George's well visits: 2, 4, and 6 months!

Obviously since I have been terrible at blogging, I've missed putting all of George's stats up on the blog. So here we are: the results of his well visits from 2, 4, and 6 months old!!

8 week appointment: 
Weight: 13lbs 11oz (94%). Height: 24.25" (93%). Head circumference: 16.25" (86%).
Finally out of the newborn sleep-all-the-time stage and just getting out of a two week hardly-sleep-ever stage. A champion eater and growing fatty.  Unlike Henry, hardly spits up, and generally super chill.
 

i know this picture isn't that flattering, but i still love it because FATNESS!!

4 month appointment:
Weight: 16lbs (73%). Height: 27" (97%). Head circumference: 17.25 (87%). 
Still a champ eater. Co-slept with us which was cute to wake up to but annoying the rest of the time ;).  SUCH a happy, smiley, chill baby.

pinchable! #amiright

6 month appointment:
Weight: 18.05 lbs (65%). Height: 28.5" (97%). Head circumference: 17.75 (84%).
Still loves to nurse, but refuses to eat baby food. Also will not sleep unless attached to me (holding or nursing). I asked the doctor about starting cry-it-out because I was nearing my wits end (he agreed it was a good idea). I brought up the fact that he hated baby food, and the Dr recommended to stop trying baby food for a few weeks and starting it again (I'll post more about that later).

sitting up on his own and everything. such a stud.

George has such a delightful, chill, happy personality. He is seriously such a joy to be around, and can always be counted on for a huge smile. He loves music and playing games like patty cake. He loves being in the Ergo and will almost always fall asleep in it [in a matter of minutes]. Henry and George love each other and are so sweet with each other, and my favorite thing is when they do something silly that makes them both crack up. I love my sweet boys!! 

Flashback: Christmas preparations

In early December we had a church Christmas party that we attended. Santa was also in attendance. Last year Henry did not do well with Santa, so we were interested to see how he'd do this year. We tried to hype him up a bit and mentally prepare him ;) Unfortunately, that didn't really work...

Poor Santa ;)

George is so chill and happy that he was just looking around. Compared to Henry's experience, it was a cake walk for Santa. He almost seems bored in the pic...

I had to work on convincing Josh that we needed to put up Christmas decorations. Which is funny because it used to be the opposite: I was scrooge and Josh would have to talk me into doing anything Christmas-related. I think it comes along with the territory of having kids: now I want to have memory-making stuff for the kids, and Josh doesn't want to deal with the mess that comes with combining kids and decorations. In the end, we put up the tree and decorations! The ornaments on the tree almost made me lose my mind... because Henry thought it was the coolest thing ever to take the ornaments off and throw them on the ground. I'm just glad the tree didn't fall over. But man those ornaments were practically the death of me. By the end of the month Henry had gotten much better about leaving them alone, thank goodness.

the cutest present ever

kitteh?

Because Henry's birthday is December 15, the presents under the tree were both for Christmas and his birthday. Surprisingly Henry mostly left the presents alone. Every once in a while he would get curious, but we'd just ask him to put them back and he did a good job. Such a stud :)

Flashback: Family Pictures 2013

As I mentioned in my last post, our dear friend Emily was kind enough to take some family pictures for us while her and Dave were visiting. You can tell how amazing of a photographer she is just from looking at her pictures, but add the fact that our kids were NOT cooperating, and I'm amazed she even got any decent pictures at all (let alone awesome ones!!). A HUGE thank you to Emily!!

hehehe

Emily worked photoshop magic on this pic, which gave me the final push I needed to finally dye my hair purple.

Thanks so much Emily, WE LOVE YOU! And Davey too, duh ;)

Flashback: Thanksgiving VIDEO!

Our vacation, captured and pieced together beautifully by Dave:

Flashback: Sesame Street Live

When I saw that 'Sesame Street Live - Elmo Makes Music' was coming to our city, I knew Henry would really enjoy it. He's never been to any kind of show or movie, so I was a little nervous. But Elmo was involved, so I had hope!! The show was on November 13th, and I was almost foolish enough to try and bring both kids by myself. Then I smartened up and asked a friend if she could watch George, and thankfully she was able to. That made it so I was able to just focus on Henry having a blast!

Ready to go!

In the theater. "What is this magic?!"

The show was actually really cute and fun. They periodically had the monsters come out in the audience and wave to the kids and interact. I was a little miffed because the row in front of us was empty, but the monsters couldn't come down it because someone put their car seat in the way. Way to ruin our fun, stranger!! Sorry, I digress...  At one point a random monster (pictured below) managed to make their way close enough to us to give Henry a high five. While I think Henry was a bit taken off guard, he thought it was pretty cool. I didn't really get a picture of that moment, but you can imagine it ;)

Henry got to high five this beautiful monster. [Also see lovely fun-blocking family two rows in front of us...grr]

At first I had Henry set up in the chair next to me. But that got a bit distracting, as it was one of those movie-theater style chairs that was trying to eat him. I ended up sitting him in my lap--where he stayed for almost the entire time (over an hour!). Impressive, I know.

Happiness.

There were a lot of different musical numbers, most of which were about making music. One or two might have been about finding lost instruments or something. [Insert joke about Sesame Street beating a dead horse by making music about making music, which adults find monotonous but children find amazing].

Henry was literally ENTHRALLED the entire time, which actually made it really fun for both of us. It's an awesome feeling to see your child be so happy, and to be able to share that moment with them :) Even if it's over seeing Elmo and the rest of the Sesame Street gang dancing and singing in real life.

Captivated. Maybe there was some sort of subliminal brainwashing going on.

singing & dancing

I think Elmo came out near us maybe once or twice. But like I mentioned, the car seat family...

Rockin robin birds with Big Bird

I will say something about this production... they definitely know how to make money. They have it down to a science. More like an art form, really. For example: they have an intermission, and the second those stage lights start dimming, people come out with giant bunches of helium Elmo balloons. Cue kids yelling saying "Elmo! Balloon! Oooh!" and cue parents thinking *Aww, maybe I'll be nice and get a balloon for my kid, that would be cute*. So the balloon guy comes closer and you overhear someone ask how much the balloons are. Cue balloon guy saying "ten dollars", and then cue frazzled parents attempting to steer their balloon-craving children away, resulting in heartache and tantrums. In public. You can all see where this is heading... Cha-ching!

We went out in the lobby during intermission to see what else they were selling. Everything was outrageously priced, so instead of purchasing anything I just took pictures of Henry and Elmo in front of the merch booth ;)  

"What's up, Elmo?"

After intermission, Henry started to get a bit more antsy. He stayed in my lap for about ten more minutes, and then stood up in front of his chair for the rest of the time (about 15 minutes). All the dancing and singing [combined with my ample supply of Goldfish] kept him from wandering away. ;)

They did cool black light stuff where only shoes lit up on stage

It ended up being a really fun experience, and it was completely worth the money, time, and child-geared acting. Henry was completely in awe of the whole show, and if they come back to our city next year I'm sure we will be going again! :)

Flashback: Halloween!

You know you're super behind in blogging when at least three major holidays have passed since the one you're blogging about... ;) haha. Anyways, HALLOWEEN!!!! Since Henry has been obsessed with Elmo this past year, our friends let us borrow their Elmo costume (thanks Dorris!) and all of Henry's Elmo dreams came true ;). And to go along with Elmo, I decided to have George be the cookie monster. It was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen (although I've been known to be biased, I suppose).

Star of the show. A random old lady even asked to take a picture because she thought he was so cute.

But really, this is the cutest EVER.

I was a cat, duh. Leopard pants + random cat ears + makeup? Easiest costume ever and I sort of looked like I tried. Josh thinks Halloween is annoying and didn't dress up, so we'll just say he went as Scrooge ;)

meow

the only picture I managed to get of them together #halloweenfail

We ended up going over to a friends house for the evening, since they live in a neighborhood and we just live in townhouses. Their neighborhood had a trunk-or-treat, so we walked down to where everyone's vehicles were lined up. I was pretty excited to have Henry collect candy for me. I left Josh with the Cookie Monster and took my little Elmo to go get some treats. Unfortunately, Henry was not on the same page as me... he did NOT understand that we were just collecting the candy and that I he would eat it all later. So with each new piece he would just try to hand it to me to open. He didn't want them going into his bucket, which he probably thought is where candy goes to die. When I wouldn't open each new treat, he started to get pretty frustrated and was probably thinking "what is the point of this, lady?! OPEN THIS!!!". This lovely meltdown resulted in me carrying him from vehicle to vehicle to collect my candy, while putting on a little smile and saying "I guess he's just a little to young to get it, he just wants to eat every piece!" Add nervous laughter (from me), tears (from Henry), and commiseration stories (from them), and we finally made it to each trunk.

"Mom, I must eat all of this immediately"

After I had collected all the candy (because let's face it--I did all the work!), we grabbed some food from the neighborhood potluck. I considered switching kids and making the rounds a second time, but George is just too youthful looking and I knew I'd get busted.

Elmo likes carbs

After we got some food, both kids were totally over Halloween. It was cold outside, George was hungry, and Henry was just eating lots of rolls and trying [unsuccessfully] to open candy wrappers. I started to get over it too... after all that hard work, I didn't even get that much good candy. People must have thought that I was actually going to let my child eat all of that candy (ha!), so they kept giving us age-appropriate things like twizzlers and pretzels. Umm...do I look like I want to eat pretzels?!?! Unless they are smothered in chocolate, no thank you.

We ditched the trunk-or-treat and went back to our friends house to hang out and let the kiddos play. Unfortunately, Henry isn't always the most graceful of children. I have no idea where he got that trait from ;) The poor kid tripped over a pillow (that he had put on the ground!), and fell headfirst right into our friends couch. He did a little cry for about .5 seconds and then ran off to keep playing. A few moments later he ran a lap past me and I noticed something on his eye. Apparently the couch was a little mad at Henry's face, and gave him his first official black eye. He was just having too much fun playing to care!!

The next day. He was giving the camera a pouty model look.

Despite the setbacks, we did have a fun time. :) I am looking forward to next year when Henry will understand Halloween a little bit better, and I he can get a killer candy stash for me to demolish. The black eye wasn't super fun, but he got a story out of it. And Henry and George were the cutest Sesame Street characters I've ever seen, so what more could you ask for?!