Lazy Parenting

In an effort to teach the boys some additional responsibility + accountability, we've been attempting to have toy clean-up sessions each evening.  No complaints here since it's nice to not have to start from scratch once they go to bed.  Last night, Landry repeatedly came out of the playroom saying that he was all done.  But, I just had a hunch that it hadn't taken nearly long enough.  So, instead of checking it out myself, I handed him my phone and had him take a picture so that I didn't have to get off the couch.  Now, that's what I call lazy parenting!

P.S. This is the picture he brought me of the "clean" playroom.  We might need to raise our standards a bit!

The Past Quarter's Recap

Well, life with three boys doesn't leave much time for blogging...as if life with two boys ever did.  But, I press on, ever mindful that this is more efficient than updating three baby books!

This catch-up post will be some random snippets of life since we brought Alex home..

At Landry's Mother's Day breakfast at preschool, I was presented with his page in his class's "All About Mom" book.  When I got to the fourth line, I laughed out loud....and so did every other Mom in his class as they read through it.  After I saw this, I flipped through the rest of the book, secretly hoping that other moms would be equally embarrassed by one of  their child's answers.  No such luck.

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Landry's 4th birthday party at a bounce house place.  This was his first friend party...and neither Brian and I took any pictures.  So, we're thankful for Brian's sister Michelle snapping a few for us....not to be confused with my friend Michelle who loves to take pictures and happens to be standing behind Brian!!

 

The other day, Landry snapped this picture of Shannon at swim lessons.  You can't make out anything, so you'll have to take my word for it...but this shot captured a moment fifteen months in the making....Shannon's first tear-free swim lesson.  Hallelujah!!  He is finally enjoying swimming and, in turn, making strides towards floating.

 

 

And, last but not least, this guy continues to capture our hearts with his smile.  He's an exceptionally easy baby - only cries when he's hungry or tired.  On most nights, he's sleeping until close to 5 or 5:30.  While I don't love the pre-dawn wake-up-call, it means that I'm getting six hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Not bad for a 12 week-old! 

 

 

 

Speaking of Alex, it's now time for his last bottle of the evening, so I'll wrap it up.  Hopefully, I won't wait another two + months to post again!



Alex is Here!

 

After I went into labor in the early morning hours a week before my scheduled C-section, Alex was born at 8:00 a.m. on February 20th. He weighed 9 lbs.1oz., which was significantly smaller than the ultrasound estimates of close to 11 lbs.! This was my first time to experience true labor pain, although only about a half-hour's worth, enough to confirm that I was never meant to be a candidate for a natural delivery.  After staying in the hospital for three nights, we've just completed our first week at home with him, and we are smitten! 



 

Tunnel Slide

I've finally taken the plunge and picked up an iphone.  I have to admit, it's nice to have a camera for spontaneous photos during the day.  These are a couple I snapped over the Christmas break during a trip to a nearby playground.

When Landry saw these photos in my camera roll, he informed Shannon that the reason why Shannon appears smaller in his picture is that he is still a "little boy," while Landry is now a "big boy." 

Christmas Card Photo

This poor neglected blog deserves some much needed attention, but, alas, the busyness of life continues to interfere with regular posts.  However, before much more time passes, I want to post our Christmas card pictures, primarily to memorialize them for the years to come.

And, while we're at it, I stumbled across this picture when I was migrating photos from my old computer to my new one (thank you, Brian for a much needed upgrade for my birthday!).  It was one we took of Shannon last Christmas, checking out his stocking on Christmas morning.

Fast forward a year, and the stockings were hung but stayed empty the whole season.  (I'm sure Landry will be old enough to question that by this time next year!)  There was something about this picture that made me excited to have a baby in the house again, which is good, since we'll have one before we know it!

Halloween Recap

We had a lot of fun with Halloween this year.  Thanks to a lack of advance planning on my part, the boys picked their costumes from their Melissa and Doug dress-up clothes, which worked out really well.  Landry chose a police officer costume, leaving Shannon as a construction worker.  This was for the best, anyhow, since the construction worker vest didn't swallow Shannon up like the jacket would have!

We kept it simple - just went trick-or-treating around the block in our neighborhood with a big group of neighborhood kids.  This was the first year that Landry realized that he could get more candy by hitting lots of houses, so he wanted to run between houses, and he didn't want to stop until his bucket was full.  Towards the end, he got hot in his costume and wanted to take it off, so we cut things a little bit short!
 Shannon was hysterical to watch in action this year.  He was brave enough to walk up the walkways to doors by himself when the homeowners already had the door open.  But, he didn't quite understand the concept of taking additional candy.  His typical drill at each house was to reach into his bucket, take out a couple of pieces of candy, put the candy into the homeowner's candy bowl, and then retrieve the same pieces of candy he put in.  As a result, he hovered around five pieces of candy total for the evening.  A couple of people commented that he was the only trick-or-treater to make candy deposits!  Start to finish, we were home within an hour, leaving Landry enough time to hand out candy to some of the trick-or-treaters at our door, which is something he's enjoyed doing for a couple of years now!

September Summary

I have no idea how the month of September flew by so quickly, but alas, it's come and gone! Here's our month in a nutshell:

 Landry started back to preschool, with a little bit of hesitation at first.  He wanted no part of Meet the Teacher night, but he seemed a little bit more eager on the first day.  Then, when he saw that he would get to do playdough, he was sold.  "Mommy, I didn't know I'd get to do playdough in my new class."  The other memorable quote out of him took place when his teacher asked him if he could find his name on the table.  He looked really sad and sad that he didn't know how to spell his name but that he knew it started with a "big L" followed by a "little a that looks like a circle with a stick on the right side."  Chalk that up to the category of things that I have no idea how he picked up along the way!  Now, a month into school, we're having great fun with his letter bags each week. We find out the letter of the week every Wednesday, and he has show and tell every Friday to show his class 3-4 pictures that start with the letter.

Here are some pictures from the first day.

Here's little brother who loves, loves, loves to pick up Landry from school.  As I drive past the school to turn in, Shannon usually points at the school and says "please." As soon as I get him out of the car, he runs as fast as he can to the entrance.  In this picture, he's eating Harry & David chocolate covered gummy bears that my parents me sent in the mail from Michigan (because there are no more Texas stores)!

And here he is demonstrating that he's still in the running for the world's record of longest transition to one nap ever!  We're at six months and counting, and he still can't make it all the way to the afternoon.  This day in particular, he fell asleep on the cold, hard tile floor.