Big Night for Sissy!

Last night Reagan changed her first diaper. She also changed his clothes while she was at it. She was tickled to death and so proud of herself. She is a great big sister and loves to help and take care of little brother. She has gotten very protective of him and will even question me on things - Is the bath water too hot? Should you be holding him like that? Did you fix a big enough bottle? She is a mess!

Alex using sissy as a trampoline.

Our awesome kiddos.

Funny Pictures...

It had been a while since I posted anything to the blog so I thought I would add a few pictures from the past couple of weeks.

Someone's head is a little too big for this shirt!

The only way I could get a picture of him laying on the Boppy was when he was asleep. When he is awake he is struggling to sit up and looks funny!

"Reading" his book while Mommy and Nana shop at the mall.

Cute little outfit from Gap.

Mommy put a blanket on my head while we were waiting for sissy yesterday to get off the bus to keep the cold wind off me. I look silly but never seemed to mind it.

Mommy must really like putting blankets on my head!

Checking out the Christmas tree for the first time.

Mimi couldn't wait to put me in the highchair for the first time.

Loves playing with his toes now!

Such a happy baby!

First Thanksgiving...

Alex's first Thanksgiving wasn't such a big deal for him given that Thanksgiving is all about eating and he is still on formula only. But he had a good time visiting with family and "looking" through the sale ads for Black Friday.

Paper is his new favorite toy so he had a great time with all the sale ads.

Thanksgiving is hard on Mommy's Little Turkey!

A Little Ink...

Yesterday morning Reagan found her stash of temporary tattoos and decided she wanted one. Matt helped her put on a giant Pirates of the Caribbean tat on her arm. They then decided Alex needed to join in the fun so he got a tattoo too!

The Cat and the Watercooler...

Let me start out by saying Juno is not a very smart cat. We have wondered several times if she was dropped on her head as a kitten. Lately she has become obsessed with water. Yes, we have the only cat in the world that actually likes water. She plays in the toilets, she plays in the bath tub, she is always curious about what is going on when Alex is taking a bath, etc.

A few weeks age we discovered water all over our dining room floor. After some investigation we discovered the water jugs that we buy to make Alex's bottles had holes in them, all four of them. Upon further inspection we noticed the holes we actually bite marks. Juno had chewed through all 4 plastic jugs of water and water had spilled out all over the floor. She did this again a week later when we forgot to put the jugs in the pantry.

Things got even more interesting when we once again found water in the dining room. However, this time there were no jugs in there to be leaking. So we really weren't sure what had happened unless the Highbridge Springs water cooler was leaking. We have one of those 5 gallon water cooler with the 2 spouts on the front that you can push for water. A short time later we heard water pouring out of it. Juno had figured out how to push down the lever and was letting water pour of the cooler!

So we put foil across the levers hoping it would discourage her since they would be harder to get to. Wrong. She just managed to get the foil off the levers and then got water everywhere again. So on to plan B. Matt put heavy duty packaging tape across the front of the levers where it was hard for Juno to get to them. We can put a cup under it and reach in above it to fill it but she can't get her paw in there. Her answer? Chew through the tape. And she did. Chewed it enough to be able to rip it away.

Now there are several layers of tape across it and hopefully this will at least slow her down. There is already teeth marks in the tape but so far she hasn't gotten through it.

However, I guess she was bored since she couldn't get to the water and decided she wanted fresh food last night and started to chew through the bag of cat food. Luckily I heard her and was able to stop it before we had a full bag of cat food all over our laundry room!!

Since I technically picked this cat out, I am wondering if Matt will ever trust me to pick out a pet for us ever again...

Funny Sounds...

Just a quick post of a video that hopefully will make you laugh, I know I do every time I watch it. This is Alex's new fun trick. Enjoy!

Tough Life...

This past weekend I went to Gatlinburg for a night for our annual Bunco shopping trip. While I was gone I got a video and a couple of pictures from daddy. From the looks of it all they did while I was gone was play. Daddy played with the baby so much it wore him out and he actually fell asleep in his jumperoo and on his play mat.

Here is the video of him laughing at daddy while in his jumperoo:

And here are the pictures of the baby after some hard times playing with daddy:

Both times Matt said he would just be playing away and all of a sudden would get quiet and Matt looked over to find him sound asleep. It is just so hard being the baby!

Our Jumping Bean...

If you didn't already know, Alex is an extremely active child.  He is always kicking, moving and trying to do something. We got a Johnny Jumpup type thing from our friends, the Coxs, as a baby shower gift. I had no idea how much he would love it. I ended up having to order one for his Mimi's house too. He loves getting in there and jumping around. Last Wednesday night he was having so much fun I was able to get a good picture and a video of him.

Happy baby!!

Down Goes the 1st Toy...

It took less than 4 months for Alex to break his first toy. He has just about put the bird on his play mat out of order. This little innocent bird goes up and down from the bar across his mat. He holds onto it and prevents it from going back up. I took a video of him "playing" with it on Friday. You can hear it clicking before he even gets a hold of it, which it did not do before he started playing with it.

I LOVE Bath Time!

Just a little post to share some bath time fun from last night. While the little man was in the tub, Reagan was talking to him and he was just playing like crazy. I got the tail end of it on my phone but we have better video on the video camera. I thought I would share the small amount I caught and a cute picture of him after bath time.

Wanting to stand up and play after bath time instead of getting dressed:

Spoiled Rotten Baby...

Yesterday was a rough day on the baby boy. All of the family was home all day and therefore he would not nap for fear of missing something. At one point he was in his exersaucer with us in the kitchen and laid his head down on the edge of the seat from exhaustion but would not close those eyes. There was just too much to be seen.

Tiredness finally started getting the best of him and he started fussing just a little. I put him in his swing because that typically knocks him out. Not this time. He started fussing and squirming around. Daddy says I am spoiling him. Daddy was proven right yesterday when as soon as I hit the stop button the swing the fussing stopped and that little turd smiled at me. As I picked him up he actually laughed! I am pretty sure that was his way of calling me a sucker. But within minutes of me holding him he was asleep so at least it wasn't for nothing.

Later that night he showed us again that a 4 month old baby is smarter than you think. I had him asleep for the night when Matt took him back to his room. Halfway down the hall Matt said he popped those eyes open and smiled at him. That is sometimes a bad sign for things to come. He put him in the crib anyways just to see what would happen. Most of the time he will put himself to sleep but if he is really awake it takes a few visits from us to retrieve a paci to help him fall back to sleep.

Last night was one of those nights. He would lie in the crib for a few minutes and then would fuss. Matt would go down the hall and when he would look over into the crib our precious little turd would start smiling, laughing and wiggling around like he was just so excited to see his daddy that he couldn't stand it. Matt would give him the paci and wait until he calmed down before coming back to bed. This ritual went on about 3 times before sleep got the best of him and he went down for the night.

I had to laugh as I lay in bed listening to him fuss through the monitor only to hear it turn into laughing as soon as Matt got there.

Now who says a baby can't figure out how to get what he wants at 4 months old???

Halloween fun begins...

It's only the 19th of October and we have already had lots of Halloween fun. This past weekend we went to the campground for the Halloween festivities. Reagan went down Friday night and planted magic pumpkin seeds. She spent the night and visited the pumpkin patch the next morning to find the magic pumpkins that had grown over night! She even picked out one for Alex. She hung out with Nana and Poppy all day playing games, single handily supporting the cake walk (thanks to Nana and Poppy) and painting the pumpkins for her and Alex. She also carved some pumpkins with Nana and Aunt Kathy. Matt, Alex and I joined in the fun later that afternoon for the chili cook-off, dinner, costume contest and trick-or-treating.

At the cook off, Matt and John Cox were 2 of the 3 judges. It was a blind test taste and they ended up picking dad's as second place. We had lots of fun with that one. Apparently dad needs to do a better job picking and paying the judges!

After dinner we dressed the kids up for the costume contest. Kids came out of the woodwork it seemed like. I wondered if there would be any other babies and there ended up being about 15! Alex took home 2nd place as a baby robot. We were pretty excited since there was some touch competition! Reagan had a ton of kids in her 7-12 year old age group so unfortunately she didn't win but she still had a good time as a devil cheerleader.

On Sunday the 4 of us headed out to Boyd's Orchard to find our pumpkin to be carved. It was a beautiful but very windy day. We again tried to mimic one of the pictures Matt has of Reagan as a baby. She is standing behind 2 pumpkins propped up on them with her arms. You can see our attempt below. It turned out pretty good but Alex wasn't so sure about it. Turns out he had a right to be concerned. Right after we took the picture, the pumpkin in the front right started to roll. It was a slow roll but he ended up on his belly on the ground and was NOT pleased. He let us know that he did not appreciate that at all. I was right beside him the whole time (you can see me in the picture) so I wouldn't have let him get hurt. I had to laugh a little at how upset he got over being on the ground. Needless to say, we didn't attempt the pumpkin picture again and will just stick with the one we got before the tumble.

Here are some pictures from the campground and the orchard:

Daddy and the baby robot during the costume contest.

The devil cheerleader!

Baby robot!

Cheerleader and robot.

Hanging out at the orchard.

The pumpkin picture, right before the tumble.



Family picture!



Mark it off the bucket list!

Friday night I got to mark one of the higher "to dos" off my bucket list. I am sure you know my love of all things UK but especially basketball. Friday night was Big Blue Madness and Matt and I went to see the new team for this year. At the end of Coach Cal's speech they revealed and "hung" the 2011 Final Four banner. For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to see a banner get hung in Rupp so I was beyond excited to see this happen in person. Obviously I hope to come back in the near future to see a championship banner hung, but a Final Four is exciting in itself. I video-taped it but here is a picture of the new banner. Exciting! Go Cats!!

"Let's hang it as a symbol of what we've accomplished," Calipari said of the new banner, "and a standard we hold ourselves to."

Finally posting some of the 3 month pictures!

Last month I wrote about how bad the 3 month photo shoot went. I was pleased with the sneak peeks posted by Hilly but that was nothing compared to the surprise and happiness I felt after I got all of the pictures back. Here are just a few of them. There are even ones of him smiling! I didn't think he smiled once that night. Hilly is good!!

There are several more of these black and whites with Matt because we have a frame of him with Reagan in these same poses. I was thrilled when the pictures of Alex came back and we had a matching poses for all 8 of the ones with Reagan. It is getting framed to match hers this week and I will post a picture of the 2 of them so you can see what I am talking about.

This is how I thought ALL the pictures were going to be.

The wubanub makes everything better!

There is our smiling baby!

Reagan was such a trooper through this shoot. She never complained, never got in the way, and was very helpful. She is so grown up for an 8 year old!

This was the last part of the night. We were not going to get any good pictures at this point. I am pretty sure he has on the shorts of one outfit and the top of another just so we could try and get one with his heartbeat bear but those didn't turn out good at all. He was just done.

We got a couple of decent family pictures.

Our own version of Oktoberfest...

One of our good friends suggested a beer tasting night and told the boys to each buy 3 6-packs of beers they hadn't tried. This past Saturday we all got together for a cookout and the beer tasting adventure. By the time we were finished we had tasted 16 beers in all, some new names and some of the old favorites that were in the refrigerator. The tasters included myself and Matt along with Mike and Melissa Collier and Mike Potts. Each of us rated each beer on a scale of 1-10. In the end, Melissa averaged all the scores and crowned a winner. Yuengling took home the crown of this beer tasting evening. It was a fun time and I am sure we will do it again soon. However, no need for a full 6 pack of each beer, we only used one of each beer for us to try and some of them were so bad that the other 5 will probably stay in the refrigerator for a long, long time.

The competitors...

Fall fun...

As October has graced us with it's presence (is it really October already???) we have enjoyed some of the fun things that come with fall.

Reagan and I went to Joseph Beth on the 2nd for a scarecrow workshop. We had a blast putting together the scarecrow and stuffing it with hay. We decided to bring it home with us instead of leaving it at Joseph Beth but a 7 foot scarecrow, me and 2 kids is hard to fit in a Jeep. We somehow managed to shove it through the back, across the back seat and up into the front and got it home. I am pretty sure there is still hay in the Jeep though. Thankfully Alex behaved the whole time and Reagan and I were even able to go look around through the books and share a banana split in the cafe. Daddy was on his boys trip in Louisiana so that's why he wasn't able to join in on the fun.

Reagan and our scarecrow. She did most of the work, I just helped stuff it. She even did all of it's face. She is so creative!

As the temperatures dropped the first week of October, I tried to find a hat for Alex to wear. All of the very cute hats we had in his dresser were too little for his big noggin so off to the stores I went. I think I found some cute ones and he seems pleased as well:

This one was found at Kohl's and his Nana bought it for him. It a bit big but at the rate he is growing, it will ft in no time!

I found this one at Children's Place while we were at the mall. It fits much better than the frog one, for now.

Since Halloween isn't that far away and his Nana and Mimi have gotten a bit carried away with buying cute outfits, I decided it was time to put them to use. I dressed him in one of the sleepers for the trip to Joseph Beth for the scarecrow fun with Reagan. He looks like he just was released from the local jail! But he is a cute jailbird!


First Halloween outfit of the year from his Mimi. Complete with hat from his Nana and Debbers.



A big boy now...

It is amazing how quickly babies change and grow up. It seems like in just the past few weeks we have gone from having a tiny, fragile newborn that really didn't notice much and could barely hold his head up, to an active, sturdy infant that loves to watch everything going on around him and play with anything he can get his hands on.

I took him to the mall earlier this month and had to find a secluded area to feed him because when I tried to feed him in the food court, he was too busy watching all the people to worry about eating. He is just nosey! I try to blame this on his daddy but I fear I will never win that battle.

Here are a few updates:

So alert, happy and holding that head up without any of the funny wobbling.

All those toys are finally coming in handy. And he finally can use his Bumbo seat without falling over.

The exersaucer has proved to be fun for both the human and the fur baby. See the video below:



Playmats - his most favorite thing in the world right now.

He loves watching people. This was at Reagan's soccer practice. He watched those kids run around for over an hour.



Seeing Uncle Thomas again on the 5th. Thomas was shocked at how big he had gotten since he saw him last at the beginning of July.