Beast

Beast: this is what we affectionately call Isadora these days and for good reason!

The girl is something else.  She's like a little tornado.  She comes crawling (yes crawling, ok?  she's totally on the Lincoln walking schedule!) into the living room and destroys it within seconds.  We always find her in the cat toys.  We even moved the cat toys under the table and she's always going under the table to get at the cat toys.

And she loves climbing.  Oh my gosh does she love climbing!  On anything and everything.  She claims onto the ottoman and will try to stand.  If she's not strapped into her high chair, she'll stand up.  We have two kid size chairs in the living room and she's always climbing into both and just sitting there for a few seconds before she's on the move again.

One of the chairs is right by an end table.  B showed us her mad climbing skills a couple days ago when she got into the chair and climbed onto the table.  I'm clearly very close to her so don't freak out!

We are busy right now with two of my favorite things: potty training and teething. For real?  Potty training?  and teething!  Will it ever end?!  We've made a lot of progress with Lincoln and even made our first venture out into public just wearing undies last week.  The hardest part is getting him to tell us he has to go when he's having fun.  My new alarm clock is Lincoln in my face saying, "Mommy, I have ta go poootty".  It's really awesome.  Especially the days it's pre 6:00 am.

And teething.  Oh my gosh, teething.  Talk about never ending.  Isa had the same four teeth for 5 months and now they are all coming in with a vengeance.  Holy cow.  My nights now consist of being up with B at least once and pumping her full of meds and then a wake up call bright and early from Lincoln.  Kirk and I have both been walking around like zombies for the last couple weeks.  It's all temporary, it's all temporary...

Can you see the teeth?  And do you see the curl?!  The lone curl!!  I hope there are more!

Being the genius that I am, I decided to take both kids to the mall on a rainy day to get haircuts by myself.  Holy cow.  That was a chore!  I even took them to Olga's.  That was a disaster especially when I was talking to the server and looked back to see Isa nose deep in the almond butter.  She had an allergic reaction on the way home.  Poor thing was itching her eyes and had a rash all over her face.  I raced home and gave her some Benadryl.  She took a good long nap and was as good as new.  So, I guess she still has a dairy allergy.

Here I am trying to get a picture of B.  The girl can move.

Oh, this box is my creativity at it's finest.  Thanks to Pinterest, I found this pin.  We took a big box, put holes in the top and put Christmas lights through the holes.  It's totally fun!

Let the holiday season begin!

Halloween

Can you believe this was Lincoln's 4th Halloween?!  Fourth!

Lincoln has been obsessed with robots lately.  They made robots out of boxes and aluminum foil at preschool and now they're his thing.  Or should I say this week they are his thing.  Next week his thing will be sharks or something.

Needless to say, Lincoln was a robot for Halloween!

How annoying is the under bite smile?!

Funny story about Isa's costume: I had gotten her a Minnie Mouse costume.  I went to try it on her and it wouldn't fit over her head!  She doesn't have a big head or anything, I think the costume was just small.  I made a trip to Target to pick out a new costume and the only one left in her size was a pink dinosaur.  Sooo, she was a pink dino.

Not the ideal costume, but she rocked it.

We attempted a picture of the two of them:

This is the progression of pictures.  Impossible!

This was the first year we carved a pumpkin with Lincoln, or should I say Kirk carved a pumpkin with Lincoln.  These pictures were mostly for show.  He wasn't strong enough to get the seeds out of the pumpkin.  They slipped right through his little hands.

He and Kirk did a great job with the carving.

 And the final product!

We had every intention of carving 2 more pumpkins, but we didn't cause we're lazy like that.  And it's a lot of work taking the seeds out of a pumpkin and deciding on a face.  And carving it?  Forget about it.  Just one of those things that was a lot easier when we were younger and our parents were doing half the work!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!  The holiday season is upon us!  Bring on the Christmas music!

Lincoln's Three Year Visit

So, I didn't update the entire month of October.  Wow!  Our life is THAT exciting!

Last week we finally took Lincoln in for his 3 year well-child check.  It's so hard to believe he's 3.  How many more times can I say that?

It's no surprise to anyone that Lincoln is small, but we were surprised he wasn't in a lower percentile.

Height: 36 3/4 inches (23rd percentile)
Weight: 29 pounds and 8 ounces (23rd percentile)

He's gained about 5 pounds and grown 3 inches in the last year.

They took his blood pressure (98/52) which I thought was so weird.  Funny to see your toddler getting their blood pressure taken.  He regularly takes our blood pressure with his play blood pressure cuff, but he's never actually had his blood pressure taken.

We talked to the doctor about his eating because he is so picky.  I feel like we did everything we could to feed him well and we cannot get him to eat.  The doctor recommended a book called Your Child's Weight: Helping Without Harming by Ellyn Satter.  Anyone heard of it?  I'll let you know if it's any good.  We can't be the only ones with a picky eater!

Isadora's 12 Month Visit

Today we ventured to the pediatrician's office for Isadora's 12 month visit.  We were spoiled at her last visit when she didn't need any shots.  Ugh.  Poor thing!

Somehow, this crazy babykins didn't even gain a pound the last 3 months, but she has grown so much!

Stats:
Height:  29.25 inches (55th percentile)
Weight:  19 pounds 14 ounces (29th percentile)
Head:  45.3 cm (57th percentile)

We wanted Isa to have her flu shot while we were there, but the flu shot is egg based.  Because the allergist told us to avoid eggs, we have to take her to the allergist's office to get the flu shot.  They will give her the shot in small doses in order to make sure she doesn't react to the shot.  Sooo, that's awesome.  :(

Other than that, Isadora is right on track!  She says "hi" which is adorable.  She pulls herself up on things and  is just starting to cruise.  She also will let go and stand there for a few seconds and fall.  She's a quick crawler and climbs stairs at the speed of light, but goes down stairs (or a stair) really ungracefully, but it doesn't even phase her.

Isadora is a great eater!  We're so bummed she can't eat dairy.  We had venison burgers tonight and she ate a 1/6th burger!  (Kirk and I had 1/3 lb burgers and split the rest into 2 for the kids).  We struggled to get Lincoln to even take a few bites of his.  I love that she'll try anything.

Loving this fall weather!  The kids had their 3 year and 1 year pictures this morning. It was so cold but they were troopers!  I'll post pictures when we get them.

Happy First Isadora!

I cannot  believe it has been a year since Isadora joined our family.

Today, Lincoln and I went to the outlets on a hunt for new tennies for him.  While there, he wanted to take a ride on one of these electric ride things they have there.  (Much like Sandy the horse at Meijer only Bert and Ernie in a fire truck or Bob the Builder or a space ship.  You get the idea.)  It brought me back to the day before Isa was born.  We brought Lincoln there for pizza and a ride(s) in an effort to ease the guilt I was feeling about having a second child.

Since then, our world has changed, no doubt.  However, it has been the most wonderful of changes.  Life with two kids is crazy busy; way busier than I ever expected.  I feel like we have no down time and I'm fairly certain I got more done around this place when I worked!  All this craziness, all the busyness, all the I-just-want-a-minute-to-myself moments are all worth it; every single one of them.

I can't help but think about what was going on every minute of my kid's birthdays the day they were born.  My favorite moment of the day Isadora was born was when I threatened to just go home because we were about 10-15 minutes late to the hospital because of horrible traffic.  As if just leaving is an option!  I laugh every single time I think of that.  As if Kirk could have been like, "Yep. You're right.  Totally not worth it.  Let's just go home."  That's totally me.  My poor husband.  :)

We had a great day yesterday filled with fun and family.  It's always so wonderful to have our family over to celebrate the kid's birthdays.  Even if Isadora had no idea what was going on and why there were so many people all up in her business, she showed no sign of it bothering her in the least.  She was such a trooper all day considering she hasn't been feeling well and she was so tired.

Isadora was blessed with so many wonderful new toys!  It's been fun seeing her checking everything out today and playing with all the new toys.  Pretty sure Lincoln is loving it, too.

I lost sleep over Isadora's cake.  I went to a couple different bakeries and people looked at me like I had 4 heads when I asked if they had a dairy free cake.  After a while, I just decided to order a cake for everyone else and make Isadora's.  I tried a few different cakes and frostings and wasn't happy with them.  I went to the grocery store and started reading labels.  Much to my surprise, the Duncan Hines yellow cake is dairy free!  And the Pillsbury MILK chocolate frosting is also dairy free!  PERFECT yet so wrong!  She wasn't quite as excited about the cake as Lincoln was at his birthday, but she liked it.  Actually, she liked the frosting.  Can't say I blame her.

A huge thank you to everyone who came by or was with us in spirit.  It was a perfect day - the rain even held out and were to hang in the garage most of the day (sounds high class, huh?).

Poor Is was whipped last night. Little thing was asleep within seconds of me putting her in bed.

Thanks again to everyone for taking time out of your busy schedules to be with us or send birthday wishes to Isadora.  What a great day!

Preschool

This whole first day of preschool thing should be a breeze for me.  Seriously, I've been taking Lincoln to day care for almost 3 years.  I've still been freaking out about preschool.  I know his teachers and they're fantastic.  There are a couple of kids in his class who he has been with since he was in the infant room.  He's so happy to be back with his friends, Alex and Aiden.

In honor of his first day of preschool, I asked Lincoln 20 questions.  I love his answers. (side note: these are supposed to be birthday questions, but since his birthday pretty much coincides with the start of school, I'm using it for school.)

1.  How old are you?  3
2.  Who is your best friend?  Aiden
3.  What is your favorite thing to do?  Go see Daniel
4.  What is your favorite color?  Blue
5.  What is your favorite food?  Pasta
6.  What do you like to do with your family?  Go to the beach
7.  What is your favorite toy?  Fire truck
8.  What do you want to be when you grow up?  A monster
9.  What makes you happy?  Fire truck
10. What makes you sad?  A cake (I asked him this question twice and it was his answer both times)
11. What is your favorite tv show to watch?  Fireman Sam
12. What is your favorite book?  The book about lions (I'd like to know who is reading this book to my son cause I'm not!)
13. What do you love to learn about? Fire truck
14. What was the best part of your birthday?  A dinosaurus cake
15. Where do you like to go?  Play at the playground
16. Who is your teacher? Ms. Carol
17. What is your favorite treat?  Strawberries
18. What do you think about before you fall asleep? Brushing my teeth
19. If you could meet someone famous who would it be?  Fireman Sam
20. What was your favorite birthday present? Cranky

So, there you have it.  Lincoln loves fire trucks and Fireman Sam.  :)

Our attempts at pictures this morning.  It's nearly impossible to get these two in a picture together.

My boys:

He was less excited to take a picture with me.  I'll take what I can get.  :)

My preschooler.

Lincoln was totally fine when I dropped him off this morning.  He took his shoes off and made himself at home.  He found Alex and Aiden right away.  I watched them all playing...silently.  Seriously: none of them said a word to each other, they just all were playing silently together.

Here's to the first of many first days of school.  Sigh.