Month Nine and Sleep Still Not Mine

My sweet little nearly nine month old has decided that waking up two times at night is no longer enough. She's now at four times. FOUR. What the!?!

My only comfort has been knowing that she has good naps, consistently 2-3 hours each. But that is not to be either. She decided to stop that last week. Her new norm is 45 minutes to maybe an hour and a half. HELP! I seriously might go insane.

Before we left for Chicago last month, she was starting to only wake up once a night (you know the thing that most babies do, if that). Then traveling messed that up and life hasn't been the same since.

Seriously, what do I do? Letting her scream for hours in her crib all night long hasn't helped and is even more torturous.

Oh, Livy. You're so cute though.

This is what happens when you never get enough sleep so you rub your eyes while you eat . . .

Here she and James are being rascals. James was walking around wearing Brian's puffer vest telling everyone he was Santa Claus.

 

On a bright note, as you can see, she remains as cute as ever. She's also hilarious. She mimics everything we do, loves to wave goodbye to us as she crawls away, crawls at an alarmingly fast pace, pulls up onto everything and even stands on her own occasionally.  I predict she'll be walking within the next few weeks. Yikes!

Gift Card

Have you ever won a blog giveaway? No? Me either. In fact, I don't think I even know anyone who has ever won. Maybe some day . . .

At any rate, The Pink Peonies blog is doing a $100 J-Crew gift card giveaway. And we all know how I love J-Crew, so if you're feeling like you have a chance, give it a go:

http://www.thepinkpeonies.com/2012/12/jcrew-giveaway-5-winners.html#comment-form

The Windy City

Chicago. Before two weeks ago, I'd only been to the airport. We decided to tag along with Brian at the last minute, so I hadn't done my research and wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Brian spent a few weeks there during dental school and said it was a lot like New York, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a lot better than New York: cleaner, newer, safer feeling, etc. Hanging out on my own with two kids in a new city was somewhat intimidating, but overall we all had a great time and loved it. Hopefully we'll be back next year.

Here's Livy sitting ever so patiently in her stroller while James ran around the park with a bunch of daycare groups. We were there for two hours and he was so confused when every 20 minutes a new group of ten kids would leave all at once and five minutes later a new one would return, all wearing matching shirts.

Brian's dental conference was in a great part of town, right by the Magnificent Mile and waterfront. Maybe some day I'll be able to go back and afford to shop there.

While there, we met up with the Davis family, old dental school friends/neighbors who now live in Chicago. It was fun to see them and I loved meeting their sweet little girl.

Here we are at the Bean. Whenever people would tell me I had to see it, I couldn't figure out why a bean would be so cool. They were right though. It's pretty awesome.

Mr. Jamers indulging my request for a picture:


 

And here's Livy and I. That poor girl had about had it with that dang stroller and snow suit by the time we left.

Birthday Boy

My sweet and sassy little boy turned three-years-old last week.

Here are some fun facts about our Jamers:

-The only time he's sitting still is if he's playing on the iPad or asleep.
-He still says the darndest things. 
-He's starting to become really interested in words and their meaning. He's also catching on to synonyms and antonyms, etc. and asks about dual-meaning words a lot.
-He is starting to switch over from playing less with his beloved stuffed animals to more with action figures. He still loves every sport out there.
-He LOVES popcorn. Brian took him to a UT football game a few weeks ago and got him some popcorn to eat during the game. He was in heaven. He liked the game just fine but it was the popcorn that made his day. The next day he asked me if they could go back to the "popcorn store."
-His favorite snacks are cheese, pickles, olives, grapes, and crackers. And, of course, he still consumes milk (esp. chocolate milk) at an alarming rate.
-His favorite place to be is the park and he loves playing with other kids. He automatically considers every kid his friend (ah, the sweet innocence of children).
-Very snuggly. Still loves to sit on my lap, give hugs and kisses, etc.
-He's been totally potty-trained for almost 8 months (although he was half-way there longer than that. I guess that doesn't count.).
-He goes to pre-school once a week with other kids in our church.
-Nap time is on its way out. He'll usually have one a couple times a week. It's a vicious cycle. If he has a nap, he won't fall asleep at night until after 10 and then wakes up cranky. If he does have one, he'll wake up super early and then be cranky in the afternoon. So, we do "quiet time" most days, which, at least once a week, results in me walking into his room and finding him like this:

The first time he fell asleep during "quiet time," I walked into his room and found him asleep sitting in the baby Bumbo (which of course he never wanted to sit in as a baby) snuggled up with his blankets.  I laughed about that one for awhile.

The poor kid wears himself out.

We spent James' birthday in Chicago (more on that another day). We found a fun park to go to that day and he was in heaven running around with a bunch of kids.

For his birthday, we had limited space for what we could bring with us in the car, but we managed to squeeze in this Fisher Price Imaginext Space Shuttle (best brand for boys ever!) without him noticing. He has played with it non-stop for the last three days.

Here we are at the "bean" in Millenium Park.

That's our James. Funny how much kids/becoming parents totally changes everything. I wouldn't trade this boy for anything.