6 Month Summer

Well it does feel like a 6 month long summer, but Audrey just turned 6 months. I can't believe how fast she's growing up.   She has two bottom teeth now, sits up on her own, rolls all over the place, and sounds like she's saying yelling "mama" when she wants me to pick her up.  She had her checkup and shots yesterday and is 15lb 13oz (40%) and 26" (52%).  Cameron seems to take after her daddy and hid in the corner while Audrey got her shots.  Last time she went and stood in the hallway so I guess we're making progress. 

We've been trying to keep busy this summer with trips to the splash park, lots of swimming, and playing with Grant and Gavin.  Cameron is starting to look like she goes to the tanning salon, she's so dark. She can't wait for school to start to have something to do every day.  We've started a chore list and allowance for her which seems to be working most of the time.  Fortunately her favorite chore is cleaning toilets and showers.  She's been working on her reading and writing over the summer and has gotten very good at both.  She read me a regular version of Beauty and the Beast a few days ago and only had help with a couple of words. 

We're heading to San Diego next weekend for Audrey's first road trip. Cameron's a road tripper already and I think Audrey will do fine. She's already used to riding around with me on deliveries, so it shouldn't be too big of a problem hopefully.  Looking forward to getting out of the heat for the weekend and hitting the beach!

School's out for summer!

...and what are we going to do with Miss C?! May, while schools was technically still in, was full of trips and weddings so we're covered there.  June...well June is dragging on and I'm thinking I better find something for her to do in July.  We're working on reading and writing here at home but she only wants to do that for so long, and would much rather watch the Disney channel all day.  Have you seen the Disney channel lately? It's not cartoons! It's tween aged programming that she loves to watch and then repeats back to me at (in)opportune times. Interesting to say the least.  We do spend most afternoons swimming and she's already sporting a dark tan.  She just learned to do front and back somersaults in the water which she is quite proud of.  She's also been able to get diving rings off the bottom of the 5' deep section of the pool and swim the whole thing by herself with no floaties or help. 

Miss A hit 5 months a few weeks back and has a some new tricks up her sleeve now.  The first being a nice pointy puppy tooth to bite with!  She's also rolling around all over, sitting up by herself, and holding her own bottle most of the time. Now if I can just break the 5:30am wake up habit! I can't complain too much but it would be nice to at least get to 6:00.

Oh yeah, almost forgot! We celebrated our 10 year anniversary on June 16th! 10 years...wow! I can't decide if it's gone by fast or not because it seems like we've known each other forever.  I think that's a good thing. The lovely prom-style pic below is from our dinner on the beach in Jamaica. 

And as I am about to click "publish", I hear Taps playing over the loud speakers at the air force base from inside my office.  I love hearing that.   7am Reveille, 5pm National Anthem, 10pm Taps. Every day.

Two more weeks

Another two weeks have flown by and we are still busy busy around here. I keep thinking my rental business is going to slow down but it hasn't much.  A nice problem to have I guess but I am ready for a break. It's been non-stop since January.  With Audrey's birth, three weeks off (if you can call it that with c-section recovery and a new baby), and then jumping right into the tourist season, I don't feel like I've gotten much time off.  I finally gave up and started closing on Sundays this month just to have a day to spend with the girls and Brian all together. I am SO looking forward to our trip to Jamaica next week for my brother's wedding. Even if it does mean flying for 2 days with the kiddos to get there.  2 days after we get back from that trip, we are all heading to Dallas for Brian's brother's wedding too.  We'll squeeze in visits with friends for Memorial Day on those 2 days home, so it's going to be a hurry-up-and-relax kind of vacation.

These last two weeks we've had fun with Easter and Cameron getting a new big girl bike from the Easter Bunny, going to the park to enjoy our nice spring weather, having a really nice Mother's Day tea party at Cam's school, and visiting the school art show where the kids get to display and tell us all about everything they've been working on this year.  The art show was actually quite impressive, with preschool paintings of Monet, Van Gogh, and more.  She was very proud to show us her art and was pulling out all kinds of work from the shelves of the classroom while we were there.  She just loves school! Some pics are below.

Audrey just turned 4 months too. The time is flying by and I'm thankful for all the time I do get to spend with her, even if it's riding around in the van or sitting in a random parking lot playing with her and feeding her.  She's now 24" and 13lb 3oz.  I guess that still only puts her in the 25% for weight though but she's looking pretty chunky. Her little jumpers make elastic rings on her legs now where the didn't before.  Some of her newest tricks are rolling from back to tummy, "talking" to us, laughing a ton, and holding on to toys (and hair, and earrings, and necklaces). 

3 Months

As I sat down to write out clues for Cameron's scavenger Easter egg hunt tomorrow, I wrote a few then thought maybe I should Google it and see if there were any better ideas out there. That of course lead to Facebook and then to a friend's blog, then to me realizing that I hadn't updated ours in like 2 months, so here I am now. The scavenger hunt clues are NOT finished by the way.  So, here it goes.

Audrey is now 3 1/2 months old and doing great! She weigh about 12 lbs and I'm sure the Dr. will tell me she should weigh more, but the kid eats 7oz every 3-4 hours so she's not starving!  Cameron was about the same, in the 25% for weight through her first year too so I'm not worried.  She's been sleeping 11-12 hours through the night since 10 weeks and is a solid left-hand thumb sucker (unlike her sister who is a right-hand thumb sucker). Awesome! No pacifiers to lose and the thumb is always available.  She coos, laughs, and talks to us all the time with her big bright eyes and eyebrows showing so much emotion. It's really funny how she can do that already.  The drooling and hands in the mouth has already started but I don't feel any little teeth coming in yet. 

Cameron is doing wonderfully, loving school and growing up so fast. She's an excellent reader and there's no lying about what kids shows are or are not on TV any more.  She's been taking swim lessons in preparation for swim team this summer. We'll see how that goes, but I think she'll love it.  At school, she's become the "little mama" as her teacher says, always wanting to show everyone else how to do their work and help them, whether they want it or not probably.  She loves showing off her baby sister to all her friends.  Even though they see her twice a day, every day, they never seem to tire of it.  Cameron still has her little bouts of jealousy with Audrey, particularly when I am feeding her. She just wants to sit on my lap too, so we all squish into one chair and deal with it.  She loves to talk to and play with Audrey, the best she can anyway.  Audrey is learning to close her eyes when she sees Cam coming though since she always leans over her and puts her hair in Audrey's face.  She loves having her big sister talk to her though.

We are getting ready to go to Jamaica in May for my brother's wedding, then onto Dallas 2 days after we return from Jamaica, for Brian's brother's wedding.  All with the kids.  It will be fun but exhausting I'm sure.  I've spent the evenings this last week sewing Cameron's flower girl dress and it did come out pretty cute, if I say so myself.  I finally got to use my new sewing machine that I got 4 months ago for my birthday, so that was good. 

Well, I'm staring at these plastic eggs that aren't hiding themselves, so I guess I better get going.  I think the Easter Bunny still has a new bike to put together tonight too!

Guess Who?

I ran across a pic of Cameron at about 3-4 weeks old and still have the same outfit.  So here's both Cameron and Audrey at just about the same age. Can you tell who is who?!

1 Month!

These are a little overdue but here's Audrey's one month pics. Cameron is 4 years and 4 months. Audrey is doing well weighing in at 9 lbs and 21".  Overall she's pretty mellow and tolerates her big sister's "help" pretty well.  She's not sleeping all night yet but only gets up once around 3am which I'm still trying to adjust to!

First Bath

After Audrey's cord finally fell off, we could give her a real bath. She's 3 weeks here in these pics. She loves the warm water and only cries when I take her out.  Cam isn't in these shots but she was right there "helping" the whole time too.

Granny's 102nd Birthday

We celebrated Granny's 102nd birthday this past weekend.  She's doing amazingly well for just about anyone, let alone a 102 year old! She lives with my grandparents and still gets around with her walker. Granted she doesn't have much of a short term memory but hey, that's not too bad!  Here she is with Audrey, or as she pointed out, the oldest and the youngest (3 weeks) of the entire family.  Here's a link to all the pics also.

Audrey Bryn's Birthday

Whew! We made it and are back home. Here's Audrey Bryn's birth story and a few pics to enjoy:

Click here for pics!

We headed into the hospital for our planned c-section around 7:30 am on Monday 1/3. To back track a little, it ended up being the 3rd because our doctor was on vacation the last week of 2010, otherwise she'd of been here sooner!  We got all checked in, prepped and were ready to go by 9:30. The doctor was a few a minutes late and as soon as he got started, I think it was no more than 5 minutes and she was born.  10:00 am on the dot.  The first thing the doctor and nurse both said was "wow, look at those cheeks! You have a pretty good sized baby in there!"  She had a good set of lungs and cried for about 10 minutes until they wrapped her up and took her to the nursery to be weighed, etc.  My mom and Brian went to the nursery with her while they finished with me and took me to recovery. Eventually they got her all ready and brought her back to me all cleaned up.  We hung out in recovery for about an hour and finally got to our room. 

Her official stats:
Audrey Bryn Peters
8lbs 3oz, 19" long, 10:00am

The rest of the stay was uneventful and we actually got to go home on Wed night instead of Thursday. I was so happy not to spend another night in that hospital.  I think that's the absolute worst part, just being there. It's worse than the pain and recovery from the c-section.  We had to wait until around 9pm to get discharged, which was a loooong time but we were still happy to get out, however late it was.

Now that we are home, Cameron is a very, let's say helpful, big sister.  She's had a few meltdowns but is dealing with the changes pretty well though. She wants to help change every diaper, hold Audrey all the time, and likes to go "pet" her while she's napping.  She's done pretty well all things considered. 

Audrey is doing great and has gained back some weight since coming home.  We are working on breastfeeding still but she's getting better at it.  So far she's just been eating and sleeping mostly, with me having to set my alarm to attempt to wake her up every 3 hours to feed her.  Boy does that bring back memories of Cameron.  She was the sleepiest newborn.  Now that she's over the hurdle of gaining back her weight, I'm not quite as worried about it though. 

We're all pretty excited and ready to see what the future holds for us and our new addition!

Baby's Room

We finally put the finishing touches on the baby's room last night, and in no time she'll be here.  Only 3 weeks to go (or less hopefully).  I'll have to take some pictures and post them soon but it's grey, yellow, and pink. I've gotten a little crafty and sewed a few things for the room too.  We reused Cameron's old crib and changing table but when I pulled it out, I had forgotten how badly she'd chewed up the rails. Oh well, at least I won't be upset when it happens a second time! I filled it in with a stain pen the best I could and it looks ok.

Cameron has had quite a lot of fun this week with one of her big baby dolls, dressing her in the real baby sleepers and hauling practically everything out that I've put in the changing table.  Her baby wears a diaper that gets changed, several outfits a day, sits in the bouncer, rides in the car seat, takes naps in the crib complete with the video monitor to watch her, she hears her cry she says and she rocks her, and I've gotten a lot of practice swaddling already too.  I'll have to wash pretty much everything again but oh well, she's having fun. 

I'm feeling pretty gigantic and waddling around pretty good now.  Yesterday I started to feel like she was really ready to be born.  She feels a lot bigger or heavier than I remember with Cameron. Maybe it's because Cam was breech and this one is not.  I feel her kicking and squirming around up underneath my ribcage which is pretty uncomfortable.We still haven't decided on a name. I think we'll have to wait till she's born and pick one when we see her!

Cameron is loving Montessori school and doing really well.  In the 6 weeks since we moved her there, she's finished the first set of 8 beginning reading books and now is on to books that actually have sentences and a storyline. We couldn't be more thrilled with how she's doing and with her teacher, who also happens to be an old family friend.  It's a lot different than her old preschool and the format really works for her. She can move at her own pace and adores the "outdoor environment" portions of the week.  They get two days a week of some outdoor activity where they learn about gardening, insects, digging in the dirt, how to hammer things, etc.  The first week she was there, they had live tarantulas for Halloween. Now that's not something you see in every preschool.  Since she's been going the themes have been artists like Monet and Van Gogh, dinosaurs, the food pyramid, the workings of the body, along with their "daily work" which usually consists of some sort of numbers, counting, or math.  They get to practice their life skills like cutting and preparing their own snacks each day (even something they grew in the garden).

We're looking forward to Christmas this year and the arrival of our new baby girl shortly after.  We will have Christmas morning at our house with my family and Cameron is very excited about the shopping she got to do at school for everyone.  We gave her a budget (and money) for a list of family and the elementary kids at the school helped her pick out things and wrap it so it's a surprise for everyone.  My grandma has been in and out of the hospital since Thanksgiving so we are hoping she's home for Christmas at least but it doesn't look like we'll be having the traditional afternoon pot luck and gift exchange at her house this year.

Well that's all I have time for this morning. Off to get Cam ready for school and make some rental deliveries.