Picture Overload

It's been so hot since Aaron was born, and he is such a hot little baby anyway, that we haven't been able to wrap him up in blankets much at all without him being a sweaty puddle. But this morning it was a bit chilly in our house and this is how he napped all morning. I'd have slept for hours too if I had that kind of setup!

Spencer regularly makes little duplo things and then asks me to take pictures of them. So fun. 

This was Genevieve's birthday cake a day late. We munched on this for over a week. It was amazing. It was made from this cake and this frosting.

Bill hasn't been drumming much lately, but he pulled out his drum practice pad and he and the kids jammed it up a bit the other night. It was tons of fun until one or both of them started using the drumsticks as hitting sticks, and then that was the end of that. :)

They graciously posed for me to show off their interesting outfits of choice. 

Genevieve views Spencer's wardrobe as free game. That's his shirt and another day she wore his cowboy boots to our friend's house.

Kind of a weird out of focus picture, but sometimes Aaron explodes. That's the only way I can describe it. He doesn't regularly spit up, but occasionally, and it's happening less and less, he just empties his entire stomach. He got me one night like this and again the next morning. It's so ridiculous that I can't help but laugh and laugh. So, so, so gross.

It didn't stop him from falling asleep, spit upon and all.

Genevieve's latest choice of hats. 

What they're doing at the moment

Spencer:

-Is getting more and more capable of reasoning. He has learned how to ask for things very politely and it melts my heart when he says things like, "Mommy, may I take a bath, please?" or whatever else strikes his fancy. Turns out it's harder to say no when he asks like that. The flip side is he thinks if he asks nicely he is guaranteed to get what he wants. We have some pretty epic fits thrown over being told no. It's improving though.

-He loves to do headstands, which he refers to as headstanders. Genevieve joins him and they laugh and laugh and laugh.

-We had what feels like a small breakthrough in his eating habits and he has started trying a few new things we give him in trade for jelly bellies. It's not the most ideal method, but hey, new tastes crossing his tongue is so novel that I'll take small bribery to get it. He still can choose to say no, so it seems to be the right level of bribe, enough that it motivates him, not so much that he feels faired against if he says he doesn't want to try it.

-He is starting to talk to other people more and notice the folks in the world around him.

-He loves anything chocolate. He will do much for chocolate. :)

-He still has a memory like an elephant. He can count to 100 and gets the concept of numbers.

-He is "reading" a few words in Bill's Hooked on Phonics game on his phone. He knows all the letters and he's catching on a little bit. The few words he knows, "cat", "dog", he will point out when he finds them in our books we read.

-He is our little lover boy. He showers us with hugs and kisses, particularly Aaron and me to a slightly lesser degree.

-He absolutely adores Aaron and is pretty bothered when he's asleep. He's fairly oblivious to the needs of others to sleep, so he has no problem kissing him and getting right in his face to wake him up. In fact this morning he freaked out that I was still asleep and came and screamed an inch from my nose. Not his best moment. lol

-He is super independent. He can access just about anything he wants in our house and gets down whatever he wants to play with or see.

-By the same token he is very attached to my hip. He prefers me to anyone else and always wants me to help him over anyone else.

Genevieve:

-She turned two this week and is hard core into her terrible twos. We love her anyway.

-Her favorite phrases at the moment are "no," "no, not that one," and conversely "thank you." The first two drive us a little crazy, but the third sure is precious as she always says thank you whenever we give her something or do something for her.

-She has a scream like a banshee that she lets loose whenever she is displeased, which is often. Think terrible twos again. However, as soon as her issue is solved she stops immediately.

-She is also enthralled with Aaron. She is super sweet around him. She always wants to give him hugs and kisses. Both kids think it's utterly hilarious to give him raspberries on his stomach. He suffers their love quite well. :)

-She is smart as a whip. She has a really well developed vocabulary and speaks in full sentences with multiple things said each time. I'm constantly blown away by how well she can say what she wants. Watching kids develop their vocabulary never ceases to amaze me.

-She has always been shy of strangers and even people she knows that aren't her family. But she is coming out of her shell and really starting to talk to other people. She particularly likes other kids close to her age and she will follow them around at the park and she is pretty social. This surprises me as Spencer is more of a loner still.

-We're trying to get her bangs to grow long enough to go behind her ears. She hates having her hair done, so she has hair in her eyes virtually all the time. She has a double cowlick that makes it do the craziest things on the back of her head.

-She loves to climb and can get pretty much anywhere she wants to go.

-She is still very much a daddy's girl. She loves him to pieces.

-She and Spencer are best friends and worst enemies at the same time. They just adore each other but can't share if their lives depended on it. They'll get there in time.

Aaron:

-Weighs 13 lbs as of yesterday, nearly two weeks to his two-month checkup. That is more than either siblings weighed at two months. He's huge! His torso is so long he is wearing his 9-month onesies. I often wonder why he can't do some things yet and then realize it's just deceiving how big he is. He's still only 7 weeks old.

-He's starting to smile at me and coo! It makes my heart melt.

-He absolutely loves to sleep on his stomach, so we let him for afternoon naps. He sleeps on his back at night.

-His night sleeping is pretty erratic. Sometimes he only wakes once, but more often it is two or three or even more times.

-All his hair rubbed off, save a thick fringe on the back. Now it is all coming back in uniform in length and still dark. This kid will not lack for hair.

-He has long, beautiful eyelashes that would make any girl jealous.

-His eyes are still blue and fairly dark at the moment.

-He is still very chill. He only cries when he's hungry and I'm not feeding him fast enough. Though he is staying awake more now and doesn't quite know what to do with himself since he can't really grab things yet. He'll figure it out though. He does a lot of looking around, taking in the world.

Moving furniture

I get such an itch to change things up in my house sometimes. Since we're renting and have a limited budget for that kind of thing, mostly I just move furniture around and stuff like that. Plus I still haven't replaced my sander that broke, and that means I can't really build anything extensive for now. 

This week I switched up the kids' bedroom and the office/toy room a bit, plus switched our bedroom around some too. Now we have a fun reading nook in the office and toys in their bedroom. I switched the mini crib to the other side of the bed and switched which sides Bill and I sleep on. I don't know why I get such satisfaction out of changing things up a bit, but I really do. I think it scratches my need to create things on a regular basis. Last week it was the living room. We built a little shelf under the window for our plants and moved the room around to make it work. Oh, and we created a picture wall, expanding the few pictures we had up in that room. We're going to be here for several more years, so it's nice to find a few ways to improve things.

All the kids hanging out together playing games on the tablet.

He's starting to smile, but the best I've gotten on camera is a pleasant look.

The reading nook.

She wanted to wear Spencer's "jumpers."

Turns out Aaron adores sleeping on his stomach. So sometimes we do that and he will sleep for three or four hours. I check on him often, but then I do that when he's on his back too. It still feels so crazy when he sleeps that long.

Tell that isn't a happily asleep child. His face is so squishy and adorable.

She's finally started to smile for pictures when i ask her to. Yay for no more angry expression photos!

Man purse...or shall we say boy purse?

Bill was gone tonight at a church meeting and I was feeling crafty and motivated so I made some cookies with Spencer and then a strawberry cheesecake bar thing that looks amazing chilling in the fridge at the moment.

After the two older kids were in bed, Aaron hung out with me while I sewed purse take two, this time for Spencer. He crashed partway through so it was just me and my Sunday playlist on iTunes. Genevieve's birthday is in a couple weeks and she'll be getting her purse then and I am sure Spencer will think it's fantastic and want one of his own. Yesterday we picked up a couple more fat quarters for him. He picked the colors, orange for the outside and red for the inside. It's kind of a tye-dyed looking pattern, though it looks kind of like flowers in this picture. I didn't tell him what it is for, but he'll be really happy to see his own bag here when we celebrate Genevieve's birthday.

Upon completion I wouldn't say the purse looks at all boyish, but that wasn't really my intent, and I don't particularly care about that part. Call it a man purse...boy purse...whatever, but he's going to love his little bag to carry random treasures around. Maybe I could have made the bottom square but I didn't feel like modifying it. There's always next time. :)

One Month

Time is a flyin'. Aaron is closer to six weeks old than a month now. He continues to be the most chill baby of my three. He is so patient with his older siblings loving on him. They give him hugs and kisses all day long and we've had meltdowns from both of them because they wanted him to be awake. Gotta love that! I love seeing them all together. Like everyone always says, I can't imagine our little family without him now.

He's filling out and getting nice and chunky. He already is out of his 0-3 month clothes for the most part. This kid is not small! It's partly because he's wearing cloth diapers, which always pushes babies up a size in clothes, but it blows me away to have him busting out of 0-3 month clothes at 5.5 weeks.

He has big blue eyes and he opens them so wide these days, trying to see everything around him. They are lightening up more each day. I'm interested to see how light they get. I think they're going to be similar to Spencer's with a gray ring on the outside and lighter in the center. That comes from me. Genevieve has a more solid colored blue much like Bill's.

Aaron's hair has done the exact same thing as Spencer's did at this age. Here's a couple shots for comparison. Aaron is still losing his hair like crazy, but it's also starting to come back in on the top, still dark. It will be fun to see what happens with it in the next month.

Spencer at roughly the same age. His hair was brownish and came back in blonde. And a side note, look at that chunkiness! This is just about the only time in his life he had a double chin, my long and lean oldest child. :)

This is when it first started all coming out. It's way further gone now, but this picture just makes me smile. Love those big eyes and the chin and just everything about him.

My MIL replied to a picture text the other day from Bill wondering where this tan little grandchild of hers came from. He really is a hark back to the hispanic side of my family. He is so much darker than the other two. He still has the family look, but much more similar coloring to my mom and her brothers as opposed to so light like his siblings and his parents for that matter.

He still loves to sleep, though he spends much more time awake each day than when he was brand new. He wakes up probably three times a night still. He is hungry but doesn't really nurse long enough to tank up for longer periods of sleep. He's getting better at that during the day, but he's still a pretty lackadaisical nurser. He just really isn't in a hurry to do anything. If he's eating, great. If he gets tired, nothing I do will get him to eat more. He's growing like a weed, so I don't worry about how much he eats at all though. Hopefully we'll get longer periods of sleep at night as time goes on, but for now things are as I expect them to be for his age.

Probably the best thing happening now is he is starting to smile a lot more. It's the best thing! I just love when my babies start smiling. He's not smiling at people yet, but he must be sharing his own private jokes because he will get the biggest grins on his face. They're awesome.

And that is Aaron at one month. He's the cutest third child I've ever had. :) lol

Family in town

It's been a great week. Bill's parents were in town this week to meet Aaron. His brother and wife also happened to be nearby too for a work training, so we took advantage and blessed Aaron while they were here. It was a great week.

It's always fun to have family in town because we go and do things we don't do normally. This week we went blueberry picking, we took a day trip to Atlanta, we ate lots of good southern food, and just generally had a great time. I had the best ribs I've ever had from our favorite local bbq place this week. I've eaten there before but never their ribs. That was a fantastic discovery.

I also paid the deposit on the vacation rental we're going to with my sister and her family for Thanksgiving. That makes me just a bit giddy. We've been in school in one form or another for our entire marriage, so finances have been perpetually tight. We don't do nearly as many vacations and getaways as we'd like. We've been saving up for this one and it's going to be fantastic. Thanksgiving with ten of us on a lake in southern Virginia. The cousins get to meet each other for pretty much the first time and have three days to play together. I seriously can't wait. It's amazing how affordable it is too with a bit of planning.

So yes, good week. I like these kinds of weeks. They recharge my batteries and help me feel good about regular life. I like that.

Soap mold

I made this with a scrap piece of plywood I had lying around. And since my sander died a month ago, I sanded it by hand. That was exciting. I only used 1/2" plywood since that's what I had. I may redo it with 3/4" the next time I have some of that for a project, but for now this worked fine minus a bit of trouble with one side since the plywood isn't entirely flat. We'll see how it works once I get my soap supplies this week and make a batch. Good times.

Isaqueena Falls

For what feels like a long, long time we've been kind of hermit-like. Between my pregnancy, a lack of funds, a general dearth of planning, and other things that we've let get in the way, we haven't done all that many fun things in many, many months. Bill and I decided it's time to get back to our former glory and awesomeness of planning and executing family adventures. Ha! We'll see how that goes, but this last week we tried to do some fun things despite all the sickies here. We took the kids to a park we've never been to. I took Spencer blueberry picking. That was supposed to be a family activity, but Genevieve was so out of it I got to have a little mommy/son date instead, and that was great. We actually did FHE. That's a victory. And yesterday we headed out to a little hike we probably should have done first thing when we moved here, but we haven't gotten around to doing until now. We hiked to Isaqueena Falls.

I don't know where the name comes from, but many things around here are named that, including a street near us. It was a tiny little hike, easily doable for us even with Aaron only three weeks old. The only complication came when we realized we had to scramble down a big hill to get to the falls and we hadn't brought the backpack from the car for Genevieve. It felt too sketchy to have two kids walking plus me carrying Aaron in a front pack, so Bill quickly ran up to get it. He pretty much saved the hike! :) It went much better with her in the pack. She probably would have been fine, but Bill and I would have been basket cases by the time we got to the bottom. It was pretty steep going down.

Once we got there it was totally worth the effort. The falls were gorgeous. There was a small pool at the bottom that Spencer and Genevieve had a great time playing in. Spencer did a fantastic job going down and then especially going back up. It was good for him to stretch and do something hard. We obviously don't get him in the dirt enough because he was pretty bothered when his feet got muddy. We'll certainly have to remedy that from now on. It was just the perfect length so that we had a good time but the kids weren't screaming at the end. All in all it was an excellent first hike back from hermitude. lol. There is a tunnel nearby that we'll have to go explore next time we go back. The kids were done for the day so we didn't do it this time.

The vicissitudes of life

I remember when I was graduating from high school my good friend used that word in my title as part of her salutatorian speech. I'd never heard it before and had to look it up. Her speech was way better than mine, which was pretty lousy. I'm very grateful I've improved my public speaking skills since then because the memories kind of make me shudder. lol

Anyway, this has been quite the week with lots of strange things befalling us. Here's to looking at the bright side of some rough days.

Genevieve came down with a crazy fever that lasted for two days. We thought it was her two-year molars coming in as she kept acting like her mouth was bothering her. Then a day later she came down with hives all over her entire body. I took her to the doctor and they really didn't know what it was except that it was viral and they had seen a streak of this kind of thing last year around the same time and it just went away after a few days. So looking on the bright side, she didn't have strep throat. The hives weren't itchy. They looked terrible and were literally all over her body, but after a few days and some benadryl to help along the process, today she doesn't even look like she ever had them.

Spencer also came down with a fever for a couple days this week. However, he didn't get the hives and he is also just fine today.

Aaron so far hasn't picked up the fever or hives. Hallelujah!

Genevieve spent the entire week attached to my hip. All she wanted to do was be held and specifically by me, which is highly unlike her. She's a daddy's girl, so I was a little thrown when she didn't want him at all. She didn't even like it when I was holding Aaron. That was rough since I kind of have to hold him a lot, but we made it through and I got some unusual Genevieve cuddling time, which was super nice.

My ward is unusually slim on musical talent. Well specifically organ talent. There are definitely people who play the piano, but they invariably are in leadership callings so they are needed elsewhere with other skills. Case in point, we have two organists. One is also a nursery leader. The other is a member of our bishopric. Both happened to be out of town this week, so they asked me to sub. I didn't hesitate to accept the request, particularly since if I couldn't I think we would have had to have someone play the piano instead. I don't think there's a single other person that plays. Accepting it though meant I had to practice some night this week and also that Bill would have to juggle three kids and no me during a big chunk of sacrament meeting. As expected it was a little crazy. I felt super rusty when I practiced Wednesday, but it came back nicely as I played prelude this morning. That was great. The actual playing went fine and I got several compliments, and also just comments that no one had known I played and that was cool. I kind of think a lot people are just impressed if you can make some semblance of music on an organ because it is an intimidating instrument that I can't say I play fantastically well, but I can get through a hymn and that'll do for now. I always appreciate a compliment, even if I don't always feel it is deserved. I'll take positive feedback any day. :) The kids struggled while I was on the stand and Bill definitely had his hands full. Turns out the acoustics are remarkably good in our chapel and I could hear every time they said "I want Mommy" or similar things, which was about a hundred times before I was done. lol. It's nice to be loved I guess. I'll appreciate the day that my being 30 feet away doesn't mean crying and sadness, but today it was just nice that Bill could take care of them and I could fulfill my assignment.

Some women like to wait awhile before they get back into things after they've had a baby. I usually take a week or two off, but then I'm ready to get back to normal life, or the new normal I should say. It helps that I generally have pretty big babies so I'm less worried about their hardiness. So I missed a couple Sundays after Aaron was born, but then headed back to church a couple weeks ago. As my mom always says, once you come back you'll get put right to work. That's very true this time around what with playing the organ and also I got asked to spearhead our ward back-to-school social at the end of the month. It will be super easy to plan as it is much the same as last year's. Mostly I'll just coordinate food. I did feel a tad overwhelmed when the bishopric member asked me to do both of those assignments at the same time, but really it's totally doable. I appreciate being needed. There are lots of people in our ward, but sometimes it feels like they need more hands to do all the work. I'm happy to have my skills utilized. I like being involved, especially since I spend so much time at home at this point in my life, and even more so now that Aaron is here. For the next year before Spencer starts preschool I will have all three kids home with me. I'm sure it is going to be crazy at times, but things will change a lot once Spencer starts school and then Genevieve the following year, so I'll just soak up all the kid time now and enjoy them while I've got them all to myself.

So anyway, it was quite the week. Bill's parents are going to be here this next week visiting and we'll even get a short visit from Bill's brother and wife, which is fantastic. We're taking advantage of them all being here to bless Aaron, so that will be nice. We're slowly getting used to our new normal with three kids and it's a good place to be. Oh, and in others Aaron is balding. It's awesome. Old man Aaron!