Job!

Last week we accepted a job offer to work for Ernst and Young in Indianapolis in their tax division, a job that was at the very top of Gordy's wish list in terms of what he actually wants to do. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee! We're pretty excited, can you tell? I'm so proud of all the hard work Gord has put into law school and finding a job. After all, finding a job ain't so easy these days....

Way to go Gord!

Jack, 2 Years

JACK IS TWO, PEOPLE! Can you believe it?!?!  Man, there is so, so much I could say about our little Jack, there is no way I'm going to be able to write it all in this blog post. I wish there was some way I could just freeze him at this age, or at least be able to remember every single little thing about him. He's just growing up too fast, y'all.

Jack is the most polite two year old you will ever meet. He always says "bless you" after a sneeze, "excuse me" when he needs to squeeze by, "please" when he wants something, he'll shake your hand and say "nice to meet you", and most recently he's started saying "no thank you" when he doesn't want something. The other night in his sleep I even heard him whisper, "thank you, you're welcome" as he rolled over in bed. I have a pretty incredible little boy.

Jack has an AMAZING vocabulary.... And I'm not just saying that because I'm his mom. He speaks in full sentences like, "mom, I need to go outside, for just a minute, and play in the rocks". It's been really helpful to be able to communicate with him so clearly. He is such a bright boy.

Jack has a really funny sense of humor. He says things like "holy guacamole", "oh nuts", "what the heck", and "oh my gosh", and most recently "holy cow" and "holy crap" (that's one I'm not so pleased with and have no idea where he picked it up). He'll use them in the proper context, and he will never hesitate to tell you if something is "hilarious", "embarrassing", or "awesome".

Jack is so, so loving. He's always trying to give someone a hug or a kiss. We're gonna have to watch out for him when he's a teenager. He's particularly sweet to Charlie, always wanting to give him loves.  One night last week, while I was singing his bed time lullaby, he turned around, put both hands on either side of my face, looked me right in the eyes, and said "I sure love you, Mama." Oh my gosh, it was just one of those moments when your heart melts completely into a puddle.

Jack's most favorite thing to do in the entire world is swing at the park. A close runner up is going to the mall and looking at the puppies in the pet store.

Sometimes, Jack will open the fridge and drink straight from the bottle of lemon juice, while simultaneously trying to convince me that it's "too tasty".

Jack loves the color yellow. He loves even more when he can spot a yellow tractor or car while driving.

He is SUCH a smart guy. He can recite entire books and songs to me. He can count 1-11 without missing any numbers and he can sing the entire alphabet.

Jack is really into matchbox cars these days. He spends a lot of time lining them up in pefect little rows. When he does this, he says he's making "a parking lot".

Jack finally started watching movies. He just wasn't interested in it before, but have to tell you that it came at the perfect time for me. Judge me if you will, but Disney movies have done a lot of babysitting for me while I've been nursing Charlie or cleaning. Jack will go in phases where he only wants to watch the same movie over and over. First it was Tangled, he would ask for "the girl with long hair" all. day. long. He was stuck on that one for a long time. I think Gordy and I could quote that entire movie and sing you all of the songs. We got pretty sick of that one. It took some convincing, but he finally moved on to watching Mega Mind, then Up, and now he's currently obsessed with Shrek.

Jack's favorite foods are pizza, cherry tomatoes, black berries, french fries, mac and cheese, and ravioli or anything "noodles". Mostly kid standard foods. He's also been known to enjoy a good salad too, so I can't really complain. He really does love his vegetables and fruit. He'll even eat tuna and onions... He has a pretty sophisticated pallet for the two year old.

Jack likes for me to sing Angel Lullaby to him when he goes to sleep.

His favorite books are "One Fish Two Fish" or really anything Dr. Suess, "Where the Wild Things Are", and  "I'll Love you Forever". With a little prompting, he can recite almost every page back to you word for word.

He is CONSTANTLY on the go. I swear this kid has more energy than any other kid I've ever known. He's always so, so busy. Which makes for one tired Mama.

We're still having a little bit of an issue getting him to go to nursery by himself. He has pretty bad separation anxiety. It breaks my heart because I never want him to be scared, but I do want him to develop autonomy and be independent. It's a struggle that I'm still trying to figure out.

While we were at my parents house last week, and after getting out of the bath, Jack ran upstairs with no diaper on, and peed right off of the cat walk. Unfortunately, I was standing right under him, but he had his back arched in such a way, that the stream was flying over my head. That kid had a full bladder, and he got some distance on that stream... but at least that allowed me to run under the cat walk without getting peed on. Of course, I screamed. My dad, who was on the couch yelled "what is it?" and I yelled back "He's PEEING!!!!" So my mom, who was holding Charlie, ran out of one of the bedrooms and tried catching the pee in her cupped hands. The whole thing was a hilarious disaster. Every time Jack turned his back we were all laughing. Having a little boy is such an adventure.

Jack has started this screaming phase. It's not necessarily a tantrum, although he does do that too. It's more of like screaming for the sake of screaming, or just to hear himself do it. It's SUPER annoying and hopefully this passes soon.

Well, the next six months are going to bring some big changes with Jack. We're going to finally get rid of the binky, move Jack from his crib to a big boy bed since he will be sharing his room with Charlie soon, and hopefully we'll be getting him potty trained (fingers crossed).  Like I said, big things in store.

Jack is such a smart, sweet, and energetic little boy. I am so glad he is our first kid because I know that he will set an amazing example for his younger siblings. I am so excited to see what the future holds in store for Jack, I believe the world truly is his oyster.

Charlie 3 Months

Our little Charlie is three months old! He is such a sweet little guy and we are all so happy to have him in our family.

This month, Charlie rolled over from his tummy to his back. I love when babies do that. It's like they lift their big heads way up in the air, and it's too heavy so they just kind of tip over. It's so adorable.

Charlie has ALWAYS loved putting his hands in his mouth, but this month he has actually been watching his hands. It's so fun to see him becoming more aware.

Speaking of aware, Charlie is SUCH an alert baby. When he is awake, his eyes are always wide open and focused, taking everything in.

Charlie took his first plane ride. We went to Utah for Adam and Amanda's wedding, then to Florida for the reception, and then back home to Indiana. He was a champ the entire time.

Charlie is still a MARVELOUS sleeper. Usually he wakes up at about 3 AM and 6 AM to be fed. He falls asleep pretty much every time we get in the car. This kid loves to sleep. For instance, last week while we were in Florida, I put him in the car and drove 45 minutes to Gainesville, went to Target, and then went grocery shopping at Publix, drove 45 minutes home, unloaded the car, and ate lunch and Charlie slept the entire time. I'm tellin' ya, he's a great sleeper. Remember how I said that he was a champ on the plane? Well, he slept every leg of every flight. However, he is getting to that age where it's starting to be a little bit of work to get him to sleep.

Charlie is a very social baby. If you talk to him, he'll coo back to you every time. It is so dang cute.

Charlie has the sweetest shy little smile. As soon as someone pays attention to him, he's all smiles. I don't know if I've ever seen a more smiley baby.

Charlie is CONSTANTLY kicking and moving his arms around when he is awake. He has a ton of energy.

Charlie's other favorite thing to do is blow spit bubbles.

I think Charlie might be double jointed in his toes. He could seriously use his toes to pick up things if he wanted to. Sometimes, when I'm feeding him, I can feel his little toes grabbing my arm.

Charlie's eyes are getting more and more blue. I love that about my boys.

He still looks so much like Jack. If you were to hold a picture up of both of my boys at the same age you would think you were looking at two pictures of the same baby. You can definitely tell they are brothers.

I am so looking forward to this next month with Charlie. He already has such a sweet and bright personality and I can't wait to watch him grow and get to know him even better.

Halloween

This year, I agonized for weeks about what I could do for Halloween costumes for our family. Gordy agreed to dress up as long as he didn't have to do any of the work getting the costumes together.... I couldn't pass up the opportunity, but I also couldn't come up with any good ideas. So, I decided to just ask Jack what he wanted to be. His answer, a policeman.

Okay, we can work with that. I searched high a low for a little boys policeman costume and couldn't find anything in the stores, and online the cheapest one I could find was 40 bucks. No thank you. seriously, you'd think a policeman would be a more common costume, but it turns out that spiderman and the like are more popular these days.

Anyway, I remembered seeing online somewhere that someone dressed their baby up like a bag of money. So I thought, this is perfect, Jack will be a policeman, Gordy and I will be robbers, and Charlie will be our bag of money.

I made the boys costumes and I think they both looked so cute! It's too bad that I completely botched our robbers masks. You'd think I'd be able to cut two ovals out of a piece of black fabric, but no, apparently, I can't. So we ended up just wearing all black and explaining to everyone what we were. Oh well. Can't win 'em all I guess.

We went to the ward trunk or treat and Jack had the best time running around with all of the kids, spilling chili all over his costume, and saying "trick or treeeeeeeat" to collect his candy. For some reason, he only chooses the candy I would absolutely never ever choose... You know, whoppers and banana taffy and the like. Funny kid.

On monday, I took the boys up to the law school to do the trick or treating thing there. Charlie, of course, slept the entire time, so he never even made it into his costume because my plan was to dress him when we got there. After all, sleeping in a money hat can't be too comfortable... It was a good thing that Charlie was sleeping because Gordy had class until 5:30, so we were on our own for the entire trick or treat part of the night, and you better believe Jack was a handful. That's also why there aren't any pictures of the law school trick or treat...

Jack's costume was a big hit. Every door we went to he got ooh's and aaaahh's and he was just a doll when he would say "trick or treat" and "happy Halloween" to every professor.

After we did the trick or treating part of the night, there was a costume parade for all of the little kids. Jack won the best costume for the boys for the second year in a row. Proud Momma.

Then they had Aver's pizza for dinner in the students lounge, which Gordy was able to join us for. It was delish. I was so distracted by the pizza that I failed to realize that Jack ate four entire strawberries, green tops and all, while I wasn't paying attention. Oh well, more fiber I guess?

 This year we picked out the most GORGEOUS pumpkin at the farmers market. Instead of carving it, I decided it would be better to paint it, so that Jack could actually participate. He had so much fun. The entire pumpkin ended up green though because I have him green, and yellow, and blue paint, thinking that those were more boy-ish colors. I should have known better, and I should have known that all of the colors were going to mix together. Oh well. We had fun, and we had a fun green pumpkin.

Needless to say, we had a really great Halloween with our two boys. Holidays are so much more fun when you have kids.

Apple Orchard

A couple of weeks ago, the weather was absolutely perfect, so I convinced Gordy to drive us out to a local apple orchard so we could pick some apples. It's something I've wanted to do ever since we moved here... I'll be the first to admit the outing was a bust. The orchard was much further away than we anticipated, you couldn't even pick your own apples, and Gordy accidentally got shocked by an electric fence. Ouch. I should have done a little more research before we just hopped in the car. My bad.

But the drive was absolutely gorgeous and we ended up stopping by the most awesome park that is just outside of town. The last time we went to that park, was right when we moved to Bloomington and I was still pregnant with Jack.

Jack looooved it. There are several different kinds of swings that he thoroughly enjoyed and he kept calling the play structure the temple. Such a cutie pie.