Bad Blogger!

Let's just pretend it's not been, oh, like 8 long months since I blogged! Yikes! What happened!? Oh..a 10 month old still not sleeping through the night maybe! Ha! I was going back to my blog for reference the other day and was so bummed that I haven't kept up with Carter's milestones! Ella's are all recorded so nicely on my little blog but poor Carter got the shaft. I haven't even really recorded things in his baby book! This is my attempt to recap and do better from here on out!

It's been so long since I uploaded pics that I totally did these backwards. So we'll start from most recent I guess!

Last week Pioneer Woman was 10 minutes from my house! How could I NOT go see her?? The signing was from 4-6. I got there a little before 3. Part of me expected to waltz up and be the first person in line. That so did not happen. There were several hundred already in line. It was around 7 when I finally got my book signed. I"m definitely not one to wait in lines but I have to say it was worth it! I had a line buddy (thanks Theresa!) and all the women in line were so fun and friendly! The book signing was at a Kroger (weird), so the deli made lots of yummy PW food to keep us happy. The passed out food and water and it was just fun! The poor lady in line behind me kept saying "I'm just doing this as a favor for my daughter...she owes me so big!" She was just astonished how many people had come to see her, and so was I! Here we are with Ree! She was so friendly and sweet!


Here we are waiting-this is about 3 hours in I think. Sweet baby Ezra came along and he was so good!

I just have some random pics on here - this pic is just so Carter. He is in to EVERYTHING. So opposite of Ella as a baby. She was content in a little section of the living room and would pretty much only play with the toys I got out for her. She never messed with all my knick-knacks. We child-proofed like crazy but she never once tried to open the cleaner cabinet or stick her finger in an outlet. Carter is another story!

Last month I decided it was FINALLY time for Ella's first hair cut! It wasn't even that long, just uneven and...well, it just looked bad. And it would be so ratty every morning. In fact, we had our carpets cleaned one morning and as soon as the carpet guy came in he took one look at Ella, did a double take and said "woah. that is some seroius bed head." You know it's bad when the carpet guys says something.

We just went to Cookie Cutters. Totally overpriced but it was a fun experience. Here she is, pre-hair cut.

And during the hair cut...(notice how tightly she is holding on to me! she was so nervous!)

Sorry, no after pic. It basically looked like the "before" pic :)

I had to put up a pic of my first ever cake-pops. Thanks to Jenny for being my cake-pop inspiration. And for letting me borrower her heart cutter.

Sweet boy

Carter and me on my birthday

A great Ella pic. She loves Curious George. She loves wearing random thngs, especially hats. Or sunglasses. Or scarves. Watching CG while wearing something random? Best of both worlds!

My sweet kiddos. The just love each other so much!!

The stats:

Ella-3 1/2 (officially, as of March 27). We celebrated her half birthday and I think it just totally confused her. :) She is a bundle of energy. She seems to learn a new word every day, is very talkative and imaginative. She loves to pretend, do crafts, help me cook, wrestle with daddy and play outside. She loves her little brother dearly! She is so fun to be around. She is very affectionate and loves to snuggle and give kisses. She loves to have special time with me at night during bedtime. We read stories, make up stories, tell jokes or sing silly songs (where I change words to songs she knows to make them silly). She has just started asking me to share secrets with her or will say "mommy, let's just talk together." As much as I am often just wanting her to go to bed so I can have some down time before bed, I often find myself in her room for much longer than planned because I just cherish that time with her. I'm sure not too far from now, I'll be remembering the times she really wanted to share secrets with me! She is in preschool one morning a week for 4 hours. She LOVES that time and hardly turns around to wave any more. She talks a lot about kids in her class during the week. We are working hard on obedience and patience-her 2 biggest weaknesses at the moment! We definitely have our moments of frustration but she is just a delight.

Carter-10 months. Oh Carter. What a sweetie. God knew just what kind of child I needed and he blessed me (us) with Carterman, as we often call him. Carter is just a love bug. He loves to cuddle and be held; he loves giving me open mouth kisses. He wakes up at night and just wants to cuddle before he can fall back asleep. I do love to cuddle him but I think I'm ok with that cuddling taking place during the day. I'm tired!! :) He has been crawling since he was about 6 months-I was not ready for that! Ella didn't crawl until 10 months. He's been pulling up on things and cruising around things for the past month or two. He'll be walking any day! I think since he got mobile so early he started dropping on the weight scale. He was only in the 3rd % at his 9 month appt. My dr really wants me to push the calories so we've been trying! His last home weight check was 18 1/2 lbs which is up over a lb from a month ago. He also has 8 teeth! He basically got 8 teeth in 8 weeks. Yeah, not a fun 8 weeks for us! He seems to be getting in some pre-molars now. Poor guy can't get a break! He loves Ella and is just so entertained by her (much to her delight). She likes to mother him a lot and will tell me what she thinks he needs ("no mommy, he doesn't want that toy, he wants you to hold him"). :) He is definitely in Ella's stuff a lot and I'm already seeing some tempers flaring from that!

Life is hectic but Life is good. We've been trying to just slow down and really experience joy in this wonderful (and sometimes exhausting!) season of life. We leave for our first family of four vacation to Dallas in a few weeks. So excited!

For Aunt Sarah

Ella has some excellent advice as to what to do if you are getting your wisdom teeth taken out.

A Sunday Afternoon

Just a few pictures of Ella and Carter in their big sister/little brother matching shirts. Ella's has an "E"-it's kind of hard to tell. I love these. Carter will grow out of his soon! I tried so hard to get some good pics of them together in these shirts but one of them (usually Ella) was not at all cooperative with this any time I tired, so I just had to take what I could get! Carter was crying off and on during this, that is why Ella is plugging her ears :)

Oh Ella. Playing on her "computer" :)

I told my sister Sarah I would post this video of our Sunday afternoon...so here it is :)

Back to Blogging

Yes, the rumors are true. I'm back to blogging! Try and contain your excitement :) If anyone is still reading my little blog, great! If not, that's ok! The other day I was going back over my blog from the time Ella was born through now. I LOVED reading it! Yes, I have all the same pictures saved on my computer. But I don't have the story behind the picture. I have some things written down in my journal, but it's so much easier to read in short tid-bits (with pictures!) on my blog. I want to be able to look back and read the same things about Carter. It's also great to back to for reference.

Carter is 11 weeks old. Hard to believe this little guy has only been in our lives for 11 short weeks-feels so much longer! Cannot imagine life without him-he just makes our family feel complete. For now at least! He started smiling a few weeks ago and I just LOVE it. This is the first actual smile I got on camera.

This face of his cracks.me.up. He makes this face when he's really trying to focus on my face.

My sweet boy!

Right now Carter is on a pretty good schedule. He LOVES to eat, unlike his big sister! He pretty much eats every 3 hours and naps about 1 out of every 3 hours. He's still waking up twice at night to eat. Every one in awhile he'll just wake up once. I'm trying to decide if he's actually hungry when he wakes up or not so I'll probably start using a paci to see if he'll go back to sleep with that. Ella never took to the paci which was nice later on when we didn't have to break her of that. So we'll see how that goes! So right now he goes down at 7:30, up to eat around 1 and again around 5, then back down until about 7am. Sleep training is much harder with the second in my opinion! With Ella we were able to give her a few minutes of fussing to see if she would go back to sleep on her own. Since Carter's room is right next to Ella's, I really don't let him fuss for too long because I don't want him to wake her up! Ella was pretty much sleeping through the night at this point-Carter, not so much. Oh well...he'll get it eventually! I can also say I've been MUCH more relaxed the second time around. I drove myself crazy trying to get Ella on a schedule from day 1. It did pay off in the end I guess but not sure it was worth it! This time, I didn't even attempt a schedule until I had to go back to work and it was much more enjoyable :)

As far as Ella goes, she is doing GREAT as a big sister! She just loves Carter to pieces. Sometimes she loves him a little too much (like...oh I'm going to just squeeze you because I love you SO much!), but overall she's doing great. Although, I never realized how LOUD she is until Carter came home! That girl is either not talking at all (which rarely happens), or she's loud. She also thinks every toy of Carter is actually hers. One of her most spoken lines is "yeah, this toy is Carter's. It's mines though."

This past Saturday Rusty and I took her to see her very first movie in the theater: Winnie the Pooh!

She did great. I think this was the perfect first movie for her. It was only an hour long and was such a kid movie that I wasn't worried about her talking during the movie. She actually didn't talk except at one part she got a little scared and asked me to turn the channel :) I think she loved having popcorn and orange fanta (her first soft drink!) just as much as going to a movie. We also left Carter with my mom so that just Rusty and I could take her. Such a fun memory.

Lastly, here's a little clip Rusty took of Carter. Nothing too exciting but he just doesn't do a whole lot yet! We love just watching his little face, hearing his sweet noises and seeing his crooked smile.

At long last

My poor little blog. So neglected. So unloved.

I've been meaning to update but then keep thinking-everyone who reads my blog is probably my friend on Facebook anyways! So, I may or may not keep up with my blog.

BUT, I at least wanted to blog about our newest addition, Carter William!! He is the sweetest most beautiful and wonderful baby! We are so in love with him!! Ella just adores her little brother. She asks to hold and kiss him all day long. Her most said phrase each day is "he is SO CUTE!".


This picture makes me laugh...this is Ella wearing her ladybug Halloween costume from last year. Backwards.

Carter was born on May 19th. He was technically considered a preemie since he was only 36 weeks 2 days. Quite the surprise to us!! I had a routine dr.'s appointment on May 18th and was surprised to find out I was 3-4 cm dilated already. In hindsight, I probably should have just tried to take it easy from the point. But I didn't. I went to Hobby Lobby to get the rest of my nursery decorations. Then I went out to lunch with Ella and my mom, went home and got Ella to bed and then started having lots of nausea. I took a little nap and woke up feeling worse, plus having mild contractions. Finally around 3pm I called my dr. She said to come in and get checked again. Rusty rushed home from work and I got in to the dr. around 4pm. She checked me and I had dilated to 6 cm! Total deja vu since that is what happened with Ella as well (just not quite as quickly!). The NP told me to go to the hospital to get monitored. Rusty and I got to the hospital around 6pm and by 8pm they decided to admit me! I wasn't contracting a ton but they figured if I was already 6 cm, I wouldn't go much longer anyways and they didn't really want to send me home being that dilated.

I got my epidural pretty quickly (yay!), the dr. broke my water (thankfully my dr. was on call that night!) and by about 3:45am I was ready to push. My whole labor really went very well. I had gotten an anti-nausea medicine that really knocked me out so I was able to sleep quite a bit before it was time to push. Carter came at 4:31am! This labor was definitely different than Ella's. It was hard work for sure, but a little easier than the first time around. We were So thankful that Carter was healthy! I was really beating myself up that he was being born so early-just feeling like maybe I could have done something to have stayed pregnant longer. It did take awhile to get him warmed up and regulate his temperature but other than that, there were no real problems. He stayed 1 night in the NICU because of his high jaundice level but Ella had the same problem and she was only born a week early.

We went home on a Sunday morning! It was so relaxed and a great homecoming. Rusty was able to take a full week off so we really had a chance to bond as a family of 4. Carter just fits right in! He's such a content little guy. He definitely will let me know when he's hungry or needs a diaper change but other than that, he's content just being held or sitting in his swing.

He is a big fan of bath time. Maybe that isn't evident with this picture! It was the only G rated bath pic I had :) Ella was really excited to help me give him a bath the first time but since then seems fine to let me take care of that job. We did have a slight heart attack moment when she was "helping" me give him a bath-she tried to clean him with a steel wool brush. Luckily I caught her in time!

Ella has been doing great with Carter. I really haven't seen any jealousy towards him at all which is SUCH an answer to prayer. She does get a little impatient with me if she wants me to help her with something while I'm nursing him and she has to wait. But other than that, she seems to have really adjusted to having him around!

I am enjoying this newborn phase so much more this time around. He is so cuddly and loves to just nurse and be held. I am looking forward to him getting a little bigger so I can start

going out more with him and Ella together. Right now I feel a little confined to the house, but I know that will get better!

Potty Training update

Hello! Didn't want to leave anyone hanging. We just finished day #11 of "potty training". Ella is doing awesome!! Seriously cannot believe how well it's going. After 3 days, she was accident free for the most part. Our only problem times were in the car (she had an accident in her pull up on the way to Aunt Rachel's just because she told me she had to go but there was no where for me to stop and let her go), and she also would go #2 in her diaper during naptime. But, on Day #8, she finally did go #2 in the potty! I knew all day that she had to go, she kept telling me her tummy hurt. Around 7:30pm, she still hadn't gone so I finally just made her sit on the potty and told her I would come back in a few minutes. She started crying after about 30 seconds saying "Mommy, I can't do it!" But, then she did! Since then, she doesn't seem to be scared anymore and has been fine. She has had a few accidents in the car (wearing a pull up) but they are getting fewer. She also has no problem going in public-I just bring her handy little seat cover everywhere we go! She seems to be holding it for longer and going less times during the day. We're still a long way from wearing panties during her nap or at night, but I'm so happy with how well she's doing. I'm loving not changing or buying diapers!!

Potty Training Day, apparently

Potty training has been on my mind since Ella turned 2. We tried potty training a few weeks after she turned 2 (I wanted to try out the 3 day method), but after about 4 hours I decided she just wasn't quite ready. She would scream every time she had to sit on the potty. So I gave up and decided to hold off. She's now 2 and 5 months. She's told us she has to go off and on for the past month or so but usually asks to put her diaper back on after an hour or less. My goal was to have her potty trained by the time the baby comes in June.

This morning she asked to go potty first thing after she woke up. I was surprised when she actually went. I put panties on her and was shocked when she told me she had to go again about 20 minutes later! And she went! She's now been up for about 7 hours and only had once accident while I was in the shower. She was so disappointed! And to make it worse, somehow she peed on her blanket which made her even more upset! So-blanket is now in the dryer, hopefully dry by her nap time! I thought this pic was really funny. She insisted on putting on her hat and gloves (I think she thought I would have to take her outside if she was wearing those!), and kept them on for awhile. Silly girl.