May + June = Hot Fun

Reading for your update? How do you feel about out of order pictures and random kiddo stuff? Awesome, here we go!

Here is Rebecca eating a banana (peel and all) at our garage sale a couple of weeks ago. She was a hot mess when it was all said and done with. (Horn toot: Kyle totally cleaned out/organized our garage yesterday--we can fit both of our cards in it now! --It's a good thing we've extended our lease so we have some time to take advantage of it, right?!)

 

Rebecca's curls are coming in "ahead of schedule" (compared to Owen). His started up top around his firth birthday. She'll be 10 months old on Thursday and hers are mostly around the nape of her neck. Sooo, sweet. Not quite long enough for any accessories, but it won't be long.

 

A  couple of awesome shots our friend Cary took with her awesome camera while we were at the beach. Let's say awesome one more time. Yes, awesome!

s This is a horrible picture but it should give you a sense of what our day to day is like. When we're not out and about, it's playtime chaos. 

 Rebecca and her namesake Bee at Owen's end of school year picnic a few weeks ago.

 

Owen loves it when he hears Rebecca wake up before I do. On this occasion he ran into her room and climbed up into her bed to "save her".  

 

 Owen and Bee at his school picnic. (Those things that look like horns are his hands, helping him stand up on his tip-toes.)

Birthday's mean cake. Picnics mean cupcakes. 

 

We will miss Owen's sweet teacher Mrs. Ouida. Here she is giving each child a beach ball with their name on it. Big hit.

 

I think this is the first picture we've had of all of us since Thanksgiving. Is that possible? An old friend from NC who now lives in Hershey Pennsylvania was in town all of last week. We got the chance to play tour guide a little bit and he was kind enough to take our picture. Nice hill country view from the balcony of the County Line. (Because of Kyle's enthusiasm when saying the word, Owen thinks ribs are called "ribza".)

 

One of these days Rebecca will get to take fun outings with her grandparents, but for now, it's still just Owen--what a treat for him. Yesterday he went with Dahdo and Pam out to my dad's project in Manor to paint some fire hydrants. You could not pay for a more perfect activity for Owen. The gettup was all my dad's doing. His old t-shirt, TX dew rag, little workout gloves. My dad and Pam call Owen their "teeny Republican" or ask him if he's a "Whole Foods Conservative" (to which they've trained him to say Yes). Oh to be a fly on the wall and overhear the indoctrination...

 

Okay, some general kid update stuff...

-Rebecca is almost "cruising" (taking little steps w/ the help of furniture and other stuff she can hold onto). She is pulling up on everything, standing with only the help of one hand. She'll let go, but promptly sit down. Her favorite thing to pull up on is your leg, while you're standing, immobilizing you. And of course she loves scooting around the train table "stroying" stuff as Owen says. When he sees her coming he says, "Momma, here comes the tornado. Come get her!". The more she can get around the more we see her personality come out based on what she gets herself into...we predict "feisty" will be an adjective that gets used to describe her more and more in the months and years to come...

-She has taken well to table foods--so much better (at least from my perspective) than the mushy baby stuff. I'm never quite sure how much she's actually eaten until I sweep...Weening is going as expected. She hasn't seemed to miss nursing all that much but she also isn't taking in a whole lot of formula. We're down to 3 times a day and will soon be at 2. At some point, she's going to get thirsty enough to just start drinking the other stuff!

-She is also starting to make a lot more noise and discrete sounds like da da. It's so fun to hear her little voice!!!

-Owen has been a busy little guy recently. Most importantly...to and from the potty! Things with potty training have gone surprisingly well. The first day or two I kept thinking "what are we doing? what are we doing wrong?" because we went through all 12 pairs of underwear...before lunch. But it's been about 2 weeks and I can't remember the last accident he had. I still remind him a lot and make him go before we leave the house and other key times, but he's also done great at taking care of business by himself! And boy is he proud of himself when he does it all by himself (including the getting undressed part) and then just comes to tell me! (This is funny: he still has a hard time putting his underwear back on. One time he was running around naked afterwards and I asked him where his pants were and he told me he "whooooooshed" them off. So, that's what he says now for getting his pants off--whooosh

-Speaking of VBS...What a great week we had! Okay, I was exhausted each day after helping. (I'm not an 18-year old camp counselor anymore I guess.) Owen went with the pre-school crew even though he isn't 3 yet and for the most part he did really well considering his age. He takes a while to warm up to new environments so he carried his green blankie around with him most of the week and had his "stoic" face on most of the time. Looking at him you wouldn't have thought he was having a good time, but by the way he talked about it with me at the end of each day, and requested we sing the new church songs he learned, I know he enjoyed it. Cousin Bailey was there too which was great--they kept each other company! (Rebecca and Blake were in child care there and were both troopers.)

-I've mentioned that Owen has taken the almost constant destruction of his (previously meticulous) train track by Betta in great stride. The more impressive part is that he's taken the opportunity to build tracks of his own design. We've had them running the length of the hallway (every piece lined up) and he's even worked in bridges and hills. It's so fun to see his little mind come up with a plan and then watch him try to execute it!

-Owenisms:
-Owen likes to answer questions in complete sentences. If you ask him if he'll do something he says, "I will!". It's funny to me because it sounds so formal and serious. If you ask him if he likes something he says, "I do!".
-Tonight at dinner w/ a new friend from church he was asked how old he was and he said "Almost 7" even though he totally knows he is 2.5.

What's coming up?
1) swim lessons for Owen this week and next
2)Visit from Grandpa Robert (Yippee)! this weekend
3) Port Aransas w/ Nana & Luke, Mel, Bailey & Blake the next weekend

Yea for summertime!

Beach Trip 2010: No Pain No Gain

So, it was almost a month ago, but I'm finally getting around to putting up some of our 500+ photos from our 2010 Beach Trip! This was the 2nd (almost) annual trip. The first trip (May 2008) we went to Holden Beach, NC and had 3 babies. This time we were in Port Aransas, TX and had 7 kiddos all under the age of 3. Wow. Let's just say that it took most of us a while to adjust our expectations of how much relaxing we were going to get to do...

 Here are 6 of the 7 kiddos: Cousin Blake, Cousin Bailey, Owen, Rebecca, Nathan, Emmy, (Boone was sleeping)

Owen's favorite thing (and pretty much the only thing he did all week) was to dig in the sand. He dug, built, trenched, patted, poured, scooped--pretty much anything you can do with sand, some shovels and a giant dump trunk. He was in heaven.

I'm not sure if we ever really got him in the ocean although I know we tried. Here he is in the pool practicing some bubble-blowing with Kyle. He's still pretty timid in the water.

Rebecca was her usual happy-go-lucky self.  She tends to adjust really easily to new surroundings. It was on this trip that she started really really scooting around quickly and pulling up on the coffee table.

                                                                      Eating sand is a right of passage it seems...                  

I was totally unrealistic in the stuff I thought I would do for (kid-free) fun on the trip. I think most of us were. Kyle and I brought a ridiculous number of books. And Katie and I each brought our sewing machines and enough cute fabric to make 100 pillow-case dresses. We were able to crank out 3--which, given the circumstances was a pretty impressive feat! Here are the girls in their matchy-matchies. 

 One "fun" activity that everyone but me seemed to love was "feeding" (aka: being attacked by) the seagulls. They swarmed like rabid flying rodents and dive-bombed you for bits of bread, but hey--what's not to love?!

 One morning the boys were real gems and left the house with the kiddos to give us moms some peace and quiet. We even had a really awesome masseur come to the house to give us all massages (except for Cary who must be an alien because she doesn't like them); for the rest of us, an hour and a half felt like 10 minutes. They took the kiddos to the Aquarium in Corpus and all reports say they had a really good time. Definitely an outing we'll repeat (and maybe without the moms again!)

 

 We got massages, the boys went deep-sea fishing. They were a little disappointed with the total # of fish caught (stinky weather), but still had a good time away from the beach-house chaos, and the fish still tasted pretty yummy!

 

So, yes, No Pain No Gain. The trip was harder this year. The weather was a little rough (so windy that we couldn't go to the beach several days). The house was a little tight for 5 growing families. But circumstances what they were, it was still such a blessing to get away with friends. This is what living our lives together is all about--the messy stuff too! Here are some other highlights (so I don't forget):

• Dessert every night and an entire kitchen cabinet filled with stuff none of us should eat (like the Twinkies Kyle said no vacation is complete without)
• Katie's famous mojitos pretty much on demand
• Katie getting me (and Christal and Melissa) addicted to the show "Alias"--don't ask me how I've been spending the weeks since our trip...
• The boys winning one game of "four on the couch" and getting so excited that they finally beat the girls that they did a big dog-pile and acted like they had just achieved peace in the Middle East
• Each family surviving sleeping together in one room together...rumor has it that Uncle Luke slept in their room's closet...
• Ticket to Ride
• tag-team napping
• a few spankings...

As a friend of mine recently told me, "the days are long, but the years are short"...and some day we'll look back on even our toughest of vacations and think fondly of the good ol' days when the kids were little. We're counting on that...and planning for next year.

May Update

Wow, it's been a long time since my last post! I guess we've been busy--you know the drill. 

Let's see...

Owen is in a big boy bed! He loves it and is still a champion sleeper! We even managed to get him to relinquish 3 of his 4 baby blankies to his "baby stuff" since "big boys don't sleep with baby blankets"...he still has his special green blankie, which will probably go to college with him. :) (Until the big boy bed he was still sleeping with Blue, White, Green and Yellow, now it's just Green.)

Rebecca is all over the place. Seriously. She is not only crawling now, but she's fast. And she's not only crawling fast, she's pulling up on everything and getting into major trouble. We've now switched from having to watch Owen more to having to watch Rebecca more. We sort of forgot about this phase--where you have to move all books and photos and breakables off low (and not-so-low shelves)!

Rebecca's favorite stuff to get into is anything paper...books, magazines, mail, trash. She LOVES to find and immediately eat paper. I totally understand why so many baby toys these days have that stuff in them that makes the crinkly sound. But she still prefers the real thing. She's much more challenging these days to keep up with (and out of trouble). It's not uncommon that we're all hanging out in the play room and we look up and she's gone. She's usually in one of a couple of places: 

1) behind our desk getting into office (paper) trash or pulling/eating books off bookshelf--she just tore the cover off of Dare to Discipline--significant?

2) down the hall and in the kids' bathroom where she likes to pull up using Owen's little potty (yeah, nice)

3) around the corner in the kitchen riffling through my tupperware drawer, or 

4) right under our noses in the playroom destroying the tracks on Owen's train table. (He's actually handled this pretty well--he has followed our lead and started referring to her as "The Tornado" and just nicely tells her "No Ma'am" over and over and over again. 

Another fun thing she loves these day is doing "doodle" (Yankee Doodle) on Bee's leg. When the song and bouncing is over she starts jumping on Bee's foot--her way of saying "again!". So cute.

She has her 2nd tooth. We're about to start going headlong into table foods (got the okay from the pediatrician today) so we'll let you know how that goes. I'll be glad to be done w/ the messy mushy baby stuff. Weening is in our near future as well...

We had her 9 month appointment today (in her 18 month clothes!) and here are her stats: 

weight: 21.2 lbs (75-90th %)

height: 28.25 in (50-75th %)

Back to Owen: He's getting to the age where "outings" are fun. We recently went and listened to a great local Austin band (one of Owen's classmates' dad is in the band) that played an outdoor concert at the City Hall. We had a picnic and had a great time with some other kiddos and mommas (even though it was HOT!). Owen also road a City Bus with Nana (great idea Nana!). They did half a loop--ending up in downtown where I picked them up. Owen has been a fan of buses (city, school, tour, church) for a long time so this was a real treat!

And we have a BIG outing we're looking forward to, but there's a catch...I hesitate to write about this because I don't want to "jinx" it (silly, I know). We're going to take our first stab at potty training! And Owen knows that when he has one full day of no accidents we'll go take a tour of the Fire Station down the street from us. So, hopefully, we'll have that outing to report on VERY SOON!

Owen has been learning all sorts of random fun things...if you see us out and about ask him about photosynthesis, volcanoes ("Lava is not good to eat"), or for an abrazo or beso.

A funny conversation we had yesterday...

Me: Owen, what do you want for lunch?

Owen: A sandwhich. 

Me: What kind of sandwhich? [thinking turkey/cheese, sunbutter/jelly]

Owen: An icecream sandwhich! [w/ a smirk, followed by giggles]

When we told Kyle about our conversation at dinner Owen informed us that he was just "pulling my leg". 

One more funny: we had a garage sale for a really cool local charity last weekend and Owen saw me getting all the stuff organized in the garage beforehand. He asked what it was all for (definitely eyeing a few kids' toys) and I told him we were having a garage sale. He actually spent most of last weekend with my dad (Yea Dahdo and Pam) and when he got home (after the sale) he asked me if we still had a garage...

Okay, this is scary. I always knew this day would come, but I thought it would be a while from now. I always knew there would come a day when Owen (and eventually all our kids) could do things better than us and would know things we don't know...I'm thinking future technology, etc. But it's already happened. Owen needed help letting the air out of a ball because he wanted to use the little hand-pump to pump it up again. I had trouble helping him and he had to correct me a couple of times and tell me how to do it (he knew how, just couldn't physically do a couple of steps). He knew how. I didn't. Oh my goodness. 

The BIG Zoo

A couple of weeks ago the kids and I went with some friends to the Austin Zoo. What? You didn't know Austin had a zoo? You were sort of right...But last weekend Owen got to go to the BIG Zoo (San Antonio) with Bee and JoJo. (Rebecca and I were at the beach with a bunch of girls--AWESOME! and Kyle was studying for his big test.) They made a whole trip out of it--staying the night before in a hotel so they could beat the crowds the next morning. I am told that a great time was had by all, including Lucky the Elephant (who Owen tells me is a girl, not a boy, and a Momma). 

I did send a stroller, but looks like Owen found a better ride... 

 

At every exhibit Owen would say "I want to go IN there!," to which Bee replied that its not allowed because the (fill-in-the-blank animal) likes their own space. She conveniently left out the part about how many of the animals would like to try and eat him. :) The hippos were a highlight--they pressed their faces and other ends right up to the glass.

Thanks to Bee Owen now sleeps with a four-foot long stuffed crocodile in addition to the already-out-of-hand assortment of blankets of every color. All in a day's work as a grandma.

Easter/Grand Canyon, Funnies, RSM Milestones

Easter was a little different this year because Kyle was at the Grand Canyon. He had been planning the trip for months with a couple good guy friends and no one realized it was over Easter until plans were set. They backpacked down into the canyon and back up over a 4-day period. Carlos was the photographer of the trip and we don't yet have pictures, but I'll share some --of the 600!--when we get them. He said it was a "trip of a lifetime" but then took it back because he doesn't want it to hurt his chances of taking another "trip of a lifetime" in the future, meaning next year. :)  Kyle came home with great stories, one minor booboo that he calls a wound (which I think is hilarious even though how it happened was a little scary and it could have been much worse), and big dreams for taking me and the kids when they get older. 

So, after church with Bee and Nana we had a little picnic in our backyard with Nana. Here's Rebecca pretending to crawl off her blanket.

 

We tried tried tried to get a family photo but nothing quite panned out...

 

It was all-important that Bee push Owen in his swing after church.

Random: our new grocery-shopping modus operandi...

 

Owen funnies:

• The other day I told Owen it was time for lunch to which he replied “Lunch is a bummer. Let’s just eat grapes.” 
• The day Kyle got home from the Grand Canyon Owen spent the evening running around yelling at the top of his lungs “Yippee! We’re going to Grand Canyon!" (The funny part was it was pretty clear while Kyle was gone that Owen knew where he was. We had a special map with pictures of the GC on it to help Owen count down the 5 days until Kyle got home. Everywhere we went he told people what his Dada was doing and when he'd be home.)
• He has a pair of kids sunglasses and yesterday afternoon he put them on and said "how do I look?” Oh boy.
• No doubt he understand superlatives (good, better, best) because he has decided that Kyle is the "better pusher" (for our swing) and that Stan/Dahdo's eggs are better than mine. At least the boy knows what he likes.  
• Owen manages to work the following statement into conversation at least once a day. "Flies eat poop.  _______ don't eat poop." (At least we're clear on that...)

Rebecca milestones:

There is a lot going on with our little princess--she's hitting a bunch of milestones, seemingly all at once!

• She definitely knows her name.
• She LOVES blowing bubbles/spitting/zurburting--it feels like we can have a little conversation. I do it, she does it back, I do it, she does it back and on and on and on.
• She is waving bye bye...she doesn't put her hand up but her fingers are definitely doing it. She does it a lot just to watch her fingers move which is pretty cute. 

Drumroll please...

• She is crawling!!! Her first crawl was Saturday night (4/10) and both Kyle and I got to see it. We were having dinner and she was sitting on a blanket on our living room floor where Owen and cousin Bailey were having a "pizza picnic". She decided to go after Owen's juice cup and she got it!  She can get her hiney up in the air but usually resorts to an army crawl right now...still, she's mobile!

AND

• Her first tooth is coming in!!! I just noticed it this morning. It's her bottom left and it has just poked through the skin! 

So, this coming weekend Rebecca and I are off for a girls' weekend to Port Aransas with some awesome girlfriends. I am really really looking forward to it. In terms of relaxation, Rebecca is such a chill little girl that it'll almost be as easy as going alone! (And it is one of my goals to get videos of her blowing bubbles, crawling and waving bye bye...so stay tuned!) While we're gone, Owen is spending 1 night with each of his 3 local grandparents. He is going to have a blast and I'm sure he's going to be spoiled rotten when he gets home Sunday...the price I pay. We're all getting out of the house to give Kyle some peace and quiet so he can finish studying for his Anesthesia oral board exam which he takes Monday (4/19) in Atlanta. We'll all be glad when that is behind us!!!

Home Grown World Christians

Kyle and I love to travel and although we're not in a period of life where we get to do as much of it as we'd like, we're always thinking/planning/dreaming about trips, both purely for fun and for mission. These dreams are starting to include our kids too...But while we're "grounded" so to speak we get really excited about teaching Owen (and soon Rebecca) things about the world beyond our house and our neighborhood. For example, Owen knows that panda bears live in the mountains of China, that Bengal tigers live in India and a variety of lemurs live in Madagascar (confession: we didn't teach him any of that, Dora the Explorer did)...but we have started showing him where these places are on the globe. It has made me go back and re-read an excellent little article Noel Piper wrote a few years ago about raising "Home Grown World Christians"...not just for parents--we all need to be reminded to open our eyes to the bigger picture in the bigger world, right? And she's got some great tips broadening our kids' horizons (and inevitably our own). At the risk of sounding preachy, I'll say everyone should read it! :)

So, on that note (and for several other reasons), we have started sponsoring a young boy in Rwanda through a great organization called Africa New Life Ministries. (We had the honor of hearing their founder "Pastor Charles" speak in church on Sunday. We also got to hear the story of and music by an amazing street kid who went through the program. Both were awesome.) Owen is really excited about his new "friend" James. He can show you where Rwanda is on the globe, knows that we're helping James go to school, and knows James like soccer and numbers. I can't wait for us to get to write our first letter to him (and then get one in return)! I believe that the work this organization is doing will significantly impact James' life, and selfishly we are getting so much out of it as a family (and our sponsorship just started a day ago)!

Update:

The pillowcase dresses I made are now on their way to Haiti (Real Hope for Haiti Rescue Center). It really was a fun (and easy!) project.

My favorite was definitely this little pink one because the pillowcase had scalloped edges which made for a really pretty bottom.

Springtime!

Spring is here and we're so happy! We are bound and determined to enjoy this beautiful Austin weather before it turns into the (dreaded) Austin summer weather, which will surely occur before we're ready and last longer than we'd like. Anyways, here are some recent shots of the kiddos enjoying the great outdoors...

Bailey and Owen "gardening" at Nana's. We've been over there twice in the two weeks (all of us) to celebrate Luke's and then Mel's birthdays. Thirty and flirty!

Kyle put a swing up in the front yard. Good times for both kids and a sign to all the neighborhood that children live here!

We went on a picnic to one of our favorite parks the other day. The weather was perfect and surprisingly we were the only ones there. They still had a great time playing. Owen found some leftover Easter eggs and filled each of them up with rocks and burried them. Dirt/rocks/sand is way more fun than slides/swings. Rebecca dirtied her outfit right when we got there, so she did a little "sunning". Here are a few of the big girl, she actually doesn't stay sitting up for long these days because she's busy rolling all over the place to get what she wants. She also does a move we're calling the "baby plank". If you're familiar with yoga and/or pilates you know what I'm talking about. Picture this: lying on her stomach, body straight (back flat, not arched), she lifts her weight onto her arms (like a pushup) and her TOES. Then she falls back down because she doesn't actually move anywhere doing this. We definitely think she'll be truly crawling soon. Right now she just rolls and pivots to get pretty much whatever/wherever she wants. :)A great shot that a "helping parent" took of Owen at school. Isn't that smile great?

And here he is "climbing" a tree in our backyard. Confession: I put him up in the tree (he wanted to). He stayed up there a really long time and talked about how he was an owl and did lots of hoo-ing. He threw a mini-tantrum when I told him it was bedtime and made him come down.

 

In other general kiddo update news...

Rebecca: 

• As it goes with poor 2nd children, we're not doing as good of a job keeping tabs on when exactly firsts occur. No doubt she "found" her hands a long time ago, but we noticed it recently because  she was staring at her hand wiggling her fingers. We've also caught the beginnings of a "bye bye"--she doesn't move her hand up but Bee and I have both seen her move her fingers into an almost fist when we wave bye bye to her.
• I already mentioned the rolling and baby plank...life is about to change!
• She tolerates Owen constantly touching/patting her cheeks like a champ!

Owen:

• Owen is fascinated by what various animals eat and drink. It's a major topic of conversation these days. Yes Owen, all animals drink water. Yes Owen, baby mammals drink milk just like you. As it relates to people--he loves to ask people (usually as soon as we see them--before hello) if they're hungry or thirsty.
• Owen really really likes to know what's coming next in a day's schedule (even if there isn't a plan/schedule). He asks lots of questions and then likes to repeat back (in order) what we're doing and when and why.
• We have a great family devotional guide for Easter that we'll probably start using next year when he's a little older, but this year we've been doing the "resurrection eggs" you can buy at any Christian bookstore and Owen has really enjoyed it. He calls it "the egg game." More importantly, he's able to follow repeat most of the Easter week story which is exciting (especially since we recognize its very very different from the stories he's used to hearing at school, at bedtime, on kids tv, etc.).

Well, that's it for now. Kyle is off to the Grand Canyon tomorrow with two guy friends. They are doing a major backpacking trip wrought with all sorts of perils, so if it occurs to you, keep them in your prayers. He'll be back Thursday.

And Happy (almost) Easter! He is Risen!!!

(Blogger has changed some recently and I can't find the spell check icon...so sorry!)