35.

A BIG Happy Birthday (or HAPPY DAY! as James would say) to my love! He's absolutely the best husband and daddy to my boys in the whole wide world! I can't believe that this is NINE birthdays that we've celebrated together. He turned 27 after we started dating (and I was, as he said, a "mere child" at 20!).

{Photo by Anna Daniels}

We love you!

{And Happy Birthday to Bess, too! Hope your day is fantastic! We love you, too!}

A Busy/Lazy Weekend...

Some of us around here had a really, really busy weekend. Others of us had a really, really lazy weekend. :) Can you tell we all went in different directions?

Thursday night we took both boys to the church for the opening night of the play that Eddie was in. I wound up leaving Will in the nursery with James just because there were no other children there! I'd planned to take him with me to keep from adding one more kiddo to the mix, but poor James was the only big child in the nursery. He wasn't a fan of that set-up, I guess, because he told me he got a little upset. The play was great! It was funny and I enjoyed seeing it. I think that Eddie has had a great time getting out of the house and doing this, but he was worn out last night when it was all said and done. For someone who just had one line, there were plenty of hours put into it! (And that's with lots of skipped practices!)

Friday morning we got up and Cacky drove up to go with us to Macon. I need a few new church dresses to fit this new post-baby body while it's still in the nursing stage and unfortunately, with several big events coming up, I can't just hang out at home forever. I needed the extra help from Mom because we still only have single strollers. (If you're in the market to SELL or let me BORROW a tandem double stroller, let me know! I think we're going to buy a jogging stroller but those won't fit through stores while shopping.)

Let me just say that getting ready and shopping with two kids (one that is an infant) is a whole different ballgame and it takes for.e.ver. I'd forgotten all of the stopping to feed a baby, etc., etc. that goes into it and it was almost 1:30 before we even went into the first store!

We walked into Dillard and James looked around and said, "Santa?" I almost fell over. We were in Dillard at the BEGINNING of December and upstairs Santa was walking through and spent a few minutes talking to James. How on earth had he remembered that three months later? This is why I cannot say or do anything in front of him! (I made the big mistake of standing on a chair in the kitchen recently to reach something...guess what my new big challenge is at home right now?!)

James was memorized by the escalators on our shopping trip so we let him ride one at Dillard and told him that if he was very, very well-behaved he could ride again before we left. He got to ride again! He wasn't excellent, but he was pretty darn good for a two year old who hadn't had a nap! (Funny story: For whatever reason, Mom and I thought it would be a good idea to take both strollers to the UP side of the escalators, get James out, and then she would go with him and I would wait at the bottom. What we didn't think about was that I would want to take a picture...So here I go, dragging BOTH strollers to the DOWN side of the escalators. The jogger's wheel was locked so it wouldn't turn easily and I had a baby in the other stroller. I looked like a crazy nut. Two ladies coming down spotted me and just laughed. One asked if I knew I'd lost my child. Ha! I know I looked crazy!)

Friday night Eddie took James with him to church and I stayed home with Will. I spent some time cleaning out our kitchen cabinets while the boys were gone. What an exciting life, huh? :)

Saturday morning the big boys got up to take Scout to the vet. Unfortunately, they didn't have an appointment and the vet wouldn't see her. Darn. Eddie was, of course, thrilled. They got a few errands run after they brought Scout back to our house and then Eddie did some yardwork while James took a fantastic nap! He went back to the church with Eddie on Saturday night. (Lots of thank yous to the sweet nursery girls for tolerating him three nights and one Sunday morning in a row!) I totally forgot it was St. Patrick's Day so I made James wear a green ribbon on his wrist so he wouldn't get pinched. :) I don't think anyone would've pinched him, but he thought it was funny.

Will wore a green gown Saturday night after his bath once I realized it was St. Patrick's Day!

Sunday was about as exciting as Saturday! Ha! Church, lunch, naps, playing in the yard. Bubbles were a big item on the to-do list. We're thrilled it's finally pretty outside (even though winter wasn't bad...) but I sneeze my head off all day long.

I caught a teensy grin from Will!

Can you tell that someone chose his own accessories???

More of the same this week! Tuesdays are SO busy for us for some reason. My list is a mile long already!

Paper Coterie

I bragged about our memory boxes last week and I got an email this week from Paper Coterie that they're having a 60% off sale. If you're interested, click HERE and enter 60FOR60ISH at checkout. I'm not being compensated at all and I wasn't asked to blog about this, it's just a website I've used several times and we've enjoyed their products. I think I'm going to get a new memory box for our Christmas cards because my current storage method for those is out of control!

Aunt Pinky's Place...

 As far as I know, tonight marked Eddie's acting debut. All of the rehearsals are over and tonight was the night! I decided to go tonight (in hopes it would be less crowded) and took both boys with me. They both stayed in the nursery (there was only one other child there!) and I was able to watch the whole play! It was SO funny! There was a row of women behind me that had the best time laughing! If you're local you should definitely catch it Friday-Sunday at 7:30. Eddie has tickets if you need one! All proceeds go to Relay for Life!



Wordless Wednesday...



Will at One Month!

Can someone please tell me where the last four weeks went? Seriously? It is definitely going by even faster this time.

At one month Will weighs 9.2 pounds and is about 20.5 inches. I won't know official measurements until his two-month check-up.

He's a great nurser! During the day we have 2.5-3 hour stretches between feedings. He sometimes goes a little longer, but I try to keep it right around 3 hours in an effort to sleep longer at night.

He is still sleeping pretty much all day long but doesn't have any consistent schedule yet.

At night he wakes every 2.5-5 hours to nurse. Some nights he does GREAT and only wakes up once and other nights he wakes up every 2 or 2.5 hours. I'm dragging first thing in the morning, but I don't have time to nap all day long like I did with James.

He is pretty much content unless his tummy hurts, he is sleepy and needs a paci, he's hungry, cold, or wet. Otherwise, he just hangs out all day long!

He sleeps swaddled at night. I learned the hard way with James that this is key!

(Will at the top, James at the bottom.)

He's out of newborn diapers (they've only JUST gotten to be too small in the past week) and into size ones...which seem a teensy bit too big.

He enjoys his carseat and his swing.

He smiles occasionally, but not like James did. James' smiles were INTENTIONAL...even at this young age. Will smiles occasionally at the sound of our voices, but usually he's just practicing for no reason. *** Hold the phone! He did it today! ***

Out of newborn clothes and into 0-3 months! I hate that our seasons don't match up because there are lots of James' things that I'd love for Will to wear. Oh well! I went play clothes shopping today and was not successful for the little man.

I'm hoping that this month will give us more consistency with sleeping/playing patterns during the day. 

Look who just couldn't stand it! Notice that he has on the "1 Month" sticker, too. :)

A Bottle, a Picnic, a Meltdown, and a Beautiful Day!

Friday night we stayed home, but I promised James that he could help feed Will his first bottle. I'm nursing and we don't do formula at all, but I do like to leave for more then 2.5-3 hours on occasion so I try to stockpile milk in the freezer for those times. However, I wanted to make sure Mr. Will would actually take a bottle. Well, just like his brother he acted like it was nothing new! :) (James NEVER took formula...not for my lack of trying but because he could taste it even if it was mixed with breast milk. Craziest thing! However, we made it to 13 months of nursing because of his stubbornness!) James loved helping feed Will...for the first few minutes and then he lost interest!

Blast from the past...the picture above is James at one month!

On Saturday Eddie had rehearsal from 10-3. After James' nap, I decided to load both boys into the car (in their jammies...I'm not superwoman) and drive through Chick-fil-A to pick up lunch. We had a "car picnic" which really just means that James was contained so that we could eat without too many meltdowns.

Saturday afternoon I was able to convince James to take a second nap after we watched The Fox and the Hound. This sweet little booger fell asleep after he ate with his precious hands underneath his cheek. :)

And later in his swing he figured out how to get his finger into his mouth. He'd get rid of all pacifiers if he could figure out how to get those fingers in and keep them there!

I won't say much about Saturday night except that it involved a meltdown of my own (not one of my finer moments) and a missed wedding. Mom and Sonny had come up to babysit so we went with them to dinner instead. :) I'm happy to say that my meltdown (which involved a wardrobe that doesn't fit) didn't last long...just long enough not to be able to get out the door in time to get a seat at the wedding before the bride arrived. *Sigh*

Sunday we seemed to get ourselves back together. After church for the bigger boys, lunch, and a nap, we went for a walk, played in the driveway, and played in the backyard. The weather was PERFECT today but the stupid POLLEN that is making me miserable!

I'm not sure a picture has ever looked less like James, but here is documented proof of our first walk around the neighborhood with Will anyway. :)

Bad mouth daylight savings time all you want...but this was the sky at 5:30!!! Woohoo!!!

James can play tee-ball NEXT YEAR. Does that blow anyone else's mind? Pretty sure we won't be signing up, but just the idea that he CAN is crazy to me. (Our area is BIG into baseball. Our Little League is phenomenal and people start 'em out young here!)

Busy, busy, BUSY week ahead for us. I'm not sure we've had this much on our calendar in a long time. Thankfully, things *might* slow down a bit after next weekend!