Catching up from September

In September and October, pretty much everything that could be considered non-essential was put on hold while my job with TVIB went into overdrive. I'm just now starting to find time to catch up, and the blog definitely suffered. 

Luckily I have three super sweet kids who  make the crazy hours worth it. Like this little guy, who discovered a friend in the mirror who kept him super entertained. 

With the weather so nice, we tried to get out every once in a while. In general, exercising has completely fallen by the wayside, and I went for my first run in weeks yesterday. It felt great to be back out there!

Although my view has changed, as Jack is now big enough to sit in the BOB without the car seat. He loved it!

We started on solids foods with Jack right after Maddie's birthday. He figured it out right away and we've been introducing lots of new foods this last month.

Bath time is still lots of fun!

In mid September we drove to Indiana for Joe's cousin Kyle's wedding. The kids had an absolute blast! Maddie loved following the bride, Ashly, around and figured out the dollar dance right away. She kept asking me for money so she could dance with her!

The kids did great and we stayed quite a bit past bedtime. Joseph slept in late the following morning, and by the time we finished breakfast, Jack was ready for his nap. 

When he is well rested, he is all smiles, all the time!

Back home, Maddie and I in our normal routine, walking to and from the bus stop each morning and afternoon. Except when super girl decides to come and leave Maddie at home. 

Maddie found her flower girl dress and insisted on wearing it to school. After a few practice twirls, of course! 

She is so independent. This little girl can do anything she sets her mind to. Although she can be defiant and easily frustrated, but she's still working on how to accept help. I think she's going to be working on that for a long time to come. But for now, it's fun watching her figure things out for herself, like insisting she can get her shoes on all by herself. 

And when she can't, we see this happen, much more often than we would like! 

It turns out, goldfish crackers don't stay inside snack cups when the lid is off. Especially when you stomp and jump to express your displeasure about needing to leave the lid on. Oh, three year old troubles!

Maddie's third birthday

On Saturday, September 5, we celebrated Maddie's third birthday with a bunch of neighborhood friends and family. She wanted a Minnie Mouse party at a playground, so that's what she got! 

We lucked out and the weather was beautiful, just a little hot. 

It was a bit breezy, so it took a while to get the candles lit on her cupcake, but it worked eventually. 

I think she had a blast and was quite happy about how the day turned out!

We let her open a few presents at the end of the party. New clothes are so fun!

Sunday was Jack's baptism. I'll do another post on that, but Maddie enjoyed getting to open more of the presents from friends. 

On the big day, she woke up to donuts for breakfast, and of course more singing to her!

And then presents from us, including a new piggy bank, Cinderella nightgown, a personalized Maddie princess CD and a sleep sheep clock!

Three has been a success so far! She has graduated to a new room at PDO and is back with some of her old friends. We know she'll miss her two's room teachers!

Binky free!

I think it is safe to declare that we are a pacifier free house! Jack hasn't been taking one for about a month now, so I've packed up most of his. Maddie has been preparing, much to her dismay, for this day for months. I knew we needed to break her of the habit but also didn't want to go through hell to make it happen. 

In August, I planted the seeds by telling her that because big girls don't use pacifiers, they would all break when she turned 3. And then every time she found a new pacifier that was fully intact, I would pop a small hole in the tip. She couldn't see it, but I could tell she knew they felt different. We could also start to see her internal struggle as we got closer to her bday. I had no intention of taking them away on her birthday, but two days later as we were putting her to bed, she told me that she was a big girl and didn't need the binky anymore. We'd heard this before but it never stuck. So I offered to take the binky and put it on the counter where she could see it. Luckily, she was tired enough that she managed to fall asleep without it! We were amazed! One nap turned into two, days turned into weeks, and here we are, 16 days later and she hasn't used one once since then! She's also stopped asking for it as much, and I don't think she's mentioned it at all this week. It's super handy that Jack quit using one as well bc she doesn't see him sucking on it and getting jealous. I had secretly hoped that we could convince her to get rid of it on her own, knowing it would be so much easier on everyone. This is one time where having such a strong willed little kid paid off!

The everyday grind

Now that Joseph is in school full time, it's been interesting trying to figure out our new routine. Maddie is really excited about being back at "school" this year, and her new backpack and lunchbag make it that much better. 

Joseph's school lets families come eat lunch anytime, so Jack and I visited once during the first full week of school. Joseph got a big kick out of having us there and showing us how he gets his lunch. He is loving ordering the hot lunch options and hasn't let me pack him a lunch since the first day of school!

Jack is getting bigger and stronger by the day. He is still settling into a routine, which is hard enough when he's constantly carted around. Luckily he's a super happy baby almost all of the time. 

There's definitely a similarity between Joseph and Jack! It's a good thing they have different eye colors or it would be even harder to tell them apart. 

Nap and bedtime snuggles are even more fun. Jack loves to hang out in between the big kids. They keep waiting for the day when he can move into their room. :)

Last weekend Joe had a work conference in Atlanta. Jack and I flew down on Saturday and spent a long weekend vacationing. While we didn't do anything too crazy and didn't stay out late, we had a great time checking out the area, doing some shopping and enjoying some awesome food. 

Jack enjoyed his tasty toes as he celebrated his four month birthday. 

We had hoped to leave him home with my parents, but his night sleeping has regressed a lot during the last few weeks. I'm lucky to get a 5 hour stretch out of him now. So since we didn't want my parents having to get up multiple times at night, he got to come along. I think he loved all of the undivided attention and was generally his super laid back, happy self everywhere we went. 

Jack is rolling from back to belly a lot now. We have to watch him more now after bath time when we are getting him dressed. On Friday we had the Royals game on, and he was fascinated. Good sign, kid! 

I could just eat him up! Such a cutie!

Yesterday Maddie took a trial dance class. It is super small, and took her a bit to warm up but by the end she was loving it. I think we will probably sign her up and see how it goes. 

So that's life in a nutshell. Hopefully I'll get us on some schedule soon that allows me enough time to play with the kids, exercise, work and keep the house going. Along with all of the other little projects that pop up.