What child is this?

That sleeps through the night? Who is this kid? And what has he done with Eli? How am I supposed to function with all this sleep?

Yep. It took him 10.5 months to figure it out, but Eli is sleeping through the night...and I don't mean 6-7 hours at a time (which I used to consider sleeping awesome and actually only happened twice before this week!)...he's been pulling 10-11 hours the past several nights!

How did I do it you ask? Weaning. Eli was very attached...very. He was wanting to nurse constantly during the day and wouldn't play on his own for more than a minute or two, and was up to nurse every 2-4 hours at night so I decided to start weaning a little early. Even when I started I was planning on nursing him some until he was about a year, but after I initiated and got him pretty much weaned during the day, I let him set the pace for overnight weaning and within a week he was done.

I'm thrilled with the results, he's napping better, sleeping at night much better and less clingy (still as cuddly as ever though), but I'm a little sad he's growing up so quick.

Cutie patooties!

Since my last post was so "serious" :) and showcased the more opinionated side of my personality, I decided to follow it with a more lighthearted post of some of the cutest kiddos around.

I think these are a few weeks old, but haven't been put up yet. One is of Eli napping on the living room floor, and the other is Noah working on the gingerbread cookies we made a few weeks ago.

The Importance of Rear-Facing

Every once and awhile I try spreading this video around. And since I know several family/friends who have just had babies or are having them soon I thought it would be the perfect time! About halfway through this video you will see some simulated crashes...WATCH THOSE! See the difference rear facing makes! Noah is over 2, and of average height and he is STILL rear facing. I have no plans to turn him...nor do I have any plans to turn Eli until they outgrow the maximum limits for our carseats.

Let me also say that there is NO reason to forward face your child at a year. And I urge all of you with little ones who have not yet bought a convertible car seat to choose one that can stay rear facing longer (mine goes to 40lbs!). There are European countries where kids stay rear facing until 3-4 years of age...why??? Because it is PROVEN to be the safest way to ride! The risk of serious injury is 75...YES 75% greater for children riding forward facing in the car. And for those who say "my child's legs are too long"...if you were in an accident bad enough to break his legs, just think what that same accident would do to his neck. Our pediatrician told us "it's much easier for me to fix a broken leg than to fix a broken neck"!

Ok...stepping off my soapbox now :) Have a good day!

Just because it's hilarious...

Somone ordered a tutu for their dog, and I just finished it. See how excited Louie is about modeling it for me?

Very exciting!

As you all know by now...I have been sewing some blankies and making tutus and other fun stuff! I am very excited about doing all this because 1. It's fun! and 2. It's selling like hotcakes! I have sold everything I have made and lots of orders coming in. I also had a photographer contact me about getting some stuff to use as props and taking some business photos for me to use, and I have had a non profit organization contact me about making taggie blankets for them to give the women who come in. We are working out the details on that still, but it's exciting to think I could potentially have a big order coming in to work on! Another very exciting thing for me is that I am getting orders from people I don't know at all! Just friends of friends of friends who have seen pictures on facebook or my blog!

I owe most of my new found success to you readers! You all have been the ones referring me to people, and I have made several sales thanks to these hook ups! So THANKS!

Weaning

I have begun the weaning process! We are taking things slow, but I would like Eli weaned fully around his first birthday. So far he is still nursing at bedtime, and whenever he gets up at night. Last week he was getting to nurse at nap time too, but today we went without and he did great. So, if we continue to go with out the naptime session, he will be pretty much day-weaned. Yay! Night time will be hard for him, and I will continue on for awhile yet with that. Here in a few weeks we will try to cut out the bedtime session, so he will just have the middle of the night nursing, which I am thinking will be the hardest to go without. I'm very excited about this. I just feel like I am getting closer and closer to a undisturbed night of sleep!

New Blog

I made a new blog dedicated to my craft stuff that is for sale...check it out if your interested

http://babylaughsboutique.blogspot.com/

Making blankets!

Brandon got me a sewing machine for Christmas (and I got it early so I could start using it). So I have been working on a few things. This is a tag blanket I made for my niece Em. I am making a few more with this same pattern and will be making a few for some new babies I know :) My sister and I are also starting to make some baby things to sell next summer at our farmers market (which is more of a craft/produce market)

Today is...

Crusty's birthday. Noah has been telling me all day that it's his birthday. We asked Noah how old Crusty was and he said "two". He also wants a birthday cake for him...so I said we could make cookies for him instead. I love this kid!

For anyone who doesn't know who Crusty is...it's his stuffed elephant lovey!

Just a little insight to my life.

For anyone who has met Noah...you know he does his best to keep me on my toes! So this post is dedicated to all of his recent "WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOAH???" moments.

Today- Noah was watching Frosty the Snowman on tv. The part where Frosty rides a train to the North Pole comes on and Noah starts climbing up the entertainment center to get on the tv. I yell "NOAH WHAT ARE YOU DOING????"..."ride train mommy!"

Last weekend- Noah was supposed to be in his room napping. I was down in the kitchen doing some housework and I heard giggling. I walked upstairs and there was quite literally 200 pieces of gum unwrapped in the extra bedroom (they were going to be for stocking stuffers for Brandon and his dad). I yell "WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOAH???"...."Want some gum mommy? Yeah?"

A few nights ago- Eli had an extra hard time going down for bed. I finally had him asleep, and in his crib. I was up getting jammies ready for Noah and hear the loudest "NIGHT NIGHT BABY ELI! SWEET DREAMS" I have ever heard, followed by Eli screaming. 2 hours later...we were all in bed again.

Another tutu...for sale!

I went to the craft store to get materials to make another tutu for a friends daughter. They of course were out of the color she wanted so I got some to make some Hawkeye tutus! (or Mizzou if your into that...bluk!)

Tutu cute!

I have been working on a few things...bows, felt play food and tutus. I'm also going to FINALLY start on Eli's baby blanket. Anyway...I just wanted to post a pic of the tutu I made. I still need to add some ribbon to it, but it's pretty much done.

Robot Noah

Please ignore his butt crack...It was too close to bedtime for me to care. :)

Eli finds a chance to pick on Noah!

Eli Dancing

The Polar Express 2010

Today we had a blast taking the boys to the "North Pole" via the Polar Express.

Every Christmas a nearby town runs the Polar Express. You ride a train while listening to the story The Polar Express. When the story finishes, you have arrived at the North Pole where there is cookies and Coco, crafts, model trains, and Santa! ALl the kids get to meet Santa, who gives them each a Christmas bell (for those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, Santa gives the boy in the story a bell, the first gift of the year). IT was so much fun, and have decided to make this a yearly tradition for us!

Eli talking on the phone

Just this week Eli has started to pretend to talk on the phone. He just puts it up to his ear and babbles or says "HI" or "Hellooooooooo". I for one think its pretty darn cute.

Cookie making

Tonight we made and decorated (and ate of course!) gingerbread cookies. Noah had so much fun rolling the dough, using the cookie cutters, and helping to frost them. In this video he shows of some of his letter recognition skills (thanks to his favorite book, and a leap frog toy he knows almost all of them).

3 years!

This past week is always a little bittersweet for me. Thankfully I have Noah's birthday to keep my mind pretty occupied, but I also have the memories of another very special little boy. November 16th 2007 we found out our little guy had passed away at 12 weeks, and the 20th we had a D&C. I guess I'll never "get over it" and I always feel a little guilty this time of year for getting so preoccupied with other things (Noah and my mother in laws birthdays, thanksgiving, and getting ready for Christmas). But I just felt the need to post this. It's hard to talk about since pregnancy loss seems to be more of a taboo topic, but its so theraputic to just talk about him sometimes.

Check ups

Noah-

Noah had his 2 year check up yesterday. And boy has he grown! He was 31 inches at his 18 month appt, which put him on the small side, but they measured him at 34.5 inches yesterday which is back up in the 50th percentile! YAY! He was also 27 1/2 lbs. Developmentally he is doing everything he should be. Talking a ton, and putting sentences together. He is still doing great with potty training, and even starting to tell me he needs to go when he is in a diaper or pullup. If he is pantless he doesn't have any accidents. So we are getting there! He even told me he had to go potty while at the doctors so I frantically ran to the car to get our potty chair (he won't sit on big toilets...way to scary still!). So we got to show off for the nursing staff and pee on the potty right there in the room!

Eli-

Eli is still huge. Just shy of 20lbs and 29-30 inches long. I can't remember what they decided...they measured him wrong to start (used Noah's markings on accident) and I don't remember what they decided he was at after that. But he is tall. He has a few words that he uses (dada is the big one) and he has repeated the words, Grandpa, Tally (my parents dog), Lou, and snack. He did look at me and say Mama a few times yesterday but I am still not counting it since I haven't decided that he was actually calling me mama. But Dada is really his only word that he will use meaningfully on a regular basis. It's nice to know that snacks, and the dogs are more important than Mommy LOL. Oh well. He is crawling like a pro, pulling up, cruising, standing on his own, and has just in the past few days taking little steps! He will only do 2-3 at a time, then falls down to crawl, but I suspect he will be right on track with his brother and walking well in a month or so. We talked about his sleeping issues, and she said that will probably just get better after we wean him, which is what I figured anyway. She also said that he will likely not be an easy child to wean, and that the gradual approach probably wont work as well as just cutting him off. So when he is close to a year we will start the weaning process. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy our late night snuggles knowing they wont last forever. I would love a night of interrupted sleep...but I also know I will miss getting up with him too. While I am super tired some days, we have some great one on one time when he wakes up at night!

2 years ago...

...The world became a happier place. Happy birthday to my sweet baby boy!

These are just a few pics of his 2nd birthday party.

Margie

We went back and forth on this for a long time...trying to figure out what would work best for us. We love our Louie, but he is just so dang hyper sometimes. Several people who have multiple dogs chimed in to say that their dogs were so much calmer after getting a companion. Then we saw Margie. Margie is actually Louie's mom, and when we saw her posted on the breeders website as being retired and needing to find a family we decided to give it a shot. We figured the worst thing that would happen would be that we need to give her back if it didn't work out.

Margie was raised with the breeders grandchildren, and had 3 litter of pups (Louie was from her first litter). After the last litter, they decided that it was time for her to go to a new home. They really wanted to find her a home with young kids since she is such a "mother hen" as they put it. They said that she was happiest when the grandchildren were visiting and just loved all babies!

We brought her home last night and have been so happy with her so far! She is everything a bulldog is supposed to be...sweet, friendly and LAZY! The best part is that Louie seems so happy to have her with us. I know it hasn't been long yet, but so far just having a companion to be with has made him much less "needy" of our attention...thus seeming so much more calm. We shall see if it continues!

And for those wondering how I can handle it with all the kids here during the day??? The dogs spend most of the day outside, or playing in the basement. They come up and play for part of the day with the kids, but when things start getting hectic...they get sent downstairs to where we keep all the doggie toys!

Chillin with Daddy

Anyone that knows us, knows how big of a daddy's boy Noah is. He loves anything that involves hanging out with Dad. Here he is learning the ropes of one of Brandon's favorite hobbies.

brotherly love

Every once and awhile I stumble upon moments like these...and my heart just melts!

Trip to MO

My sister and I took a trip with the kiddos to my grandparents house this past weekend. It was a short trip, but we had so much fun visiting!

Cousin love

Eli is an excellent lounge chair when he's sleeping :)

Cutest baby butt in town!

In our new cloth diapers! SO CUTE!

THIS ADD/COUPON -------------------------->

See this 15% off add over there?

As I mentioned in my last post, we switched to cloth diapers. Cloth diapering is a bit of a big initial investment, having to buy the covers/inserts/detergent/and all the optional gadgets that make cloth diapering easy (I really want the sprayer that attaches to the toilet to make rinsing a breeze). Anyway, if anyone buys diapers online, you can use this coupon code to get 15% off your first order (and even a second order if you use your spouses info to create a second account). When the coupon code is uses, I also receive a percentage off purchases, and since we still have a lot of cloth diapers to buy before we can do this "full time" the savings would be wonderful. :)

Life

This is going to be one of those boring update posts that only family will really care about...just be forewarned before wasting anytime reading this.

Noah: Noah now knows his alphabet! He can tell you just about every single letter. He gets Bs, Ds, and Ps confused as well as M, N and W. Another tricky one is Q which he confuses with O but he's doing great! I buy these organic cookies called "letter of the day cookies" and Noah's favorite thing is to pass them out when we have them for snacks and tell the daycare kids what letter they get. It's just so cute!

I know I said this in the last Noah post...but I am so impressed with how his language has taken off. In the last few months he has really gone from sounding like a toddler, to sounding like a little boy. It's just amazing how much it can change in such a short time!



Eli: Eli has been crawling for a few months now, and while is isn't walking he sure is climbing! And he is pretty dang good at it! He can climb stairs, and he can even climb up on chairs. Yesterday I watched in amazement as he climbed up onto the kids table using one of the kid chairs to get up to the table with. It's a little scary!

Our nights have gotten better too. He is still not sleeping through the night, but he is now only waking once to eat again. As it is now, he nurses sometime after dinner (around 7 or 8) then goes up to bed. I go up around 10 and wake him up to feed him again (this is for my benefit...I get a longer stretch of sleep this way) and then he sleeps anywhere from 1am-5 am before waking up to eat...then sleeps until we get up at 7. Thankfully he is also now sleeping in his crib better. He can fall asleep on his own without tears just as long as his tummy is full :)


Other: I have been thinking about it for awhile, but just recently decided to start cloth diapering. Noah still spends some time in diapers (mostly when we are going to be out of the house for more than a couple hours) and Eli will be in diapers for another year or two so it will save us a lot of money in the long run, and I feel so guilty knowing how much we fill up the landfill just in diapers. Since we spend most of our time home anyway it just makes more sense for us. We will still be buying disposables for traveling and when we have people watch the boys for us (so don't worry Gramma and Papa) but we are doing cloth at home.

Trick or Treat!

We didn't even make it to the 3rd house before Noah was covered in chocolate :) We had a blast...this was our first year trick or treating and Noah had so much fun! Halloween is a big deal in our little town, and we had about 200 trick or treaters! It was so fun.

Lots of people stopped us to take pictures of the boys which Noah loved (Mr. Center of Attention) and it is always nice when other people agree with me on just how cute they are :)

Pics for G'ma and G'pa

these are already up...but my grandparents requested smaller file sizes for the pics so they could print them...so everyone else can ignore this...carry on people. :)

And let me know if these don't work and I'll try again!

Halloween!

Here we are! About to unleash these naughty Things into the neighborhood!

Dangerous

As I mentioned in my previous "Noah" post...Noah's language development is really taking off.

We have a slide in the play room, one of those small plastic Little Tykes brand slides. While I was cleaning the bathroom I heard a banging so I poked my head out to see what was going on, and caught Noah with the slide overturned climbing up the steps of the slide (picture the actual slide part laying flat against the floor, and the steps leading into the air). I screeched at him "NOAH! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?????". His response...."Dangerous" with a little smirk on his face. What a booger!

Eli

The past few weeks Eli has started showing an interest in trying to walk. Not on his own of course, but he has been trying, very hard, to get around with push toys, and bywalking along the furniture. Noah was an early walker, and took his first steps when he was just 9 months old, and was walking well at 10 months (and running like a wild child at 11). I was thinking that with Eli's more laid back personality that he would be a late walker, but he is proving me wrong. He has even stood on his own for a few seconds once (then collapsed to the floor...but it still counts). He babbles quite a bit now too...and says Dada very excitedly when he sees Brandon come into the room, so I think that may be his first actual word. He can also climb the stairs now too...which is a bit terrifying for me, so we have to be vigilant about making sure the baby gate to the upstairs is closed.

Unfortunately, while he had been sleeping really well, Eli got sick last week and has been a little bear at night since. He will sleep through the night if he is in bed with us, but he simply refuses to sleep in his crib. I am thinking about trying to bring his crib into our room and just put it right next to our bed so he doesn't feel alone, but I really like my space when I sleep...and as wonderful as it is to cuddle with him, I just don't sleep well when he is next to me. I have also seen some pretty neat co-sleeper bassinets that I might look into buying too. I still want to work with him on sleep, but at this point I'm just needing a good nights sleep. Brandon has been really good about getting up with him in the mornings when he doesn't have to go to work, which buys me an extra hour of sleep, but since he usually works 6 days a week that really just doesn't cut it. I just wish someone would tell him he's not a newborn anymore...it's okay to sleep longer than 2 hours at a time!

And while it doesn't have anything to do with this post, I just realized how much I overuse "..." when I type. Oh well. :)

Noah

Every day Noah impresses me with knowledge I didn't know he had. We talk about colors and numbers and letters, read books ect but it still amazes me with how much he knows! Yesterday he pointed out his blue chair, and then his orange chair to me. I knew he could say the words, and recognize them within the context of a book we read about colors, but he had never pointed out an object and told me the color before. He also knows about half of the alphabet now. He loves this Clifford's ABC book (you know...the big red dog) and I got him a alphabet fridge toy from leap frog that tells you the letter and sound that it makes when you put each letter in the toy. SO from that, and the book, he is now able to recognized about half of the alphabet! He is also starting to put more sentences together. For instance this morning I was cleaning up breakfast in the kitchen and heard Eli start to cry, and before I could even turn to go get him Noah came running into the room and said "Baby bump wall", and sure enough Eli was sitting next to the wall with a big red mark in the middle of his forehead. I am always impressed when I hear sentences that he puts together on his own (opposed to phrases that he hears us use). He's just getting so darn big!!!

Pictures for the family

Most of these are already on facebook...but wanted to add them here for non facebook family to see :)

Such a good big brother!

Eli's getting big!

Widowed again...

And so it has begun...Hunting season. The next 3 months It'll be just me and the boys on weekends. I wont lie, it is challenging, and will be especially so this year since Noah is to the age where Daddy will be missed, but we always find some fun things to keep us busy. This year I am hoping to go down to Missouri for a weekend, and of course we will be back at the apple orchard at some point, and I'm sure we'll visit the pumpkin patch again. And now that we are in the new house we are only a few minutes away from my Grandparents (not that we were all that far away to begin with) so I think we will make ourselves at home up there a few weekends too :)

In other news...

Sleep has found me for over a week now. Rather than the 3-4 hours a night I had been getting, I have been doing 7-8 for over a week now and boy how I feel GOOD! Not only do I wake up rested, but I'm definitely more patient with my very strong willed 2 year old (or almost 2 year old). It's great!!!

Last week a new little girl started daycare with me. She is the daughter of some friends and was born just a week after Noah so I was pretty excited when they asked me to take her. She will only be coming Mon-Wed for just a few hours, which is nice because, well, a house full of 2 year olds can be overwhelming at times, so it's nice that she gets to come play with us, but it isn't too much to handle either. My new niece Emily will be coming mid December which I am soooo excited for! I love that I will get to spend so much time with her, and I am so happy that she will be with me, where I know she will be very loved, rather than in a daycare. I'm also really excited to be able to have another little baby...without having another one of my own :)

And finally, I finished one of the boy's halloween wigs for their Thing 1 and Thing 2 costumes. I tried a few different things before this idea (which is just a stocking cap with a feather boa sewn on) but I think it turned out pretty cute!

So that's all I got to say...nothing too interesting I guess...just life.

Pumpkin Patch

We usually wait to go until mid October, but Brandon had the day off yesterday, and it was a beautiful day so we decided to go a little early this year! The boys had a blast and we spent an entire afternoon playing. Noah's favorite thing was the giant jumping balloon they had, and he also enjoyed the hayrack ride. Brandon had fun in the haunted barn (mommy and the boys stayed behind for that one!), and Eli laughed hysterically through the piglet races. And me...I guess I just enjoyed watching my boys (including Brandon) having so much fun together.