4 Months

Joey had her 4 month checkup on Monday. She weighed 14 lbs, 12 oz. I know I should not compare children, but I came home and looked in Shelby's baby book to see how much she weighed at 4 months. Ummm...yeah...19 lbs! Holy cow. I knew Shelby was my little roly poly baby, but I could not help but laugh at the difference. Jeremy pointed out that one reason Shelby probably weighed a lot more was that she was still waking up in the middle of the night for feedings. Joey has been sleeping 12 hours at night for a long time now. She does great in her crib. She has been rolling from back to stomach for a month now, and can almost roll from her stomach to her back. Since she can roll, she usually flips over as soon as we lay her down in her crib. We tried a sleep positioner, but she would just wiggle and wiggle until she eventually found her way onto her tummy. We finally ended up buying an Angel Care monitor that has an alarm that goes off if no movement (breathing) is detected for 15 seconds. It actually went off the other night. I don't think I have ever made it up the stairs faster. She was fine, but I moved her and stayed in her room for a minute afterwards.

Joey can also scoot around pretty well. I can lay her on one end of her play mat and she will scoot herself to the top in no time. She is very into holding her toys and gets mad if she drops one.

Her hair is doing exactly what I knew it would...falling out. She has pretty much lost all of her hair on the left side of her head, just like Shelby did. At least it will (hopefully) grow back quickly.

Other than that everything is going great. Joey fits into our family quite nicely and we couldn't imagine her not being here with us. The other morning Shelby woke up and the first the she said was, "Mom, I love having a baby sister".

Sunday Pictures

Sports

Sometimes Jeremy's job has some sweet perks that we all get to enjoy. He's gotten two tv's, tickets to "The Nutcracker", won numerous Visa gift cards, etc. Thursday he scored some sweet tickets to the Rough Riders game. We got some VIP treatment and got to visit the JCPenneys club before the game, and we got all the food and drinks we wanted during the game. We were sitting in the fourth row, directly behind home plate. It wasn't like it was tickets to the Rangers or the Cowboys or anything, but it was a sweet deal nonetheless.



Let's ignore how I look in the picture below and focus on Joey. See what she's doing? She's drinking a bottle! It was the first time I had tried pumping and giving her one, and she took it like a champ. Let's be honest- the girl just wants to eat. She doesn't care how she gets it. This is good news for us, because it means we can start having date nights and I don't have to be too worried about leaving her with a babysitter. (Shelby would take a bottle, but there was a whole bounce-while-the-blow-dryer-is-on routine you had to go through to get her to take it.)



Saturday was Shelby's first day of gymnastics at Excite. We tried out Little Gym and she was just ALL OVER THE PLACE. The teacher had to call in someone just to chase after Shelby. I know part of it was that it was her first time, but I felt like part of it was all the singing and make-believe. I think it was too much for Shelby and she lost interest. So we decided to try out Excite, where it is just straight gymnastics. She did much better this time. She tried to run over to some of the equipment a couple of times, but for the most part she did great. There are three teachers for her group, so there is always someone to help. It was SO CUTE to watch her in her leotard with all the other little girls. I really wanted to run out there with her and tumble, but Jeremy quickly reminded me that the last time I did that I hurt my wrist (that I fractured in college). Shelby showed me her back bend today. I am excited to see how she progresses in the next few months! Maybe one day she'll even train here.




With football starting up soon, I am sure we'll be getting all the sports talk we can handle around here. Joey already has her Ole Miss bib ready so she can cheer on the Rebels with Daddy and Shelby. Just as long as her first word is Mama and not Hotty Toddy, that's fine by me.

10

Yesterday Jeremy and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. What a wonderful 10 years it has been. Of course we've had many ups and downs, but that's what life is about. We feel very lucky and blessed to be where we are at. To have gotten married so young and to have stuck to our plan and achieve all our goals so far is wonderful. We were very strict- college, jobs, house, babies. We made sure we accomplished one before going to the other, and I supposed our formula worked out pretty well for us.

To celebrate, we have a tradition of eating at Copelands, since that is where we ate on our wedding day. However, we really didn't feel like fighting the traffic to get to Southlake, and then getting back really late and having to work the next morning, so we decided to just eat at Copelands on Saturday. I cannot wait for some artichoke and spinach dip with fried bow tie pasta. Mmmmm. Anyway, so in lieu of Copelands I decided to try to just make a nice dinner. We feasted on beef tenderloin with blue cheese sauce, mashed potatoes and onion gravy, and green beans with garlic, bacon, and almonds. For dessert we had chocolate covered strawberries and cheesecake. I was STUFFED.





Jeremy got me just what I wanted for our anniversary...a treadmill! I know, how romantic, right? But really, if you know me, and you know how I love to run, you understand how this gift was totally "me". Not only is it such a wonderful feeling to get out and sweat, but it is really meditative for me. An hour alone in the garage. Just me, some good music, and the treadmill. Sounds weird, but it is the most relaxing thing in the world for me.

I decided to make Jeremy a photo book of our past 10 years together (Really 11 years since I included some pics of us when we were dating). If you are interested in seeing how goofy we used to (ok, and still do!) look, click here.

Some of the pictures that I had to scan in were a bit blurry. Oh well. I also got Jeremy a bike. I had some other ideas for gifts but those kind of fell through, so I decided to get him a bike since he's been talking about getting one forever. Today we went and got a trailer for Shelby to ride in behind him. They both love it.

Happy 10 Year Anniversary, Jeremy! I am so lucky to have such a wonderful husband, friend, and father to my children.

12 WEEKS!

HOW HAS IT BEEN 12 WEEKS ALREADY?! 12 WEEKS! I just want time to slow down so that I can enjoy Joey at this age for a little bit longer. She is such a great baby. She is sleeping 9-10 hours at night...in her crib! This is such a relief for us. We didn't know parenting a newborn could be this easy. It is just a world of difference than when Shelby was a newborn. With Shelby, you HAD to rock or nurse her to sleep. Then you had to practically crawl inside the crib with her when you went to lay her down, or else she would feel you putting her down and she would wake up. Then, once she was in the crib, you had to tiptoe out of the room. With Joey, I feed her, and then usually Jeremy will take her upstairs while she is still awake but drowsy, lay her in her crib and she will turn on her side and go to sleep. SWEET BUDDHA! She does not have a set schedule during the day. She will take three naps- one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and usually one around the time Jeremy gets home from work. Her naps during the day are not at any particular time, which is the way I prefer it. I don't want to have her in such a rigid set schedule that she is not flexible. That was one good thing about Shelby. I never had to worry about not being able to go anywhere or do anything during nap time because she would nap whenever and wherever.
Joey is not rolling over yet, but she has been coming very close to it for a few weeks. She will lay on the floor and arch her back so far that she is almost in a circle. If she would just kick that cute little thigh over she would be there! She is scooting around on her back. I laid her on her play mat today, turned around for a minute, and when I turned back, she had scooted to the top of the mat and was laying in a completely different direction.
She is also laughing more and more now. She has the sweetest little giggle. Shelby is also really cute with her. She will mimic things that I do and say, so she'll go up to Joey after her nap and say, "Hi sweet girl! Did you have a good nap?!". Love it.

Ahhh...Vacation

Since we got free vouchers from La Quinta for having such a horrible hotel experience over Memorial Day weekend, we decided to take advantage of this 3 day weekend and go to Galveston for the 4th of July. Believe it or not, this was our first real vacation since before Shelby was born, meaning it was the first time JUST our family has gone on vacation- it wasn't with the purpose of going to visit family. We were so excited. The whole week prior, Shelby would wake up and say, "We're going to the beach today!", and then get disappointed when I would say it wasn't for a couple more days.

Galveston was great! No, the beach is not white sand, and the waves aren't HUGE, but it was perfect for Shelby to play in. The sand was not too hot to walk on, the water was super warm, and there were waves high enough to have some fun.

We got up early Saturday morning and went running along the sea wall. After breakfast and showers we headed off to the parade along The Strand. I am a sucker for small town parades. I think they are adorable.












Later that day, Jordan and her family drove down from Beaumont to play on the beach with us. We were worried because it had stormed really bad right before they got there, but after they got there and we debated in the room for about 45 minutes about what we were going to do, we looked outside and it had cleared up. I'm so glad it did because we had a blast on the beach.

The color is a bit off in some of these pics. The lens kept fogging up, so these pictures were actually pretty hazy. I was able to make them slightly better with some editing, but it made the color kind of weird.












I have to include the following picture for Jordan. This wrapper scared the poop out of us for a few minutes. I caught a glimpse of something, and then it went back under the water. I couldn't tell what it was, but it kept randomly popping up just long enough for me to catch a glimpse of color. We finally got brave enough to get up close and find that it was a wrapper. We are dorks.


Sunday we had perfect weather all day. We got to the beach around 10 and stayed til about 1. Shelby had fun playing with Jeremy, and Joey was content in her Peapod.





After lunch at a cute old-fashioned soda shop, we biked a few miles down the sea wall.






Later that night, Shelby and Jeremy watched fireworks on the beach while I got Joey to sleep at the hotel. Shelby was very sad to leave on Monday morning. We all had so much fun. I think that Galveston will become our new vacation destination!

THREE

At three years old, Shelby weighs 30 pounds and is 3' 2" tall. She has a pretty extensive vocabulary and likes to showcase it by talking NONSTOP. Sometimes we have to ask her to just not say a word for 5 minutes. She usually lasts about 3 seconds. She has been potty trained for about 8 months now, but we have still been putting her in diapers at night, though she would keep it dry most nights. Lately we have been leaving her in just her panties, and she hasn't had a single accident yet. She has a weird obsession with putting anything and everything in her mouth lately, and HAS had an accident with that. She swallowed a penny. Yuck. She loves to sing and dance, and I am hoping to get her into a gymnastics class soon. Some of the songs she loves to sing are Book of Mormon Stories, Follow the Prophet, Single Ladies (Beyonce), and Baby (Justin Bieber). Her imagination is really growing and it is cute to hear her playing with her babies, My Little Ponies, and stuffed animals. She will do voices for each of them and have conversations. It is funny the things she comes up with. While she loves to dress up in her princess dresses with heels and jewelry, she also loves to play outside and dig in the dirt. In fact, she spent most of the time at her birthday party digging in the dirt instead of playing in the pool. My friend gave me the fantastic idea to do birthday interviews every year. Next year I know to do it at the beginning of the day, not at the end, because this is what I got: