Rainy days

I have some really random pictures from this week because of the rainy weather we had. We caught the remnants of Hurricane Fay here in Georgia and it brought up lots of thunderstorms and rain. Maura was not excited to be cooped up in the house while it rained and on Sunday she asked if she could jump in the puddles. We made that her incentive to take a nap, so after nap time she was ready to head outside. She loved her Pooh umbrella and loved finding puddles to splash in.
What a cutie! At first she wasn't sure about going out in the rain and thunder, but she warmed up to it and before long was splashing up a storm. Watch the video at the end to see her in action.

One of the really funny things that Brent has been doing with Tristan recently is flipping his ears back and forth and saying, "Nanoo, Nanoo." Tristan LOVES it. Brent says it with a high pitched voice and it never fails to bring big smiles. Brent had him laughing out loud every time he did it a few days ago.
On Tuesday Maura and Tristan enjoyed playing on the bed while I got dressed. I love this picture of Maura. It's the best one I've seen of her lately because it looks exactly like she really looks.
Tristan at sixteen weeks. Wow, it's hard to believe it's been less than four months since Tristan entered our lives. We love him so much that it feels like he's always been in our hearts. My kids love each other. Maura loves being a big sister so much and Tristan absolutely adores her. She gives him sweet kisses and always promises to be gentle with the "yittle baby."
And lastly, the sweetest thing I've ever found in a laundry basket! I'd never ever mind to fold clothes if I always got to see this sweet face peeking out of the basket first!

Maura's cicada

On Friday afternoon Brent brought a dead cicada and a dead dragonfly home from work for Maura to look at. She's been fascinated with cicadas for some time now. Every time she hears them singing in the trees she stops, listens, and says, "That's a bicada!"(sounds like potato) She says "They're making a cheeping noise." Maura was at the same time fascinated and disgusted by the dead bug. She would NOT touch them, but she couldn't tear herself away from them either.

Here's Maura "touching" the cicada. She never got any closer than about an inch. I can't really blame her. I've had an insane fear of cicadas since childhood when I picked up a cicada shell and it closed around my finger. I can't stand the little critters with the creepy red eyes. Uggh, makes me shiver just to think of it.
Maura's friends the cicada and dragonfly. They remained on our foyer floor for about a day before I noticed that ants were being attracted and then the cicada "flew away into the tree." So, we have a budding entomologist who won't touch bugs! Also, in case you're wondering, Maura does not indeed have any pants on. We've eschewed all pants until potty training is a lot more advanced. So, there are lots of pictures out there now with either dresses or no pants and a pull up!
We've been having a really hard time getting Maura to take a nap. Last week I resorted to bribery. Well, I actually call it privileges or losing privileges, but what it amounts to is bribery. We told her that if she took a nap every day for the rest of the week, on Friday she could have a bubble bath party. We really played it up for her, so when she actually did nap we had to make it a big deal. I hung balloons while Brent occupied her elsewhere, then he ran a really huge bubble bath. We blew bubbles when she came in and she just was so excited about it all.
Maura enjoying her big bubble bath. I even let her eat cookies in the tub! She definitely thought it was a great reward and we had fun doing it for her. It doesn't take much to amaze a two year old!

Caution: Kids caught being cute!

Yesterday just after Maura woke up, she decided to play in her room. I went and got the Bumbo seat for Tristan so we could sit in there and play too. When I brought the Bumbo seat in and put Tristan in it, Maura was so interested. She immediately stopped playing and said, "Aww, Tistan(not a typo, it's what she calls him). Aww, so cute." She went over and hugged and squeezed him. It was so adorable that I went running for the camera.
Luckily Tristan is a lovable little lad and he enjoys the attention and squeezing. Maura petted his head and held his cheeks and gave him lots of kisses. I'm really loving this new loving attitude toward her little brother. She's much more interested in him now that he's interacting with her. He is fascinated with everything she does and watches her intently. She loves that he's so interested in him and often will bring toys or books over to show him, even if it's just a millisecond's peek.
Two sweet kiddos. It makes my heart melt to see them so loving with each other. I know that there will be times in the future that they won't be so cozy with each other, so I'll just relish it now while they're so little. Maura decided today that she was going to call Tristan "Bubby." We're really not sure where that came from since neither of us call him Bubby, but that's actually the nickname that my siblings and I had for my brother when he was little. It'll be interesting to see if it sticks.
My happy little man at fourteen weeks. I love this little outfit, so I wanted to make sure I took some pictures in it before he outgrew it. It's so sweet, monogrammed with his initials.
He's giving us some great belly laughs these days and we can't help but laugh along with him.

Tristan still hasn't decided which fingers he's going to suck permanently. He's definitely going to suck some combination of fingers/thumb, but even he doesn't know which ones it will be. The last few days he's been sucking his second and third finger together.
Then, he'll switch to the first and second.
And, then we go back to the old standby, the thumb.
Here's Tristan just after the hugging session. As you can see, he's no great fan of the Bumbo. It's a sad thing to me. I LOVED the Bumbo when Maura was a baby because it kept her so occupied and happy. Tristan will sit in his for about a minute before he gets unhappy and starts arching his back to get out. I can't decide if he's just still a little young for it and he gets fatigued by trying to hold himself up or if he really truly just hates the thing.
Here's' Maura in the exact same Bumbo. As you can see, she's much happier. I don't ever remember her arching her back to get out until she was getting a closer to crawling. I guess I'll just have to keep trying with Tristan. I certainly won't be putting it up on the counter or table with him in it like I used to do with Maura!

AIRBORNE!

This will probably be the first of many posts that feature the military. There are many more events and ceremonies to come over the next year. This is probably the first time that many of you get to see my handsome husband in uniform. When we went to the base on Tuesday morning, we actually pulled up in front of the wrong building. Maura was looking out of the window at the soldiers hanging around outside the building and saying, "There's my daddy!" She could not be convinced that the soldier she'd selected was not her father. Obviously he was dressed like Daddy, so he must be Daddy! We eventually did find Daddy and headed over to the jump site to watch the Airborne school do a qualifying jump. Brent went through Airborne school over ten years ago, so it was like a walk down memory lane for him. He was able to give us all the information about what was happening. This picture is a little out of sequence, but it was the coolest one we took and I didn't want to reload all my pics and didn't want to leave it out. Every dot you see in that great blue sky represents a soldier who is in the midst of an Airborne jump. Each soldier must successfully complete five jumps to be Airborne qualified. A total of 180 guys jump each time, so it was pretty impressive to watch.
Me and the kiddos. As you can see, Tristan was not impressed. He fell asleep moments after arriving at the site and missed all the action. Maura, on the other hand, was SO excited. I told her the day before that we were going to go visit Daddy and watch people jumping out of an airplane and that's the first thing she asked me about that morning when she woke up.
Daddy and Maura taking in the spectacle. Initially, Maura was way more excited about the planes, but when she realized that the little dots in the sky were actually people, she became really interested.

Watching with rapt attention. She was most interested when the guys dropped their ruck sacks from between their legs and they (the packs) hung suspended by a strap to their legs. She kept saying, "They dropped their backpacks!"
The plane is a whole lot closer to us than it looks in the photo. They fly down to 1250 feet, so it feels like they're right over our head. Then you can see the teeny tiny soldiers jump out. It takes about 2 seconds for their parachutes to inflate and then they just drift on down. I don't know that I could ever jump like that. I think I would probably pee my pants before I got out of the plane!
Brent said that 36 guys can jump at a time, so the whole sky looks like it's full of parachutes.

There they go. We waited around long enough to see the first few guys walking back in our direction to board the buses. I couldn't believe how much gear they had. They carried their huge parachute, their rifle and their fully packed ruck sack. It was very impressive! We enjoyed our day at the jump site and then headed back to base for story time at the library. What a change of pace! Maybe someday I'll be able to drive around Fort Benning without getting lost!

Reverse Male Pattern Baldness and other musings

You are looking at a picture of the back of Tristan's head. Yes, I know it's thrilling! I wish I had taken this shot about a month ago when his hair issues were a little more pronounced. Tristan has what we like to call Reverse Male Pattern Baldness. Basically, his head grew out of the hair he was born with, leaving a long patch on top. Then, he rubbed a lot of the hair on the back of his head off, leaving just a little patch right up there where most men lose theirs. It's so funny to look at-the hair on top is all about an inch long and sticks straight up a lot of the time. He's now starting to get some hair to fill in, so it's no longer as noticeable, but I wanted to make sure that I took some pictures before it disappeared completely. On to other things. You know you're watching too much Olympic coverage when your two year old goes swimming in the tub and shouts out, "I'm in the Wimpics! I need my goggles!" She sloshed so much water on the floor. She watched the gymnastics coverage today and was inspired to perform front rolls and walk on a "balance beam" of tape that I put down in the family room. I just hope she doesn't try to mimic the uneven bars on something and crack her head!
Here in Georgia, we've decided that we're going to have to make our own fun! On Friday night, we decided to have a family movie night and "camp" on the family room floor. We told Maura the plan at dinner and she was so excited about it that she couldn't finish dinner! Daddy got her bathed and ready while I popped popcorn and filled drinks. She could not have been more thrilled with her popcorn and gummy worms.
Even Tristan got in on the action. We enjoyed our family time and our kid movie, although we realized that we must have left the remote to the DVD player in Kentucky. Ooops!
On Saturday night, we opted for a night out. We took the kids to a local hibachi grill for dinner. I knew Maura would find the "show" fascinating and I wasn't disappointed. She LOVED it!

Me and my big boy. He liked the fire!
"I'm getting too big for this car seat!" I'm pretty sure that Maura weighed about sixteen pounds(and was seven months old) when I thought she was too heavy for her car seat and I moved her over to a big seat. I just think it wouldn't be good to do to a three month old!
Maura just couldn't peel her eyes away from the chef. She especially loved the part where he threw the egg up in the air and caught it on his spatula. She really liked the fire too. I think our chef didn't want to do too much fire because he was worried about hurting the baby, but the chef at the next table was a pyromaniac and we were treated to lots of fire! Maura loved when he made the volcano and set it on fire.
Our chef was so nice to Maura. He kept talking to her and he served her even though we didn't purchase a meal for her. She loved the whole experience and she's still talking about it.
A boy and his daddy. Tristan actually slept through the night for the first time last night. I nursed him at about 9:45, put him down and didn't hear a peep from him until 6:30 this morning! I feel like a new woman! I'm not going to get too excited about it, though, because he's been sick and it might just be that he isn't feeling very well. It's a milestone, though, and I'll take as many full nights of sleep as I can get!

More fun family visits!

Tristan turned fourteen weeks old on Tuesday. I thought you all might like to see pictures of his perpetual surprise. He has this look on his face a lot. Whenever he gets picked up, transported to an area with different lighting or just surprised in general, those eyes get so wide!
"Really, Mom, I'm fourteen weeks old?"
"I can't believe you took a picture from that angle, Mom! You're showing my double chin!" Speaking of my chunky boy, I weighed him today at 15.8 pounds. He's so long too, I have switched him over to 6-9 month sleepers. The outfit he has on in these pictures is a 9 month outfit that he's almost growing out of. I'm going to have to hit some end of summer sales just to keep this little man in clothes.

Yet another "take a picture of my silly face" pictures. I feel like there might be a lot of these in the future. She is such a silly girl! She still says "girl" like "grr," so she would say she's a "silly grr."
I just thought she looked so sweet against the green, green grass. It's amazing to me that it can be hot and dry here and the grass still looks beautiful. In Kentucky, my grass died a month ago!
Maura loves watering the flowers and asks for a full can as soon as we get outside.
A self portrait out on our porch swing. We were experiencing unseasonably cool temps and enjoying 75 degree days out in the yard.
Maura has really started to entertain Tristan. In addition to making funny faces for him, she will bring her toys over for him to look at. My favorite was today when she brought her blanket over for him and draped it over his face so he could "yook" at it. Tristan is SOO interested in everything his big sister does, so it doesn't take much to entertain him.

Little Droolface! This guy is a spitter! I've started wearing bibs on him a lot of the time to catch the tidal wave that emanates from his mouth! Otherwise, we end up with VERY wet outfits.
Maura showing Tristan her best silly face. She's such a good big sister. She has started to talk a lot to him, especially when he's getting upset. Yesterday, she was so funny. Tristan started fussing in the car and she said, "It's OK, Tristan. You're OK Little Man." She also said, "It's not time to eat, you just nursed." I wonder where she's copying that from?
On Tuesday afternoon, my sister, Emily, and her boyfriend, Brad, came in for a visit. They were driving down from Tennessee, en route to South Carolina and somehow Georgia was a logical stop. We really enjoyed seeing them. I had told Maura earlier in the day that they were coming and when they got here, she stood wringing her hands like she always does when she's really excited. She loved visiting with both of them.
Brad and Tristan with my very favorite Tristan face, the VERY SAD FACE.
Yes, it might appear that Emily is abusing my child, but actually she's just playing with her. Maura loves to be tossed around and thrown onto the couch, so Emily was happy to oblige

Thanks Emily and Brad for making the extra effort to come down for a visit! I think Brad is one of Maura's current favorite people. She talks about him a lot, but she calls him "Bad." Funny, because she called Katie's boyfriend, Scott "Hot" when she first met him. If you took if from Maura, my sisters are dating Hot and Bad! Anywho, Maura loved playing with Brad and he was teaching her how to play the drums. Look at her face--she is enamored with him!
Emily loved getting a Tristan cuddle in. I think my family had the hardest time parting with Tristan knowing that he was going to grow up so much this year.
Yesterday, Emily, Brad and I decided to go tour Fort Benning, which is fun to do if you know where you're going. If not, like me, you get hopelessly lost in the forests of Fort Benning. We drove around for at least a half hour before I was able to find someone to ask for directions! Eventually we found our way and watched some soldiers jumping from a tower down a rip line. It looked like fun! Afterwards, I took them to a restaurant for some good country cookin.'
We enjoyed eating out, even if it was with a fussy baby! What a fun visit! I can't believe I've already had so much of my family down to visit. We've enjoyed our family time and it helps me to know that they're willing to travel to see us and keep up with the kids. Hopefully I'll have lots more family pictures to show after this year.