Check-ups

Yesterday, I finally got around to taking Carter for his four year check-up and Olivia for her 15 month check-up. They were a little late but oh well! Things are so different with having a second child. I never would have thought to be a month and a half late getting Carter his shots when he was Olivia's age. Ha!  I figure I better do it before I have three kids all getting shots at the same time. I would have to be insane to do that!

Anyway, Carter weighs 38 pounds (54%) and is 43 inches tall (84%). He's right on target. Olivia is finally 21 pounds! I never thought we'd hit that 20 pound mark. She's in the 14% for weight which is higher than she's been since she was 4 months. She's 32 inches long (79%). She's also pretty much right on track even though she's not walking yet. Dr. Lisa wasn't too concerned especially since Olivia is taking steps on her own, just not full-fledged walking yet. 

They both did pretty well with their shots. Carter knew it was coming and was really anxious about it. I wasn't going to tell him but he outright asked me and I couldn't be dishonest with him. I bribed him with ice cream afterwards but now I'm thinking that was probably more for my benefit than his! We went to Maggie Moo's after the appointment and shared a large ice cream sundae complete with sprinkles, whipped cream, hot fudge and cherries! This boy (and his momma) were in hog heaven!

When we were in the car, he said "Mom, I wanna go back in and SPANK that doctor for giving me a shot. That was NOT nice!" All I could do was laugh and say that technically, Dr. Lisa wasn't the one who gave him the shot, but he didn't really understand that part.

My mother-in-law is arriving this afternoon. I'm really looking forward to some help. I physically can't do much at this point because I'm so uncomfortable. I can go into labor anytime now that she's coming :) But truthfully, I really want my doctor to deliver this baby so I'd rather wait until she can than go into labor early. Yes, I love my OB that much! I'll keep you posted.

My name is......

I have two words for you:  Drama. Queen. Man, I now know what my sister-in-law was talking about with having the girl as the second child! Olivia is so fiesty. We lover her fiery personality but she can be so demanding at times and it wears Theo and me out! Her independence is great and frustrating at the same time. She throws the biggest tantrums if she can't figure something out or if she doesn't get her way. Her biggest thing lately is wanting to feed herself everything. This is fine except when it's yogurt. But she will sometimes refuse to eat if she can't do it herself.

She is taking some steps on her own but still would rather be carried. We're trying not to pick her up as often and encourage her to walk.  She thinks she is such a big girl. We are surprised what all she can and wants to do on her own. She knows how to pick up her toys and put them away. She will grab her washcloth in the bathroom and wipe herself off. She tries to put her own socks on but they usually end up as mittens.  She likes to "write", loves to dance and talks all day long.  She is really into opening and closing things right now and dumping out and filling up.

She can recognize some of her body parts: mouth, nose, hair, belly, and sometimes ears. She can follow simple commands, when she wants to at least!

Olivia has been hit or miss with sleep the past several nights. Some night she does great and we don't have to go in there but other nights, we are in her room frequently checking on her, rocking her, giving her a bottle. But I am thankful that there are finally some nights where I don't have to get out of bed.  Every little bit helps.

Even though being her parents can be so tiring at times, Theo and I love her and Carter more than the whole world and wouldn't trade our Olivia for anything!

Flashback

As I was going through some videos on my phone yesterday, I came across this one of our other little entertainer. It made me cry remembering those days when Carter was little. I think he's about 2 1/2 in this video. Grandma and Pop Pops had given him the V Smile gaming system and he was singing "karoke" to the alphabet song. How precious these memories are!

Our little money maker

Theo is convinced that Olivia can make us some money. Let me start at the beginning......Some of you may remember Frankie the fish. We added him to our family last year after Easter. He's not a real fish mind you but he sure is a huge source of entertainment at our house. Well, we've been trying for a while to get a good video of Olivia with Frankie. Theo thinks that if we can put it on youtube, Olivia will be an instant success!  This is my first attempt at putting a video on my blog so we'll see. I don't think the quality is great but you can get the general idea anyway. It is my pleasure to introduce you to Frankie and Olivia.....

Fabulous Food Friday: Orange salmon and a treat!

I have this salmon recipe that I've been making forever. It's probably my favorite fish recipe and super easy. I think it came out of a Cuisine magazine. But this week, I jazzed it up a little and it turned out very flavorful. I didn't measure anything of course so all of the ingredients are approximations. Here's the recipe:

Heat 1/2 cup orange marmalade, one tablespoon olive oil, Tony's seasoning to taste, the juice of half a lime, and one tablespoon chili sauce in a skillet over medium heat until blended. Add one small onion and cook for about 5 minutes. Season salmon on both sides with Tony's and then add to the skillet and cook until done. Presto! I served it over rice and we had steamed squash and garlic bread with it. Super easy especially if you already have to ingredients.

 But better than that are these that I found at the store recently.

Oh. My. Goodness! Go out and buy these now. Seriously, put your computer down and go to your nearest grocery store. Okay, I guess that sounds a little pushy so I'm asking you politely, please go and get these soon! When these babies came out of the oven, I almost devoured the entire pan right then. Instead though, I exercised my willpower and ate the pan in a matter of 24 hours. I mean what could be better than cookies on top of brownies? Heaven on a plate :)

Spelling Bee

 Maybe it's in his blood, but Carter is so into all things "school". I'm sure the fact that two of his grandparents work in education has something to do with it. He has different sets of letters that he has been dragging out on a daily basis. He LOVES spelling words with these letters.  The other day, he kept running back and forth to the kitchen to spell his words on the counter. He does this so Olivia won't be able to reach them! I think he ended up making 13 words before running out of letters. The words are all related to cartoons mostly but I think it's cute.  This one was my favorite:

 When I asked him what it was, he said "Noone mom!" like "duh!"  Too smart for his own good!

Weekend Wrap-Up

What a great weekend we had! I say that large in part because Olivia is doing so much better with sleeping at night. I'm so grateful for the corner she's hopefully turned.

Our weekend fun started Friday night. Theo worked a half day then came home and took Carter swimming for two hours at the Y! I enjoyed my alone time with Olivia. It's rare we get these moments together where I'm not preoccupied with doing other things. We sat on the couch and just played. I'm so thankful Carter got some daddy time. I'm hoping there will be a lot more of that in the future. Theo and I have designated Friday's as our movie night so we watched Iron Man 2. Okay, honestly, he watched it and I fell asleep about 30 minutes into it. I just can't stay up that late to watch a movie.....except the last Twilight movie but that's because of the eye candy :)

Saturday was a nice day so we headed out. We made a stop at Best Buy and then went to the mall. They have this awesome glow in the dark mini golf place. Carter has been asking now for a couple of weeks to go so we decided this was the time to try it. Theo and Carter played while Livie and I followed along. Carter even got a hole in one on with a little help from daddy. It's unlimited golfing while you're there so we stayed for quite a while. Olivia did remarkably well too.  Then we went and walked around for a while. Our kids (minus the one five minute meltdown Carter had b/c we didn't buy him a movie) did so well for the four hours we were at the mall! We hardly had to carry Olivia at all. She's at the stage where she doesn't like being in the stroller for long. I remember this all to well from when Carter was this age. It's especially challenging this time because I physically can't hold her for more than a couple of minutes. But she did so well Saturday. We let her out at our last stop at Penney's and she and Carter chased each other around the store.....crawling of course! Oh well!

Sunday I took Olivia to church with me and Theo took Carter to mass. It's usually the other way around but Theo said Carter did really well during mass. Next time he might try and take him to the children's church. I really enjoyed the praise and worship time at church this morning. I don't know when I'll be back. I'm getting so big and it's getting pretty hard to walk around my huge church while pushing Olivia in the stroller. I'm going to try and go one more week but after that, it'll probably be a few weeks after baby P arrives before I can get back. I will desperately miss it though. I'm pretty bummed too because our church is having a love and respect conference but it's 10 days after the baby is due. If you are not familiar with the book, Love and Respect, I highly recommend it. I'm sure I've mentioned before but so far, it's the best book about marriage I've ever read. I really REALLY want to go to the conference but I don't think I'll be ready to sit through several hours of a conference with a few days old baby :)

Sunday night I finally managed to cook again (my poor husband hasn't had a decent meal in a while and I've been living on college food- ya know, pizza rolls, corndogs, McDonald's double cheeseburgers!) We watched some football. Then we had more family time and played candy land with Carter. This was my idea of a perfect weekend. I hope we can have more many more weekends like this. I hope you all had a great weekend too!

16 months

Olivia turned 16 months old on Wednesday. She has changed so much over the past couple of months. She is still not walking independently but has taken four steps by herself a couple of days ago. Now, she thinks it's more fun to stand up, take one step, fall on her bottom, laugh and clap hysterically! She can also climb up our stairs and cruise and crawl around at record breaking speeds but just hasn't made her mind up to walk!

She is going (I should already is) to be quite hard-headed....comes from a long line of hard headed women :). She tries to be so independent but is quite the fit thrower if she can't do something or if she doesn't get her way. She refuses to drink milk out of anything but a bottle but will drink water and juice out of any kind of cup. What's up with that? She is still a pretty good eater but it seems like her appetite is slowing down a bit. We're not sure how much she weighs but according to our scale, finally around 20 pounds.

Up until two nights ago (and I'm crossing my fingers as I type this so I won't jink us) was waking up multiple times a night. We would go in there, give her a bottle and she would fall back asleep....for an hour anyways. We obviously don't feed her all throughout the night but she was still waking up. We tried everything we could think of. Finally, at my OB appointment this week, Dr. R suggested getting a white noise maker. I've been wanting to do this for a couple of months but just haven't done it. So that night, I put my CD player in her room, turned a relaxation CD on repeat and Viola! She has done so well the past couple of nights! Praise God. I'm trying not to get my hopes up in case this is just a fluke but Theo and I both so desperately need her to sleep. Now I'm at least hopeful!

Olivia is such a talker too (don't know where she gets that from!). She can say several words: momma, dada, bubba, uh-oh, ball, bath, bubble, no, nose, baby (bebe), more. She tries to say many more words but they don't come out quite right. One of the cutest things she does is when I ask her where is mama's baby, she taps my belly and says "bebe"! Precious :)

She still is in love with curious george and enjoys playing by herself sometimes. She wants whatever her brother wants and vice versa. She loves to play peek a boo and will cruise around behind the couch, stick her head and out and yell boo! She also has an obsession with stuffing! The girl is corn fed for sure.

She is still doing really well at the church nursery and pretty well at the Y. She loves all things music and loves to shake her hips and dance. She is so much fun to watch and a great source of entertainment.

I'm curious to see how she'll do in the next several weeks when baby P arrives. I hope she will adjust well. We love her more and more everyday and can't wait to see how she grows and changes over the next few months!

Snow Day!

Carter didn't have school Monday since it was so cold and there was a lot of snow on the ground. I was really looking forward to having him back in school but relieved I didn't have to drive him across town in the snow. So instead of school, we played outside. I tried to build him a snow man. I didn't have on waterproof pants so sitting and doing it were out of the question. I soon learned that squatting and trying to build a snowman was equally impossible!

Like the polaroid effect? If so, I stole, ahem, got the idea from this blog post!

Way to Geaux!

Don't be fooled by my serious face....

I am sooooo excited the LSU Tigers beat the Aggies in the Cotton Bowl!

We had a wonderful time watching to game with some friends of ours who are Aggie fans! I hardly cheered at all but was gloating on the inside. I know my dad was super thrilled with the outcome.   I made chili and baked potatoes. Theo bought some delicious chocolate chip cookies from Whole Foods. I'm already planning on making an LSU colored dress for Olivia for next season :) Maybe if I start working on it now, it might be finished by the start of the LSU season!

Makin' my southern momma (and daddy and grandmas) proud

I love being Southern. I never realized just how proud of this I was until I moved to Colorado. I love Colorado, don't get me wrong, but I will always be a Souther Gal at heart.

Apparently, it's a Southern thing to make black eyed peas and greens on New Year's Day. I say this because Theo had never heard of this. So I did want any Southerner would do....I went onto foodnetwork and found some recipes! I have never made greens before. I hated them as a kid and apparently I still hate them! But I wanted to be traditional. I've also tried to make black eyed peas before but they were terrible. It's hard to give it good flavor with a non-pork eating husband. But Emeril had a great recipe on foodnetwork and I substituted turkey bacon for ham. They turned out very tasty! The greens had good flavor too (a little too salty because I didn't actually measure out the salt, oops!) but I just don't like the taste of greens. I also made some sweet tea to top it all off.

I don't remember that much about being a young kid, but I do remember going to my Grandma Champ's house (my dad's mom) for lunch on Sundays. She was a spectacular cook! She made the best mashed potatoes in the whole world and still to this day, I've never had better. She always had a table full of food and I never left hungry. Southerners (in my opinion) are just outstanding cooks. Not all of them, but as a general rule, they are. I'm proud to be one too!

Wordless Wednesday Thursday

Praying for Aunt Laney

My aunt Laney is undergoing major surgery today to remove the cancer she was recently diagnosed with. Please keep her in your prayers! Thank you in advance.

New Year's Recap

After the horrendous weather on Thursday night, we still had quite a bit of snow on the ground Friday. It was sunny but bitter cold. I think the high was 8 degrees! Theo was so sweet. He took Carter to play out in the snow for a while before heading to work a 12 hour night shift. Olivia and I eventually joined them....for all of about 5 minutes. This was her first real time in the snow. She did better than I was expecting. But it was so cold, we called it a day and headed back inside!

The headless snow angel :)

I was asleep New Year's Eve by 9:45 but apparently Olivia wanted to celebrate because she was up at 2:30 a.m. :)

Saturday Theo slept most of the day and I tried really hard to keep the kids quiet. Saturday night I cooked a New Year's Day meal (black eyed peas and greens) along with chicken and stuffing. I'll blog about that later. I was quite proud of myself!

On a different note, I always make a New Year's resolution. I always fail to keep it (except for the year I promised to read the Bible the whole way through and I did!). This year, I felt God putting on my heart to step up my prayer life. I feel strongly that I need to pray fiercely for my children, as if their lives depended on it....because in a way, they do. I always pray for them. But most of the time, I'll admit, it's pretty superficial: "Dear Lord, thank you so much for my children. Please keep them healthy and safe and help Olivia sleep all night". :) But I feel led to pray very boldly and specifically for them, their health, their safety, but most importantly, their futures. I feel like I don't want to leave their lives up to chance. And although I know God already sees their futures, I want to feel like my prayers over them will help shape their lives. I know my parents and grandparents prayed over me, both as a child and as an adult. And I'm so thankful for that.

I'm also focusing on having a better prayer life with Theo. We both pray regularly as individuals, but don't often pray together. We are changing that. I know it's cliche but I do believe the "couple that prays together, stays together". And as with our children's lives, I don't want to leave my marriage up to chance either. I want to protect my marriage from anything the enemy might try to throw at it.  I believe we have a strong marriage but there is always room for improvement!

I pray that all of you have a very blessed 2011 and that God will do miraculous things in your lives!

Top 10 of 2010

 I've been reflecting over the past year and am amazed it's already over! It was certainly a trying year for us and provided us with lots of opportunities to sit back and trust God. Along with the challenges came even more incredible blessings. We are so thankful for everything God has taught us, given us, and blessed us with. Our top ten moments from 2010 and in no particular order are: (drumroll, please!)

10- our first trip back to Louisiana in February, Olivia's first plane ride and my first time flying with two kids by myself!

9- The Saints winning the Super Bowl!!!!

8- Theo and I celebrating six years of marriage

7- getting to spend a wonderful summer outside, exploring places like Pikes Peak, hiking at the Air Force Academy, visiting Seven Falls, Garden of the gods

6- vacationing in Washington D.C. and seeing the White House and seeing Theo's parents

5- all four of us getting to go back to Louisiana and seeing family and friends

4- Carter starting preschool

3- Olivia's first trip to New York with her daddy

2- celebrating Carter's 4th birthday and Olivia's first birthday and a visit from Omaw!

1- finding out we were expecting baby #3!!!

 

Happy New Year! "You crown the new year with your bounty. Your carts overflow with abundance." Psalms 65:11. May this be true for all of you this year!