Our Kiddos

Cass has a mind of his own lately, but he happened to be rather cooperative yesterday so I asked him if he wanted to take a picture with his sister and he surprised me by saying "yes"! (I'm finding it tougher these days to catch him in the picture mood). Anyway, I obviously wasn't prepared for the picture, as you can see Celena is wearing St. Patrick's Day pajamas. And it's December. There are a few reasons for this . . . 1) The color green is one of the colors of the month that Cass's preschool is focusing on so I thought I'd put Celena in it, 2) These are size 9 month pajamas that I thought Celena would wear in March, but she is growing like a weed so I figured we'd get some use out of them now, and 3) we weren't leaving the house all day. Oh, and 4) green is a Christmas color. I know, using that as a reason to dress Irish in December is a stretch. Regardless, she doesn't look all that thrilled to be having her picture taken.

Cass is quite the little helper these days. He will let the dogs in the house for us (when they don't already let themselves in . . . amazingly our dog Norm has figured out how to open the door), and he'll go and get about anything for us when we ask him to, so we can be lazy and not get out of our chairs. :) Yesterday I even asked him to brush the hair out of my eyes because I didn't have a free hand while I was holding Celena and he did it. I think soon I'll teach him how to give massages to I can get a back rub now and then. ha!

Cass is also getting closer to potty training. Yesterday he pointed to his pants and said "poopie", so I gathered Celena and we all ran upstairs where his potty was, and he had me pull his pants down, and he sat down. Unfortunately the "poopie" was already in the diaper (lesson learned - we need another potty for downstairs), but he asked for toilet paper and wiped and put the toilet paper in his potty. I gave him a miniature Hershey's candy bar as a reward, and immediately read his Potty Book to him, then called Daddy at work so he could leave him a voicemail telling him what he did. I really have no idea what I'm doing, I suppose rewarding with chocolate isn't the best idea, but he otherwise never gets candy (I know, I'm a mean mommy), so I figure it just may do the trick.

Thanksgiving

This was Chris's (first) plate of food on Thanksgiving. I just had to take a picture of it . . . remember that game "Where's Waldo?", where you had to look at a chaotic picture and find little bitty Waldo? You can play a similar game with Chris's plate called "Where's the Turkey?". Do you see it? It's up around 11:00. About the size of a quarter. Seriously. Why even get any turkey? He doesn't really like turkey, but feels obligated to get an itty bitty bit on Thanksgiving.

Above is Celena in her "First Thanksgiving" outfit. She's a little chunk, huh?

This picture is of Cass in the same "First Thanksgiving" outfit when he was a baby. He didn't fill it out quite as much as she does, but to his credit he was a month younger than her at his first Thanksgiving.

4 month doctor's appointment

I'm not sure why, but it seems like I've been too busy lately to take many pictures. So, sorry this is kind of a boring post - no pictures for you today. However, I thought I'd post an update since Celena had her 4 month doctor's appointment last week. Here are her stats:

Height: 25 1/2 inches (85th percentile)
Weight: 14 lbs (60th percentile)
Head: 16 1/2 cm (80th percentile)

She is really changing these days. She now rolls over from both her back to her tummy and from her tummy to her back. She has also become much more content just sitting on my lap - it's nice not to stand up while I hold her all the time!!! It's fun to watch her personality develop, and interesting to see how different she and Cass are. Cass was a very intense baby (and still has an intense personality, but don't all 2 year olds???) - he was colicky, always wanted me to stand and hold him, and was terrified of baths. Celena seems to be very laid back, will lay on the floor or sit on my lap contently, and LOVES to take a bath. They really couldn't be much more opposite - it will sure make it fun to watch them grow up if they continue to be this different!!!

4 month growth spurt???

This is the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning - Celena staring at me with a big smile on her face. That is because she got to sleep with her mama last night. I don't let her do this very often, only when I get so exhausted that I can't get up with her anymore. Her sleep schedule continues to be very inconsistent. She slept through the night a few nights ago, then the following night only woke up once, but then the last couple nights she has woken up almost every hour to eat. On those nights I end up just putting her in bed with me after the first couple wakings so I can get some sleep! I'm not sure why she is doing this, but I have heard babies can go through a growth spurt at 4 months and want to eat all the time, so hopefully that is what this is and it will soon pass!

Here is a sign of what also may be causing the night wakings - maybe she is teething??? It seems early, but she is drooling a lot and chewing on her hands all the time. If I remember right, Cass did this for quite a while before a tooth appeared, so I don't expect to see any pearly whites popping through very soon.

In the doghouse

Here's where I found Cass with some of his toys yesterday - in our dogs' cage. He's getting too tall to stand up in there, but he doesn't seem to mind.

New hat

Check out Celena's new hat! I love, love, love the little baby flapper hats! I have become obsessed with etsy - as you may know, it's a website with all handmade things where you can find great stuff, especially for babies. In case any of you want one of these hats for your daughters or just for baby gifts, I got this one from ZoeLynnDesigns - the website is http://www.zjohnson.etsy.com/.

Poor little Celena is fighting the cold that we have all been passing around the house. I took her to the doctor yesterday just to make sure her ears and lungs were okay, and they were fine. She's just really congested and has a bad cough. Last night she woke up around 2 am coughing, and I was able to get her back to sleep around 4:00 in her swing downstairs and I slept on the couch beside the swing. She seems to be a little better today, so hopefully she is on the mend.

Halloween

Chris carved a couple pumpkins on Halloween, then went through what appeared to be a tedious process of separating the seeds from the pumpkin so that we could toast them. Cass was a lot of "help" in this process (you can see from the picture that Chris was trying his best to make sure Cass didn't mess up his piles).

Here's our little cheeseburger all dressed up for Halloween! He had fun. The day after Halloween he put his costume back on and wanted to go outside to trick or treat again. I guess he doesn't realize that it is not normal to dress like a cheeseburger and ask your neighbors for candy on any ordinary day :)

Celena was a bunny. This picture is funny - the cheeseburger had a little meltdown while trick-or-treating. I can't remember what it was about, but you can see in the background that he was being dramatic and had dropped to the ground to throw a typical 2 year old tantrum.

The bunny didn't make it very long!