, and I needed to get away or else I was going to go crazy!

It was nice to have a change of scenery and to get some help with the boys. Today we went to my friend Sierra's house to play (she has two little kids too, so we help each other to feel normal!), then the boys and I went to Kemah for the afternoon. Grant enjoyed watching the boats and the little train, and he loved looking at the fish in the Aquarium restaurant. He was pointing them out to Drew: "You see that big shark, Drew?"

We're going to an Easter egg hunt tomorrow, and then hopefully to take some pictures in the bluebonnets. The time has gone so fast this spring.....I forget that it's that time of year already! I'll be on my own with the boys this weekend, so hopefully I can successfully take their pictures and get them to cooperate! It will definitely be an adventure.

Drew had his 6-month checkup yesterday.....he is doing fine and handled his shots very well. He weighs 18 lbs, 10 oz, and all of his measurements are in the 60s, percentile-wise. Then last night was the first night I let him cry himself back to sleep in the middle of the night. He woke up at midnight (I fed him then), but then he woke up at 4am......I went into his room, patted his back, and went back to sleep! I know he cried for a while, but I just can't let him get into the habit of waking up in the middle of the night. Grant did this from about 7-11 months, and I don't want to go down that road again!

But I did notice this morning that his little front left tooth is about to pop out! So....now that I think of it.....if he wakes up tonight, I may feed him and give him some Tylenol, just in case he's really in pain!

Okay, more later. It has been a rough couple of weeks and I feel like a zombie. We are really looking forward to our trip next week to Corie's wedding!