Bennett's a learning machine!

Bennett loves to play hide and go seek.  He covers his eyes while we count.  This morning I found him counting in our closet all by himself.  Surprisingly he did it again for the camera!  I don't know why he felt he needed to pause in between each number. Dramatic effect?

For Aunt Kelsey and Uncle Scott

 Thanks for making us so cute! Love this tie and headband bow.

Sunday Best

Renn and I went to all of church yesterday for the first time. This was the first time I also had fun dressing her up as a little girl, head band and all.  I'm a t-shirt and jeans kinda girl and that's pretty much how I've been dressing Renn as well.  But Sundays are a different story.  Who doesn't like to look cute on Sunday? Since I'm having a hard time finding a nursing friendly outfit that also fits my enlarged body AND qualifies to be put in the cute category,  I need to accessorize with a cute baby. (Not to mention that I need to look acceptable as I meet my future friends here in Corpus for the first time. I need a good first impression).  So here she is.  Renn is her first-Sunday-at-church dress.

Please ignore the bad lighting/weird angle.  I was wrestling this little guy to keep him from crushing his sister as he tried his hardest to get share her attention.  It came down to me just snapping whatever picture I could to document her outfit.

Renn is diong amazing.  She's pretty calm for the most part.  When she starts to make a fus usually all she really needs is to be up on your shoulder or facing outward slung across your forearm as you walk around the house.  When she's tired, we just wrap her up, calm her down, and put her down.  Pretty easy.  This past week her baby acne has gone into full swing.  Bennett's was horrible and lasted for what felt like forever.  I think in comparison hers isn't quite as bad.  Hopefully it wont last as long, too. 

Quick funny story.  Yesterday when the girl I met in the nursing room (daughter just turned two and a baby about 7 months) asked me what Renn's name was I totally blanked.  I started saying something and then totally stopped, stuttered, thought about it for a minute and then told her.  I blame it ont he fact that we always refer to her as "baby sister" or "the baby".  For example, " Bennett, quit running circles around the baby.  You're going to step on her head".  Or, "Bennett, baby sister is sad and crying because you were being silly and slapped her.  We don't slap baby sister".

We're still alive!

I feel like I can finally start to breath again. May was crazy. Packing, moving our stuff, birthday, baby, graduation, selling the house, moving ourselves, and doing it all in one week. I can't say that things have settled down into a normal routine yet. Russ is still home for another 2 weeks before he starts his residency. We still have stuff to unpack and cupboards to organize. I'm currently lacking the motivation to finish. Russ keeps talking about ways to decorate to make this house a home and I keep avoiding the topic. Isn't that a little bit of a role reversal?

This is the beautiful face that got up for the day at 6am. Lucky for you it means nobody else is awake in my house and so I sat down to write this blog.
Renn is doing spectacular. She eats great. She sleeps great. She poops great. She pretty much does everything great that a baby her age should be doing. Bennett just loves on her. When I hold her Bennett wants to be held too.
He also likes to do what she does. He loves to lay on the floor next to her or lay in the boppy with her. He keeps sneaking into our room and climbing into her bed and chewing on her pacifier. He runs to her side whenever she makes the smallest cry and tries to shove her pacifier in her mouth. Then he leaves his finger inside while she sucks on it and laughs.

These two kids make me happy.

Besides playing with his baby sister Bennett loves to play in our new back yard. He loves running through the sprinkler with Athena. He loves his new swing set and his new sandbox. I'm loving that I can send him outside to play while I make dinner.

Russ was still attaching the slide but Bennett could not wait any longer.

I think he looks like a little Tom Sawyer in these sprinkler pictures.

Such a perfect baby!

Save the Planet!

Bennett's really been into recycling lately.

Project finished!

I just finished making a blanky for soon to be here in May baby girl and I LOVE It!

















Up close.















The flip side-- super soft bubble fleece.






















I asked Russ last night if it was blog worthy. He said something to the effect of "well, if getting pregnant, finding out it's a girl, on top of all of Bennett's milestones and accomplishments aren't blog worthy..."

Ok, ok, so I'm really not a great blogger. I have blog ideas all the time. Obviously these don't really make it past the "idea" stage.


So here is some catch up. I am pregnant. I am having a girl. I'm due 2 days before my birthday in May. I don't know which scenario I'd rather avoid; having a baby born on mothers day or having a baby born on my birthday. At least mothers day isn't the same day every year...

Bennett is a crazy guy. He loves to dance. I love watching him when we eat out. He'll just randomly start bobbing his head to the back ground music that nobody else even notices.

He loves books. He'll bring us book after book and then climb up and cuddle in our laps to have it read to him. He especially loves books with animals. He'll start making the animal noises these days unprompted when he sees animals he knows. This includes dogs on bilboards as we drive around and monkeys on random burp clothes that we use as his snot rags to whipe his nose. His best animal sounds are giraffe (just licking the air), cow, lion, elephant (hand up to the face for the nose), monkey, puppy or dog, and kitty-cat. For the animal sounds he doesn't know he'll just point to the that animal over and over to hear us make that animals sound over and over.

He's getting quite the vocabulary. A lot of his words are only comprehensible to Russ and I since we know what he's trying to say. This morning we were able to get him to say baby. He'll try any word we ask him to. His all time best word is "bubble". He says it when he sees the bath tub because he likes bubbles in his bath. He says it when he finds a bubble wand in his toy pile. He says it when he sees bubbles on my cereal in the morning or on the German pancakes we're eating for breakfast. He asks for bubbles whenever he sees the bubble jar. Unfortunately Athena also loves bubbles. She understands when he's asking for them and then starts flipping out. It's kinda hard to blow bubbles for your little toddler guy when you're also trying to keep your crazy dog from trampling him in her efforts to snatch every bubble she can out of the air.

He's really polite and signs please (a lot) to ask for things. The down side is that while he is asking nicely, most of the time I have no idea what it is he's asking for. So, I'll just say "Good please! Go get it!" Sometimes I can figure out what he wants if he's looking strait at it. Most of the time that is not the case and since I'm not very good at mind reading he can get pretty frustrated.

Anyhow, I think that's enough for now. Does anyone have any good ideas for birthday presents for Russ since his birthday is this Sunday. I've already consented to let him watch the Superbowl. Is that birthday present enough?

And for those of you curious enough, here is a link to my Sis-in-law's photog site with our family pictures from Thanksgiving. Cutest family ever!

Funny Face

I laugh every time I see this picture. Bennett loves to play with his pacifier and taste it in all sorts of positions. Every once in a while he is able to get all the way in like this. Russ says he looks like the Joker. Bennett makes me laugh every day.





















Bennett can get himself into the "crawl" position all by himself now!! However, he needs a very enticing incentive (like Athena's tail) to convince him to do it.















I stuck Bennett in this box to keep him in one place so I could do something quickly. He loved it.