Weekly Happenings: It’s hard to believe that we’re already a few days into March. Time just seems to be moving faster and faster. This past week contained a couple of nights where Abigail and I went out for a couple of events (a baby shower and a Relief Society activity), fun days at school for Joseph (it was Read Across America week), and a big milestone for Abigail (a change in sleeping arrangements).
The Weekly Weather: It’s been a mix of warm, cool, and rainy (yesterday it rained pretty much all day). We’re supposed to get more of the same this next week as well. I know it’s not spring according to the calendar just yet, but I think spring has hit South Texas!
What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been busy with work, projects and exams for school, and Scouts. He also did most of the moving around of stuff as we moved Abigail from our room into hers.
What Sarah’s Been Up To: As mentioned before, I attended a baby shower for a close friend and also attended the Relief Society birthday dinner for our ward (celebrating the anniversary of the organization of the Relief Society for our church). Abigail came along with me to both and did stellar. Other than that, it was a pretty average week for me.
What Joseph’s Been Up To: As mentioned before, it was Read Across America week, which meant that there were several fun dress-up days that he got to do. The only one I got a picture of was “Nerd Day” because the result was pretty amusing. He also had a fun time going to Scouts with Paul since it was a fun night of playing video games for the boys.
What Abigail’s Been Up To: As eluded to a couple of times already, we moved Abigail out of our room and into her own on Friday. Saturday, Paul hung some shelves and some decorations. It turned out pretty cute. She’s doing fine there (she’s really too young to know much of a difference yet, so I think it was a good thing for us to do at this point) and we have a monitor that has two receivers so that I can have one in our room and one downstairs.
This Week in Pictures:
I have an awesome friend who sent me some stuff for Abigail, including this narwhal clip. I love that she gets my sense of humor!Here he is, dressed up for “Nerd Day” at school. I’m just glad we had it all in his closet already, since I totally forgot about the different dress-up days. All the days were made up of “what do we already have that will fit this day’s description?”, but I think this day yielded the best results. I made him glasses by popping the lenses out of a pair of cheap sunglasses he got from HEB (I knew I’d be able to pop them right back in, so he was fine with it as well).Houdini strikes again! This swaddling blanket has Velcro on it, to make sure it stays tight around her, but she’s a very determined baby at times (and I may not have gotten it as tight as I usually do). I would just leave her arms free, but she tends to punch herself in the face (or startle herself some other way) and wakes up mad.Sometimes one needs the binky, the blankie (it’s hard to tell, but she’s got a tight grip on it), AND the momma.Video game fun with the Scouts. I love Joseph’s face in this one.Here’s a good shot of the accent wall that Paul painted a while back (the week we brought Abigail home from the hospital, actually, because that’s when Paul had the most time for stuff like that). I love the shade of purple he chose. We don’t have a theme, per se, for Abigail’s room (we don’t for Joseph’s or ours, either)…just pretty colors. 🙂One corner of the room……and the rest of the room. It seems like a nice, cozy space for her.Sometimes, after feedings especially, she’ll just fall completely asleep on me. This, apparently, was one of those times.
Weekly Happenings: Most of the week was average, with the exception of Monday. Since Monday was President’s Day, Paul and Joseph both had the day off. It was also Dollar Days at the rodeo, which has been in town the last few weeks. We decided to go and have some fun. We walked around the different exhibits and had fun absorbing the sights that are “the rodeo”. This year was a bit more fun for Joseph because he was big enough to go on some of the rides in the carnival area by himself. He was pretty excited about that. Oh, and on Tuesday, we got to see some friends of the family (Mike and Debbie Emmett) who were in town (Debbie was attending a school psychologist convention in town). We met up at Bobby J’s for dinner and had a great time visiting.
The Weekly Weather: On Monday night we had a crazy thunderstorm which actually generated several small tornadoes (luckily none near us). I don’t believe there were any injuries, but there was a bit of damage done to some parts of town. Other than that, it’s been downright hot on some days. We even had one day where it was 91 degrees. Crazy to think that this is happening in February. It kind of makes me worried about what summer is going to be like. :/ We had a brief respite yesterday, with a cooler day, but it’s supposed to warm right back up again.
What Paul’s Been Up To: Work, school, Scouts…it seems like it’s rinse and repeat for him. I suppose that’s adulthood. 🙂 We really enjoyed having him home on Monday and getting to have a fun family day. He also makes sure to dedicate part of each day to doing stuff with Joseph so that Joseph still gets “Daddy time”. The past few weeks, Joseph has been going with Paul to Scouts, which has been fun for him.
What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mainly taking care of the kids (still getting used to putting an “s” at the end of that word). Really not that much different in my life this week, either.
What Abigail’s Been Up To: I took her in for her two month check-up (that seriously came up fast). She is 22 and 1/4 inches long and a solid 12 pounds. She had to get some immunizations, which she took like a champ, only crying during the shots themselves. A few hours later, however, she woke up from a nap just screaming. I got some Tylenol into her (because I could tell the crying was pain-related), but it took a while for it to take effect. Poor girl! After sleeping A LOT and another dose of Tylenol, she seems to have returned to her normal, happy self.
This Week in Pictures:
Pulling a silly face for the picture…3/4 of the family.On the carousel.“Nice horse!”I love that he’s easily pleased by a ride on the carousel!One building had a bunch of different sand sculptures. They were pretty impressive.Getting ready for a (small) roller coaster ride. While riding, he noticed the other riders putting their hands up in the air, so he did, too. It was pretty funny to watch.This is pretty much what she did the entire time.Momma and Daddy selfie!Ah, the potato sack slide…he saw the bigger one (meant for older kids and adults) and wanted to go on it, but was too small (thankfully…it was really high…he probably would have freaked out). He was pretty happy to find this smaller version.He called it a “roller coaster slide”.“Milking” a cow.Lovin’ on his baby sister.Fist-suckin’ cutie.Our crazy weather…The aftermath of shots…sleeping the sleep of all sleeps.
Weekly Happenings: This past week was pretty average. It did contain Valentines’ Day, but since we’re sort of home-bodies right now, we didn’t do much on the actual day. There was one day that Paul could tell Joseph needed to get some energy out, so we loaded everyone up and went to the park. It was right before I needed to feed Abigail, so I brought a bottle/bib/burp cloth with us and changed her right before we left. I was a bit apprehensive about feeding her there (the only place I’ve fed her other than home so far is church), but it went fine. Paul took Friday off since he had a camp out over the weekend. That enabled him to still sort of have a “Saturday” (in other words, a day where he could spend part of the day with us and the other part with his homework/work around the house). Since he did that, after he walked Joseph to school (I stayed home with a sleeping Abigail), he, Abigail, and I went to lunch. It’s been a while since we’ve been anywhere without Joseph…I almost didn’t know what to do since I wasn’t needing to help him out with food and such, haha.
The Weekly Weather: A little bit of this, a little bit of that…typical South Texas weather, I suppose. It’s sort of funny. The cloudy/rainy days have been warm and the clear, sunny days have been cold. That’s sort of opposite of what my brain says it ought to be like. We did have one kind of crazy thunderstorm (that Joseph miraculously slept through). There was one especially loud clap of thunder immediately after a lightning strike, so I knew it had to be close. I assumed it hit the radio tower that is in our neighborhood. The next morning, I found out it actually hit a house on the other side of our neighborhood. 🙁 The family is okay, but they are staying in a hotel while their house gets repaired. People in the neighborhood are collecting donations and whatnot to help them out.
What Paul’s Been Up To: His typical week of work and school with a camp out thrown in. I’m glad I got him the foam mattress for the bench in his office for Christmas because he was able to take it to the camp out (it was in the back yard of one of the other leaders whose house is on a really large lot, so he has a HUGE backyard) and sleep rather comfortably, I assume (I haven’t asked him about that…I probably should ask him how it went). He surprised me the day before Valentines’ with some roses. I think I’ll keep him. 😉
What Sarah’s Been Up To: My typical week of shuttling the kids around. Not much else to add, actually.
What Joseph’s Been Up To: He enjoyed the Valentines’ Day party at school, giving and getting Valentines’ and whatnot. He also did something pretty cute for me. When Paul had gotten the roses for me, apparently he had also gotten a heart-shaped box of chocolates for Joseph to give me on Valentines’ Day itself. Joseph told me he was going to make a treasure hunt with a surprise at the end for me. I figured it would be a toy of his or something and that he just wanted to do the treasure hunt for fun, since he had seen Daniel Tiger (a PBS show) do one that morning. He made notes for me to follow, which led me to the box of chocolates hidden in his closet. It was a fun surprise, for sure!
What Abigail’s Been Up To: We switched her from her zip-up swaddlers to larger ones (that have these sort of wings that you wrap around her once you put her in the sleep sack itself). She seems happier with more room, though in just the last day or so she has started to fight the swaddle a bit (probably since she can actually wriggle her hands out of the new sleep sacks a bit easier…the zip up ones only had the opening at the neck, so she couldn’t really get her arm up that high. Last night I still made her stay swaddled, but after her early morning feeding (did I mention she slept from about 9:30 to 5:00?! First time, which was divine!) I left her arms free and just wrapped the wings around her body. She seemed to fall back asleep fine, but when Paul went to check on her as she was fussing a bit around 7ish, he said she was practically doing windmills with her arms…almost as if she didn’t know what to do with her arms out and she wasn’t sure how to stop. I’m not sure I’ll leave them free tonight. I guess I’ll see if she fights it hard-core again or not. Oh, and a fun thing: I stood in front of a mirror with her to see what she would do (since she’s focusing on single objects more). She looked a bit confused at what she was seeing (I’m guessing: “How can Momma be holding me AND be over there? And who is that baby she’s holding?!). 😉 Then, when I was putting her car seat in the car one day, I could tell she focused on something in her “rear view mirror” (the mirror that’s on the headrest of the seat her car seat occupies which is there so I can see her from MY rear view mirror). She then popped out a huge grin. I looked to see if I could see what she was grinning at (I thought, perhaps, that she had seen herself and smiled) and could tell that she was looking at the reflection of me. 🙂 Cute girl! Oh, and another funny story: As I was holding her up to my shoulder to burp her after a meal one day, she pulled her head back so she could see me, gave me a huge grin, and then promptly burped (luckily it was a dry one) in my face. She then smiled at me again. I think she’ll be able to hold her own with her older brother just fine. 😉
This Week in Pictures:
I love when she falls solid asleep on my after a feeding. I usually try to sneak in a nap, too!My prize from Joseph’s treasure hunt, along with his handwritten clues.All ready for her close-up!Trying out the new swaddle blanket during nap time.Playing at the park. It was in-between cold and warm that day, so that’s why he had a sweatshirt and shorts on.Dining al fresco. She seemed mesmerized by the giant oak tree we were sitting under. I totally get it, baby girl. I think they’re amazing, too.Happy to be included with the rest of the family during dinner.Breaking free of the swaddle in order to suck on her fist.
