Long time no see...

So the last time I was here was in March..... how did that happen?  I swear it hasn't been all that long ago, but apparently I was wrong.  I'll give you the 30 second update on us and I promise I'll try to update more often.  Try being the key word.

Biggest change for us.... Baby Lincoln!  He was born Oct. 4th and has been such a perfect addition to our family.  We really are complete now.... REALLY I mean it!  He's a big boy just like Grayson.  We went to the Dr yesterday to check on his thrush (new meds for that) and he weighed 15 lbs 6 ozs.  7 weeks yesterday.  Time is surely flying by.  I love watching the big kids love him.  Sometimes a little too much, but they love to help.  For the most part we've all been adjusting pretty well.

Amelia has been in preschool since September.  She loves it and so do we.  She has learned so much in such a short time- it's amazing.  I spent the morning with her this week at her Thankful party.  It was fun to be back in a preschool classroom again.  I'm pretty sure that I couldn't go back there again long term.  She turned 4 in October and is obsessed with birthdays.  Mainly her's more than anybody else's.  Her best friend at school is Josey.  Seems they have a love hate love relationship b/c once a week or so she comes home and tells me Josey can't come to her party anymore.  She's growing like crazy and is looking forward to Santa coming.  This is the first year we've done Elf on a Shelf and it has been a lovely way to convince them to go to bed :)

Grayson turned 2 in August.  He's still our sensitive loveable guy.  He does everything Amelia does and mostly keeps up with her.  He harasses his sister 1/2 the time and the other 1/2 they play perfectly together.  They really are the best of friends and worst of enemies.  It's so fun to watch them when they are playing nicely together though.  I'm looking forward to Lincoln tagging along in the near future too.  We're starting to attempt potty training.  We'll see how far we get with that.  It might be a project for Christmas break.  Maybe.  He is still beyond obsessed with Star Wars.  He's also loving super heroes as well.  Favorites are Hulk and Iron Man with Captain America thrown in every once in awhile for good measure.

I'm going back to work after Thanksgiving.  I'm anxious to get back into our routine, but worried about how it will go.  I'm sure there will be a few days/weeks of adjustments, but we'll get there.  Somehow we always do :)  After this semester I'll be at the 1/2 way mark of my masters program.  4 semesters left after this.  All in all life is pretty good around here.  Crazy for sure, but good.  We are loving our little family of 5- even if we didn't plan it out that way ourselves :)

 Lincoln at 6 weeks

 Amelia giving Grayson lip gloss :)

 Attempts to get a group picture

 Lincoln and Stella.  3 weeks apart :)

This was the secret...

Randomness

Well here I am again.  The lazy blogger.  I actually have some good excuses, but I bet you don't want to hear those.  I will share a few things with all of your faithful readers when I have more time to write.  For now you'll have to settle with my random thoughts.

I've been addicted to March Madness this year more than ever before.  I think I've seen every game at least in part.  Florida Gulf Coast is my new favorite, but I'm also rooting for Illinois, Creighton, and Wichita State.  Obviously the ISU loss to Ohio State today sucked.  Big time.  My bracket of course has been busted since the first day, but I do have my champion left- Louisville.  I hope Kansas loses.  Soon.

Amelia is cracking me up with all her new sayings and her imagination.  She's not cracking me up with her refusal to go to bed these days.  It drives me insane.  I'm really hoping and praying that when we get into a routine for preschool next year she'll be better.  She's certainly going to have to get up earlier.  I'm still not sure how we're going to handle that.  She's also now refusing to wear any pants except sweat pants.  No jeans.  No leggings.  I'm going to have to stock up on dresses and skirts for the summer I think.

Speaking of summer I think it's never really going to come.  Or it's going to go right from winter to summer with no spring in between.

I had a list of several things to get done over spring break and I think I accomplished like 2 of those things.  I just have no energy or motivation these days.  I need to get the kids to daycare for a few days with me at home.  I'm always amazed at what I can get done in a house by myself for 8 hours.

Grayson had an ear infection this week.  I'm hoping it's cleared up.  He certainly had some major sleeping issues that were not cool.  At all.  He's learning a lot of new words and his favorite phrases are oh man, woah, Mickey Mouw (mouse), No, and my favorite is when he says Thank you.  Too cute.  He's getting to be such a big boy and all grown up. 

I will update you on some important changes for the Updes in the very near future.  For now though I must go to sleep.  I am honestly hoping and praying for a snow day tomorrow.  I could get so many things done that I couldn't manage to do while home for a week.  I need help.....

Just Tuesday Huh?

Some good quotes these days...

"Daddy.  Are you stupid?"

"Mommy.  Did you know that Daddy is in court today?"

"Dad.  I know you can fix the broken potty.  You're great at fixing things."

"Shake your booty"  (this happened to be in the middle of the sermon this past Sunday... Nice)

"Eli is my best friend."

"I think Dad can fix Eli's game, but not Justin.  He not know how to fix games.  Sorry."

And when she says sorry her voices gets higher at the end.  Kind of sing-song like.  It makes me laugh. 

She also owes me $201.00 because she flushed almost an entire package of baby wipes down the toilet which clogged our drain.  The previous total is from the plumber.  The cost of new carpet is going to come out of her college fund.

I'm exhausted.  We went to watch the Super Bowl in Gilman and had a blast.  When we were leaving I could hear Grayson coughing.  By the time we got home he was full-on seal barking.  The croup cough made it's return.  It was a very rough night.  He and I were standing on the steps outside at 2 am.  The cold air did help a bit though.  I took him in on Monday and he was treated w/steroids for croup.  His cough improved a lot. 

Fast forward to today and I get a call that he has a temp of over 100.  Luckily we've been able to control his temp with meds so far....

oh yeah in my blogging hiatus you missed several episodes of Grayson seizures.  Awesome. (sarcasm should be detected there)  we did however get an EEG done to show his brain activity and that was normal.  So we can be almost 100% sure that the seizures are febrile in nature and will eventually stop.... that day can't come soon enough honestly.  But I digress

Currently he's sleeping in bed with me while I finish up my homework for grad school.  His cough sounds horrible.  Luckily one of Aunt Lindsey's friends is going to come check on his lungs and let me know how he sounds.  I'm kind of nervous it's turning into Pnemonia.  We'll see.  We just may end up heading back to the Dr tomorrow.  We may as well live there.

Oh yea.  And there was sewer water and sewage in our basement.  Sick sick sick.  New carpet is on the horizon.  Luckily our furniture is fine and the basement is pretty small so it should be relatively inexpensive to do.

Did I mention how last night we stayed at Eric's mom and dad's b/c of the sewer in our basement and Grayson literally was still awake at 2 am.  Honestly.  Just hanging out.  I'm exhausted.  Luckily I'll be home tomorrow with Grayson and I'm just sure he's planning on me taking a nap too. Right??

A girl can have big dreams can't I??  Until the next time faithful readers.....

And a reminder for the day.  Baby wipes will cause a clog in your drain that may or may not be more than 100 feet from your house.  Sweet right? 

Food Network

I can get so addicted to the Food Network.  I could seriously watch it all day long.  It makes me want to be better about cooking.  Eric and I like Man vs. Food.  It's fun to see if he can do whatever disgusting challenge comes his way.  I also like Iron Chef America and Chopped.  I think I need to steal more TV time to catch up on these shows.

That is very unlikely to happen, but it takes so little to make me happy these days.

Picture Updates

 Amelia on Christmas morning

 G was more about the pop tarts than the presents

 Minnie Mouse kitchen!

 My Grandma!  Love her!!

 Eli

 Playing in the snow at Uncle Kelly's

 Kind of blurry, but this is the Fresh Beat Band concert we took the kids to in October.

 Disney on Ice

 G at the pumpkin patch this fall.

Star Wars at Mercy hospital.  We got to see R2D2!!

Long awaited return...

I'm baaack.... I really really didn't mean to leave my blog dormant for almost 5 months.   My main problem is going to be that I haven't been so great at completing G's baby book and now I have no record of what's happened for the past 5 months.  I'm going to attempt some type of update.  At the moment we are all home on a snow day.  Amelia is crying because I won't lay in her bed and I can hear Grayson attempting to open his door again...

Which leads me to my first update with Gman.  He is now officially in a big boy bed.  After the 3rd week of horrible sleep we decided to try a wild idea and convert his crib into a toddler bed.  He slept the first night all the way through.  He still generally wakes up once a night still, but I can get him back to bed pretty quickly and he'll stay there.  He really likes it and it seems to be a good change so we'll go with it for now.  Naps have definitely taken a hit, but I'll take a good (or semi-good) night's sleep at this point.  He also had his first big boy haircut, which makes him look much older.  I'm missing those baby curls, but it's pretty cute.  He seems to be working on a few teeth so our teething saga continues.  Seems like we've been teething in this house for years.  He's also learned (from Amelia for sure) how to throw a pretty decent fit as well.  Complete with stomping and screaming.  I'm praying that he is easier on us than Amelia, but I'm not holding my breath or anything.

Biggest update for Amelia by far is (drum roll please)..... FINALLY FINALLY potty trained.  Thank heavens.  She worked on it at Maria's for a week or so and then we put her in underwear and she's been pretty great ever since.  I think maybe a total of 3 accidents in the last 2 weeks so I'm feeling pretty good about how she's doing there.  Still pull ups at night, but that's fine with me.  I'm hoping and praying that she can get into the preschool we want in Norwalk.  Turns out I was maybe supposed to get on some sort of waiting list, but I had no idea.  We'll see how that works out.  Other than that she's still the same sassy spunky child.  There are days where she seems to be a grown up and others where she wants to be carried like a baby.  She's had so much fun with dance classes and also taking swimming lessons last session.  Swimming is by far her favorite thing to do.  I messed up her classes this session so I need to try and fix that.  Otherwise she'll be back in the next session.  I'm hoping I can get Grayson into lessons as well.

Eric and I have been busy.  We went on a mini-vacation to Branson at the end of December.  It was really nice and relaxing.  We did a lot of sleeping and a lot of eating.  Which reminds me that I really really need to get back to the gym.  Pretty sure I have put myself in a position to qualify for the Biggest Loser.  I am also taking two classes this term for grad school.  Which makes it difficult to find gym time.  I'm attempting to come up with a schedule.  I need to make a better attempt ASAP.  New goal I believe.  Eric's been working hard.  He and Brian and their friend Joe went to the Cubs Convention a few weeks ago.  They had a blast hanging out.  I think it might be an annual adventure for them.

Well I can hear Amelia telling me that Grayson isn't sleeping after all.  He's playing Barbies in her room.  He's going to make me for that some day :)  I'm going to attempt to add pictures sometime today, but I make no promises.