Greyden's 2nd Birthday!

If any of you read my post of Greyden's first birthday (you should have since it was only two months ago), you'll remember that he isn't exactly a fan of cake. In fact, he's downright scared of it. Sometimes I wonder if he really is my child. Since he was going to have an audience at his party, Kevin and I decided to ease him into the whole birthday cake thing this year. On his actual birthday (2 days before his party) we went to the grocery store and bought a practice cake for him. He seemed okay with it at first.

  

He was REALLY okay with it when those candles were lit. We lit and blew them out about 47 times. Then came the part where we encouraged him to take a bite. Yeah, not so much. (As he pushed the cake away being meticulously careful not to actually touch the frosting.)

 


We gave up. And relit the candles. And blew them out. And I ate the cake. Darn. No sense in making him do something he doesn't want to do, right?  


His actual birthday party turned out well! We did a Thomas the Train theme since having a two year old boy means that lately we live and breathe that quirky little train.



My Thomas the Train chili toppings holder

  

Greyden's favorite part of the night was obviously the presents. Because he needs more toys, right? It took him all of 4.3 seconds to catch on to the fact that there were toys under all of that wrapping paper. Game on.

We even skyped in Aunt Kerry and cousin Addie to witness the destruction. 

  

Then it was time for (dum, dum, dum)............the cake. I would LOVE to say that this cake is my own creation, but that's not completely true. I baked the cake from scratch and made the butter cream frosting, but I made mom decorate it. I just don't have that kind of talent patience. I did make sure to carefully oversee the project (over her shoulder) though.



When we put the cake in front of him, I thought we might stand a chance. Then I realized he was focused on the candles only.  Light, blow out, light, blow out, rinse, repeat.

 Yup, as soon as we suggested he stick a finger in it, he tried to get down from his chair.  

 

He obviously didn't stick around long enough to watch me cut it open. If he had, he would have devoured it. I mean, who can resist a cake that looks like this? 

I wish I had taken a picture of the pile of gifts he received. Although I guess it wouldn't matter since, even after amassing a ton of new toys, he ended his night engrossed in my salad spinner.

(While I have your attention, I'd like to take this moment to point out that Greyden would also like a new crock pot and a cast iron griddle for Christmas.)

While I'm posting about Greyden's birthday, I can't forget about Kevin! Since his birthday is 3 days after Greyden's (and therefore completely insignificant) I decided I should do something for his birthday too. When I told him I wanted to make him a cake, he told me not to bother because he didn't like cake. Yet, the cake I made him was completely gone by the end of the night. Hmmm.

Greyden is Growing Up!

As time goes on and Greyden and Emerson grow up, I find that I don't always have time to capture their cuteness on my blog. Instead I jot notes on my phone, then don't do anything with them. So in an effort to catch myself up, I'm writing a totally random post.

My first born baby is growing up! It's amazing the things that he is picking up. When I had Emerson, mom came down to help me take care of her. As we were heading out the door one day, mom picked up my purse to hand it to me. Greyden ran over to take it from her while telling her, "no! Mommy's!" Then he brought it to me. I had no idea he'd even noticed it before. He's also told Kevin "no! Mommy's shirt!" when he's wearing one that we both have. Since he's picking up on so much, we've had to be really careful about what we say and do around him. I hadn't put much thought into the breastfeeding thing and what he would think and how he'd react when he saw Emerson doing it. The first time I nursed her in front of him, I had my answer. As soon as I was home from the hospital, I was feeding Emerson when Grey came running over yelling "Back! BACK!" (this is what we say to the dogs) "No bite mommy!" Yes, we explained to him that mommy is feeding sissy, and she's eating, not biting. A few times since then he's asked if "baby sissy bites mommy?" but hasn't seemed too concerned. Then last weekend I was just finishing nursing her and Greyden asked me "Sissy all done biting Mommy?" So maybe he's still a little confused.

He's definitely turned into a toddler over night though. Suddenly everything is more difficult. For example, diaper changes. We used to be able to convince him to come with us to his room so that we could change him by telling him that mommy or daddy was going without him. Now he just tells us "okay! Bye!" He's also become very opinionated. Everything is "no singing, daddy", "no talking", "come, mommy" or "sit down". And god forbid you don't do it. You'll probably witness the tantrum from hell. If he's not giving orders, he's "fixin" things. "I fixin?" or "Daddy fixin?" And sometimes it's an order, for example when he brings you something (like two halves of Daddy's glasses that he had found on the nightstand) and tells you to "fix it". Yes, we're working on adding please to the end. Everytime someone says ow, he also asks "okay?" We've come along way from Greyden's first word of dog. Of course his favorite toddler word is "NO!" Actually, in the last week it's become "NO WAY!" I love daycare.

Now that he's talking and repeating everything we say, we have to watch ourselves. No more asking Emerson if she wants some boobies. Nor can we make up words to songs and nursery rhymes that we don't know. Well, we still can, but we just have to make sure they're not inappropriate . (Have you ever noticed that it's much easier to make up inappropriate words to songs rather than sing the real words?) We've had some issues with pronunciation of certain words. For awhile "fishies" was "shitties". Kevin even tried to teach him to say it properly by saying "fa-fa-fa-fishies". All he got in return was "fa-fa-fa-shitties". He pronunces bear like "beer", which, the first time he said it, prompted Daddy to freak out and tell him "shhhh! Don't let your mommy hear you say that!" The newest pronunciation disaster is the word "bucket". He seems to be convinced that it starts with an F. Kevin and I have done everything we can to get him to say it correctly, including saying "buh-buh-buh-bucket". I'm pretty sure that's going in one ear and out the other, considering this morning he told me that his dump truck had a "buh-buh-buh-fucket".

Greyden is taking the whole new little sister thing incredibly well. In fact, he seems to adore her. Whenever she is in her carseat and starts to cry, he reaches over and holds her hand.

Greyden wanted a picture with his "beek ponekin" as he calls it. We have to go to the side light window and look at it multiple times each day.

This is what happens when I turn my back for two seconds.

Luckily he was just going in for a kiss. :)

Busted

Happy Birthday Baby Boy!

Today is my baby boy's 2nd birthday! Since it fell on a Thursday this year, we're waiting until this weekend to have his party. But I couldn't wait until then to give him a shout out and say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Sunshine!

Baby Sissy showed up to get him out of his crib this morning, which he loved. No, seriously. He wouldn't let me take her out of the crib and piled all of his stuffed animals and blankets on her lap so she could play.

Good morning Big Brother!

We have some serious bed head going on.

Once we got up and dressed, we took him out for a birthday breakfast at Cheryl's Place before daycare. Papa and Nana had stayed the night to watch Emerson while we took Grey trick or treating last night so they got to come along too!

Dippies take serious concentration

I think he liked them, because he made this face with every bite he took.

A note from our waitress who celebrated her birthday yesterday!

More birthday fun to come soon! Stay tuned!

Emerson is 3 months old!

Okay, more like 3 1/2 months now. But I'm close!

My sweet little angel is still the world's most perfect baby. Yes, I'm biased but you would be too if you were me. I have a baby that doesn't cry unless she's hungry, tired, or has a dirty diaper and she's STILL sleeping almost all of the way through the night. Most nights she is still up once to eat around 3 or 4, but this week she even pulled an 8:30 - 6:00 for us. It's amazing. If I could guarantee that every baby I had was like her, I'd have about 30 of them. Okay, maybe not 30. Not that it matters, since it can't be guaranteed and I'm not willing to risk it!

Unlike Greyden, who had a doctor's appointment every month around his birthday, Emerson has been really healthy! Since we haven't had to take her to the doctor for anything besides her well visits, we're not exactly sure how much she weighs. I weighed her myself on our home scale just to get a general idea and it was right at 11 pounds. Her next well visit is at 4 months so we'll have another "official" weigh-in then. I wouldn't be surprised if she's put on another 10 pounds by then. The girl eats like a horse. After only a week in daycare, we were already increasing her bottles from 3 ounces each to 4. And she's taking 3-4 of them a day at daycare alone. That's not even counting the 4 times per day that I'm nursing her. It's insane. At this rate I have no idea how I'm going to keep up with her. She's going to eat me out of house, home, and boob.

Checking In!
Weeks Post Partum: 16 Weeks!

Total weight gain/loss: Um none? Okay, maybe 2 pounds (although I haven't weight myself in a week so I'm sure it's more like 20 pounds now). I guess when everyone told me that it was harder to lose weight after the second pregnancy, they were annoying right. The weight is just not falling off with this one. I looked back at my post partum check ins with Greyden and they were all "10 more pounds lost! Yay!" which is HIGHLY depressing (and annoying) now. It kind of makes me want to punch the old me in the head.

Maternity Clothes: Well, I can ditch my shirts, but the pants? Not so much. When I'm not in my yoga pants, I'm in my maternity pants. At least I was up until a week ago when I finally got sick of hauling up elastic-waisted jeans every 4 seconds (as they were being shoved off my hips by my love handles) and decided to buy a pair of real, non-maternity jeans. I thought this was a great idea and would also be great motivation to see where I was at in terms of sizing. I figured it couldn't be near as bad as I thought it was going to be. Nope, I was wrong. It was worse. I walked out of Target with a pair of size 14 jeans. I haven't worn a size 14 since never. The good news is that as soon as I wore them for a few hours, they stretched out so much that I was hauling them up every 4 seconds as well. So maybe I wasn't really  a size 14. The bad news is that this meant buying yet another pair of jeans. Right now I'm wearing a size 12 and I've had to haul them up a few times today too. I'm sure this is because I'm shrinking and not because they are stretched out too.

Sleep: Yes, thank goodness. Unfortunately I have to totally attribute her sleeping to being swaddled. Swaddling is a total pain in the ass, but we don't have a choice. A few weeks ago we decided to try to break her of it. After a full week of it taking an hour+ to get her down in the evening and then being up 4 more times throughout the night, we wrapped her back up. It just wasn't worth the effort.

Best moments this week: Taking Greyden trick or treating! The Halloween post will be up shortly. The other best moment happens every morning when I nurse Emerson and we get to have our morning conversations. The girl will lay on her boppy, look up at me, and chatter on and on for 10 minutes to me when she's finished. It's the cutest thing ever.

What I miss: My babies while they're at daycare. It's especially hard since I feel guilty since I'm home all day and they're not, even though I'm working and it would be impossible to keep them home with me and still get anything done. To add insult to injury, Greyden has started calling daycare "home". Grrrrr.....

What I am looking forward to: Greyden's birthday party this weekend! And this time I PROMISE that his 2nd birthday post will be up within a week, and not take a year like his 1st birthday post. :-)

Milestones: No major milestones yet, but she's well on her way. My favorite part of the day is when I go into her room to get her in the morning and she grins from ear to ear when I peek over the edge of the crib. Keep in mind she's still wrapped up like a burrito at this time, so it's the most adorable thing ever. She's also getting louder lately. And when I say loud, I mean it. On our way up to my parent's house last weekend she was babbling so loudly from the backseat that I had to turn around and put a pacifier in her mouth so that Kevin and I could hear each other talk. She goes on "talking" sprees where she babbles at the top of her lungs for minutes at a time. I think she takes after her Daddy.

Emerson's bunny snow suit

Holding mommy's hand



This would have been a great picture if Greyden hadn't been moving!





Grey "helping" to cover Sissy up




Greyden sharing his toys with Baby Sissy.