Busy, busy, busy

We somehow always manage to keep busy. If it's not one thing, it's something else. Since we apparently aren't busy enough, we've decided to list our home for sale and look for another one. So, the last several weeks have been filled with cleaning and prepping the house for potential buyers and looky-loos, as well as visiting several homes already on the market, trying to find that perfect new home. Also, we have been visited by Grandma and Grandpa, as well as Nana and Papa. Finally, we made a trek up to Santa Clarita in the middle of June to visit the great-grandparents and lots of extended family. We just keep busy!

The boys keep busy, too. Jacob loves his school, and loves to read. His school is having a summer reading program where each child is to log the books that are read to them and they work their way toward a class ice-cream party. Jacob has already met the goal, after one week. When he's not reading, he's usually drawing, playing outside, or rearranging the items in our home to his liking. His current favorite movie is Tarzan, and his favorite foods continue to be pancakes and french fries. Aaron is just fascinated by faces and will grin anytime he sees one. He is trying to grow some teeth, and it's hard to see our normally very content baby be so uncomfortable. He is also starting to reach out and play with things in the activity gym and rocker, and it's fun to see him interacting with the world around him. As Papa says, he's not a slug anymore!

We have lots and lots of pictures, but finding the time to sort through them seems to be a challenge, so they will need to be posted another time. Happy July!

Lawnmower time

Mandi went to Babies R Us this afternoon and found a new toy for Jacob that he just loves--a little Jacob-sized lawnmower! (He is currently obsessed with lawnmowers, and would push around other toys and make whirring noises to simulate lawn mowing.) He is a VERY happy goose with his new toy. It makes cool lawnmower noises and rattles around the yard. He doesn't know it yet, but it can also shoot out bubbles--we may not even bother introducing this feature to him, since he's already so happy with the toy as-is.

Aaron continues to grow like a weed, and he's gotten nice and pudgy. We're pretty sure he has doubled his birth weight and he's only three months old. He's also typically sleeping from 9:30PM to 4AM or so, which is much better than Jacob would do at 3 months old.

Jacob also has a few more tricks up his sleeve. The most impressive one is that he can recite the alphabet--almost entirely correctly--from beginning to end now. Sadly we haven't taken camcorder footage in a while. Maybe it's time to pull it out and make some recordings.

Lawnmower time

Big grins!

Aaron is learning to grin at mama and daddy. Also, Jacob enjoys roly-poly bug-hunting in the park.

Big grins

Two Months!

Aaron turned 2 months old yesterday. He is growing like a weed. I had to move him to 3-6 month and 6 month clothes about two weeks ago, packing away all of the newborn, 0-3 month, and 3 month clothes, many of which he never got to wear. I took him in for his 2-month well baby check today and he weighs 13 pounds 10 ounces and is 24.5 inches long! He is in the 90 percentile for both his height and his weight. No wonder my back hurts. He also slept like a champ both last night and the night before, doing a 5.5 hour stretch the first night and 6.5 hours last night. Unfortunately, I can't sleep that long, and had to get up after 4 hours both nights to pump. But little Aaron won't take a bottle either, so all that milk is just piling up in the freezer. Oh, well, we'll use it someday. He is just as cute as can be right now, and grins a bunch. He keep smiling at the pediatrician, who was just loving the grins and his chubby cheeks.

Here are his 2 month pictures that we had taken yesterday. He slept through the whole process. These are uncropped, so you can see me in a couple of them, but they turned out okay. Also, while Aaron and I were taking pictures, John took Jacob to see the fountains, play some games at Dave and Buster's, and ride the carousel. Jacob had a good day!

Spectrum visit

An Ode to Emily

For the past year, our family has been blessed with an amazing babysitter. Emily came into our lives last spring, and each week would provide me a few hours of sanity as I first worked on my master's thesis, and when that was done, enjoyed a couple hours of free time. She and Jacob had loads of fun together, playing inside and outside, doing art, reading stories, visiting the park, and eventually even going places so Jacob could ride in "Emily car." She even stayed with Jacob overnight twice, once while John and I had an overnight date to San Clemente, and also the night before Aaron was born. But, she was a senior at Concordia University in Irvine this year, and graduated on Friday with a degree in Liberal Studies. Also, in December she got engaged, and so has returned home to the Sacramento area to finish planning her August wedding before returning to Orange County in the fall to student teach. So, on Wednesday, we said good-bye to Emily. We miss you already!

Emily

Busy Boys

Our family has been busy recently! Jacob is acclimating well to school—he still isn't too thrilled when we walk out the door, but apparently he's back to his usual happy self within a minute or two. Aaron continues to grow at an astounding rate and keep our hands full. Our babysitter is graduating and moving away, so in the next week or two we'll need to start looking for someone else who can help Mandi get a few hours of blessed sanity each week :)

Here are some pics from around the house. There isn't too much of a theme, but we've stockpiled a ton of photos recently and it was time to share another batch. I expect we'll put up another round of pictures pretty soon if we get a moment to do it.

Busy Boys

First Day of School

Jacob had his first day of preschool today! He was a little sad to see Mama go, but he had a great time. He finger-painted, played with new friends, and slid down a big red slide. (He was able to explain all of this to me later, as well.) He is looking forward to visiting preschool again on Wednesday.

Jacob is doing great at potty training. He is extremely enthusiastic for M&Ms--they are a fantastic motivator. Today, Mama brought home a new potty chair so we can have one upstairs and another one downstairs. He was so excited to try the new potty chair, while Mama was distracted, he brought it into the kitchen, took off his pants and diaper, and used it (correctly). Yes, he got an M&M. And Mama got a picture.

First day of school