Long and Lean

James and Livy both had check-ups last week. Both are in the 75th for height and 25th for weight. I guess we make them tall and skinny around here.

Livy at 10 months: My love for this little girl grows by the day. She is oh so adorable. I've started calling her my "Sweet Pea" because she is just the sweetest little thing there ever was. She loves to give hugs, kisses, and laughs and smiles so easily. Seriously, all you have to do is walk in the room and her face will light up with a million dollar smile. She is almost always happy and when she's not you know it's usually nap time.

Brian and I joke that she is our little puppy. She crawls around after us whimpering and sits up and begs when she wants attention. She constantly eats things off the floor and sometimes when you offer her a snack, she'll just eat it right from your hand instead of taking it herself. She eats anything and everything (total opposite of her brother these days).

She is still crawling around like a little speed demon. She also takes a few steps every day and is always so proud of herself. She loses her balance and falls over just out of pure excitement for what she's doing.

She absolutely adores her brother. She gets giddy around him she loves him so much. She wants to do whatever he is doing and she loves to wrestle with him.

She also loves me. She started saying "Mom" a couple weeks ago and it melts my heart every time.

Her nights are improving ever so slightly, knock on wood. I remain hopeful that some day in the near future I may get more than four hours of consecutive sleep.

I don't even know what a favorite food of hers might be because she will literally eat whatever you give her and act like it's the greatest.

She loves music and is starting to dance when she hears it. She absolutely loves the piano and I can hardly practice these days without her begging to sit on my lap to play, too.

I could hold and snuggle this sweet girl all day if it didn't kill my back so dang much. Even though she's getting so big, she's still got the softness and warmness of a new baby and I could just eat her up she's so dang snuggly.

James at thee years: Oh where oh where to begin with this sassy boy? He can go from one extreme to the next in minutes, which causes me to go from one extreme to the other in minutes. He makes my heart want to burst with pride and joy one minute and makes me want to pull my hair out the next.

He is asserting his independence increasingly, still has a love-hate relationship with his sister, and currently has about four things on his list that he will eat without putting up a major fight about it. Getting him to eat is a chore and a half. I knew toddlers could be picky but I never imagined it could be this bad. I've resorted to spiking his milk with pediasure just so I know he's getting something in there. I really hope this is just a phase and not the start to a childhood of extreme pickiness.

He is SO into rhyming these days. He rhymes every day requests and sentences like it's totally normal to ask for a "Piece of banana bread-whama bread." Brian and I have to hold in our laughter when he prays and says "Dear Heavenly Father-Wather." The other day on the playground at the park he was playing with this little built in piano thing that had a busted key and a little girl came over and he told her "Sorry, we can't play with it. It's broken-hoken." I don't think the little girl knew what to do with that message.

He plays make-believe like a pro. It's hilarious to sit and listen to him. I could do it all day. He has some major imaginative bones in his body.

He tries my patience but I sure love this kid.

Insanity

Brian and I are currently in week two of the "Insanity" workout. Oh help me. It truly is insane. Only six more weeks to go. We can do this, right? Right?

Livy. Oh Livy. I love her to pieces but she makes me want to scream and pull my hair out. She's almost 10 months old and sleeping through the night is still a struggle. Every few weeks she'll tease me and sleep 9 or 10 hours straight two nights in a row. Then she goes back to her old ways before I have a chance to get my hopes up too high. I never knew sleep deprivation could go on this long without a person snapping. 

Jamers started going to Sunbeams on Sunday. I think he's going to love it. He loves being with the older kids. All week long he's been rehashing bits and pieces of his lesson. I love hearing him play with his action figures and tell them things like "Jesus is just like us!" and telling the firefighter guy to put out the "burning bush."

James got the above Jeep for Christmas. The first few days we were back from Utah/Idaho it rained nonstop so the Jeep stayed in the house for James to test out. It was cute watching him take Liv for rides. A few days later, Brian took James out to the garage to show him how it really works and it has been there ever since. After adamantly enforcing into his little head how important it is not to go out into the road or even anywhere near the road or the sharp decline that is our driveway, I think James is officially too scared to drive it now. Too bad it's not Brian's size. He'd be in it in a heartbeat.

James woke up with a terrible cough, runny nose, fever yesterday. This is the month to be sick, I guess. We've been sick more the last two months than we have the last two years combined. I hope after this one passes that we'll get a free pass the rest of the year because taking care of two little energetic rascals while you're sick is just about one of the hardest things I can think of.

I just got called to be the primary pianist in our ward. Seriously? It's quite laughable if you know my true piano playing skills, and musicality in general, are quite lacking. I tried explaining this to the primary president but she thinks I'm just being modest. I took maybe three years of lessons and was by far the worst out of all my siblings. I just didn't care. It's just proof that you can't hide anything in our ward. No talent or half-skill goes unnoticed or unused, which is nice in a way but totally weird in my case when you really can't play the piano and they don't believe you. They'll regret it when the primary program time comes around.

Last thing, and this one is funny: our favorite Mexican restaurant here celebrated Elvis' birthday earlier this week. Brian will kill me for sharing this, but it has to be done. They sent out an email saying if you dressed as Elvis and Priscilla Presley, you got a free meal, so naturally, two Halloween-hating people like ourselves decided we had to give it a go. Brian pulled out the tight t-shirt and leather jacket, rolled up his jeans, etc., and completed the look with hand drawn exaggerated side burns. He actually looked pretty good. I couldn't decide what to do. My baby fine hair won't go big no matter what I do to it, but I tried anyway. It would stay big for a few minutes and then go flat again. The final look was just ratty. But I did have some crazy 70s eyeliner and a shortish dress (as short as I could go without being immodest) with boots and that was about all. The result was Brian looked like Fonzy from Happy Days and I looked like a prostitute. We got the free meals all right but both of us agreed we were far too self-conscious to enjoy it so we won't be doing that again. Ah, fun times. I may post a picture soon.

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.

My Eight Month Old

The Livster is officially eight months old. She's crawling around like a speed demon. She can get from one end of the house to the other in the blink of an eye. She's pulling herself up and even trying to stand on her own. She's not strong enough for that yet but she doesn't care. She tries anyway.

She is a major copycat. It's pretty much the cutest thing in the world. My favorite is if you pucker your lips and make a kissing sound, she will do it right back. Same with clicking your tongue and spitting. I love it.

She can clap and wave, which is also totally adorable. I can already tell she has a sense of humor and is going to be a total drama queen.

Here she is on Halloween with her handsome dad. You'll notice she's not in a costume. I hate Halloween, so sue me.

James has a love-hate relationship with her these days. It probably started around the time she started crawling and trying to take all his toys.

This isn't the best photo, but captures her personality perfectly. If she's awake and fed she's usually quite happy.

She's pretty much a total doll these days, except for one minor detail . . . she still doesn't understand that going to bed at night means you're supposed to sleep until morning! She does about three to four hour increments all night long. Ahhh! When will the torture end!? I keep hoping one night it'll just click, but no such luck just yet. Until then, if I'm cranky or totally anti-social, you'll know why. Not getting enough sleep sure takes a lot out of me.