Kiddos

Hi Sissy!

All smiles!

Wave to the camera!!!

Cheesin' it up!

Eating cereal for the first time! Is that santa???

Yummy cereal!

Helping daddy change the brakes on his truck!

Hugs.

I got home from work today and went to change clothes. When I came back Brady had somehow gotten himself into Mackenzie's high chair!

Our Garden

We picked our first veggies today! Four little cherry tomatoes. There are a ton of green ones still on the plants. We also have several big tomatoes on the vine and a zillion cucumbers starting. We have probably about 20 different peppers growing and some radishes too!

Brady likes to help Jeremiah water the plants in the garden. The plant they are watering here is a cantelope plant. We have three cantelope plants with about 10 blossoms on them.

Mommy and Mack in the garden. She's getting so big!

Brady looking at the pepper plants. They're getting almost as big as he is!

Daddy and Brady by the cucumber plants! We're going to have a million cucumbers!

Watering the cucumbers.

Forgetfulness

Wow. We're having a really bad thunderstorm right now. It's lightning like crazy and raining really hard. So far I haven't seen any hail, but the news said it could be mixed in with the rain. During the last bad storm we had Jeremiah's truck got some hail damage. It was almost golf ball size.

Good news! Stacey found out today that she's having a little boy! It's her birthday so that's a nice present. She had been thinking it was a girl all along and was surprised to find out it is a boy, but she and Jeff are excited! I told her I have plenty of boy stuff to give her! I think I have about 12 rubbermaid tubs of clothes Brady has already outgrown!

I am so forgetful these days. I will be ready to say something and then when I open my mouth I forget what I was going to say. I was thinking about something while I was logging on here and now I am clueless as to what it was. My friend Gregory at work was eating lunch while I was today. We were in the breakroom and someone came in and interrupted me as I was talking and I totally forgot what I was going to say. Gregory was like, "Are you sure you're not pregnant! You can't remember anything!" The other day I was thinking of something I had to tell him and I forgot. I think it's mainly due to sleep deprivation. Last night the whole house was awake from about 3 to 6:30 a.m. Brady woke up like three times for who knows what reason and he couldn't go back to sleep. Lately he's been getting up and taking his nightlight out of the wall. We have been afraid he might try to put something in the socket so we got some of those things you can put in them to block it out and we decided to get a different night light. We thought maybe one of those battery operated tap lights would be cool so we bought one and put it in there. It only lasted like three hours. What a joke. I guess it's not meant for really long term use. I thought it would last a week or something. So I saw a nightlight at Target that has a long cord that you can plug in so I might get that one and plug it in behind his dresser and set the little light thing on the dresser.

Mackenzie has been having kind of icky poops from the antibiotic she is on for her ear infection and she hasn't been sleeping really well. She woke up once last night with a really nasty diaper so I think that was bothering her. Jeremiah and I were really cranky because we had gone to bed late after watching some television after the kids went to bed. That's the only time we can actually sit down and watch a show! So we were crabby, but at least we were crabby together, right?! I think this week I have only gotten about 4 hours of sleep each night and it is really catching up to me!

Both of the kids seem like they are doing a lot better since our visit to the doctor. Brady's nose has hardly run at all since he's been taking the allergy medicine and Mackenzie's has cleared up too.

This morning the babysitter had to run one of her daughters up to school to get her on a bus to cheerleading camp so I couldn't drop the kids off until after 9:30 so I took them up to work with me. The office ladies have been wanting to see them anyway so it worked out perfectly. There's this lady Kay who is hillarious. She is totally me in like 35 years! We both are obsessed with candy - especially black licorice! She's always pumping me full of sweets, which could be part of the reason why I still have not lost all my Mackenzie baby weight. So she has been wanting to see Mackenzie for a while and today she was so excited to see her. She wanted to hold her so bad, but every time she did Mackenzie started crying. When we first got there Kay said, "Oh my gosh, look at her legs! They're so chubby!" I told her Mackenzie didn't want Kay to hold her because she was being a meanie. When I was pregnant with Mackenzie, Kay told me my butt was getting really big. I told her Mackenzie remembers her from inside the womb and she's still mad at her for making fun of mommy! It was really funny. Kay and I joke around all the time. She's fun.

When I went to get the kids from daycare the babysitters house smelled kind of funny. I didn't want to say anything, but it smelled kind of weird and it was coming from upstairs. Sunni, the babysitter, clued me in. She said her oldest daughter was redoing the room of the daughter who went to cheer camp. She had painted it and taken everything out of it so she could shampoo the carpet. Sunni said her daughter had asked her where the shampoo was and she told her it was under the sink in the red bottle. Well, it turns out that there were two red bottles and she didn't really think about it when she used the Drano instead of the shampoo!!! Yikes. So that was the stinky smell! That daughter is 16. The one at cheer camp is 14. She's got another daughter who is 7 who loves Brady! Then she has her 2-year-old son, Xavier who is Brady's best friend. They are like two peas in a pod. They are exactly the same height and they do so many things the same! They love looking for bugs and goofing around!

Well, other than all that not much has been going on. I am off this weekend which is totally awesome since work has been kind of nuts with four managers out for a week. I don't know what we're going to do because Jeremiah isn't doing any off duty stuff Saturday or Sunday! I know we have to mow the grass and do some other stuff outside. I also need to change all the sheets and vacuum all over the place! The weather is supposed to be really nice so hopefully we'll be able to spend some time at the park or on the boat or something. If we take any pictures I'll be sure to get them on here sometime soon!

Have a good weekend!

More ear infections...

It's been a while since Brady has had an ear infection so it's Mackenzie's turn now I guess. We went yesterday for her four month visit and Brady's two year visit. He is growing good still. He's in the 55th percentile for both height and weight so he's pretty much average. Mackenzie on the other hand ... well, she's in the 90th percentile for her weight, meaning only 10% of other babies her age weigh more than her ... and she's in the 20th percentile for height. So she's short and chubby. I told my sister Jenn this and she said, "Welcome to the family, Mackenzie!" Ha ha ha. I thought that was really funny.

Mackenzie has an ear infection and she had some green goo coming from her one tear duct so she's on an antibiotic and some eye drops for a week or so. She seems like she is already feeling a lot better today! Oh, and she weighs 15 pounds 9 ounces and is 23 inches long.

Brady is 31 pounds and 35 inches tall...almost three feet! Wow! I think he is going to be taller than both Jeremiah and me. In child psychology in college they told us when kids are two they are half their adult height. He should be close to 6 feet tall by that theory. Anyway. He's pretty healthy, although he does have allergies, which explains his forever running nose. He's going to be taking Zyrtec now. He had his first dose last night and today his nose hardly ran at all! Other than that he has some bug bites that got a little infected. The doctor says that can happen easily. He recommended that for the first 24 hours after a bug bite we put Cortizone cream on it then Neosporin until it goes away. Good to know since we spend a lot of time outside now that it's warm.

Work is still crazy. Last night I worked until 3:30 a.m. Ick. Jeremiah's been pulling long hours...he had two 16 hour days last week. We have inventory in a few weeks so it's going to be crazy for me until after that.

Our garden is really taking off. One of our little cherry tomatoes is turning red! We've got a ton of peppers popping up and radishes too. All the tomato plants have a few on them, and our cucumbers and cantelope plants all have flowers on them so it won't be long before they come out! Our onions are doing well too.

Well, Brady's out of the tub so I need to help with bed time.

As if I don't work enough...

Ok, so I got done posting the last post and the phone rang. Any call from an 800 number at 11 p.m. is never good news. ADT was calling because the alarm at work was going off. I had to go up there and check things out. It looks like someone unplugged the extension cords that run through the lawn mowers outside, but I don't know if they took one or not. We have airplane cables that run through them too and it wasn't cut so either we didn't have the cable running through one and they took it, or they pulled the extension cords apart and when the alarm went off it spooked them. We'll find out in the morning when loss prevention reviews the video tape. One of the guys that works in LP met me up there but he didn't have his keys to the LP office so we just rearmed the store and went home. Good grief. It's midnight now. I'm going to finish watching SuperNanny and go to bed!!

Sleepy.

The other day Mackenzie fell asleep in her exersaucer. It was so funny. She was really tired when I put her in there, but she had been fighting sleep so I figured she could stand around a little. It was only like 10 minutes and then she was out.

Tonight when I was rocking Mackenzie she fell asleep. I was singing some songs and she put her hands over her eyes. I thought it was funny. I didn't know my singing was that bad! Ha ha.

We're watching an episode of SuperNanny that we taped the other day. I love that show. It's nice to know that other parents are going through the same craziness that we are going through!!! The episode tonight has a 3 year old boy, 4 year old boy and 6 week old twins. Yikes. They don't have a good routine so the toddlers get nuts sometimes. We don't have a set routine either so that makes a little sense.

Well, I have to work tomorrow...Day 6 in a row of 7. Tuesday I don't go in until like 9 p.m. I have to be there until 4 a.m. because they are stripping and waxing our floors. The kids go to their doctor's appointment Tuesday afternoon. Hopefully they will take naps when we get home so I can too! I'm off Wednesday, but I am going to take the kids up to the babysitters so that I can sleep and catch up from Tuesday night. I think I might just take a nap over in the display beds in home fashions Tuesday night too!

Tye dye

Brady and all the other kids at daycare tye dyed some t-shirts. When I went to pick up the kids all the big kids were wearing the shirts they made. Brady loves his!

Boatin and Swingin

I went to change Mackenzie's diaper Tuesday morning and while I was in there I noticed that Brady was being awfully quiet in the living room. I knew that meant one thing: He was up to no good. When we came out we found him like this. He had climbed up into Mackenzie's swing, snapped the tray in place and had even turned it on. He was just sitting there swinging. It was really funny, but I made him get out because the motor sounded like it wasn't enjoying his 31 pounds!

Mackenzie loved being on the boat for our dinner picnic last week! When we put the anchor down to eat we took her out of her life jacket. It says it is for 0-30 pounds, but it is really big and uncomfortable looking for her. She loved the breeze and the warm weather!

Sittin with Pop.

Brady loves the boat! He loves driving it and honking the horn.

Sweet summer time

Well, I have some pictures to upload, but I don't have time right now so they'll have to wait. I just wanted to make a quick update. Mackenzie is totally rolling over on her own now and sleeping on her belly because she loves it so much. I put her in the crib on her back like they tell you to and within a minute she's snoozing on her tummy. I think it's ok for babies to sleep on their tummies whenever they can get themselves over onto it...besides, how on earth could I keep her from doing it? It seems that sleeping on her belly helps her sleep better too. She's not eating in the night time anymore which means way better sleep for me. She still wakes up once a night usually, but we go in and give her the pacifier and she's out within seconds. I think she has trained herself to cry about it. We could probably break her of it and she would eventually go back to sleep if we let her cry it out, but I want to go back to sleep too so I just get up and give it to her!

Work has been insane. I'm in charge for the next two weeks because my boss is going to be getting married this weekend. There is so much going on and we are totally short staffed right now so it's a little nuts. I have today off then I'm not sure when my next day off is - I think a week from Friday. Ick. I told my boss I'm taking a 5-day weekend when he comes back. That will be nice.

Well, Jeremiah's on his way home and we have to go to the store when he gets here so I better run. I'll try to get some pictures on here sometime soon. I have some cute ones from our excursion out on the boat last week with the kids.

See ya!

Bites and ballgames

That big brown spot on my arm is the bruise from where Brady bit me Saturday when I took away Jeremiah's deoderant from him. People at work Monday thought I got hit by a baseball or something. I said, nope...Brady was just reminding me he is two.

So bedtime the first night in the big boy bed went very smoothly. Naptime the following day: not so much. He pulled everything out of every drawer, spread all his toys around the room and sat down to enjoy a good book. He even took his BMW initials off the wall! So now for naptime we set the pack-n-play up in his room. So far he hasn't figured out it would be a lot easier to climb out of there than it was to climb out of his crib!

The second night with the big boy bed and then again last night he slept on the floor next to his bed. What a goof.

Brady and Daddy had boys night out last night. They went to the T-Bones baseball game. Brady had a ton of fun, and I think Jeremiah did too! Brady got to see Sizzle the big cow mascot. He told me he shook Sizzles hand and said, "Nice to meet ya."

Boys night out tired everybody out. Daddy and Brady capped off the night with a good snuggle.

One day a couple weeks ago Brady and I sat down to have some cereal for breakfast. When all mine was gone I didn't think about it and I held the bowl up and drank the rest of the milk. Brady thought that was really cool so now every morning he has his cereal and then slurps out all the milk. I've learned not to get him dressed for the day until after breakfast because half of the milk inevitably half of the milk ends up down the front of him!

Everyone is napping now, but tonight I think we are going to take the boat out to the lake for a little bit. We might have a picnic dinner on the water! Brady loved it last fall when we did that. The weather is really nice today. The temperature is in the low 80s. Our Parents as Teachers lady came this morning at 11 so we talked with her for about an hour and Brady got to play with her toys. After she left we took a walk across the street to the water fountain park and playground behind the school. Brady wasn't too sure about the water fountains so we spent most of the time going down the slides on the playground. Of course I forgot to take the camera! Oh well. I took some cute pictures with my cell phone, but I don't think I have a way to get them on the computer.

Well, since everyone else is napping I might as well too! Mackenzie ate about 3 hours ago so I'm sure she will be waking up any minute so if I don't fall asleep quick I won't get a nap!

Pictures new and old

Wow, I didn't realize how long it had been since I uploaded photos until I went to put them on here this morning. Oh boy. Mackenzie has like doubled in size since I last put pictures on here of her! Well, here they are, enjoy!!!

Time for a big boy bed...

Playing hide and seek behind Daddy...

Reading a night-night story. This one was "Teeth are not for biting." A lot happened yesterday: Brady woke up and was fussy from the get-go. Then he bit me really hard during a temper tantrum and bruised my arm really bad. So I put him back to bed for an early nap and he slept for three hours! I guess he was pretty tired! Well, after three hours I heard him moving around and talking in his crib, but I didn't want to get him up too early and have him be all fussy again so I figured I would wait until he called for me. Well, all got quiet again so I figured he fell back asleep. Next thing I know about 5 minutes later I hear this clicking sound and I say to myself, "oh no." Keep in mind Brady had been in his crib for his nap. So I head back there and open the door and he is standing in the middle of his room where he points to his crib and proudly annouces: "I got out!" It was hillarious.

So after we spent the afternoon visiting with Aunt Stacey, Uncle Jeff and Melea, and their new puppy Mac, we were off to Nana Joyce and Papa Don's house. We went for a walk there to the park down the street and Brady had a ton of fun sliding down the slide and then climbing back up. He sure does love to climb! When we got home I quickly put together his toddler bed and took down his crib. While I was putting the bed together I had it on its side so I could attach the ends and Brady said he wanted to help. Next thing I know his head is stuck between the slats. Good grief. I had visions of the fire department coming to rescue my child from the toddler bed! Luckily we were able to wriggle it back out!

This picture was taken after he fell asleep last night. He didn't want to go to bed and it was pretty late since we didn't get home from Nana's until around 9. After books and bed time routines it was probably 11 before he settled down. I had put him in his bed the first time and he immediately jumped out and somehow got his door knob turned and came walking out into the kitchen. I put him back and I could hear him by the door for a little while before I guess he decided he should give in and hit the hay. We figured he would sleep on the floor or something, but he made it back to bed. I remember when Ryan was a little guy he used to sleep on the floor right behind the door a lot when he was first out of his crib.

This was a couple of weeks ago. Mommy and the kiddos! Brady loves playing with Mackenzie.

Mackenzie and Leapers at 3 months old. She's getting so big!

She likes to sit up a lot. This one is from about a week ago. I double stacked the boppies and propped her up in there so she could bat her Pooh toy around. I don't think Brady was able to sit like this until about 4 and a half months. She is pretty good at sitting that she can do it without the boppy for a good 45 seconds at a time before flailing over to one side.

Brady's birthday cake! Yummy!

After a long hot day he was down to just his diaper!

I love this picture. I was going through some hand-me-downs for Mackenzie that Stacey had brought over a couple weeks ago and Brady decided to play with some of the clothes...he put on a green sweater and zipped it up and threw on a stawberry floppy hat. What a goof!

Mackenzie LOVES the exersaucer now. She loves standing even more than she likes sitting, but all that standing wears her out!

Awwww. What a nice big brother.

While Rustin was in town for Brady's birthday he and Jeremiah fixed the leaky faucet in the bathtub. Brady helped.

Brady got a water table for his birthday. He absolutely loved it. He got soaked from head to toe!

Sissy hung out in her saucer during the party! She's still got blue eyes so far!

Brady drove Logan around on his little four wheeler. They had a lot of fun!

The dogs had fun too...chasing around all the kids. They took a minute to cool down in their pool.

One of the first times Mackenzie was in her saucer. Her feet barely touched the bottom. Now she can stand in there and push herself up. Look at her cute little shoes! She can finally wear newborn size shoes! She's wearing her 3-6 month clothes though cause she's still kind of chubby. She is getting longer though too.

The day before Brady's birthday Jeremiah had to work at the annual Turkey Creek Festival in Merriam so we went up to visit him and walk around the park. Brady thought it was fun to see Daddy in his police man uniform.

We got to see the tail end of the parade.

They had a petting zoo and Brady loved it! He got to pet a cow, a goat, and a camel; and he got to see a monkey, a turtle and some kangaroos!

Mackenzie and MeMaw.

Well, we go back to the doctor for Brady's 2-year and Mackenzie's 4-month well kid visits in a few weeks so we will see how big Mackenzie really is getting. I can tell she is a lot bigger though. I bet she probably weighs about 14 or 15 pounds now. She reminds me so much of Brady when he was her age, except she still has those baby blues. I think she may have a little more hair than he had too. It's so cute, it is starting to curl on the ends where it is long on top!

Well, I hope you enjoyed the pictures! I'll have to take some more and not wait a month to get them on here!

Updates

It's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. Really nothing unusual has been happening, just lots of working for us both. I finally have two days off in a row this weekend, but Jeremiah is working off duty gigs both today and tomorrow so we can pay for our plane tickets to Florida next February! I'm going to be spending the weekend cleaning the house. It gets kind of messy when we are not here that much.

Jeremiah has a cold trying to come on. Really I think he just has what Brady and I had a few weeks ago...a fever for 12 hours and then head congestion. He said he's feeling better today than yesterday so that's good.

Mackenzie is doing really good and sleeping a lot more through the night. She gets up around 6:30 a.m. now on average which is a lot better than 3:30! We've been putting a scoop of formula in her bottle before bed and it seems to be helping. I've been enjoying sleeping more than 4 hours a night!

Brady has been having a lot more fun at daycare and doesn't cry anymore when I drop him off. He's been in quite a mood today though. He has just been really fussy and throwing temper tantrums every two minutes. He bit my arm really hard and left teeth marks and a hickey on it. He had Jeremiah's deoderant and tried to suck on it so I took it away. He chomped down so hard when Jeremiah tried to pull him off of me he stuck. Finally he got him off. Now my arm is swollen and red and purple. Nice. When he got out of time out after that he still was fussy so we tried to have a snack which helped for about 10 minutes. Then he started throwing things around the room for who knows what reason so he's back in bed for an early nap. So far there's a lot of crying and jumping up and down going on in his crib and no sleeping. Oh well, he's going to stay in there whether he likes it or not. When I put him down in there I told him we were going to start today over! Hopefully he'll fall asleep and wake up in a much better mood.

I was going to take the kids over to my parents and to my sister Stacey's house today so we could see her new doggy, but I don't know if that is going to happen. We'll see how things go this afternoon.

Well, I'm about to cut my hair. I'm going to try not to because I want it to get a little longer first, but we'll see. It's hot and my hair is really, really hot. I pretty much have it up in a ponytail every day. The temperature in the building at work is set on 80 or something so it's pretty warm if you are moving around doing stuff. I am going to donate my hair to the Locks of Love but you have to have 10 inches in a ponytail to do it. I have that now but what would be left would be pretty short so I want it to get a little longer before I do that. If I got it cut now it would probably be an inch or two above my shoulder, kind of around my chin. Since Brady was born I have only had one haircut - last year on my birthday. I don't think my hair has ever been as long as it is now. It's like halfway down my back. I like it because I can put it up, but really it's so heavy and thick that I usually never leave it down. And I can't dry it because it would seriously take more than a half hour to get it completely dry. I have been trying to take showers at night so I can let it dry over night. Although it is so hot out yesterday I washed it in the morning and went to work with it wet...by the time I got there it was nearly dry. I put it up when I got there anyway so it didn't matter.

Well, I am going to try to get the dishes done and the living room cleaned while Brady is in his room. He likes to "help" do the dishes but usually I end up with more dirty ones that way because he gets them out of the dishwasher and plays with them on the floor! He's funny when he's not being a crabby patty.

Oh - one more thing...our garden is really taking off. We already have some strawberries growing and some onions coming up. We also have some radishes starting to poke out of the ground and some tomatoes forming. We've had a ton of rain lately so it's been helping. I told the babysitter it's a good thing she likes tomatoes and cucumbers because I'll probably have a ton to bring her all summer...we planted 4 cherry tomato plants, 2 regular tomato plants and 4 cucumber plants! Last year we only planted two cucumbers and we had them coming out our ears!

Well, I'm off to clean!