Friday, December 28, 2012

I last wrote about Abbi, leaving off mentioning how I was excited to see her open presents this Christmas. It wasn't a disappointment. She was very excited about the majority of her presents, and she really did seem grateful for the majority of them. She definitely got into "present mode" where she just wanted to open the next one, and the next one, and so on. But we urged her to take some pause and try to appreciate what she was opening, and she reacted well to that.

Another awesome facet of the Christmas season with Abbi this year is that SHE wanted to get a few gifts for people. She specifically wanted to go to the store to buy a gift for her friend Audrey, and for Cole. She looked and looked and looked trying to decide. Then once we were home she wanted to wrap immediately.

Abbi has spent more time this past month sick. Just like last month. I found myself noticing that with Cole around, Abbi seems more prone to getting sick. I'm sure that has at least something to do with the fact that he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth, and then she in turns touches most of those things. A sick Abbi is a rough kid to deal with. She's cranky and hard to please. But another consequence we notice is that the house is silent. In an eerie way, so much so that we look forward to her getting better just to have the dull roar that is Abbi noise back.

Finally - there have been more and more occasions where Abbi and Cole are actually playing with one another. This is why we had two kids. Jenn and I specifically hoped that having another child, they would have one another. To play with each other now, to help get through things in the future, and to help deal with Jenn and I when we're old. And so it starts now, with them playing together. Its awesome to watch her be so nice and helpful to Cole. Last night for instance she was very intent on wanting the help him walk. She just needs to learn a little bit of patience to go with that helpfulness.

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Thursday, December 27, 2012

Abbi got a doctors kit from Grandmom for Christmas and loves it. She proceeded to bust it out and give a prognosis for everyone in attendance on Sunday afternoon. Grandmom had given her some "medicine" to put in her pill bottle. She them gave "pills" to everyone, including herself and Cara. Those "pills" were m&ms.

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Monday, December 24, 2012

I took this picture of Cole and Grandmom yesterday at our Christmas "Eve" dinner get-together. I often have the camera, but don't so often think to take pictures of the kids with their other relatives. Since she was helping Cole enjoy a new toy, I thought it was a good time to get a picture of the two of them.

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Friday, December 21, 2012

At this point it feels like the race is on to one year. Two big changes mark Cole's entry into 10 month old life.

The first change is that he's now got 8 teeth. 4 up top and 4 on the bottom. It seemed as though all these teeth just popped their way out all at once. Cole handled the teething well, the only real problem he had with it was an excess of drool we were forced to deal with.

Then obviously with those teeth, means he can eat more. I say almost nightly that this boy is a machine. Just a food eating machine. If he sees once of us eating, he wants some. He of course also gets his standard meals that he devours, but he just puts it away. Constantly. This is of course all a good thing, I mean he really seems to be self-weening himself off of his mid-day bottle. Which is the goal. He's pretty much eating all the things that we eat, that aren't on his no-no list (shellfish, peanuts, etc.). Whats amusing here as well is that he likes to put things in his mouth himself. Abbi would let you "feed her" where Cole definitely wants to do it himself. If you put it in his mouth, he'll often take it out and then put it back in.

He's still got his all-star personality. Smiling and laughing a good bit. Another development that is continuing is his interactions with Abbi. They are playing "together" a bit more. The other night they were actually playing together. They were playing peek-a-boo on opposite sides of the side table. It very cute to watch.

One thing I've found interesting with Cole in contrast to Abbi is that the things I used to do with her he doesn't find as interesting. For example tossing him into the air. He hates it. Abbi loved it. So I've had to work hard to discover new things to do with Cole to play with and interact with him. While its fun, its also hard because I kinda figure my set of kid tricks worked on all "kid". Clearly they don't.

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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

A few weeks back we went shopping at the Mills and outside of Bass Pro Shop, they had a person dressed up as Frosty. So, after a little bit of hesitation, Abbi decided that she would like her picture taken with him, and the chance to say hi. I'm shocked she was willing to get as close as she did.

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Sunday, December 9, 2012

I feel like each month I write the same thing about Abbi. Each month she gets older, and so do Jenn and I. There really is nothing like a child getting older and older by the day to make you reflect on your own age, and position in life.

I look at Abbi and I can't help but see a mini-me. She loves attention. She's loud. Often times she can be quite obnoxious. She's silly all the time. She loves her mom to death, and her brother too. It really is crazy to look at a little 3 year old, and see yourself, but thats how I feel every day when I look at Abbi.

Some of the problems that were beginning to present themselves last time I wrote are obviously still there. We've had to have a few conversations about telling the truth. Situations where she's clearly lying we're doing our best to encourage her to tell the truth, so she can learn the value of being honest. But its definitely a struggle with her. Its actually kinda funny from my perspective to hear her blame Cole for something that is literally impossible for him to do.

Another awesome development for Abbi is her recognition of some of the alphabet. She can clearly spell her name now, A-b-b-i. If you ask her to write her name it is written as follows: Mountain line (A), line circle (b), line circle (b), and line dot (i). She knows which letter is which, but tends to shout out "Montain Line!" when she sees a capital "A" on bilboards and signs. She we usually respond by asking her the letter, and we always get "A". Its awesome.

I'm really excited to see her open presents this Christmas. Last year she got it, but this year even more so. We've been talking with her about the meaning of Christmas, and this was the first year that she was interested in decorating the tree with us. She's also all about turning on our Christmas lights that are all around the house. I love seeing things through her eyes, it makes the mundane that much more enjoyable.

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Saturday, December 8, 2012

Last night after dinner we had some pudding cups for dessert. It should come as no surprise that Cole loved it. As you can see here he's got the spoon in his mouth and has been at this point chomping away at it for quite a while. He was also a complete mess excuse he had pudding on his hands, face, and clothes. But he loved it!

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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

One thing I truly love about Abbi at this age is her outright crazy behavior. She insisted that Jenn and her both have these headbands on during dinner, and then once we were done Abbi wanted to give Jenn a kiss, while I took a picture. But of course, she decided to also do some crazy eyes.

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Monday, December 3, 2012

If he can pick it up, he puts it in his mouth. EVERYTHING. Cole has become very curious about everything, and of course that means he wants to put it in his mouth. Whats not so good about this, is that we have a ton of little toys that our 3 year old plays with. So it does require constant vigilance to ensure Cole doesn't choke on some stupid little toy. That said - I love him putting this in mouth.

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Yesterday while I was outside putting up Christmas lights, Abbi wanted to come outside as well and help "supervise" my process. I took her picture sitting and supervising, but then she wanted me to take multiple pictures of her in different poses. I threw them all together into this collage shot.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Now that Cole is mobile, and obviously getting older, we're finally entering the phase where our kids are playing together. Now that together is mostly in a sense that they are playing next to one another, but its nice to see them together. Cole is particularly fascinated with this little kitchen and the plates/cups. He loves to go over and throw it all on the floor. Abbi tends to take things from him, but he doesn't usually cry about it, he just moves onto something else.

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Tuesday, November 20, 2012

I'm not sure where to start with our little guy. I suppose there with "little". Cole went to the doctor for his 9 month check up and while he's exactly where he should be for height and weight, he's a little guy. He's in the 25th percentile for both height and weight. Compared to Abbi who was and still hangs out in the 90th percentile.

Definitely one of the more interesting things about having a second child is seeing all the similarities and differences between two kids. I mean Jenn and I are the same parents, but we definitely do things differently, and as a result Cole is already showing signs of being different from Abbi.

Cole will play a lot more on his own, mostly because Abbi demands that this occur. But he enjoys playing this way. He's constantly smiling. I mean constantly. I don't remember if Abbi was this way or not, but Cole is always smiling. And he's always super happy for me to be around. Abbi not so much. She was momma's little girl. Cole is my boy, for sure.

Cole has mastered the art of the crawl at this point. He's up on his knees and moving about. With this he can finally get around with greater ease, although his wounded warrior crawl never really seemed to impeded his progress all that much.

He's got 4 teeth at 9 months. He's rocking two teeth on the bottom and two up top. He's got the center two teeth on bottom, and one incisor and one center tooth up top. It won't be long before he's got 4 up top, but not just yet.

Now that he's 9 months old, we're going to start transitioning him off of baby food and more towards normal meals and such. So that will definitely be an interesting transition. Jenn has done such a phenomenal job over the past 4 months making all Cole's food, its going to be strange to start feeding him "table food". That said, Cole is definitely ready for the upgrade.

Lastly, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I wanted to make sure I did, so I don't forget about it years from now. Many times Cole is referred to as "Coley". Said as Cole-e. Why? Because I've got Abbi. And therefore he's Coley. It just works. Abbi picked up on quickly and so did Jenn. I think even grandmom has picked up on it here and there. He's got other nicknames from me too though, like Colers, Colerone and big man. But Coley seems to be the one thats really sticking at this point.

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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Over the weekend we raked up our leaves. This year I have the awesome power of a leaf vac/blower at my disposal, yet we still raked them up like normal in the back so Abbi and Cole could play in them for a while.

Abbi LOVED playing the leaves. She helped for a few minutes raking the leaves, but spent many more minutes jumping in and out, over and through the leaves. And of course, some time simply throwing them up in the air.

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Monday, November 12, 2012

Last Thursday we took Abbi to the hospital for the first time. It was certainly an experience, one that I think Abbi did really well with. Jenn took Abbi to the doctor earlier in the day and they diagnosed her with croup. As the afternoon wore on, it became harder and harder for her to breath, and so we made the call to take her to the ER.

She handled the urgency of the trip well, and did great dealing with new doctors. They decided to give her a nebulizer treatment to open up her throat and make it easier to breath. They put a mask on her to administer the medicine and after about 5 seconds she freaked out. It took us a good minute to calm her back down to the point Jenn could hold the mask close to her face and allow her to breath in the medicine. But once it was done, she was much better. We stayed for observation for about 3.5 hours and then headed home. We ended up back at home a little after midnight, which we were thankful for since we were at least able to sleep in our beds that night. Instead of waking up in the middle of the night to rush her to he hospital.

She's still reeling a bit from the croup, still has some cough but overall she really seems to be getting back to herself, which is awesome to see.

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Monday, November 5, 2012

Another year, and its the same ol story. Last year Abbi wouldn't put her hand inside the pumpkin to get all the guts out. This year, she was psyched up to carve the pumpkins, but once she saw the inside she wasn't so interested. Jenn was able to coerce her into putting her hand in once, so at least thats an improvement. She also as you can see helped Jenn decide on the carving style.

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As I was sorting through Abbi's candy on Halloween night, Cole was very interested in all of it, and of course continuously tried to put it all in his mouth. I personally can't wait until we grow out of this phase. But as was recently told me, I'm not trying to rush him out of this phase, especially since it'll be the last time we get to experience it all.

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Sunday, November 4, 2012

This shirt is cute because it has spider man on it. This shirt is awesome because I happen to be a web programmer myself, making the saying on it, phenomenal. Obviously Cole doesn't care to much, but I personally love this picture.

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Friday, November 2, 2012

More changes for our little girl. I think she's always like to sing and dance, but I really think that dance class is starting to have an impact. Each time I watch her perform her moves for us on the "dance floor" that is the area rug in our living room, I wonder if we're watching a future dance star. I say that thinking of the home movies you see of the people on the reality shows.

Abbi loves to dance. Most nights she clamors for our attention so she can show off some new creative moves she's been working on. Sometimes she wants to dance with me, other times she's just looking for spectators. Of recent topic she's been working on her saults. Such as the somersault, "fall"sault, "winter"sault, and "spring"sault.

The desire for her mom's attention has only gotten worse. She at times seems to have deepened her dependency on Jenn, and her desire to only have "Mommy" fix her issue. There are times when I can step in and help out, and others she just blows up at me and demands Jenn. One interesting thing, if we prep her by discussing what is about to happen, she often does well regardless of who's helping her or what we're doing. Unfortunately we can't always plan ahead for her whats going to happen.

This past month of course included the culmination of 3 months of discussion and waiting to dress up as Puss-N-Boots. She did great trick or treating, and really enjoyed getting dressed up. I was worried there would be costume aspects that she would immediately shed, like the hat or sword, but that didn't happen. She stayed in costume the whole time she was out!

We're still working through sleep issues, which isn't really all that surprising. But things have improved. She's also starting to develop a few less than desirable habits, such as not quite telling the truth. I wouldn't call them lies, but she's starting to stretch the truth, or omit things. Yet another fun challenge of being a parent, that like all the others, we're woefully unprepared for :)

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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The newest thing for Cole these days has got to be his mobility. Over the past month he's developed the concept of crawling. He's not getting around all that fast, but he can certainly get around. It started with a really basic army crawl, and has evolved into a slightly better army crawl. With that mobility he's starting to realize that he can actually get to the things he's interested in.

He's still just rocking the same two teeth on the bottom of his mouth. With those teeth he's been moving through different types of foods. This past month he's worked his way through chicken and turkey, and a mixture of a lot of his old favorite. Jenn is still making the food, and so of course, I'm still proud. We mixed the meats with some different veggies for flavor. So chicken and carrots, or turkey and sweet potatoes. Jenn also started giving him some combos of stuff he was already good with, like apples and bananas or apples and mangoes. Tasty stuff. Cole has also been doing a lot better eating graduates (little rice puff things), moving him towards eating other foods with his fingers.

Cole's personally continues to change as well. I commented last month that now that he doesn't spit up constantly I find myself spending more time with him, and actually enjoying it. I often come home or back into a room when Jenn is holding Cole and he reaches out to me. What he then does is immediately turns back towards Jenn and reaches for her. Repeat. Like a game. But he does seem to enjoy spending time with me more and more, which I of course like.

Its crazy how fast kids grow up. People say it all the time, every day. But they grow up fast. Almost to fast. I'm not a fan of all the bottles, the diapers, and the screaming. But I know Jenn is missing his falling asleep on her. He used to eat and then fall asleep on her chest and then she'd take him to bed. Now - he eats, and then we put him to bed. So there's already things he's leaving behind that he won't come back to. So while its sad to see him grow up, its equally awesome to see him learn, explore and grow into new things. I know Jenn and I often stop and try to enjoy where Cole is knowing he's just going to keep growing up, no matter how hard Jenn might wish to keep him at 8 months old.

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Friday, October 26, 2012

This is how Abbi often spends her time on our car rides. Playing a game, or watching a movie on the iPad. In this case, I also asked her to make a funny face for me!

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Here's a great picture of me and Cole. He doesn't often look at the camera very well when I hold him, so this is certainly a great one!

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Thursday, October 25, 2012

I love this picture of Abbi. When we were down at the beach she was out in the sand dancing to her own beat. I snapped this picture, and I think it perfectly conveys her joy of dancing!

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Last Friday after work Jenn and I took the kids to Papa Johns farm to get some pumpkins. They have pumpkins to choose from, mums, and all kinds of other locally grown things. Like giant sweet potatoes. Here's a picture of the kids with all of our pumpkins. A giant family pumpkin. Abbi's large pumpkin, and Cole's little mini-pumpkin that Abbi picked out for him.

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Thursday, October 18, 2012

The other night we took Abbi to get her first real haircut. I say real, because she went once and had about 3 hairs trimmed on her bangs, and it didn't matter to much. This time was different. This time we went in, she knew what was going on and what was about to happen. In the end, she got about 2 inches or so cut off the end. As Jenn calls it, the scraggly part.

Abbi behaved immaculately. I couldn't have asked for better behavior. I would have liked a few more smiles about it all, but then again, from her perspective it probably didn't warrant to many smiles.

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Monday, October 15, 2012

Yesterday we went up to Aberdeen to celebrate one of our nephews birthdays. While we were outside for the party, I took this picture of Jenn and Cole. The smile on his face sums him up pretty well. So long as he's not pissed off about something. But thats only an occasional occurrence.

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Friday, October 5, 2012

I love this picture. The other night Cole was playing on the quilt on the ground. The thing he's looking into hold little plastic balls, which he had already taken out of there. That however didn't stop him from continuing to look inside for more and more balls.

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Thursday, October 4, 2012

Over the past month there have been a few developments for Abbi. The first one is her speech. Like I mentioned last time I wrote, she just kinda woke up one day and realized how an "s" is used in a word. She used to say "prin-tha", and where now she actually says "princess". Another example being "Mack" or "Mak-they", now she says clear as can be "Max" or "Maxy".

She's still the best big sister around and Cole loves her to death. Which I still can't figure out.

She's really learned how to use the computer this past month as well. Before Jenn or I had to sit with her while she played her games online. So Jenn sat down with her and worked with her on using a mouse. Unfortunately the mouse she used was older and not very good, so we quickly transitioned to using the trackpad on the laptop (the computer she usually uses). I also worked with her on understanding how the arrow keys can help her re-frame the content so she can see all of what she's trying to do.

What she really likes to do on the computer is play games on disneyjunior.com. She loves that site. Once we take her to the main site she is fully capable of navigating around and deciding what she wants to play and figuring out how to play it. For that, I'm very impressed by her.

I mentioned last month that she would be starting back up in her Fall activities and those are in full swing. She's in Rainbows (a church activity) on Wednesday nights, and then Thursdays she's in dance class again. She loves them both. I don't really think I could say which one she likes better (but if forced to do so, I'd say dance). We really like her participation in both activities since they promote different things and each gives her and opportunity to interact with other kids.

And speaking of her involvement, I've mentioned over the past 3 years how Abbi has impacted our lives and such, and these new activities are definitely having an impact. Its a whole new adjustment for Jenn and I to figure out how we're going to get Abbi to each of the activities and bring her home. Making it that much more complex to figure out is what to do with Cole during that time. Much like everything else, we'll adjust, but it will take time.

Finally, the last time I wrote Jenn had just gone back to school so the effect of not seeing her as much hadn't really set in on Abbi, but now it has. Abbi misses Jenn. A lot. And you can really tell. As such, I tend to get the crappier end of the stick from Abbi on many occasions. Abbi is very keen on understanding Cole's needs, but as soon as she sees a window of opportunity she pounces on Jenn. Example: If I offer to hold Cole for Jenn, Abbi immediately says "Mommy, now you can hold me. Hold me mommy!" and of course Jenn picks her up for a few minutes. So its clearly been an adjustment for us all, and we'll continue to work through it.

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Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Last Friday we had homemade pizza for dinner. Abbi and I made the pizza after Jenn made the dough. I took pictures of Abbi throughout the process to make this collage at the end. She really enjoyed every little step of it to, and the pizza, of course, tasted delicious.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Where to start with our little man and him hitting 7 months. He's now got two teeth and uses them with full force. His bottom two teeth have come fully in, and for now that seems to be about it. He's also figured out that he can really get you with those two little teeth of his.

Cole's food array has expended a considerable amount in the last month. Some of the foods that I know hes had include apples, bananas, peaches, pears, sweet potato, zucchini, acorn squash, yellow squash, butternut squash, carrots, and peas. And that's just the stuff that I can remember. He's done well with most of them, personally I think he disliked the peas the most. Jenn, like a true champ, has been making all of his food. So I'm definitely proud of her, and I'm sure the food tastes that much better to Cole know his mom made it for him.

Cole's personality is continuing to evolve, month by month. This month he seems smile and laugh even more. He really seems to enjoy spending time on his own, something Abbi NEVER enjoying doing. Cole is content to sit in his pack and play with toys and play for a while, or often times he's playing in his exa-saucer, which he loves.

Personally, now that Cole has stopped spitting up every 5 minutes, and he doesn't wail every time Jenn walks away, I'm finding it more and more enjoyable to spend time with him. I can sit with him and play, he's even fallen asleep with me a few times this past month. It really is awesome to wake up in the morning, and see Cole and when he hears my voice he always turns his head to find me. Definitely an awesome feeling. And when he finds me, he always get this big grin on his face, just like the one in this picture.

Lastly, I love that my kids love each other. Abbi is the best big sister Cole could have ever hoped for. She loves him to death, and for that we love her that much more. Its an awesome feeling knowing your family is complete.

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Monday, September 17, 2012

Saturday we went to a birthday party for Ange and Jakes little girl, Ellie who turned 1 last week. That of course meant that Abbi and Audrey got to have some fun playing together. The party was at Ange's dad's house, with a pool, and while the girls didn't really swim all that much (I think Abbi was in the pool about 3 minutes), they did play and hang out in their bathing suits. I managed to coral them over long enough to get this picture, that pretty much sums the two of them up.

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Friday, September 14, 2012

In a trait he clearly inherited from his mother, here you can really see Cole's big blue eyes. This picture is from the other night after taking his "7 month" pictures.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

This is from Monday night. I was getting dinner ready and so Abbi was keeping Cole occupied by feeding him puffs. He loves them. I mean LOVES them. He seems like he can't get enough. If only he could figure out how to put them in his mouth on his own, then he'd be all set.

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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Last night was Abbi's first night at Rainbows. Rainbows is a church sponsored activity for kids aged 3-4. Its the first step in a program that at age 5 separates into boys and girls and is a Christian based girl-scouts type of activity. Point behind all this, Jenn was super excited for Abbi to start Rainbows last night.

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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Have I mentioned before that I love my little girl. Because I do. She's the sweetest little girl around. Even when she's not. There's still a little ball of sweet in there just waiting to come out.

Almost as if she was waiting on being three to change, days after turning 3 Abbi starting talking differently and showing us different things. She's really picked up on the pluralization of words, not the proper way, but now she seems to understand the concept of plural when talking, and its of course cute to watch her.

She's starting to sing a lot on her own now too. Before she would sing songs occasionally, but not very often. Things like the ABC's, and she would always demand that you sing with her, but recently she's been branching out ans performing on her own.

She wrapped up her first session of dance class as well, so it was really good to get Abbi involved in a program outside of our family and home. And next month she'll be starting a program for kids 3-5 (I think) at our church as well as starting back up with dance class again. So thats all very exciting for us and her.

Going back to my thoughts though, I love this kid. Its crazy to think about how much one little kid can change your life, your outlook on things, and your attitude, but thats exactly what Abbi has done for me. I look forward all the time to the days in the future when we can sit down and have intelligent conversations with each other, but honestly, right now, I kinda hope she stays just like she is for a very long time. She's incredibly fun to be around, play with and interact with, and while I look forward to more engaging conversations, I'm sure they'll only pale in comparision to the passion she exhibits when talking about Merida or Puss N Boots.

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The other day we were outside and Abbi was insisting that Cole sit at the picnic table with her. As you can see he seemed to enjoy his stint at the table. He's really been coming in to his own regarding some personality and interest recently. Its really awesome watch it all happen again. Its also incredibly funny to see Abbi do things to make him laugh, and watch him crack up at them.

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

Jenn and I regularly ask Abbi what she wants to do. Her usual response "Play". I love it in its simplicity. This is a picture of her playing with some of her Duplo before Jenn or I got involved. She put up the additional walls all herself, so I was very proud.

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I really want to explain this picture. I was in front of Cole, talking to him. Jenn went inside the house and then started talking to me so Cole did this fancy roll over maneuver so he could see Jenn. I of course thought it was the funniest thing ever.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

I took this picture of Cole last night, and I love it. He sat there like this and looked at me for a good two minutes. He just had this look of complete boredom mixed with complacency. I love it!

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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Last week Abbi wrapped up her first session of dance class. It was a series of 6 sessions, once a week over the summer. Since there was no official "recital" to conclude the summer series, they let the parents attend the last class.

Abbi did fantastic! She did most of the moves, and definitely listened well to her teacher. Jenn and I were both super proud of her, and thought she did an amazing job (although what parent wouldn't feel that way).

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Wow. I can't believe how quickly the last 6 months have gone by. I'm about a week late on this post, but its been a busy week.

Now that Cole is 6 months old, the biggest change for him is that he now has teeth. Or tooth to be more specific. One of his two bottom-center teeth has come through. So of course with all that teething, there has been significant pain for him, but he seems to be doing well with it. Just like Abbi did when she was teething.

Cole still sleeps like a champ, and now he's starting to eat like one too. He's always been very regular and reliable with his feedings, and now that we've brought solid foods into the mix, if possible, I think he's even more reliable with it. After mastering multiple tablespoons of cereal, he moved onto bananas and now he's got a few new foods lined up to try (green beans, and avocado to start).

The other development for Cole is that he is now able to sit up on his butt on his own. He's been working on it for a few weeks but he has just now really gotten the hang of sitting there and enjoying life in the upright position.

He's yet to go to the doctor for his 6 month checkup, so no updates yet on his height and weight, but he's gotten bigger, thats for sure!

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Friday, August 10, 2012

Cole loved the beach. He definitely got some sand in his mouth, no where near the amount Ellie got in hers (but then again she can crawl to the sand to eat it). He enjoyed putting his feet in the sand, and rolling around on the blanket. When we took him down to the water to put his feet in, that he wasn't soon keen on. But we think he had a good first time at the beach.

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Thursday, August 9, 2012

While at the trailer Abbi found all kinds of random things to play with. One of them was this brush that she decided was going to be her microphone. I love her imagination!

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Cole's got a tooth! Tuesday Jenn noticed that Cole's first tooth had finally broken through his gums. Its one of his bottom center teeth. Abbi was very excited for him proclaiming that now "we all have teeth".

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Friday, August 3, 2012

One of many pictures of Abbi from our recent OC vacation. One evening we were out on the beach taking pictures and having fun, as well as flying kites, which you can see here Abbi was holding down very well. She had a great time with the kite this year. This year she wanted to hold it and control it unlike last year when she didn't care at all.

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While on vacation we put Cole behind the wheel of the car to see what would happen. Quite awesomely he put his hands on the wheel and pretended to drive. Jenn was able to get this awesome picture of him.

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Thursday, July 19, 2012

I've delayed this post by about a week just to give Abbi's third birthday the recognition it deserves.

But our little is now 5 months old, and I really mean this - I can't believe it. He's really starting to develop some real personality and its awesome to watch.

The biggest change this past month is that we've started him on "solid" foods. Last month we got the green light and about mid-month we started him on the rice cereal stuff. Jenn's been working with him to get him up to 4 tablespoons at a feeding at which point we'll start giving him some vegetables.

As you can see in this picture, he's getting some really strong arms. We started these pictures by setting him on the couch to take pictures similar to the last few months, but that didn't work to well. So I thought we'd try and put him like this and he loved it. He's good and pushing himself up, another skill he's really started to hone over the last month.

Another skill is that he's now spending regular time in the exa-saucer or sit and spin as I call it. Basically he can "stand"/sit in this play contraption and entertain himself, and it helps promote him using his legs to stand but there's a seat for him for when he gets tired.

He's still sleeping really well, and has actually started to take some "normal" length naps. Prior to this month most of his naps were about 30 minutes long, but he's finally getting into some 1.5 - 2 hour naps which I know Jenn thoroughly enjoys.

Cole really likes to smile and like I know I've said before, he loves Abbi. Really loves her. I don't know what it is, but he loves her a ton. He smiles and laughs at her all the time. Jenn also finally got Cole to give a good belly laugh after I was able to get it from him a few weeks ago.

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Friday, July 13, 2012

I can't believe my little girl is three years old. I mean as a parent, you know its coming. Each day she gets a little older bit by bit, but when I sit back today and think about how she got to be three its just crazy. I really do feel like just yesterday we were in the hospital with her. Its nuts!

Abbi has changed in so many ways over the past year. She's moved into a real-deal big girl bed this year, and of course that has proved to be problematic for her and her sleep "issues" as Jenn says. But we'll get through it. She loves the big bed, just not being in it alone.

Her speech is amazing to me. Its crazy to sit back and think about how big her vocabulary is after only 3 years of life. She talks really well, and shes really starting to figure out how some words sound. Simple things like please, now sounds like please instead of "meese". She's really getting good at her pronunciation.

One "new this month" item on Abbi is that this week we started Abbi in her first "group" activity. She started dance class this past Tuesday. She'll be going over the next six weeks, and hopefully she's loosen up and learn to have fun at it. This first time she was definitely timid and reserved, but afterwards, she did say she liked it.

I think the biggest change though for Abbi in the last year is that she's now a big sister. She really seems to love Cole and the fact that he's her brother. What I don't think she likes is all the attention she's lost from Jenn as a result. However, as I've mentioned before, I think Cole's presence has strengthened my bond with Abbi, and so for that I'm even more thankful. Abbi still loves more than anything her time with Jenn, but now she wants to spend her time with me more often. When I come home after work she's always happy to see me and wants to spend time with me.

I gotta say, as a father, its definitely one of the best feelings to come home to your daughter, and for her to want to spend time together. She doesn't care if its Barbie's, Lego's, setting up the water sprinkler, feeding max, changing laundry, vacuuming, cutting grass, anything. If its with me, she's interested, involved and happy, and I love her tremendous amounts for it.

I'm super excited to see how my little girl continues to grow over the years, and just see all the new amazing things she's going to do!

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Friday, July 6, 2012

This was taken at the beach a few weeks back when we went down for Fathers Day weekend. I had Cole in the chair and I was taking a picture of him and Abbi wanted to jump in and get a siblings picture.

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From last Saturday celebrating birthday's the and fourth of July all in one. This is Abbi enjoying one of many sparklers of the night.

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Thursday, July 5, 2012

Yesterday we were able to spend the day pool-side with our friends the Sofinowskis. This was Cole's first real chance to go "swimming" in a pool, and at times he really seemed to enjoy it. As you can see here with a giant smile on his face!

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