Happy Halloween!

Trying to get a picture of all three kids together while their friends are already outside trick or treating = impossible.  Here's the best I could get of our Snow White, Duck, and Mermaid before the two eldest ran away from me. 

Happy Halloween!

'Stormy' birthday

We had some crazy weather here today.  It's the end of October and we're having unseasonably warm, humid weather, so that usually means one things when storms approach. . . tornadoes! 

Schools let out at 12:30 today, so Tyler had both of his sisters home early on his birthday.  While I was folding laundry and watching the continuous weather coverage, the girls watched TV in my bedroom and Tyler napped.  I lost count of how many times the tornado sirens went off and the meteorologists told us to "seek shelter" and "get in your safe room."  Most of the sirens were sounded because of storms in other parts of our county, but we did have two strong storm cells track over our house.  Thankfully, they never dropped a tornado, because this time we actually never made it to our tornado shelter.  Probably a stupid move on my part, but I really did not want to wake my peacefully sleeping birthday boy.  All's well that ends well!

Happy 1st Birthday Tyler!

11 months old. . . for 3 more hours!

On the eve of Tyler's 1st birthday, I realized that I never actually posted his 11 month old update.  I actually drafted the writeup below on the 8th of October and forgot about it, so here it is, almost one month late :)

Tyler turned 11 months old on Sunday, September 26! Here is how Tyler has changed since my last post about him.

• Tyler now has four teeth...two on bottom, two on top!  He's still sucking on his lip and keeping his fingers in his mouth, so the other two on top should be coming soon.
• Tyler is still crawling all over the place. He pretty much gave up the "army" crawl entirely this month and moves around the house fast now. 
• He found the stairs this past month and heads for them any chance he gets.  It took me a while, but I finally got the gate up at the bottom of the stairs today. 
• He's not too interested in trying to walk while holding our hands yet.  He'd prefer to pull himself up on any table and stroll around that way.  
• Last week I turned on a Baby Einstein video for him for the first time. . . definitely the third child because I think I resorted to these a lot earlier with the first two.  He's such a busy body that I did not think he'd sit to watch one, but after a few attempts he's actually enjoying them.  He does, however, have to stand up in his chair and bang on the table the entire time it is on. 
• Tyler has been consistently taking two naps and sleeping from around 7pm to 6-6:30am (except for two weeks this month when he was getting up at 5:30am - love the teething).
• Compared to the girls, Tyler is not the greatest eater.  He loves all fruit, waffles, pancakes, peas, yogurt, turkey lunch meat, crackers, Kix cereal, and some meat.  When he does not like something, he is very good at spitting it out and throwing it on the floor.  I tried to mix small pieces of broccoli with some meat the other day and he managed to eat the meat and spit out the broccoli.  He still nurses 3 times a day, but we're almost ready to switch to whole milk as he mastered the sippy cup this month. 
• Tyler loves bathtime more than the girls ever did.  He holds onto the side while I'm filling the tub with water and bounces up and down squealing with excitement that he will soon get in.  Once in the tub he loves putting his face entirely under water, splashes constantly and crawls back and forth.  He'll barely sit still long enough for me to actually bathe him :)
• He's still babbling the same words as last month, mainly sticking to 'Ma Ma, Ba Ba, and Da Da..'
• When I weighed Tyler on around his 10 month birthday, he weighed 20lbs. 5oz.  He's wearing 12 month clothing and still wearing size 4 diapers. 

Here's Tyler in his onesie at 11 months old.

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My almost 1 year old

We've been so distracted with Claire being sick (which by the way, strep hit our family again), I just realized today that this cute little guy turns 1 in four short days.  I guess I better get that smash cake ordered soon!

 

Cabin fever

It's been a long 36 hours in our house.  Around 10pm Tuesday night, Tyler woke up screaming.  When I checked on him, he was burning up and his temperature was 103.  After giving him tylenol, we tried to put him back to bed, but that was short lived and he ended up sleeping next to me (although I'm not sure you can say we really slept).  Fortunately, Tyler was better by the next morning.  Claire, however, was another story.  She woke up cranky yesterday, but was not complaining about anything, so we got ready for preschool.  Yet, within minutes of leaving, I noticed her warm head.  Throughout the day yesterday, her temperature rose to as high as 103 and she vomited three times.  Thankfully the anti-nausea meds worked and she is now keeping liquid down, but the fever still remains, even with tylenol.  So we're stuck inside when it's beautiful outside.  Hopefully, we'll be back to normal by the weekend because it's a busy one!

Ebay

Wow, I knew October was going to be a busy month, but my lack of blogging shows just how busy it has been.  Okay, in reality, this month I've also been very good at procrastinating and finding other ways to spend my time, particularly online shopping.  Just ask Mike. . . everyday he comes home to find another ebay auction waiting for him to pay.  The best was last Saturday, I found a new LL bean coat on ebay that I wanted to buy for Grace.  The seller's ebay id caught my attention and when I looked at the seller's location, I was surprised to see that they live in the same town we do.  So I asked the seller if I won the auction, could I pick up the item.  She agreed, I won the coat, Mike paid for it, and then I kept forgeting to contact the seller to ask about picking it up.  Well yesterday, a package was waiting on our front doorstep.  Lo and behold, the seller lives on the street over from us and kindly dropped off the coat. . . what an amazingly small world!   Since she seems to be selling nice children's clothing, I guess I'll have to try bidding on her items more often :)

In the meantime, I can't wait to see what packages arrive today. . . ha ha!

Two sisters

So many similarities. . . so many differences!

All smiles

After all, it is fall break from school this week!

Botanical Gardens

Day 2 of fall break has been a lazy, quiet day at home.  Although we enjoyed touring the botanical gardens yesterday, I think it may have been a bit much for all of us on our first day of break. 

Here's a few pictures from our morning at the gardens yesterday. . .

 The girls loved the treehouses, especially the Wizard of the Oz one.

 This visit to the gardens was the first time we have noticed the monkey bars.  Grace decided to give it a try.

Tired

Since Grace came down with strep last week, it seems everyone has been a little under the weather.  Fortunately, no one else has come down with strep; however, we've all been fighting colds and/or sore throats.  Tyler's also still working on getting 4 teeth up top.  Two have finally broken skin, two more to come (hopefully anyday).  Maybe then Tyler can start sleeping later than 5:30am and I'll start feeling back to my normal self. 

As for this week, we're one day into fall break and the girls are already bickering.  Needlesstosay, they are not used to being around each other during the day anymore :)   So to help pass time, we visited the botanical gardens for a little while today with our neighbors and enjoyed seeing the scarecrows and treehouses.  It was a beautiful fall day.  

Since I'm too tired at the moment to get the pictures off my camera from today, I'll share some of Tyler from a little over a week ago (September 23 to be exact).  We were all enjoying some time outside right before bed.