3 Big Things around Here

1. Emily has begun to crawl...very slow and wobbly, but we fully expect her to be crawling all over the place in a few days. She can also go from belly to sitting and does it all.the.time! She also is beginning to pull up in her crib, which means we lowered the crib mattress.

2. Emily is sleeping through the night! Wahoo!

3. Kason starts preschool next Tuesday. Mommy is sad, but I know Kason will have a blast. He didn't cry this week when we dropped him off for Sunday School, and didn't want to leave when we went to pick him up. So, we know he'll do great.

And, now, a few pics....

Playing with the farm


Reading night-night books

Kason playing on the new addition to the playroom..the castle slide (thanks Sean & Tina)

Fall is Coming!

Pumpkins, scarecrows, Halloween, and cooler weather are in sight! Can you believe it? It is 76 degrees outside right now and it is almost 3:00pm. Amazing!

Fall has to be the best time of the year. You can enjoy almost every day outside, and we fully intend on taking advantage. Kason and I spent the morning outside today and we'll all head back out after naptime. In a couple of weeks, we will be going to the fall festival at church. I am in the process of getting Halloween outfits together for the family to wear.

As for Halloween costumes, Kyle and I will most likely not be dressing up, but Kason and Emily will be the cutest little kids you've ever seen. Kason will be Smitty and Emily will be Warehouse Mouse, from the Imagination Movers (check out go.disney.com if you don't know who they are). I am in the process of making their costumes myself. I think they'll turn out great. Pictures to follow in a couple of weeks.

I would tell myself...

that my kids don't need me to be super mom...they need me to be a happy mom.

Reflections of Motherhood

Sleepy Time

In the past few weeks, Kason's night and naptime habits have gotten out of hand. For whatever reason (we can't seem to figure it out), he does not want to go to sleep in his room. Most nights, we give in and let him get up for a while, but we have decided it has to stop. So tonight, we went Supernanny style with him (well, sorta). Supernanny says, tell them goodnight and you love them, then leave. Everytime after the first that they get up, you simply take them back to bed without talking. That's where we differed. We can't stand to put our crying little boy to bed without acknowledging him. So, each time, I picked him up, hugged, shushed, and kissed him, laid him in bed, kissed him again and said, "night night, I love you". And, each time I left he was once again calm and said, "night night, I love you" back. After about 5-7 times and 30-45 minutes, he was finally down and asleep. Pretty painless and very little crying. Here's hoping we can keep it up and get him back to bed.

We are fairly certain he has nightmares since he sometimes wakes up shrieking and punching/kicking. The shrieks are so shrill sometimes it makes my heart race and stomach churn, but, we go check on him and he is back to sleeping peacefully. At some point, though, it seems every night, he actually wakes from these dreams/nightmares and makes his way to our room. As of right now, we have no intentions of stopping this. I, myself, had nightmares often as a child and ended up on the couch or in my parents' bed, so I know what it's like. So, each night, we take the blanket off the foot of our bed and make him a little pallet next to the bed. When he shows up in our room in the wee hours, we get his pillow and blanket and he goes to sleep on the floor. He is happy just being in our room, so it works for all of us.

As for Emily's sleeping, after about a week and a half of tortuous sleep, she seemed to get a little relief and is doing pretty well now. Our little Emmy has had horribly swollen gums for several weeks now, which we believe was the culprit of the poor sleeping. And, today, her first tooth has finally broken through. We expect to see #2 in the next few days, and are hoping for even more relief for our baby girl. Yay!!!

Sweet Dreams!!

Labor Day

We were planning on going to the DFW area this weekend for a visit with family over the long weekend. That was thwarted, though, with Kyle's need to work overtime (for the next 3 or more weeks). Yucky for less time at home, but the extra $$ will be nice.

So, we had a great weekend staying at home. I got to take advantage of Labor Day sales and do a little fall/winter shopping for the kiddos, we went to the park, played with the neighbors, grilled, and today, sat in traffic forEVER to spend the rainy day at the Galleria. We were supposed to meet Lee there as well as Sean, Tina, and the kids. However, since our approx. 25 mile drive took us almost 2 hours, we got very little time with any of them. But, Kason had a blast at the Galleria's play area and we had a yummy dinner at Freebird's, so even though Emily was super tired on the way home, it was still a good day.

Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend!