Pumpkins

Everyone else is posting their pumpkin pics, so here are ours :)

The patch we go to also happens to be at Ben's pre-school.

Another Belated Milestone

Brandt turned 2 months on the same day that Lindley turned 2!  At his check up, he weighed 12 lbs 8 oz and was 23 something inches. 

My giving up eating dairy has actually seemed to help some.  But, who knew that the milk protein is in pretty much everything I eat??  Even a piece of bread has dairy in it.  So I have been shopping in the Kosher section of the grocery store with all of my Jewish friends.  And yes, I even found dairy free ice cream.  I also have learned how to make a cake with just the mix and a can of coke.  I couldn't give up all my sweets!! And, thank goodness there is no dairy in Dr. Pepper.  If there would have been, we would have traded a fussy baby for a fussy momma!!

He also had to have his first bottle this week because my boss was in town and wanted to have breakfast.  Well, technically, Brandt had some bottles in the NICU, but those don't count.  He did really well, just ate a little slow :)

She's 2!!

Okay, so I'm a little late in posting about Lindley's birthday.  Earlier this month, Lindley turned the big 2!!  We had a small "bubble blow-out," which turned out to be more of a "burst bubble" :)  We only invited a few little friends that are her age, and she was a little overwhelmed with even that.  One of the bubble things I ordered ended up getting shipped to Europe...it of course arrived the following Tuesday (and it would have gotten there Monday but for Columbus Day!) It was a little cold outside, so none of the big bubbles were actually working, so there went the activities!! But, the kids managed to have fun anyway. And, I was happy with my decorations :)

We opened gifts after the party. Ben had wanted to wrap up something for her, so he went and chose one of his "old" toys that he doesn't want anymore. He wrapped it himself using tissue paper. He had chosen his tool box to give to her. We let her open that one first, and it turned out to be one of her favorite gifts!! It was so funny; she wore the "work gloves" the rest of the evening!!

Here is our big two year old on her actual birthday!

At her 2 yr checkup, she weighed 28 lbs and was 35 1/4 inches.  The height predictor thing said she will be 5'7" when she is 18.  That is also my height.  We will see!!

Family Circus

Just some things that have been going on in each "ring" of our three-ringed circus :)

Ben:

The other day I had twelve dollars sitting on the console in my car. The next day, I went to go ahead and put the money in my wallet, but there were only two dollars. I couldn't imagine how I had lost the $10 bill; I searched high and low in the car, in my pockets, purse, trash can...I had decided that maybe I was crazy and never actually had $12!  A day later, Ben walks in and annouces..."Mommy, I have $10!" Here is the convo:

Me: Oh, really? Let me see!

Ben:  (goes to get $10 bill and shows me)

Me: Wow, where did you get this?

Ben: From you

Me: (laughing) Oh, really? How did you get it?

Ben: I wanted $10, so I took it!

I then of course went on into the lesson on stealing and how I didn't give him the money and he didn't earn it, so it wasn't his!!! Funny....

He also has some football terms : Runbacker, Defenser, and Down set hutter.

Ben and Lindley also like to go and play in Ben's room. I knocked on the door and opened it to this :

Lindley:

She absolutely LOVES music, dancing, and singing ( and also Barney). Our step stool is her stage...all the time. She has been singing some tunes to us lately. The sweetest song is "Jesus loves me," but I didn't get that whole song on video. So, here is a video of a different song. We also got her saying her newest phrase, "I don't know!" We celebrated when she said "One, two, THREE" on the video because usually she says, "One, two, FOUR!"

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Brandt:

He still eats, sleeps, and cries :)  We have caught him smiling a couple of times, but he is still just taking it all in most of the time.  He moved to his crib this week, and he has been doing okay in it. I have now given up eating dairy to see if that helps his tummy problems. We'll see.

Why-Day Friday

Why do we spend tons of money on toys when our kids are perfectly entertained by a bucket of soapy water and four wash rags??

Back story:  I had taken a water bucket and wash rags outside to wash the dirt off of the front door and let the kids "help."  Afterwards they took turns slinging the water off of the wet rags onto each other, seeing how far they could throw them, and generally getting wet.  Go figure...

Soccer Has Begun!

Ben is #12 on the Texans for our 3rd season with this team.  Ben is playing "up" a league with Kindergartners.  They now have goalies and referees.  Here are some action shots...

6 weeks

It doesn't even seem possible that Brandt will be 6 weeks old this week.  In some ways, it feels like it has been the fastest 6 weeks of my life.  In other ways, not so much!  He still struggles with gas/stomach pain/reflux/we don't know why he's screaming, but he gets a little better every week.  At his one month appt, he weighed 9 lbs 3 oz (30th %tile) and was 21.5 inches long (50th %tile) . That is quite a weight gain from his birth weight of 6 lbs 11 oz!

Here he is at 1 month:

We are still trying to figure out who he looks like, but there are times when I see Ben in Brandt.  I found this picture of Ben at one month, just for grins...

Ben's Birthday Bash

Ben has basically been celebrating his birthday all month!  His actual birthday was a super busy day with the first day of Pre-K, first soccer practice, and a small family celebration at home.  Then, we had his bowling bash this past weekend.  He had a blast!!

Changes

Don't you just love the new look!?!? We received a blog makeover as a gift from a dear friend. It has been so fun!! And, Kristi did a great job. There is a link to her website on the side.

To go along with the new look, we are going to be changing blog addresses, so please update your readers/links, etc.

Our new address will be http://theschribtribe.blogspot.com/

I will be changing it over on Monday-ish.

"It's hard to have 3 kids"

Today, as we were driving to McDonald's, Ben asked if we could eat at the restaurant so he could play. So, I explained to him that normally he could, but we had to get back home to get Lindley down for a nap by 12:30 so she would be awake by 3:00 so we could take Ben to his friend's house to play. Ben's response? "It's hard to have 3 kids." Amen to that!!

The one word I would use to describe having three kids is "circus."

Some other highlights from this past week:

- At this point, the baby pretty much goes wherever I go. One thing about him is that when he decides it is time to eat, there is very little lead time and soon becomes an emergency. So, I went to get my hair cut yesterday and took the baby with me. He decided to wake up about halfway into the hair cut and also decided he was hungry. Despite my attempts with the pacifier, I ended up feeding him in the chair with the cape as my cover.

- Ben accidentally locked himself in the bathroom when I was here by myself with all three kids. It was really hard to coach him on how to unlock the door, and I couldn't get it unlocked from the outside. Luckily, he finally figured it out.

- I also took the kids to get pictures made. I was really just wanting to get newborn pictures, but went ahead and took Ben's 5 yr and Lindley's 2 yr pictures because I decided we weren't going to make it back for those ;) It is pretty much impossible to get a good picture with all three. Here are a few of what we did get.