Bikes and Books

The weather has been pretty decent here lately, so we've been trying to get outside at least a little bit each day.  Jackson loves to ride his bike and kick the soccer ball, and Emmett is happy to push his lawnmower and walk through the flower beds and up and down the curb.  We did get him a balance bike for Christmas that he's getting a little better at riding.  Hopefully by spring he'll be zooming around on that behind Jackson.

We've also been doing lots of reading inside.  The boys LOOOOVE being read to.  Their favorite books right now are all of their Thomas ones.  Jackson also loves this book that I had from when I was little called "David's First Bicycle" and a book about a tractor named Otis.  J actually has a bunch of books that he loves - he's much more open to other choices, whereas Emmett is pretty stuck on only hearing Thomas stories.  :)

The other night Phil was getting in the shower and we wanted Emmett to get in there with him instead of giving him a bath.  I had taken E's pants off to get him ready and then got sidetracked with something else.  Phil had gone into the bathroom and started the shower and then left the room for a second.  When he walked back in, this is what he saw:

Someone took matters into his own hands!!  He totally cracks us up!  Here's E and Daddy having some snuggy time after E woke up from his nap...

My dad asked for a video of Jackson riding his bike, so here's a nice, long two-minute one just for you, Popeye!!


Untitled from Heather G on Vimeo.

And here's a shorter one of Emmett on his bike...


Untitled from Heather G on Vimeo.

Super Sweet Surprise

Gosh, it has been a little while since I last blogged!  I've been running around crazy-like trying to get house projects finished up before the baby comes.  I have literally changed at least one thing in every room in my house this pregnancy (except for the master bedroom - that is coming soon - we're getting a king bed - yay!!).  I'm blaming it on the hormones!  I haven't been buying clothes, either, so I guess I've been making up for that by buying stuff for the house.  :)

Anyway, I just wanted to quickly share what happened this past Friday night.  It was one of the most special nights of my life!  My friend, Katie, had planned a girls' dinner for the ladies in the squadron at a restaurant downtown, since the guys had a naming that night (A naming is where the instructor pilots give temporary call signs to the students in the squadron that they'll keep until they get to their first active duty assignment.  It's usually a crazy night for the guys).  At least a few of us wives usually get together on the night of a naming since they guys are usually out late, but this time there was a great response to the dinner out and about 17 people came.  Everyone was having a good time just chatting and laughing... then Katie stood up and pulled a present from under the table.  She turned to me and said (I can't remember her exact words - I was overwhelmed!) something about how they had planned this dinner to be able to give this gift to me in celebration of baby #3.  Then she said that the gift was meant for me to be able to put my "best foot forward" as a mother of three boys.  I knew right then what the gift was and I immediately started to bawl!  Katie and I had chatted and texted back and forth a few times about these gorgeous, expensive designer shoes that we love that she has a few pairs of and that I knew I would probably never own.  The designer is Christian Louboutin and he makes the most beautiful, well-made, amazing shoes that celebrities love and normal stay-at-home-moms can only dream of owning.  Well, I now own a pair!!  Almost all of the ladies in the squadron chipped in and bought a pair for me as a baby gift!!  I was completely shocked and totally overwhelmed by their generosity.  My friend Michelle said that Katie picked out a few styles and that everyone e-mailed back and forth and voted on which pair they liked best.  Here is what they chose... (the red soles are a C. Loub signature!)

They also gave me gift certificates for two pedicures, nail polish, and two cute movies ("In Her Shoes" and "Happy Feet").  I had absolutely no idea that this dinner was planned as a little "shower" for me, or that everyone had joined together to surprise me with this amazing gift.  It was seriously one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.  I was crying really hard while I was opening the gift, partly because I was excited about the shoes, but mostly because I couldn't believe everyone had done such a nice thing for me.  I felt totally undeserving.  I spend a lot of time complaining about living in this tiny town so far from my family, and this surely was a wake-up call to me to stop being so whiny and ungrateful and count my blessings.  I am really, really blessed to have such wonderful friends here.

I hope this post didn't come off as really braggy - I didn't mean for it to be that way!  I just wanted to record and share this very special memory.  The next post will be filled with pictures of the boys - I promise!

P.S.  Baby is currently head-down.  Please say a little prayer that he stays that way!!

Tub Time

We're still not doing much of anything exciting around here, so here are just some cute pictures of the boys in the bathtub.  They have so much fun in there together... especially with bubbles.  

A moment of sweet brotherly love...

Emmett loves to put the bubbles on his face.  He's also started laying flat on his back in the tub so that only his face is out of the water and then rolling over onto his tummy.  He's a fish for sure!

Sleepover

I was having a terrible time sleeping a few days ago when my cold was at its worst, so Phil decided to have a "sleepover" in Jackson's room one night to let me have free reign to toss and turn all over our bed.  It was nice to have the whole bed to myself for one night, and I'm sure Phil got a better night's sleep than he would have listening to me hack and cough and snore and toss and turn all night.  Jackson was very excited to have Daddy sleep in his room with him, and also to get to sleep on the top bunk for the very first time!  I don't have a comforter or anything for that top bunk yet, so Phil just put a sleeping bag up there for J.  He loved it!

Phil slept fine in there, but luckily he came back to our bed the next night.  Actually, no, the next night he slept in the guest room because I was still miserable and up all night long (and isn't he a sweet hubby to sleep in the other room instead of kicking me out of our bed?), but he came back the night after that.  :)

Jackson now sleeps on the top bunk every single night (and for naps, too).  I'm so glad he likes it, because the tentative plan for when the baby comes is to have Emmett sleep on the bottom bunk and J sleep on the top.  I'm still not totally on board with that plan, though, since they're both so young and I don't want to mess up the good nighttime sleep and naps that currently happen at our house.  Plus, we're not sure that Emmett will stay in bed and obey when we say it's bedtime!  Our other option is to get another crib and put E in the playroom/guest room to sleep.  I don't really want to do that, either, though, because that room is already crazy crowded with toys, a bookcase, and a guest bed.  We really need to get serious about planning this out, though, because baby will be here soon!  I think we'll probably try the bottom bunk for E and see how it works, and if it's a disaster we'll move him to the guest room.

We Have Speech!! (Well, Sort Of...)

Emmett has finally started saying a few words!  We really haven't been too worried about him, because Jackson took a long time to talk, too, and is totally fine now.  But it's so great to hear E making an effort to say some things!  So far he'll say "Mama," "Dada," "All Done," and "Buh-Bye."  Don't get me wrong, though, he doesn't say those things all the time, but every once in a while he will blurt them out and we get so excited!  The cutest thing he does right now, though, is make a "Grrrr!" noise whenever he sees trains in his train books that have grumpy faces.  I ask him to make the noise over and over because it cracks me up.  I took a video of it, but you'll have to excuse my annoying question-asking if you watch it.  I was trying to get him to say some of the words that he knows, but he was too focused on getting Phil to read his favorite book to answer me.


Untitled from Heather G on Vimeo.

I've had a cold since Christmas, so we've been laying really low at home lately. I just can't find the energy to bundle everyone up to get out of the house.  The boys have been really good about having to stay home, although we have been watching more TV than usual. I promise to be better about TV watching when I get some energy back and start feeling better!  I'm hoping that I don't have to wait until the baby is born for that to happen.

Here are some pictures from around the house the past few days:

Emmett enjoying a peanut butter and jelly sandwich...

And some other cute Emmett pictures...

Jackson came out of his room after his nap the other day with his socks on his hands.  It made me laugh so I had to take a picture.  He was actually very accommodating with the picture-taking for once and even looked at the camera and smiled a little!

I had put up all of our Christmas decorations before we left for Florida in the middle of November, so I was totally sick of them the day after Christmas.  I took them down that very next day.  Then I felt bad for our pretty trees that sacrificed themselves for our pleasure.  They were still mostly alive and even still smelled really good and I hated to just chuck them out the door.

So Phil stuck them behind our fence standing up so we could still look at them all winter until they get brown and nasty.  I feel like maybe they're happy spending their last days outside in their element.

Jackson was pushing a truck around the house the other day and fell forward and hit his nose on it.  He got a big scrape under his nose and it was gushing blood.  I was pretty scared because I haven't seen that much blood coming from one of my babies before, but it stopped pretty quickly and he was okay.  We snuggled on the couch and watched Thomas for a little bit right after it happened and that made things a little better.

Hope everyone is healthy at your house!