8.03.2013

Tillamook Pleasure

We recently had the pleasure to vacation near Tillamook, Oregon for 3 blissful nights and 4 days.  I love the Oregon coast so very very much.  It was fun to be in a place where all the adults and children stayed in one house, which makes it a lot easier to hang out and chat because of BEDTIME!  The greatest gift a child can give to his mother.

Photo dump!


Sums up wake time with the kiddos
Henry when we said it was nap time


Char's first experience at the beach


We sorta did wheelbarrow races. Joshua Lutes won.


Again, the winner.
Football frenzy


Probably post one of the dance parties we had 4-5x a day
Aunt's are really the best
BFFs


Hens and Elliot helping Grandpa with the vacuuming

One of my favorite nights was our last, when we spent an hour recording all the family songs.  It's a Williams tradition that started with my Dad, who made up my Mom's song when he was out walking and knocking door-to-door selling books during their first married summer in Washington.  Josh thinks it's the best song, which is arguable cause we have such great lyricists in the family, but it is definitely the only "original" tune which certainly deserves a shout-out.
I love you Janny
Oh yes I do
Though skies are cloudy
It still rings true
One thing I know dear,
I know for sure
If I am lonely
Then you're the cure.
So cute.  Now, I intend to put all these priceless family heirlooms on a CD for the children to listen to, because I prefer the voices of my best sister/friends/family to the cacophony of a million scream-singing children.  Because now I'm a mom who listens to kid music in the car.



PS. I took this of my house one day to show Josh that I really did clean before the kids woke up and friends came over.  So you can see our house now before I move!


2.03.2013

Henry's Birthday #2

I gotta get this going.

Henry's birthday falls right after Christmas. Last year we celebrated with a baby little party where he got to eat cake and that was pretty much it.  This year I wanted to do something more fun and momentous and also didn't want to worry about it right after Christmas so I changed Henry's birthday to February 2nd.   And technically we still sang him Happy Birthday and he got a present or two on his real birthday, so he really had a couple different birthdays.  I think it all turned out great for him.  I don't know what we're going to do next year, but I think he'll be old enough to tell us what he wants.



Henry woke up to balloons hanging and laying all over the ground, and his door was covered in streamers.  He took them down gradually over the course of the morning.  We started the day with a present and played for a little bit.  Josh was sweet and played with Henry and did all his favorite things while I put together party stuff.  They went to the park and kicked a ball, played in the sand pit, built a fort at home, watched Wild Kratts, took a nap, and played in the bath.  We also spent all day talking about his birthday party when he would have friends and Grandma and Grandpa come over and play.  I decorated H's cake when he was at the park and found him a bit later like this:



Soaking it all in.

So anyway, back to the birthday party.  For the couple weeks before his birthday I asked him what he wanted at his birthday: trains, cars, trucks, or dinosaurs.  He loves every item on that list, but without fail every time I asked he wanted trucks.  He also had a love affair with Bob the Builder (hence the halloween costumes I shall post right now) so we decided to have a construction truck themed party.  Oh, and the real reason I was most excited about this theme was so I could build a cake that was supposed to look "rough".  Three cheers for avoiding fondant and weird shaped cake pans and a dozen different colors of frosting.




Halloween costumes.

Party decor!  It took a couple days of hardcore research aka Pinterest to decide what I wanted to do, and I put most of it together the two days before his "birthday".  I went to a couple different party stores looking for construction cones/party decor and was disappointed that what I found was either too expensive or didn't exist.  Ultimately, the dollar store was my perfect party store.  I found the cheapest balloons and toothpicks there, and was pleasantly surprised at the amount of construction themed things they had in the party aisle!  I found a bunch of small yellow cones and all the tiny little cones and signs are from the dollar store. 

Everything I served food wise was a Henry favorite.  He can eat an entire bag of Target popcorn by himself, he looooves Gingerbread men (thanks to Grandma Williams), can't get enough of strawberries and blueberries, orange cheese, and chiiiiiiicken (what he calls ham).  And he'll eat anything on a tooth pick.  I knew I picked right because as soon as the toothpick food was on the table, he got through about 1/3 of each plate before I cut him off.

 My new Washington bestie, Michelle, has two kids that are about 6 months older and younger than Henry, and they were our two other child attendants in an otherwise adult filled party.  The only activity I planned was a little construction "dig".  Basically a storage box filled with pinto beans and I hid a ball for each kid and a few other little cars/trucks, and little packages of gummy worms.  It went surprisingly well for three kids under 3 years old.  And now Henry always asks to play the fuuuuUUUuuun bean game.

 Fun presents!  You can see Henry running away from the cutest little sweater that Mallory and Joshua picked out for him.  He also got a train set, lawn mower, and some puzzles!  Henry only had one major melt down with kids playing with his new toys.  A serious success.
Last we ate cake and enjoyed time together. I think next year we'll try cake first presents second because the kids were zero percent interested in stopping to eat some cake.  Henry stayed still for 15 seconds to blow out candles and pose for 1 picture then ran off to play with his toys some more.  He had such a fun day.

We are so happy to be parents to this little ball of energy.  He is non-stop energy from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes down.  He such a good kid (or fears and respects me so much) as he actually will go down for bed and naps and has yet to climb out of his bed to avoid sleeping despite the fact I've witnessed him climb in and out of his crib.  He loves singing and laughing and being really really silly.  He always wants to facetime some member of our family, and will randomly remember different family members, like his uncle Brad who he kept saying will come to his party and it will be "fUUUUuuuuUUuuuUUUUN".  Brad didn't make it, but Henry did say he had "fUUuuUUN" yesterday so it was ok.  Henry loves to build things, and the floor is no longer a safe place for me because Henry now loves to wrestle and jump.

Well, naptime is over and Henry is currently calling, "Awake, Mommy!"  

10.04.2012

No more PAH in the house

BIG DAY IN THE CALVERT HOUSEHOLD.

Henry no longer uses his pacifier.


I've spent months (alright, years) worried about his pacifier.  Is it good? Is it bad? How am I going to get him to stop using it?  When do we start phasing it out? Am I going to be able to take it away? What happens if he goes to high school with a pacifier?  YIKES.

Then he got hand, foot, and mouth (again) and I guess using it hurts his mouth and he just stopped using it.  Hasn't even asked for it for 2 days.

I'll let you know if he needs it back, but I'm pretty certain we're just gonna ride this one out.  He can fall asleep without it.


YESSSSSSSSSSSS

10.03.2012

Baby D Birth Story: Charles Kent

Watching TV waiting for that baby to be born


Last pregnant picture of me ever taken.

First family of 4 picture
  I was so ridiculously excited that Baby D was born. Words cannot describe the feelings of seeing your baby for the first time. There's a baby. That I grew. For 9 months. I just spent 6 months in nausea with shooting leg pains and random RLS and lack of energy and moderately bad heartburn and then took a huge needle in the back and still felt pain and pushed this big little guy into the world And NOW I get to hold him. (cue lots of tears because it's not like I gave those up real fast or anything.) If you have had a baby maybe you'll know what I'm talking about. If you have not, I sound like a crazy person. I'm alright with that.

I mean, this little guy was definitely different looking than Henry. People explained to us how surreal it is that when you have a second baby, it isn't the same as your first/oldest/other baby. Sounds dumb, but SERIOUSLY it was weird. I mean, how many times do you experience the same symptoms and have the same "disease" but with a different outcome? How is it possible to produce a different human? Again, I sound crazy, but it's the truth. This baby wasn't Henry. He didn't have a cleft chin and he had bigger hands and feet. It was a completely different human. So strange and so perfect.

After I pushed Charlie into this world they whisked him away to clean him all up and I stayed in bed (obviously) and kept saying stuff like "OH GOSH I'm so happy to not be pregnant any more. Hallelujah!" and I'm sure I sounded ridiculous. I have video evidence that proves the fact.
Also, side note: If I ever have another baby I want to hold it as soon as it's born, barring any major complications. No clean up necessary.

It felt like it took way longer for the nurses to bring Charlie to me. I started to get nervous because of the horror story people sell about not bonding and breastfeeding NEVER WORKING because you don't immediately hold baby ASAP but I got him and he was the cutest and I loved him so much. It felt 100% surreal that I finally had this little guy.

It was wonderful to spend the evening snuggling and loving this little baby. I was also running on that last 1% of energy that seems to last foreverandeverandever and I finally had to crash around 10 and slept like a rock until 6 hours later when it was time to feed Charlie again. Breastfeeding went waaaaay way waaaay (like 100x) easier with Charlie than it did with Henry, probably because of experience and probably because Charlie is overall more patient and calm than Henry was. He ate really well and actually woke up and was cranky to eat, which was something I never experienced with Henry.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Breastfeeding tangent ahead.  Please skip if you desire.
 And if you are going to breastfeed please do yourself a large favor and get a prescription for Newman's Ointment which is a steroid/antifungal/moisturizer that is safe for you and baby and will prevent terrible infections and things that can make nursing way harder than it needs to be.

Also, my most important piece of advice for any mother who is planning on breastfeeding, MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A LACTATION SPECIALIST BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE HOSPITAL.
Breastfeeding will be harder than you expect and if you're like me you're going to wonder why the eff it hurts so much/if you're doing it wrong/if baby is getting enough milk. Even if you're confident with your skill, it's nice to go for the reassurance that your baby is getting enough milk and you ARE doing it alright. And it's reasonably priced, I paid $30 because insurance didn't cover it. end of advice. And of the weird breastfeeding tangent of this blog.









It was surreal to have Henry visit at the hospital. Honestly, it was really hard to reconcile his existence to Charlie's when I was in the hospital, away from Henry. When Gabbe and Duck brought him to meet Charlie it seemed like he couldn't have cared less about a) seeing us and b)seeing baby Charlie. He put up with it though, and was interested enough in all the cool machines to hang around a little bit.  It was sad to see him go, but the time we spent in the hospital really felt like a vacation, and we were treated good in there.


Henry's favorite hospital toy.

In all, Josh and I spent 2 days agonizing over Charlie's name.  In the end, Charles Kent won.  Charles because we liked the name and it fits with our other old man, Henry.  Kent because of a) my father and b)Josh's middle name (and simultaneously a family name) and c)It's a one syllable middle name.  Which I've got going on in my family, and I like the ring of a double single syllable name.  We picked his name the day we discharged, and hung out all day because we didn't have to leave until 6.  Abbey had Henry that night, so we were in no rush to get home, and ended up staying until around 6:30 because our nurse liked us and wanted to make sure we got dinner before we left.  It was sweet, and when we left I felt a little more prepared to do this crazy adventure all over again.

9.15.2012

Birth Announcement for Baby D

Alright, ya'll. Here are the stats on Charlie boy. It's been a million years since he was born and we figured we sorta missed the window on sending out birth annoucements...but I need one for Charlie's baby box, so here it is. Enjoy in all it's glorious internetness. And keep posted for the Baby D follow-up: The Birth of Charles Kent. It's coming. Love!


Calendar Date Boy Birth Announcement
Shutterfly has personalized baby birth announcement cards.
View the entire collection of cards.

9.13.2012

No Good Reasons

I have run out of reasons to delay this return to the bloggersphere.  We are officially moved in to our new apartment (minus a box here or there) and I have both boys in bed and have spent too many nights perusing Hulu to see what shows I should watch while I wait for fall TV to start up again, so....

We're Back.

I am re-capping the summer for my conscience with some pictures with captions.  The format will probably be terrible but once this is done maybe I can start the blogging with some current events.  


The size of my babies when we left.

Mal getting married and all

More wedding

So proud of our little girl.

Mal and awesome woman who made it all possible. (sort of...but seriously Alyssa is the best)

Cuter cousins could not be found

Working magic on the 4th of July

Fun with Gpa Williams

SLEEP!

Played with Alaina this summer.

Saw a deer in Grandma's backyard and it changed Henry's life

Also a sucker for Chevy's cause we ate there 5 times in 4 weeks.  Free dessert?

Watched lots of Olympics till swimming and gymnastics ended

The story of Kino's summer.

Oregon City Trolley

Henry at his cutest.

Went on a fancy date with Abbey and Jacob.  Also enjoyed living closer to them than we may ever live in our lives.

Henry starting to play with Charlie.  So sweet.

ANNIVERSARY GETAWAY HALLELUJAH. (3 years! Heaven and my first night away from children since Henry's birth!)

Melts your heart sort of.

Just hanging with the VS pink dog at the mall.

Yes I crafted this from a nail polish covered dark wood table.

Lots of walks with Grandma Calvert

Sleep!

Charlie super excited that Josh has a stethoscope. (so proud of Josh and that Med School has finally started!!)

Learned how to color.  Is allowed to do whatever he wants at Grandma and Grandpa's.

Aunt Nat the Great.

I will miss living with Nat...we'll be reunited at Christmas!

Henry is all about trucks, ALL THE TIME.