Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Tagged

Tagged by Sara! Here is a picture of Grant late last September (just after we moved into our new house and probably just a few days after his falling-from-the-counter accident. This picture amazes me.....he has changed so much over the past 15 months! This is a picture of a baby who couldn't stand on his own, and now he has transformed into this sassy, sweet little kid! I hardly remember him being a baby anymore.....I'm glad I have videos (which maybe we'll have time to watch once the kids graduate from high school)!

Really quick, before I tag other people. I will post pictures hopefully soon, but we bought a minivan yesterday!! It's a used '07 Odyssey, and we really like it! Part of me can't believe we have two kids and a minivan.....wow! I really am old!

Okay, here are some people I'll tag (do it if you have time and want to.....don't worry about it if you don't, or if you've done it recently):
Leah
Corie
Sarah M.
Melissa M.
Kristen S.
Carissa

Instructions:

  1. Go to the place where you store all of your pictures on your computer and open up the 4th folder
  2. Open the 4th picture
  3. Post the picture and give an explanation
  4. Tag 4 people

Monday, December 22, 2008

Drew is 3 months! ......and an update on Grant.....

Our little guy is three months old today! He is making lots of noises and loves when people look at him....but he likes Mommy and other ladies more than he seems to like men! He hasn't quite laughed yet, but yesterday when I'd surprise him and make a funny noise, he'd smile and say "haaaa." He's still not on a great schedule with sleeping.....he's not nearly as consistent as Grant was at this age. He usually gets 6-7 hour stretches at night, but that means he sometimes wakes up at 3am to eat (depending on what time I last fed him). And until a few days ago, he'd usually get one good 1+ hour nap per day (plus some shorter ones), but for the past couple of days he's taken all very short naps! I hope this is just a stage!

Here are some recent pictures of my little sweetie!


We hung Christmas ornaments about 10 days ago, and Grant had a great time! He loved this school bus ornament we got last year.....he thought it was a toy and kept riding it around his railroad tracks. We had a few ornament casualties.....we're learning to put the more breakable ones up high, out of his reach! Grant is having fun this Christmas season. He loves pointing out (and naming) Christmas trees, snowmen, Santa, gingerbread houses, presents and other things when he sees them. He was talking with our neighbor Brynna the other night, and she asked him what he wanted Santa to bring him for Christmas. He said, "cereal bar." So he doesn't completely understand the concept of Santa.....next year I'm sure it will be a different story!

Here we are at Grant's Christmas party for school last week. It's always fun seeing him interact with other kids in his class.....and I was happy to see that other kids spit out their half-chewed up food too! Maybe that's where Grant learned how to do that??!Grant has now been sleeping in his toddler bed for seven nights. It's been a bumpy ride, but I think he's finally getting used to it. The past few nights he hasn't woken up at all! It was really funny.....the second night we tried it, Dean was downstairs about five minutes after putting him to bed. He heard a noise and went to find Grant playing at his train table (which is downstairs), very quietly! Such a sneaky little kid!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Snow Pictures

Here are a few pictures of the snow last Wednesday. Anyone in Michigan who's reading this, I know it's nothing compared to what you're used to! But it was the top story on our news that night, and it was a big deal to us Texans! This one shows how excited Grant was about his first experience with snow: he didn't care for it much at all! About three or four hours later I took these pictures (around 11:30pm when it was about finished):

Poor hibiscus flower.....it was just as surprised by the snow as we were!

I love how it piled up on the Sago Palms!
Front yard:


I tried to write a comment about global warming on our car (and a few other places), but the snow was too thick and icy....so it never came out. We saw on the news earlier that night a picture of a car with "Global warming??" written on the window. Very funny (at least to us)!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Four years ago today.....

Dean and I got engaged! I can't believe it's been four years already! Four years, two children, and many crazy experiences later, and he still puts up with me!

That Christmas season was so busy (we seem to have many fewer things planned now that we're married and have kids!). But that year it seemed like every weekend we had one or two events planned. So Dean had mentioned early in December that he wanted to have a date night on the 17th (a Friday). That night, we went out to eat at a fancy restaurant at the top of the Hilton hotel, then we saw the Houston Ballet perform The Nutcracker (one of my all-time favorite things to do). Afterwards we went to Herrman Park to walk around and look at Christmas lights. Unfortunately, the lights were already off because it too late! But we walked around anyway, and he proposed at the same place where we'd had our first kiss four months before.

Today, we commemorated this romantic occasion by chasing our crazy two-year-old around JCPenney as we tried to have family pictures made (he was NOT excited about picture time, and kept trying to leave!). Then at noon, I had a minor surgery related to childbirth (still finishing up my healing), and we spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with our Dr. Jeckyll/Mr. Hyde child......I swear, one minute he is so precious, and the next minute he is whining, screaming, and throwing things! Life is so much fun with kids! :) (just kidding of course!)

This was taken the night after we got engaged, at my friend Ashley's wedding.

Here are a couple more pictures of us from around that time.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Weekly Update

These pictures aren't from this week, but they're ones I've been wanting to post from earlier this month:

Grant loves trying to give Drew his pacifier.
Monthly monkey picture. This was his two-month picture taken in late Nov. I'm trying to take one per month in the same pose, so I can look later and see how he's grown.
Yuck! Here's Drew after drinking a bottle from Daddy. Drew is a spitter, just like his brother!Daddy and Grant:
Grant can swing on big-kid swings now! He usually still prefers his little baby swing, though....
Here's his new train set that we got for his birthday. Grant spends a lot of time playing with his choo-choos.....he likes to play by himself, but then he'll come grab our hands and say "show choo-choos" when he wants to show us something he's built or when he just wants some company. The table doesn't usually look this nice, though....he doesn't keep the tracks together very well!

Silly Grant......

We've had a busy week! Grant, Dean and I all got sick last week (Dean being the worst)....it was some kind of stomach bug, but thankfully Drew didn't ever seem to get it. We're mostly better now, although Dean is still trying to get completely back to normal.

And.....everyone in Texas knows this, but we got snow on Wednesday! It was amazing.....they didn't predict it at all (at least for Houston). But that evening after dark, I looked outside and saw something white on top of Amminadab's cat house. Grant and I went out to play in it for a while (this was the night Dean got sick, so he stayed inside), but Grant surprisingly wasn't very excited about it. He wanted to come in after a few minutes!

A while later, after putting Grant to bed, the snow kept coming down harder and harder, until about 11:45 that night. Drew and I went outside to take pictures, and then later I came out again by myself to play. I felt like a little kid! By the time it stopped, we had probably over 2 inches in our backyard. It was majestic! I never dreamed I'd see that much snow in Texas. Our next-door neighbor built a huge snowman.....a real snowman, not a little 12-inch one!

And.....one other big event.....Grant slept in his toddler bed last night! We moved it into his current room, because we figured we might be expecting too much by asking him to change rooms AND beds. About 5 minutes after Dean left his room, we were downstairs and heard him talking loudly (we could tell he had opened his door). He was standing inside his room and said "door open!" when Dean went upstairs. He acted surprised, as if the door had magically opened by itself! This happened a few times before he finally went to sleep. And he woke up two or three more times after we went to sleep. Each time, he got out of his bed and came out of his room, calling for Daddy. So we'll see how he does tonight and for his nap today.....we might have to put a childproof handle on the inside of his door.

Today we are going to Grant's Mother's Day Out Christmas party, then Dean will be on his own with the boys while I get my hair cut and go to my doctor's appointment. He was on his own with them about 10 days ago and did great!