Family of 4 Vacation

                               Los Angeles Trip

We recently took out first vacation as a family of 4. We had traveled to NY and LA with the kids separately so this was a new adventure for us! We visited my brother and his family in LA for several days. Our big concern was how Amber would do on the airplane. I flew with her back in May when she was 8 months old and it was tough. She did not want ot sit still and I had to put on quite the dog and pony show to keep her entertained. I was worried because she is now several months older and really hates to sit still.
   We knew if we provided Nathan with books and a DVD player he would be fine.
   We got to the airport pretty early and ended up walking right through security; therefore we had some time to kill before we boarded. Nathan looked so cute walking around holding mickey and pulling his Thomas the Train rolling backpack. He did not want to put the backpack down!

 The kids did pretty well on the plane. Luckily it was not a full flight, so no one was sitting in front of Nathan to complain about him raising and lowering the tray over and over.
  Amber fell asleep for about an hour and really did pretty good for the majority of the flight. As long as she had her lovie and paci she was easily calmed.

 

She is really into books right now, so she was content reading them over and over.  This is the 1st time I have flown with Nathan since we had to buy him his own seat (He has flown with my mom a few times in the past year) and it was much better than when he had to sit in my lap!
    He is really into Mater (from Cars) right now, which is humerus because he has never seen the movie before. He has several books about Mater,so we figure that is where his fascination comes from about Mater. Anyways, our plan was to let him watch Cars for the 1st time on the plane. He has never seen a "real" full length movie before, he only watches Veggie Tales, Clifford or Mickey Mouse. We figured this would be a huge treat and keep him occupied for most of the flight.

 It was so interesting, when we turned the movie on he kept asking for Mater, so we fast-forwarded to when Mater enters the scene and then after about 15 minutes he asked to watch a Veggie Tale. So funny! At least I had brought several Veggie Tales with me!
  I had brought popcorn for us to munch on the plane and that was by far his favorite part of the flight. (once we were in the air and he could not see airplanes anymore)

 We arrived on Thursday evening and spent the night in an airport hotel. My brother and my niece (Maeva) came and picked us up the next morning. It was so good to see them again. Nathan and Maeva took right to each other again. We headed to the beach to ride bikes alongside the ocean. However plans changed and we ended up walking along a pier. We then were going to let the kids "dip" their feet in the ocean. Ummmm......Do I KNOW my child?? Telling him he can only put his feet in the water is like telling a starving man at a feast that he can only have a cracker!! I SHOULD have known better. I pulled out my camera to take a few pictures. As I turned around, my son takes off running into the ocean, just as the current was pulled back so before I got to him a wave came crashing down on top of him. Needless to say my camera went into the water as I was rescuing him and took it's last picture..so sad. I now had no camera on the 1st day of our trip.

 

Below is the last picture on my camera before it met its end. Thankfully, my sweet sister in law had an extra camera I was able to have so I could continue to take pictures!

 



 

 

 



 

Saturday morning we decided to take the kids to Griffith park to ride horses. However, we could not leave until the cement truck arrived! My brother is having big renovations done to the house and the kids were very excited about getting to see the big truck!

   Nathan is into truck of all varieties right now, especially the trash truck, so he was quit mesmerized by the cement truck!

 

After the cement "show" we headed to the park.

Maeva and Nathan rode in the jump seats that are in the back of my brothers Tessla. They had 5 point restraints, and were riding backwards, so I feel it was much safer than a car-seat. He had them specially added to the car and I think they are a nice touch!!!!!

Maeva insisted Nathan needed sunscreen, and that she should be the one to apply it! It was adorable!!!

Of course, he needed some on the back of his neck too! He stood very still for her to grease him up.

 

There are 4 different speeds of horses for the kids to chose from, to ride. 1st you have your starter pony that just walks around in circles. Then you have your walking only pony but he is outside of the circle. Next you have the fast Pony that you have to be 3 years old in order to ride. Then you have horses that gallop and you have to be 7 years old to ride those.
  Last year, Nathan rode the walking only pony but we could tell he wanted to ride the fast ones (that was Dan's assessment!!). Maeva was not fond of any of the horses last year.
 This year they both were so big and brave. We fudged a little on their ages so they got to ride the fast ponies! They loved it! Maeva's head just bobbed up and down!

          Maeva did look little next to all the "big" kids who were riding the fast ponies!  After the Pony's we rode the little train.  We wanted to play on the big playground afterwards, but it was pretty hot outside.

 

Amber got to ride the ponies too!

 

On Sunday, we went back to the beach, since it was evident my child really wanted to play in the ocean! We drove to Santa Monica beach and played in the water and sand for awhile! Nathan loved the ocean. I was afraid he was going to have a big meltdown when it was time to leave, but thank goodness he was pretty cold from the water so he more than happy to be wrapped in a towel! He ran in and out the water, over and over again! He was so happy!

 

Maeva loved being in the water as well. It was fun to watch the 2 dad's with their kids out in the ocean!!

Amber enjoyed the beach, however her favorite part was eating the sand!! She and her aunt enjoyed sitting under the umbrella playing with sand toys!

Maeva loved building sand castles with her daddy and Amber "helped" by destroying them!
I did let Amber put her feet in the ocean but I was afraid it was too cold for her to be totally immersed. When I put her down on the sand she took off crawling right into the water! What is with my 2 kids??? Do either one of them understand the high drowning risk of just taking off into the water? Although, I am thankful they do not fear the water!

Amber got mad at Uncle Joseph because he was trying to prevent her from snacking on the sand.

This was our only family photo of the whole trip. Oh well, at least we got 1!



After we pulled the kids out of the water we buried them in the sand. Not only did they think it was a fun game but it helped to warm them up. Nathan was literally shaking and very mottled looking. Maeva made sure Nathan's feet were covered with sand!

A little cousin down time after a busy morning at the beach! They both were in a little Veggie Tale trance.

Amber says "Wait, I want to watch too, and I want to hold the DVD player all by myself while chewing on the screen". Needless to say, she got evicted from the movie watching party!

 


On Monday morning we said good-bye and headed to the airport. Aunt Lorraine and Maeva left early for work and school and then my brother took us to the airport....in LA rush hour traffic, BLESS him!

I tried standing on my head while dancing to get them all to smile for a cousin picture, but at least they were all looking at the camera!

   Overall, we had such a fun and successful 1st family vacation. I look forward to the many more vacations and travels that we will make together as a family!
   

August update

We have been enduring the awful Texas summer heat the last few months! I still don't know why we live here when we both hate the heat so much!

We have been creative in finding activities that don't require too much outside time, which is hard since both our kids LOVE the outdoors. It is so hard when it is 80 degrees at 7am and 100 degrees by noon. All that to say we have stayed creatively busy!

 

One of the kids favorite indoor summer activites is to play in each others cribs. It is so funny. Some days they will play in Amber's crib and other days they play in Nathan's. This entertains them for over 45 minutes! They both laugh until Nathan gets a little too rough with sister, then we call it quits.

 

 We were invited to Nathan's friend, Davin, (Da-do is what Nathan calls him) birthday party. The kids had so much fun painting and playing with bubbles. I had not been brave enough as of yet to let Nathan paint, so I was curious to see how he would do with it and what he would do with paint. He really liked it! He was kind of a neat freak about it. He did not like getting it on his hands or body, unlike Davin, who was covered!! He loved picking out different colors and mixing them together. He stayed interested in it for about 20ish minutes. He also had fun "painting" on Davin!

 "I'm supposed to paint my friend's back right?"

 Sister's favorite part was the bubbles! The girl loves watching and pointing at bubbles! Another fun indoor activity.

 

Last weekend I took the kids down to Houston to visit my Grandparents. Dan had to work, so I drove with my mom. We had a nice visit, as usual! I Love going to Houston. There is just something calming and memory invoking about visiting and spending time with my grandparents! They are such amazing people and have played such an important role in my life, I try to visit as much as possible! The kids love them too! Nathan started saying "pop" for my grandpa this visit! Nathan loves older men.

We went swimming a few times at the neighbors pool, and surprisingly Nathan did not want to get into water. Amber loved it, she is a little swimmer girl!

 

 We went ot P.F.Changs after church and Amber tasted her first baby back rib!!

 

 
 Amber was sharing her carrot with Tracy. The kids love the dogs and have never been afraid of them, which I am so thankful. We also went to the park and fed some baby ducks and turtles. They were all so hungry. One duck was eating bread out of Amber's hand and off her leg. She was laughing, it was so cute. OF course I didn't get a picture.

 

 
One of Nathan's favorite things to do at gram and Pop's is to take a bath in their jet tub! He could spend all evening in there playing with the jets and bubbles! The kids are doing better about tolerating the car drive back nd forth from Houston. Amber still gets a little fussy after a few hours, but overall the do pretty good!

 

 We went to Lowes the other day and they both were having so much fun together in the cart. Amber was just holding on to her brother's leg the whole time...SO CUTE!!

We had another speech evaluation for Nathan this past week. He is already receiving services from ECI which is the state funded program and it is well.....state funded. They do a good job but we wanted a second opinion on his "diagnosis" and we were concerned they wer not being aggressive enough in his therapy. We had him evaluated at the Callier Communication Center. The speech Therapist there told us he does not have Apraxia, which was our concern, and that is a huge blessing. She said he just has speech delay and would benefit from aggressive speech therapy. By aggressive, she said 2 times as week would be sufficient. Unfortunately insurance will not cover the therapy so it will be an out of pocket expense..Yikes! Yes, it will be an expense we did not anticipate but we feel it is worth it. Nathan is making so much progress each day, we want to help in any way we can.

I would say he has really started to say more words in the past 2 weeks. He parrots the last word of a sentence quite regularly and attempts a ton of words now. He is still leaving the ending off most words but we know what he is trying to say.

I can't believe he is 2 1/2 already. He continues to be a sweet boy. He is a pretty compliant child and we don't have too many discipline issues with him. He still gets time-out for taking toys from sister or telling us no (with attitude). HE is still more of a passive child. HE has started "jumping" recently and still LOVES music. He calms very easily with certain music, which is a blessing when I get stressed from his whining. I just put on that music and he will just sit and listen to it or pick a book and flip through it while listening to his music.

HE is starting to "play" with Amber and they are taking more interest in each other, which has been great fun to watch. He trys to get her to chase him! They laugh at each other more now too!

I will post an 11 month post about Amber soon. I am a little behind. It is hard to find the time to blog between taking care of kids, the house, working, working out and being a wife. I never realized how much juggling I would have to do!



July happenings

Time keeps marching on.

 

Amber is 10 months old now and continues to be a very active baby! She is a fast crawler and is pulling up on EVERYTHING!! She has started walking behind her push toys and when we hold her hands. I am sure she will start cruising around the furniture soon.

She is still a terrible napper and pretty inconsistent sleeper at night. I have a feeling that is just going to be a part of her personality....not needing as much sleep as her parents or brother!!!

We had Amber dedicated at church in a smaller fashion. We go to a large church and Dan and I have been attending the traditional service since they started it. The traditional service is much smaller (300?), meets in the old chapel, has piano only for music and is apprised of people wise in age!

Needless to say we bring the median age of the congregation down a bit, but we love the service and the people!

Dan has been attending a different Sunday School class while I work in the nursery. Most of the members of his class attend the traditional service. They all were so faithful to pray for us when Amber was born and we were unsure of her medical issue and scared.

We made a special request ot have her dedicated to God in this service as opposed to the dedication they have in the contemporary service with the pastor and 20 plus babies.

They agreed and it was a very special time for us.

 The "pastor" who lead the traditional service gave a humbling and personal charge to us as parents on how to teach our children about the Lord God everyday.

We feel blessed to belong to our church and the fellowship and relationships we have there.

 

 Since we live in Texas and the coolest temperature of the day is maybe 79 degrees and that is at 2am, we have been spending a lot of time playing in water!

Now that Amber can stand so well, she loves to splash in the water table. Of course, when Nathan sees the table he wants the pool out. How can I resist, I mean it's too hot to do anything else!

 As soon as she "stole" the hose from brother she tried to drink from it. Of course she sputtered and coughed, then she just laughed and went right back to trying to drink from it again..sigh....I guess she doesn't learn to well from her mistakes!!

 I was tired the other day (Amber had been up several times at night) so I laid down on the couch in the playroom while they were playing. I guess Nathan thought it was a game, because he came right over and climbed up on me and pretended to be "sleeping". It was really cute! I of course enjoyed the cuddle time.

 My mom purchased a Dallas zoo pass for the year. She takes them alot, but this was the 1st time I had been in a long time. I have a pass to the Fort Worth zoo, but I really like the Dallas zoo better. They have an amazing children's area at Dallas zoo complete with a little "river" for kids to splash and walk in. That was Nathan's favorite part. I even let sister crawl around in the water and she was happy as can be, I just didn't capture it on camera.

Nathan loved watching the penguins (he is really into penguins right now) he calls them "oon-gaa's"!

 

 Amber and I on the elephant.

 

 Amber's new favorite thing to do is to take a walk with her daddy in the backpack. She just smiles and babbles thes whole time!

 Our neighbors tree came tumbling down in a storm a few weeks ago. Dan decided to clear it out for them while they were gone for the day and of course Nathan got to help!

Don't worry, those are safety goggles, Dan does not normally wear them!

He was so cute following Dan around and "helping" him move branches out of the way. The chain saw was a little loud for Nathan so he got to wear his daddy's ear muffs. He loved wearing them!

He really loves helping Dan with projects. He stayed outside in the heat with Dan for well over an hour, just watching him and "helping"! Such a daddy's boy! I am so thankful to have a husband who can teach our children a plethora of life skills such as this and show them what it means to serve others, even if we get no recognition or reward for it. Such wonderful lessons to learn at a young age!

Little Crawler

9 month old crawler!

Amber turned 9 months the last week in June.

Her stats:

Wt: 18 lbs 3oz - 50%

Ht: 80%

 

She started crawling on Father's Day and has gotten progressively faster at it! The game has certainly changed around here now that she is mobile. She was hesitant about crawling on the tile which helped contain her in certain areas of the house. However, a few days ago she realized the tile was not bad and now crawls on any surface!

2 days ago she started pulling up to standing! I mean she has only been crawling for 2ish weeks! And, to top it off  TONIGHT, she crawled up onto the fireplace!

We are in trouble!!! What a totally different child from Nathan. If you remember, Nathan never crawled so we could leave him in 1 place and he would stay there. I am not used to having a fast crawler around. Yesterday I put the 2 of them in the play room while I started lunch and Amber crawls into the kitchen and under the table to eat the crumbs on the floor from breakfast.

Here is the little mover at 9 months. She is such a beautiful baby! I love all of her facial expressions, laughs and squeals! She is a much more personable baby, as she smiles, laughs and interacts with people so easily!

               I have not taken enough pictures of her crawling so this is the best that I have to show.

 



 

She is a very happy baby! She has quite the little personality. She talks very loudly and it into everything. Her favorite "game" is to take any toy her brother is playing with and chew it. He is not a fan of this game and we have started dealing with working on sharing and not "harming" your sibling, even if she takes your favorite ducky!

 

 

She is doing much better about sleeping during the night. She usually will sleep from 8:30pm to about 5:30am, when she wakes up, drinks a bottle and then goes back to sleep until about 7:30.

She is still a bad napper, but that is partly my fault because I never got her on a good nap schedule.

With Nathan, my whole day revolved around his nap schedule, but now since I have 2kids, Amber odes not get the day revolved around her. Some days she takes to naps, other days she takes one.

My least favorite day is when they are on TOTALLY opposite nap schedules os I don't even get 5 minutes to my self without one of the awake. But, at the same time, when they are on opposite nap schedules I get to spend time with each child individually and I love that time.

She is not a good eater unless she is feeding herself. We can not get her to take more than 1 or2 bites of baby food. However, if you give her chunks of bread, apples, eggs (or broccoli!) she will happily feed herself. She does not actually eat that much of it, most of it ends up in her lap. I am not sure how to get more solids in her, since she does not eat much. She is still dependent on her bottles. At least she is experimenting with a plethora of different foods. She loves to gnaw on apple slices and I give her those most frequently because they are the easiest to clean up.

 

 

I have a feeling that she is going to be walking before we know it!

It amazes me how different 2 siblings can be at such an early age! They are quite opposite, although they do have some similarities. The biggest difference between them is just the age at which they accomplished gross motor skills. But I guess it is to be expected that the younger sibling will catch on sooner since they have an older sibling to watch. They both like to be outside and to swing! We spend a lot of time during the day swinging! They both love their cribs, as they sleep well in them and enjoy just playing in thier cribs. We never use their cribs as time-out or as a punishment, so they only have positive views of them. I guess that they feel safe in there?

They both are water babies too! Now that it is summer we have the pool blown up and in use most nights! Amber will just splash....however, tonight she tried to stand up on the side and nearly fell out onto her head, that girl!!

They both are at fun ages right now but I am still learning to appreciate all the small things! Some days I feel like all I do is clean up their messes and deal with meeting all their needs. I find it hard to find joy in those days, but as the Steven Curtis Chapman song says "Do every little thing to the Glory of the ONE who made you", and I am really trying to do that, with the Lord's help of course!!

Other days, it is easy to see that I made the right decision to only work part-time so I can relish all the little laughters, smiles and memories. On those days, the seemingly mundane tasks are enjoyable.

 

May happenings

 May was a busy month for us!

This little girl turned 8 months old and is so close to crawling. She is able to go from any laying position to sitting and crawls backwards. She is a very smiley baby and quit the babbler.

I am very excited for the crawling stage since Nathan never crawled I feel like we missed out on a fun milestone.

She is eating more solids now, however she is not tolerating yogurt, so I hope that does not mean she still has a dairy intolerance! She loves in the high chair and gnaw on a cracker while we eat. She also is obsessed with her sippy cup! It is hilarious to watch her when you put the cup in front of her. You would think we had never given her a drink in her life!! She likes to chew on Nathan's feet/toes and thank goodness he finds it funny.



 

I took my yearly New York trip with my mom this past month. I brought Amber along this time. We had a fun time, however the weather was not cooperative. It was in the 40's, rainy and strong north winds....at the end of MAY!! We made the best of it and were still able to do lots of shopping!

My sister lives on Long Island, so she came into the city and took Amber back to LI with her for 2 days. That way my mom and I were able to go see a few shows and shop without having to worry about Amber.

We saw "Nice work if you can get it" and "Cinderella" this time around. They were both fun, light-hearted and entertaining musicals! We had seats in the front for "Nice work", and it was so fun to get a different perspective by sitting that close up.

ON Sunday we took the train to Long Island and spent the day with my sister. We went to the beach after stopping by a farm that is known for their homemade pies!!

 



I was bad about taking pictures, but here is one of us on the 1st day, braving the cold and rain! Amber never complained (cried, fussed) once! She was telling us that she is a born New York girl! It has been a tradition in our family since I can remember to take a girls yearly trip to NY. I look forward to Amber being able to join in on the fun as the years go by!

 

I don't have any pictures, but Dan and Nathan had a really goo father/son weekend while Amber and I were gone! Dan was so creative and had different activities planned for each day. They went tromping through 2 creeks and found bugs, trash and mud! They had a camp out in the living room, they went swimming at the city pool, they had a flashlight adventure 1 night, they washed the cars, went for bike rides and more!! I don't think Nathan would have noticed if I never came back!

Dan is such a wonderful daddy and I am glad they had such a fun weekend together.

 We have hit the beginning of the hotness of Texas summers which means we will be spending most of our time in some form of water. Either the city pool, backyard pool or sprinkler.

They both love the water, but what little kid doesn't?

 Nathan loved to run between his big pool and sister's baby pool.

 

 

Nathan's new favorite thing to do lately is to wear our shoes. It is so funny. He will run into our closet in the morning and pull out different pairs of our shoes and wear them around!

During the day he will sign for me to take off my shoes so he can wear them around the house.

 He has a little room to fill to wear daddy's shoes

 

 



 Amber is now big enough to ride in the bike trailer. They both enjoy bike rides, but Nathan misses getting to ride on the back of the bike. He was too tall, his legs would not fit anymore.

 

And my new favorite picture to end!

 

 



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