This week

I started this week thinking we were going to have a busy week, but all-in-all it turned out to be rather mild. On Wednesday I took Jett for his 4 month checkup, and he is a BIG boy! His stats are, drumroll please.......

weight: 16lb 8oz (he has gained EIGHT pounds since birth) He's in the 79th percentile.

height: 27 inches (he has grown 7 inches since birth) This puts him upwards of the 97th percentile. I guess they don't keep stats above the 97th percent as the sheet the doctore gave me just said >97%.

head: well, it's BIG! 89th pecentile. We just say that means he's going to be really smart ;o)

Overall the pediatrician said he looks really good.

The rest of my update is in the picture captions below...

Big boy in the Bumbo

Big girl in the Bumbo

I may have mentioned that we got a swing set for Lila and Jett. Our neighbors moved to a new house and this swing set was in their backyard. Their kids are older so they gave it to us. Roman and Grandpa Kent disassembled it and brought it to our house in several different trips. We power washed it, replaced some of the boards, put it back together, and then stained it. Below is the after picture.

They are still trying to figure out how to get the see-saw swing to stay on and how to attach the slide. They need certain bolts and can't seem to find them at the local hardware stores. Lila is just happy to have a swing as that's what she enjoys most. I got a couple pictures of her swinging the other day.

Lila and Auntie Meredith being silly

I made a cake (from scatch, not from a box) and icing for Roman's birthday and I let Lila lick the frosting off the beater. She liked it so much she went and stuck the beater in the side of the cake to try to get more. Naughty, naughty!

Okay, so I'll never make it as a cake decorator, but Roman didn't seem to mind. I was able to get the icing his favorite color blue.

I bought Jett a new diaper. The monkey was just too cute to resist.

The quality of this video isn't the best because I took it with my phone, but it was a cute video of the two of them.

July

Well it's that time again, update time. It's seems a lot has been going on here lately.

Lila's room is still a work in progress, but I have stepped up my work these last couple weeks. Lila has started climbing out of her crib. Until now she has been really content to sleep in her crib. Truthfully I think she still is. I think she just figured out she could climb out in a fit of rage, and now that she knows she can, she does. She was pitching a fit in her crib while I was trying to get Jett to sleep in his. I went out and closed her door--she HATES it when we close her door--and next thing I know she's REALLY pitching a fit and then I hear her open her door. She's periodically been getting out, but we've told her that if she doesn't stay in crib we'll close her door and that's mostly being working. We finally this week got a bedrail for her bed, and she took a nap in it this week. The last thing we need is a step stool so she can get in and out of the bed. It's pretty high up since it has a trudle underneath. I ordered her one with her name on it and am just waiting for it to arrive.

Jett is still such a happy baby. He is trying so hard to roll over. He lays on his back and pushes his leg and arches his back over and over. I help him roll onto his stomach and then he looks around as if to say, how'd I get like this. I take him for his 4 month checkup next week so we'll see where he falls in the height/weight percentiles. He's also started waking up just once a night to eat, usually around 4am. That's made a huge difference for Roman and me as we've been able to get longer chunks of sleep. Last night I actually slept for 6 hours without waking up. That's the first time that's happened in as long as I can remember. Probably sometime at the beginning of being pregnant with Jett, which would be almost a year ago.

With the good comes the bad for me. I've been having some pain in my right shoulder. I thought I'd just slept on it wrong, but it didn't go away. Now I think I have some kind of rotator cuff injury. I don't recall doing anything to it, but it seems like what I've read online. The best thing for it is rest, not lifting anything heavy, and not raising the arm up above the shoulder. Well all that sounds well and good if you don't have two little kids. We'll see. I just hope it goes away soon!

It's Roman's birthday tomorrow and he's going to go fishing, which he loves! If he catches some good fish we'll have a nice dinner this weekend. We've hardly had any rain here in the last month and a half. I think it's rained twice since our visit to MN in early June. You've never seen so many people so excited about rain!

Well that's all I can think of right now. Pictures below and a video of Lila, and a video of Jett.



4th of July



Cute baby!



She'd just woken up from her nap

She loves these rain boots and puts them on randomly to walk around the house.

My cousins Jenny and Allison wanted to get me a tree to plant in honor of my dad. We decided to get a couple of these small orange trees. We're going to plant them in some nice pots until they get a little bigger and then when we get around to landscaping our backyard we may plant them out there. We're not entirely sure we'll stay in this house longterm and I'd want to take them with us if we moved.

I have no idea what the heck she was doing here. Dangerous place for poor baby Jett.

Lila always wants to hold him

We have a SERIOUS fire ant problem her in Texas. Some idiot brought them over from Africa and they have no predators. We went to feed the turtles in the pond across from Roman's office yesterday and poor Lila got attacked. She even had bites on her knee.

I know this video is pretty dark, but you can still see her. We were singing "I love you, you love me...", otherwise known as the Barney theme song.

We were at a birthday party and I got this little video of Jett and Roman

Laughing

Jett started laughing while I was playing this him tonight. Roman got a video.

Where have the last three months gone??

Once again, a lengthy, overdue update...

Jett is now 3 months old. I can't believe it! It seems like the time has just flown by. He is growing ever bigger. I had to go through his 6 month clothes yesterday and pull out summer things for him to wear. They still look a bit silly on him as he doesn't fill them out, but we need them for length as he's still really tall. The cloth diapers make it worse since we need extra room at the bottom of his clothes anyway.

Jett is really a happy baby. He loves to sit with us and really pays attention to Lila. He's just about got neck control mastered as well. I tried to get a video of him talking to me the other day, but when he sees the camera he clams up, much like his big sister. Roman got a little bit of it though and I posted it below.

Lila has been somewhat accident prone lately. This week she fell down the stairs for the first time. She was on the landing at the top and as she went to grab the railing she sort of stubbed her toe and went somersaulting down the stairs. Luckily I was at the bottom of the stairs so I caught her before she did the second somersault, which would have landed her hard on the tile. She seemed to be more freightened than hurt. Then that same day she was in time out, but wouldn't STAY in time out. I went to pick her up to put her back and she did one of those flopping-like-a-fish-out-of-water things and smacked her forehead on the corner of a table. She had a HUGE goose egg on her head. It actually scared me it was so big. I thought for the first time in my life I might need to call 911. Roman's mom was here and both she and Roman had experience with such things so we put ice on it to reduce the swelling [BTW, I learned later that you are actually supposed to wrap their head tightly with an ace bandage, not use ice]. She didn't much care for the ice pack, so we had to bride her with treats to get her to sit still. The swelling eventually went down and now it's just a bruise. Hopefully that'll be all the accidents around here for a while.

We are getting closer to getting Lila's room completed. I finally found her a good mattress, well Roman's really the one that did. I wanted one that didn't have all the chemicals and flame retardants they put in traditional mattresses. They are SO expensive, but we found one on sale at a local mattress place by our house, and it's really nice and comfy. I bought her a cute bedspread and ordered her a step stool with her name on it as the mattress is too high for her to climb up on her own. She's still pretty happy to sleep in her crib, so I'm not overly eager to put her in her big girl bed. She fell out of the bed when we were at my dad's house too, so that makes me even more weary. Her bed is a daybed though, meaning there's only one side she could actually fall out of, so we'll just need one bed rail.

Here's a little funny from Lila...

Yesterday Lila was carrying around her little stuffed puppy dog. She says to me, "He's hungy Mommy" and then proceeds to lift her shirt up and put the puppy's face under her shirt and says, "he's drinking his milk Mommy". It was too cute!

Here are the photos (and video)...



This swimsuit was a hand me down from my friend Beth. I thought it was so cute on her daughter so she gave it to us when Ella outgrew it. We were at the neighbors' pool and Lila was so enamored by the dogs playing fetch. She kept asking to throw their toys.








You can't really see it the picture, but there's milk all over her. She has a big girl cup she likes to drink from, but we only let her drink from it in the kitchen because she spills frequently. The other day she kept coming into the living room and finally I said, okay, that's it, I'm going to take it. Well that sent her running back toward the kitchen, cup of milk in hand. When she got to the tile it spilled and she slipped and hit the floor and the rest of the milk splashed on her. She was NOT happy!

If you look closely (or click on the picture to enlarge it) you can see the goose egg on the left side of her forehead. This was after the swelling went down considerably. It looked like a ping pong ball under skin beforehand.

Baby Jett and Grandma Frances

My diva daughter! Lila got a hold of neighbor Jenna's sunglasses.

Below is the video of Jett talking

Minnesota

If I had to sum up our trip to MN in one word, I think it would have to be "cursed". Okay, maybe cursed is a bit strong, but it was definitely problem-filled.

PROBLEM ONE: We'd planned to go for seven days, Tuesday to Tuesday, to sort out all the things at my dad's house. My cousins are going to rent his house, so we just had those seven days to get everything out of the house. Well Roman ended up with a couple meetings he couldn't change. So he flew up with us last Tue, left Wed night, flew back to MN Thr night, then left again Mon morning and met us back at the airport in Houston Tue night. Thank God for my mom! If she hadn't come with us I'd have gotten absolutely nothing done with two kids to handle. I can barely get things done at my own house with my two kids here.

PROBLEM TWO: My aunt and uncle were planning a trip to Texas so they offered to take their big heavy duty pickup truck and tow a trailer with all the things from my dad's house that we wanted to take here. This option was about 1/4 as expensive as our previous option, which was to rent a pod and have it transported here once we loaded it. Well my aunt was having some health problems so they cancelled their trip. We scrambled to get a pod and it was delievered Monday morning. With Roman gone, my mom and I recruited a bunch of people to help us pack it up.

PROBLEM THREE: The dog.

Noli was staying at my mom and step-dad's house while we were gone. My step-dad let him outside one night and just as he ran out the door, a spot light Kent had on created a big shadow and scared Noli really bad. He was so scared he went running back in the house, pooping and peeeing as he ran. Kent put him back outside so he could clean up the mess and when he came back Noli was gone. Kent put up posters, searched the neighborhoods around their house, and called the shelters in the area. I did some online searching and put a lost dog posting on the SPCA website, but we haven't found him.

We all miss him, but I was most concerned about Lila. Within an hour of us coming home on Thr Lila asked, "Where's Noli?". Then Wed she wanted to take Noli's food over to my mom's house for him. I told her that Noli ran away and when she asked where he went, I told her that we didn't really know, but that maybe he went to look for Papa [my dad]. She keeps randomingly saying, "Noli runned away?" and I just keep telling her "Yep, he ran away" and she says "Oh". I imagine in time she'll stop asking.

PROBLEM FOUR: My thumb...it starts with the bedroom set you see in the picture below.

I had put this bedroom set of my dad's on Craig's List and someone had wanted to know if the nightstand cabinets separated from the headboard. I was trying to move the cabinet over to see if they separated and the overhead piece above the mirror fell on my thumb. Yeah, you see that big wood piece? That's the one. It was SUPPOSED to be screwed in, but it wasn't. Well when it fell the corner of it lacerated my thumb to the bone. Hi ho, hi ho, off to the ER I go. Luckily my cousin Jenny was there so she stayed with Lila, and my mom and I took Jett with us. The ER doctor was concerned that there was either some tendon damage, or some damage to the casing around the thumb joint, so she put my thumb in what she called a splint. She basically made what I'd call half a cast around my thumb, hand, and wrist to hold my thumb in a thumbs up position. I went to a hand doctor here in Houston the other day and he said it looked fine and that the clicking at my thumb joint was probably due to swelling.

IT WAS AWFUL having that thing on my hand!! You don't realize how many things you can't do when you don't have one thumb. And of course, it had to be my right hand as well, making it even more difficult. Those stupid snaps on baby clothes, those look me forever to get snapped. All is healing up nicely now though, so it's all water under the bridge. Thank you God that it wasn't something serious--I need my thumb!






Before the stitches



My splinted thumb

Two days after the stitches came out--not too bad.

Well I think that about sums up the majority of the issues we had. I had a really hard time letting go of my dad's things. He really loved the things he had in his house, because most all of them were antiques that came from his parents and extended family. I sit and lament the things I let go, but I couldn't keep everything. As hard as it was to go through all my dad's things, it was great to see my family, and they were all SO helpful! I could never have done it without them.

Below are some random photos (and a video) I took before and after our trip. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take any photos while we were in MN.

Lila was sharing her giraffe with her brother

Chillin' in the bath

First time in the neighbor's pool this year.

She is OBSESSED with drinking from the Sesame Street "big girl cup" she got from Marta at Roman's office. I cannot count the number of times she's spilled on herself, but we only put water in it, and just little bits at a time.

Roman says she looks like she partied too hard.

Still smiling with one pirate eye

My baby is such a big boy--12 weeks already, where does the time go?! He straightens his legs and stands up all the time. He is so long that now his 3-6 month sleepers and some of the shirts are getting to be too short. It's crazy because there's all this extra room in them because he's so skinny, but then you can see his belly sticking out the bottom.

We've managed to weather the colic stage and now he's so easy and predictable. He only really cries when he's hungry, tired, or needs a diaper change. He still has some gas issues, esp. in the evening, but it's 1000% better than it was. He's so happy and smiles at us all the time. We have little conversations with him as well. After he eats I'll put him in his chair and we'll smile and talk to each other. He coos and makes all sorts of noises when I talk to him.

This is a video of Lila singing her ABCs. She's modified the song a little, but she has it mostly right.

Minnesota Zoo

The one and only thing we did while were in MN was to take the kids to the zoo. We went with my two good friends from middle/high school, Michelle and Heather, and their kids. Here are some photos, all taken by Michelle, who is a professional photographer (http://www.masterverkphotography.com/index2.php#/home/).

Heather's kids had so much fun getting soaked by the sprayer, and she was so sweet, she just let them be kids and get wet. I would have been freaking out. A lesson for me that I need to relax a little! Thanks Heather!!

Michelle's son Elliott

Lila giving Heather's daughter Eden a kiss. This one and the one below are Heather's photos...thanks for letting me borrow!

Me, Michelle, and Heather