Busy, busy, busy

This is a busy time of year anyway, but with three family birthdays, Halloween and Thanksgiving in the space of 6 weeks, it's an especially busy time in our household. I joked with Gerry that I was pretty sure that from now on, my birthday (the last of the family birthdays) would be on the brink of being forgotten! It's just hard to get excited to plan one more celebration when we've already had the two most important birthdays in our family just weeks before!! :-)

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had my parents and later in the evening, my brother over and were also able to share the day with our good friends Dave and Emily. Gerry and Dave went out in the Zodiac and caught six crab which we cooked up for dinner in addition to the regular Thanksgiving turkey feast! Emily and Dave are expecting, so it was fun for Gerry and Dave to get some guy time, while Emily, my mom and I had a great time talking pregnancy and babies.

Reed has finally gotten to the age where he likes showing off for people! He spent much of the day yesterday leading Emily and Dave around the house to show them various household attractions, but especially his car bed!

Spring is cooing and smiling more and more! I LOVE it!! We're still getting her bed time needs figured out. For example, last night was fairly teary, but tonight, no tears at all!

All smiles

Well, I thought I may have seen a smile two days ago, but yesterday, I was sure, Spring is smiling!! We've gotten lots of dreamy smiles already, but yesterday she was nursing, and pulled away and gave me several great big, wide awake smiles! It melted my heart!!! And to go with the smiles yesterday, I got a couple of cooing noises. So exciting! :-)

And, I've been able to get Spring to sleep in a co-sleeper for at least part of the night for the past few nights. It's taken me a while to figure out how to get her to sleep since it's different from how Reed would go to sleep, but I think we're finally making progress. I thought we might be heading toward having a colicky baby since for several nights in a row, she would cry for at least an hour, usually more, before bed time. We've learned that she really needs to be close during that time, so I put her in my wrap, and she's a whole different baby. She still cries a bit, but nothing compared to the nerve-wracking hours of crying we had before.

And a fun Reed story. Reed and Gerry were playing in Reed's room a few days ago, and Gerry was pretending to sleep in the rocking chair. I gave Reed a mischievous suggestions, something like, why don't you go tickle Daddy while he's sleeping. But even with that suggestion, what does Reed do? He gets blankets to cover Daddy up!! He really likes taking care of people and things right now. He's been trying to nurse his animals (or minimohs as he calls them) and yesterday, he tried to put on the wrap to carry around his dinosaurs! He's such a sweet little boy!!!

This picture of Reed is unrelated to my post. He's showing what a messy snack freeze-dried blueberries can be!

Happy Birthday Roo!!

Yesterday we celebrated Reed's second birthday! I can't believe my little boy is two years old already!!

We started the day by taking the ferry to Seattle and going to the aquarium.

It was Spring's first ferry ride!

Reed had a ball at the aquarium, especially splashing around in the touch tanks!

When we came home, we had dinner, and Reed got to help decorate his birthday cake. Here Daddy and Grandma show him what licking the beaters after making frosting is all about!

Putting sprinkles on the cake was fun, but it required constant vigilance to make sure that the holes were not getting clogged with frosting!

Unlike last year, Reed thought that cake was a wonderful food! "Seriously guys, why don't we have this everyday?"

Picture time

So it has been brought to my attention that we need more pictures of Spring on the blog, so here you go!

Spring is doing really well! Our goal with her right now is to get her to sleep in the co-sleeper (a type of bassinet which is more like a side-car for our bed). Since day one, she has refused to sleep for any prolonged period of time in any place other than on a person, which means she's been spending the night in our bed. I'm not opposed to bed sharing with my babies, but I'd be more comfortable if she'd spend at least some part of the night in her own space. Last night, we had our first little victory when she slept till 1:30 in her co-sleeper! Woot!!

Spring giving us a dream smile!

Grandpa and Spring.

Trick or Treat

I love halloween, it's the only day of the year that you get to dress your kids up in silly costumes, and parade them around the neighborhood. Granted, WE do this several times a year anyway, unlike normal people...

What you see here, is the rare Northwest Growling frog. We tried to teach Reed to say "Ribbit", but anytime we asked him "What does a frog say?" he would growl... too cute! Spring had a good time too, bundled up next to nice warm Mommy, under her coat.

-Gerry