Two Peas in a Pod

Homemade Halloween

This year we attempted to make our Halloween costumes (well, 2/3 of them at least). Jack wanted to be Thomas, of course, and the ones you can buy in the stores are pretty pitiful. We found some ideas online, saved a diaper box, and got to work. The only thing that's technically homemade on Anna's costume is her antennae (which she refused to wear most of the time), but we recycled pieces from her birthday outfit to create a butterfly. We just bought Sam's costume from Wal-Mart, but after all the work we put into making Thomas, the $8 costume was totally worth it - and boy does he make a cute giraffe!

Some of these pictures were taken a couple weeks ago when the kids dressed up for the first time and some of them were taken tonight before trick-or-treating.

This was Anna's first time in her costume and she was too busy checking it out to look at the camera for pictures.

She's flapping like a butterfly here.

The best one we got with all three of them.

Trick-or-treating

Stuffing their faces with candy after we headed home once it started raining.

Happy Birthday

Anna loves to sing to herself. Lately, when she plays independently, she's almost always singing. Her recent favorite is Happy Birthday. She usually sings happy birthday to herself or Sam, but we encouraged her to sing to Grammy tonight.



Hope you have a wonderful birthday, Grammy! The kids also wanted to show off their special dance moves in honor of your day. I guess they're just dancing to rhythm inside their own heads!

Sick Boy

Jack woke up Thursday morning with a horrible cough and I decided to keep him home from school. His voice was hoarse and he sounded terrible. Turns out he has croup and has been a pretty miserable guy these past few days. He's on medication now and is definitely starting to feel better.

While he was feeling yucky Thursday I offered him a special snack to help his throat feel better . . . hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows, and a silly straw, of course!

He didn't get out of his jammies today, but I guess he was feeling well enough to do a little primping and accessorize his outfit.

Someone needs to teach this boy about using concealer to get rid of those dark circles under his eyes, though!

Halloween Playgroup Party

We were invited to a friend's house for a small Halloween party. Well, I thought it was going to be small, but this lady goes all out! Jack was in school, but Anna, Sam, and I had a great time! The kids started out with a bones hunt (similar to Easter egg hunt), then moved on to pumpkin bowling, musical chairs, and pin the nose on the jack-o-lantern. I tried to take lots of pictures, but when I wear Sam strapped to my chest, he jostles me around and most of my pictures turn out blurry.

Anna on the bones hunt (they were little rubber skeletons and she loved them).

She just loves Jonas!

Pumpkin bowling. She never quite got the hang of it, but she won a prize anyway.

Modeling her prize. She would not take these glasses off! She looks mad because I stopped swinging her so I could get a picture.

Musical chairs.

These kids were just a bit too young for this game. They weren't really sure what to do . . .

and this is what they looked like when they got out. My girl was the first one and right after I took this pitiful picture, she started to cry.

Meanwhile, the game continued and once the kids realized chairs were missing after each turn, they started carrying their chairs when the music turned on! It was hysterical!

I showed Anna the "special" chairs (the ones taken away from the game) and once she sat down there, she quickly recovered.

We had so much fun playing with friends and eating lots of yummy food!
Thanks, JoAnn!

Five Months

My baby was officially five months old yesterday. Here are some things I would record in his baby book - if I had one.

- This boy is big! He's been wearing size 9 mos clothes for about a month now.
- He 's finally getting on somewhat of a predictable schedule. He's awake for about 2 hours and then sleeps about an hour. Sometimes he blesses me with a two+ hour afternoon nap (if I've been good that day)!
- When he's awake he is a really happy guy these days. Once he's been awake 2 hours on the dot, I can rock him a couple minutes and put him in his crib awake and he will go right to sleep. If it's been shorter or longer than 2 hours - he cries.
- His favorite blanket is a white one that someone made for him and he loves to rub it on his face as he falls asleep.
- Big boy is still not sleeping through the night! At 2 1/2 months old, he would sleep 9 hours - until 5:00am. Somewhere along the way he regressed a bit and started getting up earlier and sometimes even twice a night! Thankfully, he eats and goes right back to sleep, so I'm really only up for about 15 minutes, but still, it's time to sleep, Sam!
- We've been feeding him in the evenings in attempts to get him to sleep longer. He only gets up once now that we started food, so I guess that's progress.
- He hated cereal and now eats oatmeal instead - he loves it! He's also had applesauce and seems ok with that one, too.
- Now that he's discovered the art of rolling - he does it all the time. I left him in the middle of the blanket to go check on supper and when I came back, this is where I found him:

Guess he was trying to get his toy!

- This boy is a spitter and a drooler. Thank goodness for bibs.
- He loves to splash in the bathtub and adores his siblings. They can always make him laugh - especially Jack.
- He also loves to play "airplane" and fly on your legs. Watch out for the drool, though, it will get you in the face every time!

He really is a happy (and heavy) baby and we love our baby Sam!

A Sneak Peek

Who, me?

Guess who rolled over from his back to his tummy for the first time tonight? Three times!

Oh how I love these silly babies!

Princess Fun

Anna got the cutest book for her birthday. It's a board book about all of the Disney princesses and it came with small figurines. Each of the six princesses are included as well as another character form the story (Ariel & Flounder, Belle & Mrs. Potts, etc.). The other day I heard Jack roaring loudly and it sounded like a huge commotion, despite the fact that he was playing by himself. When I walked in, I overheard, "ROARRRRR . . . I'm gonna get you fish!" He had Jasmine's tiger (can't remember the name) chasing after Flounder and all the princesses were screaming and running away!

A couple days later, I found him picking up the princesses (by the head!) with his toy pliers and putting them into the back of a dump truck. He happily played with that for at least 20 minutes! Probably not what the creators of this book set had in mind, but it works for us!

Old Friends

This past weekend I got to spend some time with some very special friends. Carly & Lauren are my "old" friends because we go way back - to middle school (though technically we've all known each other since elementary school). Lauren just had her first baby a few weeks ago and Carly and I finally made the trip to Georgia to meet her. Sam tagged along but Davis, Jack, & Anna stayed home with their daddies. We had so much fun gabbing with each other and snuggling with sweet baby Audrey! Hopefully we can do it again very soon.

Sam is about 3 months older than Audrey, and boy do those three months make a difference - she was so tiny next to him

Two

She's two. I have no idea how that happened, but it did. Our spunky girl is growing up so quickly. She tries to do everything her brother does, and she's usually pretty good at it! She talks up a storm, speaking in full sentences, and most of the time we understand everything she says (except for her prayers at bed time - she will talk forever and we only catch a few words here and there). Ironically enough, the two things I hear her say the most are: "I do it by myself!" and "I need some help please Mommy." She's becoming extremely independent and gets so frustrated when she can't do everything without help. She has a firm idea about what she wants to wear, so some days it's a pretty interesting combination (though honestly, if we're going in public, I try to encourage her to at least choose something that matches). She loves to sing the ABC's and can count to 10 (she usually leaves out 8). She's really starting to get into baby dolls these days. She feeds them, rocks them, and puts them in Sam's swing, exersaucer, bouncy seat, etc. She loves to watch the Wiggles, but I think she enjoys Jack's Thomas videos, too! We went to the doctor this week for her well-visit and she's 27 lbs and 33 inches tall. She got her flu shot while we were there and she didn't cry at all, though she did give the nurse a pretty nasty look! She's our tough kid, no doubt about it. We love her to pieces!

Pumpkin Patch

We hit the pumpkin patch today with the MOMS Club. Actually, it's just a church that sells pumpkins, but we called it a pumpkin patch, and at this point in life, my kids don't really know the difference. They had a story time for the kids with several different books and songs and then they got to pick out their very own pumpkin. We had a blast (even though Jack looks like a grouch in a lot of the pictures)!

Anna liked the bumpy pumpkins the best.

I tried to get a picture of J & A together.
This is my first attempt.

I asked them to smile and this is what I got.

Number three wasn't any more successful than the first two attempts.

Why I thought we would get a good one if I threw Sam into the mix is beyond me! These are the only two I could snap before everyone complained that Sam was too heavy to hold.

Jack moved on to explore the other pumpkins.

After watching our attempts at a group photo, Jonas asked to hold Sam and he didn't complain once that big boy was too heavy!

More bumpy pumpkins.

Story time.

Again, despite the sour look on his face in the pictures, he loved it and participated in the songs.

Picking out his pumpkin.

I asked him to show it to me . . .

and then threatened that we wouldn't go to Chick-fil-A with his friends if he didn't give me at least one smile!

Just because it makes me laugh, I'm including all three of our attempts at a family picture (minus Marshall, of course, since he was at work)!

Anna with her pumpkin.

The kids found something even more exciting than pumpkins - a wooden beam!

They ended up the trip by climbing the hill, rolling their pumpkins down, and then running down the hill to retrieve them and start all over again. That, of course, seemed to be the highlight of the whole trip!