9 months

Ok, so a week after I said I'd have this up, here it is. Graham is .75 years old. LOL

At 9 months old, Graham:
drinks formula from a bottle
eats baby food and other table foods (yogurt, cheerios, small bites of "people food")
sleeps about 11 hours straight at night
takes 2 naps, usually totaling around 3-4 hours
is wearing mostly 18 months clothes
wears a size 4 diaper
wears size 12-18 mos Robeez (soft soled shoes)
has 4 teeth (love his buck teeth smile! - which I just realized I don't have a good pic of, so I'll definitely be trying to get one this week!)
crawls at lightning speed
pulls up on anything (moving or not)
can stand as long as he's holding onto something, even with as little as one finger
can say MAMA!!!
is still in desperate need of a haircut, but I'm not giving in just yet

Here are some misc. pics from the past few weeks. I haven't taken many pics, and I hadn't even looked at any of these until today. I wish I could say that I'll be better, but I have a feeling with the upcoming move, things are gonna get a lot busier before they settle down again. I'll do my best at keeping you all updated though!

My attempt at a mohawk on Graham. Looks ok from the side.


Not as great from the front. That boy has some CRAZY hair!


Noah pulls it off much better!


Can you see how pouffy his hair is in the back? This is what I had to work with! LOL




I loved this Cheerio yawn!


Erica as Snow White




Erica put this cardboard box on her leg and said she was a pirate! So cute! (and creative!)






I just love my little nephew Noah!


And yes we still have Natalie lol. She just didn't happen to make it into any of the pics this time. But not to worry, she'll have a whole post dedicated to her pretty soon for her 6th birthday! I simply can't believe my BABY GIRL is about to turn 6 years old!

And the pregnancy is continuing to go really well. I have had minimal morning sickness, but lots of fatigue. I'm hoping in a few weeks I'll get some energy back.

And make sure you don't miss the house post just below this one!

New House

It's almost ours! I dropped off the earnest money today and we'll sign the contract Saturday morning when Eric gets back in town (he's in Colorado for work this week). I cannot tell you how IN LOVE with this house I am. We looked at all the different builders in the part of town we wanted to live in, and we really liked a lot of the DR Horton floorplans. Once we saw this one in person, we knew it was perfect for us. There were 2 different neighborhoods we were looking in. In one, they only had 1 spec home (built by the builders to sell) in this floorplan, but we didn't like the location of it. So we would have to have one custom built, which would have taken a year since they hadn't opened up the next new section yet. In the other one, they had 2 spec homes in this floorplan, and we just fell in love with this one. It had a lot of upgrades that we probably wouldn't have sprung for, but that are so nice to have. It's 3224 sq. ft, 5 bedroom, 3 bath, with lots of space upstairs and down. It's in a beautiful master planned community, and in it's own little "no outlet" area, on the back street, so very little through traffic. I am not sure when the closing date is going to be, but I'd guess sometime in September. We are so excited to be getting pretty much our dream house! We plan on being in this one for a long long time.

Here's the front - they're not done with the landscaping yet


and here's the floorplan, though ours is a mirror image of this, and some things are different because of upgrades.

9 weeks

I had my 9 week checkup yesterday and Beat is still doing great! He's (no I don't know if it's a boy or girl, and I don't really have any feelings one way or the other, but I have found myself saying he/him all.the.time with this one and I've never done that before *shrug*) growing perfectly and my due date has been confirmed for Feb. 22 (though once I see the fetal medicine dr., they may decide I need to be induced at 38w again like with Graham, which would put him coming around Feb. 8). Up until about a week ago I was still feeling pretty good. I had a touch of nausea, but nothing too bad at all. I've been super tired though. Well in the past week, the nausea has been kicked up a notch and I've gotten sick a couple times, but this is still by far the easiest first trimester I've ever had *KNOCK ON WOOD*. I will go back for another check-up in 4 weeks and will probably be seeing my specialist around then, or soon after, as well. I am not *showing* per se yet, though the bloat and all that fun stuff has set in, so I'm sure it won't be long until I'm sticking out a little extra there. Although I joke that I think I'm still "showing" from Graham. LOL Stayed tuned tomorrow (hopefully) for Graham's 9 month update!

Birthday Parties

Kelly's Korner is hosting a Kid's Birthday Party Blog Carnival today. And oh how I love me some kid's bday party fun!

I love planning birthday parties. It would take me forever to go through all of my kids' birthday party details, but I'm just going to give the basic themes I've done for each one.

Natalie's 1st
Basic 1st Birthday Girl Theme
We had our family and a couple of her little friends over for food and cake and let her open her presents. I made her cake, which was in the shape of a little baby face that matched the partyware (I can't seem to find a pic of it online anywhere).



Natalie's 2nd
Friends Party - Backyard Beach Bash
I set up kiddie pools of water and sand for the kids to play in. I made her a sandcastle cake with the castle shaped pan, covered in crushed graham crackers. I gave away little sandpails filled with goodies to the guests.



Family Party - Princess
We had our family over for dinner served on pink princess plates. Natalie wore a princess dress and had a great time. My mom made the pink princess castle cake.





Natalie's 3rd
Curious George
We had her friends party at a Play Place, combined with her friend Jayden who was turning 2. I made little monkey cupcakes.





We had her family party at Willie's for dinner. They have a sandbox outside for her to play in. My mom made the monkey shaped cake.




Natalie's 4th
Friends Party - Pirates & Pixies
We set up the backyard with a kiddie pool for "Mermaid Lagood", a sandbox for "buried treasure" which had gold coins buried in it, the playscape was "the jolly roger", and we had a treasure chest shaped pinata. I bought a Tinkerbell cake from the bakery. I had party hats and made mini tutus and wands for the girls, and bought hook hands, eye patches and pirate hats for the boys.




Family Party - Cinderella
We sent out royal invitations to family and Natalie wore a blue princess dress. My mom made the blue/white Cinderella's castle cake.



Natalie's 5th
The Little Mermaid
We had her party in our neighborhood clubhouse. I had gotten a bunch of Little Mermaid and Nemo (for the boys) crafts and goodies from the Dollar Spot at Target. They decorated pictures and frames, ate lunch, broke the pinata, and had an Ariel shaped cake that my mom made. I made Natalie a custon Little Mermaid outfit to wear.





Natalie's 6th - Coming Up Soon!
Disney Princess
Natalie will be dressed as Sleeping Beauty (Erica as Snow White) and we're hoping her guests will be dressed up as well. We plan on playing a pin the tail game with princesses and a castle, pass the poison apple, and possibly musical thrones. The girls will be given wands and tiaras, and the boys will be give swords and shields. I've ordered a Sleeping Beauty cake from the bakery.


Erica's 1st
First Birthday Girl Theme
We had her party on Thanksgiving Day, and after our feast, we had cupcakes and opened presents. I made her a little pink cupcake dress just for the occasion.





Erica's 2nd
Elmo & Zoe
I rented a bounce house for the backyard and had an Elmo pinata. Natalie and Erica wore Elmo and Zoe tshirts. I made an Elmo shaped cake.




Erica's 3rd
Pablo from The Backyardigans
Graham was just weeks old when we did this party, so it had to be SIMPLE. We had the family over, ordered pizza, and had confetti cupcakes. We played "pin the bowtie on Pablo" and had a Pablo pinata.


Graham's 1st - Coming in October
Boys Little Cupcake 1st Birthday
As of now, I'm planning on having just family for a simple party. I want to do a giant cupcake shaped cake, with a smaller version for the smash cake. All blues/greens themed cupcake decor and a giant cupcake pull string pinata.

Life is busy

I know that I have several of you who have emailed me with questions about things that I told you I'd blog more about soon. I have just been so busy. Busy with life. My pregnancy is going well, I'm not too sick, but the fatigue is getting the better of me. I don't remember ever being THIS tired before, but I guess I've never been chasing around an 8 month old while pregnant either HA! I have a new business endeavor that I've been working on also which is taking up some of my time. We are trying to get our house organized and ready for a birthday party in a little over 2 weeks. THEN I'll be working hard on getting our school room in order so we can start school up again in August. All just typical life stuff, but it's kept me so busy that I haven't had time to work on those blog entries you were promised. BUT, they ARE coming, eventually... so stay tuned! I even have pictures on my camera that I haven't even had time to sit down and look at much less post!

Blessings

A few weeks ago I had a very funny conversation with Natalie. Out of the blue she says to me, "Mommy, I think you should have another baby."
"Oh, you do!?!" I say.
"No, actually I think you should have TEN more babies!"
"Ten babies! That sure is a lot of babies. I don't think I can take care of ten babies all by myself."
"You don't have to, I'll help you. I'll take five and you can take five."
"So when your five babies start crying at night, are you going to get up and feed them and change them?"
"YEP!"
"Well what if they all wake up at the same time, and you can't feed them all at the same time."
"I'll just give the other ones a pacifier until I can feed them."
"Oh, that's a good idea. But what if they don't like the pacifier, because they're hungry and they want milk?"
"Well, then I'll call you in to help."
HAHAHAHA

I told her that I most certainly wouldn't be having ten more babies, but that perhaps we'd have *just one more*.

Like, maybe in February. :)



I went to the dr. today and everything looks great so far. I am 7 weeks along and got to see the little heartbeat! The first thing I said when the screen came up was, "There's the heartbeat!", and since I'm due around Valentine's Day (my due date is Feb. 22), I think that "heartbeat" or "beat" for short, is a great nickname for this little one.

I am also going to add that this is the first time I've waited this long (almost a month) to share the news. I've had a lot of anxiety about telling everyone we're having another baby because there are some people in our lives that have made it very clear that they think we've had enough kids and that we shouldn't have anymore. We are VERY excited about this new baby and can only hope that our friends and family can be as well. We feel like each baby is a blessing, and we are thrilled that we get to add another blessing to our family.