Cute pictures

If we could only...

...get them both smiling in the same shot.

Johnny loving his playmat.

He also likes to sleep on Mommy.  It's his happy place.

Sister Holly is sharing her baby with Johnny.

She makes sure he's always tucked in with babies.

Holly's learning how to make cookies with Mommy.

It was fun and she did a good job.  Holly enjoyed that both of us were wearing aprons.

Another batch of pictures

Holly and cousin Ayden playing at Grandma's house on 4th of July.

The beagle is Rocky, one of Grandma's doggies.  There in the background is a small tire hanging from a rope from the tree that Holly just LOVED playing with.  "It's a swing!"

She kept pointing at it and telling us all about it for much of the time.

Holiday and Johnny, she like to pet him gently like a puppy.

Mommy eating birthday cake.

Dog pile!  Johnny just looks good in orange to me.  It's a happy color.

Sweet baby boy.

"Bro"-ing out.

Little strawberry swimsuit.

Holly liked the playground too.

Splishy splash with Daddy.

Johnny is doing better with his bottle feeding lately, still room for improvement.  Holly likes to try and feed him too.  He's kind of a snacker so when I nurse him it's for about 15 minutes on average.  Because of that I'm feeding him every 1.5 to 3 hours.  I don't mind that so much since he sleeps so well during the night.  During the night I'm still waking him up to feed him and then he falls right back to sleep.  He smiles at the walls, and apparently the ceiling fan is hysterical because he laughs at that a lot.  There's a concert poster in his room that he likes and he smiles at the turtle on his curtains while he gets his diaper changed.  Holly is doing so well with potty training now.  She wears panties all day except for nap time and bed time.  Once in a while she has an accident, usually because we're either stuck in traffic too long or she's distracted with what she's currently doing.  She's better about telling us she needs to go but we still ask her frequently.  If it's been a while we pretty much declare a potty break.  She's gotten a lot quicker with the whole process too.  Get on the seat, go, wipe, hop down, pull up undies, flush, close lid, get up ladder to sink, wash hands, dry hands.  She's pretty fast now and that's a lot of steps for a 3 year old.  Holly is getting better at undressing and dressing herself now.  She wants to do more for herself and help out others...you know "I can do it!"  We're still working on the sharing and bossiness.  She gets excited about a toy or an activity and she'll not want to break away for any reason.  It's all a learning process.



Kid's clothes

I was able to go through both the kids' closets this weekend and evaluate their clothing needs.  Johnny is set for 6 month sized clothes but he's growing so fast that I checked out the next size up.  Next he'll wearing the 6-9, 6-12, or 9 month sizes (depends where you buy).  He doesn't have much of that range at all.  There's a jeans jacket, couple shirts and onesies and a pair of jams and that's about it so the field is extremely open.  I'd say the only limitation would be that one jeans jacket is probably enough.  Holly wears 3T now but all her dresses are getting shorter on her but 4T stuff seems kind of big for her yet.  She's gotten taller but weighs the same.  I'm thinking that by the time fall rolls around that 4T stuff would fit her better.  Holly has enough 3T lighter weight clothes to get her through summer.  I do have a couple hemmed 3T pairs of pants for her, maybe if I dropped the hem they'd fit her better.  She only has a couple t-shirts and 2 sweaters in 4T so again, the field is open.  I will say that Holly is really into dresses and would probably choose a dress over a t-shirt and pants.

This week with the Andersons

Well, Johnny's been doing much better on the bottle at daycare, which is a big relief.  I unfortunately hurt my leg this week.  I have tight calf muscles since always and they've been feeling tighter than usual.  All I did was quicken pace at the grocery store parking lot because a vehicle was waiting for me to cross and my left calf muscle seized and popped.  I'm really glad we have an ace bandage, it helps a lot with the pain and it's starting to feel better.  I'll be really limited as far as physical activity goes for a while.  Still sucks though, I really want to get rid of this mummy tummy.  On Wednesday we went to ZooTunes and saw Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.  The kids did great and everyone had a good time.  Holly remembered doing an egg hunt there for the Bunny Bounce at Easter time and fully intended to pick up David's messenger bag and go pick up Easter eggs.  She was disappointed that there weren't any.  We are getting portraits done of the kids tomorrow so that will be good to get done.  I definitely need some pictures of Johnny on my desk to counterbalance the ones of Holiday.

Another Lovely Weekend

I purposely didn't plan anything for us to do this last weekend being my first week back at work, I knew we were all going to be tired.  I think we have our workday routine established now.  It helps a lot if Holiday wakes up in fairly a good mood.  It's so much easier to have her shadowing us around the house chattering away than fussing and refusing to cooperate.  None of us are really morning people anyway so we understand.  She's been doing better lately.  Most of the time Johnny snoozes while we're all getting ready, today he was awake just watching all the bustle action.  Since there were so many construction closures, festivals and tons of traffic on what was left, we decided to stay close to home this weekend.  We did go to the local wading pool and it was nice.  Just a handfull of kids there and they were well behaved and very nice.  They let Holly play with their toys and gave her a birthday cupcake.  Holly also played a lot on the playground there.  She figured out how to climb up the ladder, going down was trickier.  She was getting stuck on the slide until some of the kids who were wet from the wading pool went down on them and got them all slicked up.  Then she'd fly right down and off the end.  It's okay though, the ground is padded all around the playground area.  David did some more work on the backyard bushes.  He's about halfway through that long stretch and he made a point of ripping out all the nightshade he could find.  Don't want any of that around with kids.  Holly and I transplanted the pumpkin starts from the greenhouse into the ground last week.  I also taught her how to water them.  She picked up on that quickly and made sure that every plant got a drink.  Hopefully we'll get some pumpkins out of them for fall.

Getting back to work

Well, I started back to work on Monday this week.  I miss baby John terribly but I'm doing alright.  John is having issues with using the bottle so it's going to take some time for him to adjust.  It's still all breast milk for him at this point, just the delivery system is throwing him off.  Despite that, he's not very cranky and still sleeps as much as he ever did.  He sure does a big healthy feeding when we get him home though.  Both Holly and John are at the same daycare which helps for convenience, finances and maintaining the sibling connection.  Johnny and I both had doctor's appointments yesterday, his 2 month and my post partum.  Of course Johnny is just doing spectacular, the doctor said I could take full credit for that.  All I can say is breastfeeding simply is not easy for me.  As for me, I'm weaning myself off of the antidepressants and am having slight post pregnancy issues but should be easily remedied.  I can go back to working out again I just need to keep a close watch on my milk supply.  Since I'm using a breast pump so much being back at work it would be quickly apparent if something was off.  I basically need to drink fluids like crazy and not work out to the point of throwing up.  I'm certainly not going to go full bore at this point, I'll need to start small to begin with otherwise I'm likely to pull every muscle in my body.

End of Maternity Leave

So I go back to work on Monday and Johnny will join Holiday in daycare.  Holly does seem to like the new place and is adapting well.  I hope it won't take too long for Johnny to adjust to the changes as well.  And then there's me...I hope I adjust to the changes soon as well.  Things are completely different this time around.  I'll certainly miss time at home with baby John.  I hope he'll understand that mommy had to go back to work like daddy so we can cover bills and provide a good quality of life for him and his sister.  It will certainly make every moment with my family absolutely precious.  Johnny's growing so fast.  I already need to sort his clothes and get rid of the clothes he's already outgrown...because there's a lot.  I'd say we're to the point where he's grown out of most of the 3-6 months and is a solid 6 month size now.  But he won't be there for long and I anticipate him going to 6-9 month size soon.  He's wearing size 2 diapers currently but probably inside a month he'll be at size 3 I'm guessing.  That's just amazing to me since he'll be 2 months old tomorrow.  Holly was still in 0-3 month size at 2 months old.  Maybe it's because he sleeps so much that's he's growing like crazy.  I just turned 36 yesterday.  I got a foot massager foot bath.  When David asked Holly what to get me for my birthday she said a puppy.  But helping mommy blow out candles and having cake was enough excitement for her.