Halloween, Pumpkin Patch 2012

We had yet another fun-filled Halloween this year!  First, we went to the Sunset Valley Elementary Fall Festival at Eli's school. Thanks to more parent involvement and a bigger, better PTA, the fest was 100 times better than last year. It was outside with bouncy houses, live music, food, several booths, cake walk, haunted houses, and more! As the room parent, I recruited John to volunteer for the 1st grade fishing booth, which was a success! 

We also went to Jed's school fall carnival, which was fun as well...perfect for 2-5 year olds.  My favorite part is when the kids sing their Halloween songs.



For about 4 years now, we have gone to the pumpkin patch at the Elgin tree farm with the Klentzmans.  Jen and I were trying to figure out how and when we were going to go out there this year, which was going to be tricky since Eli and Mia are in school and we had to work around the babies' nap times. Luckily, the first grade classes at SVE planned a field trip out to the Elgin pumpkin patch, so Jen and I ended up taking the little kids there and met Eli and Mia and their classes on their field trip.  It worked out perfect! We got to do the duck races, the corn maze (although it was more like a tall weed maze due to the lack of corn from the drought), decorated pumpkins, the hayride, train ride, picnic lunch, and the pumpkin pictures! We snagged Eli and Mia before they got on the bus home for some quick pics, and they almost got left behind! It was really difficult to get 6 kids to look at the camera at the same time. The series of pictures I took of the kids is funny.

And finally, we went trick-or-treating this year in our neighborhood with our friends who live down the street and have three boys, all a year older than each of our boys. They are good friends to have around! They came to our house for some taco soup and then trick-or-treating. Fun times!

As you may notice, Jed had some costume changes. We have plenty of costumes, so it was hard for him to decide which one to wear. He ended up as Storm Shadow (white ninja from GI Joe for the SVE fall fest and for trick-or-treating, Spiderman for his school carnival, and Iron Man when they wore their costumes to a party at our church). Eli was Snake Eyes from GI Joe, and Max was a frog ( the same frog costume that Eli and Jed wore when they were babies). The boys insisted that John and I dress up as well, so we went with our go-to costumes: John was a cowboy for the SVE fall fest and a Baylor basketball player for trick-or-treating (he also wore his uniform to work on Halloween...no one else dressed up, which he knew), and I was a farmer and a cowgirl.  Next year, we'll have to put some more thought into our costumes.  Jed already told me that I should be the either the pink Power Ranger girl or Scarlett from GI Joe. We'll see...

Max is walking!

He had been standing alone for awhile, but not taking steps. Then he practiced going from sitting to standing by himself, without holding on to anything. After he got that down, he would stand up and take one or two steps and then fall. He did that for a couple weeks. Finally, three days after Max's 1st birthday, he started walking across the living room. It seemed like it was out of the blue when he first did it because I looked up and he was walking across the room! It was like he just decided he was ready one afternoon, so he started taking several steps and falling and doing that over and over. Now, about two weeks later, Max is walking about 85% of the time. When I see Max walking, it still takes me awhile for it to sink in. It just doesn't seem right!  Now we're in the phase of having to keep an eye on him at all times!  He's all over the place!

Max turns 1!

I'll say it again...that year flew by! My baby boy is 1 year old!

We had a small party at our house, and it was just perfect. There were lots of babies who had fun playing with toys and balloons all over the floor, we enjoyed good food, friends, and cupcakes. Max loved his birthday cupcake and made a mess while eating it, which made for great 1st birthday party pictures.

On Max's actual birthday, we had a play date with some friends at Zilker Park. Harper, who is two weeks older than Max and Eliza, who is one week younger than Max plus their moms, who are my friends, met us there. We rode on the little train called the Zilker Zephyr, swung in the swing, and had a picnic lunch. It was fun for all!

Max is learning new things and accomplishing new skills daily, it seems. As a matter of fact, as I was in the process of writing this blog post (I started it a couple days ago), Max has started walking! I'll write all about that and include a video in a separate post.

He is saying more words, (his favorite lately is "hi"), signing "more", "dog", and "all done", and doing things to make us laugh, like his surprised face that you see in a lot of the pictures, or laughing, or making funny faces. Max is copying what we do, especially if we think it's funny. His babbles are sounding more like words, and he wants to talk but it's not coming out right!

This is a fun stage, but definitely a hands on stage for us since Max is mobile and very curious, not to mention very fast and stealthy about getting into things. His favorite thing to snatch are markers. One minute he's right next to me and the next, he's found a marker and it's all over his face. Eli and Jed help us keep track of Max, too, which is helpful.

Max's little personality is emerging more and more. I just wish he would slow down because he's already growing up too fast!

Lunch notes

Do other kids have cool notes from their moms in their lunch boxes? I doubt it. Does Eli think the notes are cool or dorky? It doesn't matter because I sure have fun leaving them in Eli's lunches!

Jed turns 4!

I am finally posting about Jed's birthday now that it's almost Max's birthday next week!  Jed had a great birthday. He celebrated his birthday at his school with some birthday cookies for his class at snack time. His birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so he woke up to birthday pancakes and presents. Then we had our usual party at the park, and it was a hit! Jed chose a Lego Star Wars theme this year.


Jed is definitely a typical four year old. He's becoming more independent by helping himself to snacks, making himself lunch, and doing chores and getting money each week. He's also started to draw very detailed pictures and color very neatly in the lines. He's quite the artist! Jed is counting and writing numbers and letters, too. My favorite number that he says is "eleventeen". He says some funny words I want to remember, like "seer-ee-up" for syrup and the way he says past tense works, like "waketed up" for woke up or "runded" for ran. Jed is also in the beginning stages of learning to ride his bike with pedals!

The years go by so fast! I wish I could remember every detail! That is one reason I do this blog...helps me remember.

Lexie, Jed, and Annalee, two girst from his class

opening gifts

 

 



Jed and his buddy, Luke

 

learning to ride!







Jed's version of The Lorax



BU vs. SMU

Baylor played SMU this year, so we thought it would be fun to meet Grandpa (SMU football alum) and Gramma Ninny in Waco to go to the game. The boys had never been to a college football game, so it was fun for them to see all the action. John and I took a chance because we knew it would be a late night and very hot that day...and it was very very hot, too! It was worth it though.

I feel like I grew up going to SMU football games, so it was fun to sit in the SMU section with my dad and hear all the SMU songs and chants again. It brought back fun memories. Baylor beat SMU (duh), but Grandpa was a good sport. Go BU!

Max wore his SMU shirt to humor Grandpa

Baby Yoda

Remember that baby Yoda costume I had for Max when he was first born last year? I needed to give it back to my friend, so I had to get a few more pictures of Max in it before I gave it back. I think it is the cutest costume ever!

Max went from this:

To this:

He's got the light saber fighting down, thanks to his brothers!

Lego Fest

On Labor Day weekend, we went to the Lego Fest at the Austin Convention Center. It was a ton of people and a ton of Legos. The boys were in Lego heaven! They had different areas to build, mostly separated by the types of Legos, as well as building competitions, Lego stores, Lego movies to watch, but my favorite thing was the giant characters built all out of Legos. John and the boys also had fun building Lego race cars and racing them down the ramp. I think they had everything you could think of to do and stuff for all ages! It was all fun until it was time to go and we were all hungry and deciding what to do for lunch...but we don't need to remember that part! I think we'll go again if they have it next year, but we'll come prepared and pack a lunch!

Lightning McQueen...all legos!



C3PO and R2D2...legos

Lego Darth Maul from Star Wars

building race cars

Max joined in the fun too!

The Hulk!

Max's first word

Bath!  Max started saying bath ("ba") at around 9 months old. He loves the bath, so of course it was his first word!  Since then, he's said other words, like hi "I", Boone "boo", Mama, Dada, book "buh", yay "ay", and most recently Eli "eeyah". Now that he's almost 1, his babbles are sounding more and more like words. It's fun to hear!

It's hard to capture him talking on video, but I was able to get him saying bath this time.  This video is from a couple months ago...

Jed's first day of preschool

Jed is now in the three year old class at Faith Preschool. (Yes, he's four, but he has that September birthday so he'll always be one of the oldest in his class). Jed loves his teacher, and has met a new best friend named Luke.  Apparently all the kids in Jed's class love him...who wouldn't?? We love Faith! I'm looking forward to another year there!




It was a little bright

Toothless Grin

Here's what's happened in the last month:

lost first top tooth

lost other top tooth...others are close behind! 4 lost so far

Eli's first day of 1st grade

Thankfully, Eli was looking forward to going back to school after summer break. He was excited to see his friends again and meet his teacher. We haven't heard any complaining from Eli about school, but we have heard some complaining about homework. I can handle that!

Speaking of handling that, this year I've volunteered to be on the PTA board (co-chair of membership) as well as be a co-Homeroom Parent for Eli's class with my friend Jen, who is Mia's mom. I think I may have bit off more than I can chew!

Eli is continuing in the two way dual language program at school. This year, they have a mixed class of native Spanish and native English speakers, which is the way it's supposed to work. He is exposed to more Spanish that way. I love seeing him write notes in his folder in Spanish!

So far, so good for Eli's 1st grade year!

Eli and his friend, Mia, with their teacher, Mrs. Sanchez

Sunset Valley Elementary Cheetah Pride school shirt

My 3 Sons

 

Parent Rap

Summer Fun Pictures

I know the summer break is over, but I'm trying to play catch up here on the blog. Summer flew by! We spent most of the summer at the YMCA pool. It was a fun summer, although there were hard days when the boys were bored and I was at my wits' end trying to deal with three loud, energetic boys all day, every day!

Here are some pictures from the end of our summer break:

Beach Trip

In late July/early August, we went to the beach in Port Aransas with Grandpa and Gramma Ninny, Aunt Brynn, and cousins Grayson and Garrett. Grandpa and Gramma Ninny rented a nice little beach house for all of us to stay in, which was just a short walk over the boardwalk to the beach. It was perfect!

We had a great time except for the little incident when Garrett got stung by a sting ray! He was in a lot of pain and we weren't sure if the barb was in his foot, so we ended up calling the ambulance to come check out his foot. There was no barb, and we found out that to treat a sting ray sting, all you do is soak it in very hot water for about 45 minutes and then treat it with iodine and bandage it up. As soon as Garrett put his foot in the hot water, the stinging went away, and we was walking on it a couple hours later. Eli liked seeing the ambulance in action, and thankfully everything turned out to be okay.

The day we left, John and I took they boys to the Texas Aquarium in Corpus Christi. What a cool place! We saw many different kinds of sea life as well as a dolphin show. The USS Lexington ship is right next to the aquarium, so we stopped there. The boys loved checking out the ship. It's huge!

So, it was a fun vacation all around. I love driving only 3 and 1/2 hours for a beach vacation!

14th anniversary

July 18th, John and I celebrated our 14th anniversary! For our anniversary date, we went on an afternoon date to the greenbelt for a little hike and dip in the cool springs. It was perfect! I love that Austin has several hidden gems in the greenbelt that are within 10 minutes from our house.

Stranger Danger?

Last time we were in Dallas in July, we went out to eat with Grandpa and Gramma Ninny to their favorite Mexican restaurant. They go there every Friday night and know everyone who works there. However, Max was not a fan of our server for some reason. Every time he came to our table Max would start to panic. Since then, Max has gotten better with waiters, but if we have a male server, Max gets worried.  Not sure what it is, but it is pretty funny. Poor Max is scared and we're all laughing at him!

Max is 9 months old!

Wow, Max has accomplished so much in the last month! In fact, at his nine month well check today, the doctor said that he's doing so much that he's all messed up. In other words, his brain is working hard keeping up with all these new developments. Unfortunately, I think these new milestones are all affecting his sleep as well, and he's not wanting to stay asleep. He wants to practice his new skills instead of sleep! Here's a list of his new accomplishments this month:

• he got another tooth on the bottom and three more are close behind, making eight total teeth
• eats finger foods and loves feeding himself
• waves bye-bye/night-night
• clicks tongue and loves when you click back
• likes growling back and forth with people
• gives kisses by smacking his lips
• likes to dance whenever any music comes on by bobbing head and/or body up and down
• he practiced all month and finally started crawling one week before he turned 9 months! First he went from being on his belly to sitting up, then he was doing a move where he would do a push up and balance on his toes with stretched out legs, then he did the crawling position and rocking on his hands and knees, he could crawl backwards for awhile, then he finally took off!
• a few days after he started crawling, he started pulling up to his knees and then to standing soon after that
• he likes to pull up on the ottomans and bite off the leather on them; not sure what to do about that
• he also likes to pull up on the piano and play it; he's so tall, he can reach the keys already
• and as of today, he can clap his hands

avocado!

The Plank

You see his tan lines? He even has tan lines
on his wrists and ankles where his rolls are.

We'll blame this on the angle of the camera : )

Whew! Needless to say, Max has been busy! He's also been busy growing. He weighs in at 23 pounds and is 31 inches long. At the doctor's office, the nurse asked me how much I thought he weighed, and when I guessed 23 pounds, she laughed and said, "Thant's a little ambitious, don't you think?", and I was right on the money! He's about the size of a 15-18 month old. Slow down, Max!