Sad things, new things and a few randoms

First off, does everyone see this?? No, Nick and I did not sell our house....although we eventually would like to get into something a little bigger, but this is not our sold sign. Nope, this is our friends and greatest neighbor's ever sign. Ryan and Casey have moved 3 hours away and last weekend was their big move. They have been living about 1.5 hours away from us for the last couple months but we would still see them every couple weeks when they would come up for appointments or to check on their house. However, their house finally sold and they are officially....gone :( Not am I only sad that we are losing our "guest house" (my family would always stay at their house because it has been empty for a few months) but we are losing some of our greatest friends and Cole's best friend Lexie. Casey has been one of those friends that will always be a friend, no matter where they live...more like a sister.

We have been through weddings, pregnancies, babies, husbands being butt heads....we have been through it all together. As sad as we are that they have moved so far away from us, we are so happy that Ryan found such a good job and that they are closer to her family.

We will miss you Ryan and Casey!!!

This weekend we did a whole lot of nothing. Cole helped Nick do some push-ups. 30 extra pounds definitely makes a difference!

"All the way down, dad"

Nick had helped a buddy move some furniture on Saturday and he came back very sweaty. I needed him to hold Finley for a minute while I did something, but this is how I made him hold her...so she wouldn't get smelly :)

Today I put Finley in our jumper for the first time. I always forget when Cole first did things so sometimes I have to go back and look at pictures or old blog posts to see when we did things. Here is Cole around 3 months. This was his first day in the jumper.

And here is our cute girl in it for the first time. We have to put this plastic bin under her because our doors are too tall and she doesn't reach the ground. :)

Here is a little video of her attempting to jump. She is kinda getting the hang of it, but she sure had fun!

Long weeeek

I feel like this has been such a long week! Cole doesn't start MDO till after Labor Day so we are trying to find stuff to keep us busy, but with this heat, it's hard to find a lot of things to do indoors. So, we've been hanging out a lot at home.
Look at how high this girl gets her head now! She cracks me up, she just loves being on her belly so we still haven't made a lot of progress on the rolling over. She HAS done it, but only a couple of times.

The other day I got Finley to laugh. It was the cutest thing and music to a mom's ear. It's so fun to watch them figure out how to do these things, like laugh.

This is her mid-laugh. The picture is terrible because I was laughing too and it's from my phone, but you get the idea.

Yesterday we had a last minute play date at Susan's house. Can I just say that her house is my DREAM HOUSE!!! First of all the house is gorgeous but I was in love with her back yard. In Texas you don't see very big back yards but theirs was huge! AND it backed right up to a golf course so it felt so open. They had a fire pit, great patio....ugh, just what I eventually want sometime.
She had set up the coolest bounce house/water slide and it was absolutely perfect for the toddlers.
Cole had so much fun and he could have stayed several more hours but it was getting SO hot and Miss Finley was too distracted by everything going on and wouldn't sleep so we had to get back for naps.

Cole blowing bubbles

Picture of most of the kiddos, they all had so much fun, can't wait to do it again soon!

Yesterday afternoon I got Finley in the bumbo chair. She doesn't like being in it for too long but she had fun eating her ducky.

I mentioned my friend Katie that was having her baby soon, well, she had James very early this morning.....Welcome James!!! All is well with them and we actually got to watch their first fur-baby for them. Last night I took Cole with me to pick up Charlie. Of course Cole thought it was fun to get in Charlie's cage.

I was surprised with how well all the dogs are getting along. We have 4....yes, 4 dogs at our house right now. We are also dog sitting for Gigi's dog, Max. After a few minutes of a sniff session they all got along great and lay by each other.

I think Charlie is ready for baby James...don't you?

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Teeth Week

This past weekend we had a baby shower for my friend Katie, but I'm so mad at myself because I didn't take any pictures except this one. I had to take Finley with me because Nick and Cole were going to a birthday party. This handsome guy with Finley is Jack. This is my friend Megan's son and he is the sweetest kid! He got right down to Finley's level and would talk to her. Such a good kid!

Katie is due with her first baby boy in just a couple weeks and we can't wait to meet Baby James!

Our poor little Benny Boy got a much needed haircut last week, but pretty sure they cut him too short on his "manhood" area because it's all red and he keeps licking it and now it's looking infected. Nick says he sees some cut marks so remind me next time to tell them to stay away from his privates :)
Poor Benson has to wear a cone for awhile till it heals because it will continue to get worse if he keeps bothering it.

Look at those lips....Finley's, not mine :) Maybe she is our future movie star :)

Yesterday I took Cole to his first ever dentist appointment. Obviously I was a little nervous because what parent isn't nervous to take their 2.5 year old to something like this!?! Everyone there was so nice to him. They gave him a little tour and then the hygienist showed him all the instruments that she uses. They even had a TV on the ceiling that distracted him.

After she showed him everything and let him pick out his own flavors of polish and fluoride, she got him to climb up on the table and she got to work. She actually looked and counted all his teeth, polished them and did a fluoride treatment. I was shocked that he let her do all that. They even got him to sit still long enough to get some x-rays. They showed me the x-rays and it's so weird to see the adult teeth above all those baby teeth....kinda gross weird :)
The dentist said he has all his teeth and that is pretty advanced, and that usually they don't have them all till around 3. I was surprised to hear that because he didn't start getting teeth till he was about 10 months.

"Ok, get me down from here"

I was so proud of Cole, he did so good! He will now go back every 6 months...gotta get in the good habit of going twice a year!
Apparently this is teeth week in our house. Both Cole and Nick got their teeth cleaned and unfortunately, I have to get a root canal tomorrow morning. I am VERY upset about it!!! I would rather break my arm off and beat myself over the head with it than get that kind of dental work done. Apparently I clench my jaw so bad that I cracked my tooth. After this I will be getting a mouth guard for at night because I refuse to go through this again. It's just such a long process because I have the actual root canal tomorrow, then a week later I have to get fitted for a crown and then another week later I get the permanent crown. I'm going to be so sick of dentists after this....ugh!! When the endodontist asked what I was afraid of, I told her that I am so completely claustrophobic and when all those instruments and gauze, etc is in my mouth I start to get panicky, like I can't get out of the situation....sounds stupid, I know. She completely understood and said a lot of people are like that and she promises to give me lots of breaks. Plus they have a TV that I can watch during the procedure. Ugh, I just want tomorrow to be over already!

Dancing Fool

First off, this is how we found Cole sleeping last night. At one point I looked on the video monitor and thought I saw feet up by the headboard....so I went to check it out. This is how we found him. Crazy kid!

I don't know if you can see that mattress cover thing that he is laying on. My friend that gave me all the potty training advice told us to get one of those water proof mattress pads that is supposed to go UNDER the sheets, but Jenn told me to just let him sleep directly on that. That way, if he has an accident during the night, we don't have to completely strip bedding, just that pad. Genius! Luckily, he still has not had an accident at night, but just in case.
However, if we would have let him sleep like this all night, the pad would not have helped at all :)

My parents bought Cole Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and he is now OBSESSED with that movie. He has always loved musicals, especially Mary Poppins, so we knew this would be a big hit as well. He loves this one part of the movie in particular. He loves to dance to it, and he has learned how to do a somersault because of this dance. And yes...I let my kid run around in his underwear.

Happy Weekend!!!

What I Love Wednesday

Today I'm linking up with Jamie with What I Love Wednesday's.

I'm so excited to see this movie, but I insist on reading the book first. I LOVE reading and always prefer the book over movie. However, I definitely can't get through books as fast as I used to because by the time I actually get to bed, I'll read about 2 pages and my eyelids get crazy heavy. THEN, the next night I forget half of what I read so I have to go back and re-read a page or so, so you can imagine this thick book might take me awhile :)

I'm so excited that this trashy, fun show is back on!! This is totally my guilty pleasure right now and I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I even watch it. I'm almost afraid to admit that I watched The Bachelorette last season and this is even worse. I can't help it though, it's pure entertainment and makes me feel very good about myself...except for the fact that all the girls are skinny and gorgeous.

This little beauty right here is my new favorite thing. Nick introduced me to these yummy coffee's and I absolutely LOVE them. I have to have it every morning, with just a bit of cream and sugar. Nick always makes fun of me though because I only drink half a cup.....every. time. I don't know what it is, because it's so yummy, but I just can't bring myself to finish a whole cup of coffee. Yes, I'm weird.

I'm also loving that this sweet face.......

Has started rolling from her tummy to back. I know, she's 3 months and probably should have done it by now, but she absolutely loves being on her tummy so why would she want to flip over?? But, she's done it once so far and working hard at it.

There she goes....

AND, my biggest love right now is this little booty....how cute are those underpants? Ok, it's not really the booty, but that he has not had one accident since our first day of potty training, which was last Saturday. Even at night, he's stayed completely dry!
Ok, but let me kinda take that back, he hasn't quite mastered the "poo" part...we are still working on that. Maybe towards the end of the week we will venture out of the house for a bit because I'm getting bad cabin fever!

You like the shirt tucked into his underwear??? That's his dad's kid!!!

Successs!!!!....well, we are getting there

This weekend has been our weekend to "tackle" many things that have needed work. Does everyone see this picture?!? Let me say that we now have a cute little girl that WILL take a bottle!!! Praise the Lord! I have many things on my up-coming calendar that will require me to not be present for every feeding so I knew that we needed to get this no-bottle thing under control. We are familiar with this whole thing because Cole was the exact same way....apparently they like it straight from the tap. :)...ok that was kinda gross.
Anyway, I knew we'd have to exclusively do bottles for a couple days and eventually she would figure it out. It actually never even got to that point where we had to do bottles for each feeding because after only a couple feedings, she was taking it no problem. It's just such a pain having to pump for every feeding so thankfully she figured it out sooner than expected. We will just have to make sure we try to do 1 bottle a day so she doesn't forget.

Our second order of business this weekend was to potty train. We started Saturday morning after breakfast, we threw all his diapers away and decided no diapers period! All my friends I talked to were right....after the day 1, you come away feeling very defeated!!
Day 1 pretty much looked like this....ALL day!!!

Honest to God, we went through at least 20 pairs of underwear! Now, they weren't all full out accidents, he would just let a little dribble out and leave a little wet spot but the idea of him getting a new pair of underwear was very appealing to him.
We are now on day 2 and it is going SO much better! He did have one accident during the night and only one minor one so far today so he is definitely starting to catch on. Yesterday it's like he didn't quite understand the sensation that he had to go until he started going. I felt like we were training a puppy yesterday because you have to catch them in the act and then rush them to the potty...exactly what we did with our puppies :) Today he's understanding the feeling before it comes out, then he'll do a little dance and we have to remind him to run to the potty and we've had great success today. We decided to just go the full-out potty training route. Most of our friends told us to still do diapers and naps and bedtime, but we decided to at least give it a try with absolutely no diapers. I'm glad we did because I really think it will work. We just have to be very diligent with cutting off the drinks 2-3 hours before bed and my friend Jenn told us to take him to the potty a couple hours after he goes to bed and even though he's still half way asleep, they will usually go. That and making sure we get him to the potty first thing when he wakes up, I really think he will catch on fast!
I can't wait to see how the next couple days go!
Even though it's only day 2, I'm already getting cabin fever....probably because I know we will have to spend most of our time at home for the next week or so. It will definitely take time till I feel comfortable with him going in public. I'm so excited to only have one kid in diapers, yay!!

3 Months

Our Little Finley is 3 months!!

You weigh approx 14lbs
You are wearing 3-6 month clothes, mostly 6 month clothes
During our trip to California, we FINALLY moved you up to a size 2 diaper. After 5 outfit changes each day, we figured it was the diaper that just wasn't doing the job anymore.
I just realized the last couple days that you no longer are a newborn, you are turning into a baby now with so much personality
Your eyes are still blue/gray but a lot of people think they will turn out like mine, which are green
You are starting to "talk" so much now and really interact with people
You make the best eye contact and will just stare for the longest time when people talk to you
You definitely know your mom and dad's voice, if you hear us in the room you will turn your head and just follow our voice, so cute! The other day while walking through the airport, your dad was carrying you and you just arched your head back and watched him for so long.
You are still a pretty good night sleeper. You actually have digressed a little since last month. During month 2, you would go anywhere from 7-10 hour stretches, but now you go anywhere from 3-7 hours. I'm not complaining though, I don't mind seeing your sweet smiles in the middle of the night :)
You also have become a great napper! You have definitely taken to your wubbanub pacifier and all I have to do is stick that in and you will fall asleep in minutes.
You are typically taking an hour nap in the morning, then a 2ish hour nap early afternoon and then a couple more cat naps the rest of the day.
We are starting to put you to bed between 8 and 9pm and you usually wake up for the day around 7am
You have been sleeping in your own room for several weeks now and do great. Except, because you are a tummy sleeper, you scoot to the one side of your crib and get wedged in there and I think that is what wakes you up sometimes during the night. We need to figure out how to keep you from moving around so much.
Month 1 and 2, you had to eat every 2.5 hours, but now it's every 3 hours. If I try to feed you before that, you will get VERY mad!
You have decided you don't like bottles. We need to fix that because that makes it very hard for mom to leave you for more than 3 hours!
You took another airplane ride to California this past week and did pretty well. You are a great flyer but you were definitely not yourself during parts of the trip. Your stomach was pretty upset for several days and I could tell you were in some pain. I'm wondering if you are becoming sensitive to dairy, I haven't had dairy in a couple days and you have been fine. Bummer if that is the case because that means no ice cream...booo!!!
We love you so much little girl!!!

Here is the latest video of our girl "talking"...she sounds more like a kitty cat :)

California....I wanna go back!!!!

We just got back from California last night and even though we were exhausted and TOTALLY off our normal schedules, we had a blast! We left last Thursday and we left during nap time so that Cole would nap during the flight. Our flight leaving DFW was about 2 hours delayed, so here is me and my girl waiting patiently at the airport :) We are SO excited to be getting out of the nasty heat!

Luckily, Cole did fall asleep the second we got in the air and slept for a little over an hour. Finley did great on the flight too, slept for most of it.

When we landed in San Francisco, we were greeted by 65 degree weather....ah-mazing!!! We even had to put on light sweaters, loved it! We couldn't have asked for better service. Nick's parents are the greatest, we walk out of the airport and have a car there waiting for us. No driving to the car rental and waiting in line. So nice of them!
Before we headed up to Santa Rosa for the wedding festivities, we met up with a good friend from back home and my cousin and his wife for an early dinner. It was so good to see all of them. Unfortunately we couldn't stay too long because we had a 2 hour drive ahead of us and when you have a nursing baby that has to eat every 3 hours, you are kinda limited on things like that.
We made it up to Santa Rosa (with a good hour of crying and screaming) and immediately put the kiddos to bed. I'm not gonna lie, being 2 hours behind was pretty tricky to work with. :)

The next couple days were spent touring around a few winery's, swimming, hanging out with family and chasing around kiddos. Here is sweet Finley ready to hang out outside for a bit.
Poor thing though, she really wasn't outside that long and was always in the shade, but somehow got a little sunburn on her cheeks and nose. I feel like a horrible mother! :(

We visited the Simi Winery and while the guys and my parents enjoyed some wine tasting, Rachel and I hung out with the kiddos. How funny are these two!!!

This is how Finley toured the winery's :)

We then went to the Coppola Winery. That place was so cool! We had a great lunch there and really enjoyed our time at this gorgeous place.
These two have so much fun together. They are so sweet to each other and really make each other laugh

After visiting a couple winery's, we came back and had to get ready for Emily and Blake's Welcome Dinner. Finley was such a good girl and slept so that we could get ready.

The Welcome Dinner was fabulous. We enjoyed the nice weather outside and some cocktails and then they moved us inside for the dinner. Here is Rachel, me, Finley and my mom at the Welcome dinner....where's Cameron!?!

Cameron is definitely very interested in the baby, I think she is going to be a wonderful big sister!

Nick and Finley at the Welcome Dinner

She was such a good girl and sat quietly during the dinner and then eventually fell asleep. However, at one point, she had a big blowout....like so bad that I was holding her, it came out the top of her diaper and got all over my skirt and dripped down my leg. Lovely huh? I sent Nick into the bathroom to clean her up and I think it took 5 grown men to get her all cleaned up. If you could see the team of men coming out of the bathroom after getting her cleaned up, that was definitely a funny sight!

Cole had a great time at the dinner, he at one point stole the microphone and was walking around with it, trying to get people to talk into it.

The Welcome Dinner was absolutely beautiful. The food was great and it was just so fun and everyone did a great job putting it together.
The next day was the wedding. I got to hang out a bit with Emily and the girls while they got ready and that was fun. Nick and I had to catch the trolley up to the winery a bit early for family pictures so my dad and brother Ross were in charge of getting Cole and Finley ready for the wedding. I really did feel bad because when they walked in our hotel room, I handed Finley to my dad and told him she just pooped and they needed to put her clothes on, ha! At one point, my dad and brother had to call my mom to see if her little cardigan sweater went on top of the dress or underneath the dress....oh goodness! I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall!
The venue were Blake and Emily had their wedding was gorgeous! It was up in the hills a bit and had awesome views. Everything about the wedding was perfect, I mean, look at those flowers, isn't that gorgeous!
That is Nick in the middle of Emily and Blake, he did a beautiful reading and pretty much made everyone cry!

Father and daughter...nice face Finley :)
(You like the napkin Nick has on his shoulder?? No way was he going to risk getting spit up on his nice white shirt!)

Me and the hubs...this is the view from the wedding site

During the toasts, Anna and Emma were champs at keeping the kiddos quiet. Those girls were SO good with our kiddos and were so much help! When having a 2.5 year old and new baby, it's hard to keep track of everyone and still have time to enjoy yourself. Also, my parents were so helpful during the actual ceremony because Nick and I got to sit up front with his family and my parents were in charge of Cole and Finley....and I know they had their hands full!!!

Me and my girl...it was a little chilly there so we had to keep her bundled up :)

Mimi and Finley....thanks for the help mom!!!

So pretty much Cole was a big hit on the dance floor. Him and Cameron were dancing fools! They also had a fun photo booth for everyone to take pictures. Cole loved getting into everyone's pictures. So many people would tell us how Cole's little head would pop up in their photo booth pictures....kinda like Where's Waldo, ha!

Again, I can't tell you how beautiful Blake and Emily's wedding was. They definitely had their touch put into it and was so unique and special. I think everyone had such a great time.

After the wedding, we had one more full day to have some fun. We went to a couple more winery's.
Finley was really enjoying the walking around :)

Cole with a giant wine bottle

At Kendall Jackson winery, they had the prettiest outside area. Gorgeous flowers and landscaping everywhere. Nick was chasing the kiddos around and they were so funny.

Uncle Ross, Cameron, Nick and Cole outside Kendall Jackson

We left the following day and had a pretty smooth trip back. However, in San Francisco, they wouldn't let us take our stroller through security because they said it was too heavy. Um, ok...pretty sure we have traveled with the same stroller all summer and nobody said anything to us. So chasing around Cole and carrying around Finley in her car seat wasn't the most fun thing. When we got to DFW airport, Nick just stuck Cole on his suitcase and strolled him around this way, ha!

Of course coming back to 110 degree weather is not my idea of a fun time, especially when you have 1000 loads of laundry to do, but it is always nice to get home and get back into our regular routine. Cole went to the sitter so I could get stuff done around the house and this is poor Finley in the only clean clothes I had...poor thing clashes just a bit!

We had such a great time in California and are sad it's all over. A year and a half of wedding planning, a gorgeous wedding and fabulous vacation...of course it's sad that it's all over!