Father's Day

This weekend, we were lucky enough to spend Father's Day with a great dad and husband. A couple weeks ago, Gigi and I took Cole and Finley to a pottery paint place to make Nick's Father's Day gift from the kids. I knew having Cole in a place like that would be a disaster so once we did his part of the platter, Gigi took him home so he didn't break everything in the store :)
We made a grill platter for Nick and it has Cole's hand print and Finley's footprint.
Here is Cole getting his hand painted
Getting his hand print on the platter

Here is what it looked like after the hand and footprints. I didn't get pictures of Finley getting her foot painted because I had to assist in that part :)

This is the final product. We made Cole's hand into a hamburger and Finley's foot into a hotdog. How cute is that!!

On Sunday morning, Nick opened up his present from the kiddos. Here is Nick and Cole showing off his present while we are eating breakfast.

The rest of the day involved church and then BOTH kids taking a long afternoon nap AT THE SAME TIME!!! Halleluia!!! While both kids napped, Nick and I did something we haven't in a long time.....we played Mario Kart and Guitar Hero. We used to play Mario Kart all the time before Cole was born but haven't in a couple years now. We had fun, just relaxing and playing games.
Finally Cole woke up and wanted to take part in the action. Here is Cole jamming out with the guitar.

How talented is this guy!!! He can play Guitar Hero WHILE putting a baby to sleep, ha!

Later in the afternoon, we headed to Nick's parents house for a yummy dinner. Dennis and Nick opened up their presents and boy were they pretty excited about them!!
Dennis got a new iPad!!! Dennis travels all the time, so having this will be great for him.

And Nick got a new universal remote for our house. We have a ridiculous amount of remotes so this one will do everything all in one. I think Nick stayed up till after midnight trying to get that thing programmed...dork! :)

It was a great Father's Day weekend, unfortunately I was not able to spend it with my own dad, but I will be seeing him very soon. Hope everyone out there had great Father's Days!!

My hair and some crazy kids

Last weekend, I randomly decided to chop my hair off. I always do this to myself....I want to grow my hair out but by the time it gets long, it gets too heavy (I have crazy thick hair), too hot and it gets in the way when you have little ones, especially the baby!
So, here is my before picture. I feel like I look so frumpy in this picture, so a change was definitely needed!!

I don't really have a good after picture, this is the only one I have...but you get the idea.
We cut 9 inches off, 1 inch short of Locks for Love. If I was a good person I would have waiting another month or so and donated to Locks for Love but when I get something in my head, I want it NOW! And I definitely wasn't wanting to go any shorter because it already got a little shorter than I had wanted.
(Finley's face is definitely starting to fill out!!!)

This week, we had a couple play dates. Wednesday, Cole, Finley and I headed over to a girls house and it was perfect because all us moms have boys within a few months of each other and then 3 out of the 4 moms had baby girls. So, I didn't feel like the only mom trying to juggle 2 little ones. Cole had such a great time playing with the boys and playing outside. Of course it was my plan that I would feed Finley before we left, then she'd fall asleep in the car and sleep the whole time we were there, but of course she didn't fall asleep and wouldn't sleep the whole time we were there so my plan of sitting around chatting with the moms didn't really happen. :) Oh well!
Thursday, Gigi came up and watched Finley so I could take Cole on another play date to the splash park. I was so excited about taking him and only having to worry about 1 kid and actually being able to spend some time with the other moms, but Cole was just not having the best day. He wasn't really feeling the water park and then he went to play on the swings and jungle gym stuff, then he fell and hit his head pretty hard and then it was just down-hill from there. We finally went home and I think he had a pretty good headache. Poor guy!
This picture is terrible but I thought it was a funny picture of Cole with a straw hanging out of his mouth. :)

Cole using mom as a jungle gym...he did this about 50 times

Then he had to get some snuggle time in with Roxy...ahh!!

A cute picture of my little family

The other day we gave Cole a blue sucker and we couldn't believe how blue his mouth turned. It was stained like that for the whole day/night. He thought it was pretty funny though.

Cole showing off his favorite thing ever...his monkey. He is so attached to this monkey, I wonder if it will go to college with him :)

And Miss Finley....she is doing pretty good. She actually has been having some longer stretches of sleep this past week. One night she had a 5 hour stretch and I couldn't believe how rested I felt...haha!

We have a pretty fun weekend planned. Today we actually have 3 birthday parties we were invited to but I think we may only make it to one of those. Our godson Grayson is turning 1 so we are excited to spend part of the day with him. Plus, Cole is SO excited about going to "Beau's house" (Grayson's dad). Cole is so funny, he will randomly talk about going to "Beau's house" so when we told him we were going today he got pretty excited.
Tomorrow we are celebrating Father's Day with Nick's family. I'm excited for Nick to open his presents, and I'll be sure to post pictures as soon as he sees them first.
Happy Weekend everyone!

1 Month

Happy One month Finley!!

Here are some of the things you have been up to this month:

Not exactly sure on your weight, but I'm guessing it's close to 9.5lbs
You are starting to look like a little sausage in your newborn clothes, so we will soon be in 0-3 month clothes.
You still look just like your big brother when he was a baby, people always comment on your big lips :)
Your eyes are still very blue, and I know around 6 weeks is when they change, so we won't be surprised if they stay blue.
With us switching you to tummy sleep, this week has been a bit of a challenge with us getting enough sleep during the nights. You have consistently been sleeping in 3 hour stretches, nothing more. I was really enjoying the first few weeks of your life when you would go 4-5 hour stretches...not sure why we have decided sleeping isn't "the cool thing" anymore.
You take great naps during the day, but the witching hours of 5pm-9pm are not the most fun. You are always so tired during those hours but refuse to be put down. You just like all that snuggling.
You have been the best eater! You are still exclusively breast feeding but have had about 4 bottles so far. You eat about every 3 hours, but every once in awhile only go 2 hours.
We are starting to see more smiles out of you. I'm assuming they are either gas or pee-pee smiles but they are still cute!
You have the longest fingers! Everyone comments on the size of your hands. Maybe you will be a basketball player, or pianist :)
Finley, you have been such a sweet baby, very easy to have around. We can't believe it's already been a month since you have been with us.
We love you very much!!

Our week

I've been a little behind on blogging, not for any real good reason....actually I take that back. Trying to find some time where both kids are sleeping and I have a few minutes to get pictures on my computer and figure out what to write, I guess I do have a good reason.
Last weekend, I needed some mommy and Cole time, so I asked Nick to watch Finley and I took Cole to the splash park. Cole is so funny, he still isn't too fond of water, especially in his face, so I think he was the only kid with dry hair for the first 30 minutes. However, he did loosen up a bit and finally got his head wet. He was having so much fun, running around like a crazy man.
And yes, he is wearing the same swim outfit as last summer. If he still fits in them, I'm not going to spend the money on new ones!

After we left the splash park, we went to Sonic and had yummy drinks. That is my kind of afternoon! It was so great to spend some alone time with Cole. He is not being neglected by any means lately, but our attention isn't solely on him anymore and I wanted to spend some uninterrupted time with him.
Next week my mom's group has a play date at the splash park so I'm going to take Cole again and Gigi is going to come watch Finley. If it weren't crazy hot outside, I would take her with us but it is just way too hot for a baby right now.

Tuesday evening, the girls in my Life Group got together for a pot luck dinner and we just sat around talking, drinking wine and actually watched some basketball. It was such a fun night, I totally needed some time out with girls!! That was also Nick's first time being home alone with both kids. He managed to get Cole in the bathtub and into bed, who knows how much crying went on or how clean he "really" got, but he was proud of himself and I was proud of him too. :) Now we are going to have to do this more often!!

I've talked before about how our Roxy is our little mother-hen with the baby. Yes, I lay my baby on the floor, giving Roxy the perfect opportunity to cuddle. :) It really is so cute to see how sweet Roxy is.

The reason I sometimes lay Finley on the floor is because we have realized lately that she is going to be a tummy sleeper. Yes....gasp!!!! I know they are supposed to sleep on their backs but we have had major issues with her sleeping on her back and she sleeps much better on her stomach.

Finley has major gas issues and if she goes to sleep right after she eats, she gets extremely gassy. We follow the whole "eat-play-sleep" pattern during the day, giving her tummy some time to settle before she goes to sleep. However, at night she goes straight to bed after I feed her. She would grunt all night long, never seeming like she was in a good, deep sleep. She wouldn't cry much but I could tell she was uncomfortable. We've tried the gas drops, gripe water....which the gripe water does help a lot but not enough to let her continue on her back. So, after monitoring her for a couple days during the day, sleeping on her stomach, I felt comfortable enough to try the night sleep on her stomach. Last night was our first attempt at it and she did sleep much better. We have an AngelCare monitor which would alert us if she stopped breathing so I felt better about the tummy sleeping. Even though we have the Angel monitor, I think I checked her every hour, haha!!!
I just hope this is our answer and she continues to sleep better!

So let me tell you about my Mother-of-the-Year morning I had. My mom's group was meeting at IHop to have breakfast with the kids. I knew I was being daring, attempting to take both kids out to eat by myself. I've gone out and done errands, walks and parks by myself with the kids, but expecting Cole to play nice with all the kids and sit still during a meal....AND try to keep a nearly 1 month old happy.....HAHAHA!!!!!!
To start out, I thought we were meeting at 10am, but looked at it was 9:30. I didn't have time to feed Finley so I pumped a bottle real quick but I really was hoping she would just sleep the whole time, not needing the bottle. After scrambling to get everyone in the car, we were a few minutes late. Ok, so we sat down and all the kids had crayons and paper to color on. Except, Cole and the kids around him kept stealing each others crayons and Cole had a meltdown. Yeah, a little embrassing! After threatening timeouts and who knows what else, I did what any mom would do.....gave him my phone so he could watch Mary Poppins videos :)
Alright, so he starts to settle down and now Miss Finley is waking up...great!!! I knew if she woke up I'd have to feed her so trying to give her her 3rd bottle in her lifetime all the while trying to carry on conversations, it's not so easy. Again, she has only had 2 bottles before this so she isn't real comfortable with them yet. So after massive amounts of spit up and burps so was good to go, however she wouldn't let me put her down.
THEN, I realize I smell pee....I feel around on Cole's shorts and realize he is completely soaked through his diaper. I completely forgot to change his diaper before we left and didn't even bring a spare!!! I guess I'm so worried about making sure I have everything for the baby that a I didn't even think about a spare diaper for Cole! I mean, literally, he is wet all the way up to his shirt, everything! I had no choice but to let him finish eating and sit in his wet-ness.
We were all pretty close to being done eating and I don't think a server has ever gotten that many mom's their checks so fast! Yes, we were one of "those" tables that every server dreads having. We finally got into the car, but I wasn't about to let him get the carseat all wet, so this is my view of Cole from the front seat.....haha!!! Poor Cole!!
Yep, no clothes, diaper, completely in the buff!

I knew I'd have to experience my first outing at some point, but never did I imagine it to be such a disaster. All you can really do is laugh right?
Hopefully our weekend turns out better. Although, Nick has a guys night tonight so I'll be with the kiddos on my own tonight. Maybe I can actually get in time to watch our netflix movie that's been sitting on our counter for 3 weeks :)

End of the Year Party and some randoms...

Thursday was Cole's last day at Ms. Jen's. I had been dreading this day for so long because Cole absolutely loves being at her house with all his friends. I know he will miss all of them, but I'm sure we will keep in touch with them! Wednesday afternoon Ms. Jen had an End of the Year party and it was a blast watching all the kiddos!
They all munched on some yummy food, and they even had snow cones!

Ms. Jen even had a pinata for the kids to try to destroy, however, this pinata was impossible but they still had fun giving it a good whack!

Once all the candy was out, they all got to fill up a bag to take home.

We are definitely going to miss Cole being at Ms. Jen's, she truly has been such an awesome sitter and friend. She loves what she does and you can see that she just adores those kiddos. Cole was lucky to be with them this past school year!

Here is a funny picture of Cole taking his nap today. He's been so funny when it comes time to go to bed, he gets books, crayons, stuffed animals, anything really and puts them in bed with him. This is how I found him today...crayons, sippy cup, books, coloring pages, monkey. Silly goose!

This morning we had to take Finley to the hospital for her 2 week newborn screening test. Yes, she is a little over 3 weeks now, so I was a little delayed on getting the test done. Actually to be honest, I just forgot about doing it. I think with Cole we did it at our pediatrician's office but now they make you go back up to the hospital to do it...which is a little annoying b/c they have to get her all registered and that takes forever to sign all that paperwork.
All they had to do was prick her heel and get some blood. She fussed a little bit, but overall did great. While we were at the hospital I took her up to the lactation office to have her weighed b/c I was curious.
She was 7lb 2 oz at birth....
7lb 6 oz at one week....and....
today she was 8lb 15oz!
The nurse weighing her said that is definitely above the average weight gain so I was super excited to hear that because Finley is a massive spitter-upper and I wanted to make sure she was gaining enough, which she is!! Yay!!

Here is a cute picture from the other day....I love it when they sleep like this. She likes it when she gets the chance b/c at night I swaddle her soooo tight and to where she can't get her arms free. Hehe....but, that's they only way she will sleep 4-5 hour stretches.

"Whatup folks!!"
These cute sunglasses were a gift from Gigi, they are the smallest sunglasses I've ever seen!! :)

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!!