Lainey Reese 2.5 Years

Look who is 2 1/2! This pretty girl!

Lainey is playful, silly, affectionate, curious, and determined. She keeps us busy chasing her around all day and picking up the trail of toys that she leaves throughout the house. 

Lainey girl is so affectionate. She loves to sit in laps, give hugs and kisses, be tickled, tackled, and gotten. She especially loves babies and will give lots of hugs to any baby she sees.

Lainey shares a room with Cambry and they go to bed around 7:30 or 8:00pm. Sometimes it takes Lainey a while to fall asleep. She wakes up around 7:30am. She takes a nap at 1pm each day, and it usually last 1 1/2-2 hours. 

Cambry and Lainey play with each other more and more. Mostly it is running around the house chasing each other and giggling. They like to lay in Cambry's bed and act silly while we read and do our night time routine. 

Lainey likes baby dolls and enjoys pushing them in the stroller and pretending to feed them. She likes pretending to be on the phone, and likes unloading and loading things. But mainly the unloading.

She likes books but doesn't always like for us to read the words on the page. Especially if there are a lot of words she gets super impatient and tries to turn the pages quickly. She seems to enjoy the pictures better when we point out everything to her.

Lainey also loves water. Standing on the stool at the bathroom sink washing her hands is a favorite activity. She loves baths too. One day I gave her a bucket of water and some cups outside and she was entertained for a long time. I am eager to see if she likes splash pads this summer.

Although Lainey is a good eater, she has gotten pickier over time. This happened with Cambry too. She now inspects her food more closely and has plenty of things she dislikes. But overall, she does really well. Her favorite is banana. She would probably eat several a day if we let her. The other night as we were getting dinner ready Lainey reached up and grabbed a banana off the counter, peeled it, and shoved 3/4 of it in her mouth before we spotted her running to the other room. It was pretty funny. She also loves candy and sweets and will bring us the bag of chocolate almonds or a bag of chocolate chips.

We still think that dairy upsets her tummy so we do not give her any (except in tiny amounts occasionally). We substitute almond milk, coconut milk yogurt, and dairy free chocolate when needed.

Lainey does speech therapy twice a week. She has made some good progress in both expressive and receptive language. She is trying to communicate more and attempts to say a lot of things. At her 2 year update I don't think there were any words she was saying regularly. Now there are many words she tries to imitate (although other people probably would not be able to understand them all). The words she says more clearly are: baby, dada, mama, more, bus, nana (for her grandma and banana), please (sounds like peas), bye, hi, done, night night (ni ni), up, and out. She also likes to make a variety of animal sounds. I can tell her receptive language has come a long way as well since she identifies objects in books and is following more commands without gestures. 

Lainey still has the cutest curls, big brown eyes, and long lashes. She is our "wild style" and we love her to pieces. We are thankful she is ours!

Colton 6 Months

Happy half birthday! How did 6 months fly by? I want to slow down time and yet each month is my new favorite age. There have been a lot of changes this month it seems. You are rolling both ways, sleeping on your tummy (bye bye swaddle!), trying solids, and your first tooth just popped through. Let's go over the details.

Size: I will update weight and height after your check up. You wear 6 or 6-9 months clothes and size 2 diaper.

Eat: You eat about every 3 hours during the day and usually twice at night. Your reflux has gotten better. Instead of spitting up 3-4 times after a feeding, you usually only spit up once.  We tried oatmeal cereal about a week ago. At first you seemed confused and not exactly thrilled. We continue to offer you a little each day. We have also tried banana and avocado. I think you are warming up to the idea of eating. You seem excited when I am getting the food ready and open your mouth eagerly when the food is coming toward you but then you are confused what to do once it is in your mouth. It is messy and cute.

Sleep: Sleep has improved lately. You haven't ever slept through the night, but you have gone for some long stretches. You go to bed at 7:30pm. Usually you wake up around midnight or 1am for a feeding, then again around 4 or 5am. There have been a couple nights lately where you went until 3am for the first feeding, but that's not the norm. It doesn't bother me too much to get up to feed you. You are my sweet little babe.You wake up some time after 6am and usually make cute baby sounds in your crib for a while before fussing for me to come get you. When I come in there you give me the BEST and sweetest smiles. You usually take 3 naps a day. Sometimes you may take just 2 if they are both good ones. Usually you nap for 1-2 hours.

Likes/Dislikes: You like attention and you like being held. If you are left alone for more than a couple minutes you are not happy. If I look at you and talk to you from across the room you suddenly light up. You like rolling, grabbing any and all toys on the floor to chew on, and being held by someone who is standing. You tolerate the jumparoo for a few minutes at a time. If you are in something moving like the stroller, car, or Ergo, you are happy. I am so thankful for this. You are wonderful on the go. You rarely make a peep in the car or in a store while in the baby carrier or cart.

Skills: You are rolling both ways now. You even managed to roll to your tummy while swaddled so we promptly stopped swaddling you. It really changes things now that you can roll yourself across the room. I have to be careful about what toys are out and keep a close eye on what Lainey hands you. You stick out your tongue and blow raspberries, you are putting some weight on your legs, and are getting stronger in your core.

Colton Brooks we love you so. You are all sorts of adorable with those scrumptious baby legs, the long shaggy hair, the huge open mouth smiles, and the baby hands that grab everything in their path. I love watching you grow and learn.

Cars, Dinner, Hiking, and Rain

I have a couple things to catch up on.

Recently we took the kids to see the art cars. We went before the parade started so we could walk around and see the cars lined up. It was fun to see all the creativity and especially the coordinating costumes. We grabbed lunch from the food trucks before heading home. Greg got some sort of chicken donut sandwich which included a fried egg and was seriously delicious.

Later that night we had friends over for dinner. 4 adults, 7 kids, check. It was really fun and actually it didn't feel any more chaotic than our normal dinners with just the 5 of us. The "big" kids had fun together at the little table. Lainey got up from her chair every 3.5 seconds as seen in the picture below.

A couple weekends ago we went to Brazos Bend State Park. We packed a picnic lunch and hiked along the trails. It was one of those things where we spent more time packing and driving than we actually spent at the park. Even so, it was good family time spent together.

Houston has gotten a ton of rain in the past couple days. There is horrible flooding in some areas of the city. Houses and cars are completely flooded out and people are being rescued by boats. Thankfully our street is fine so far. Parts of our neighborhood had flooding though so Greg couldn't get to work on Monday. Then today they sent everyone home early due to flooding near his building. Cambry's school was cancelled today too. Last night I had the great idea to try out HEB curbside for the first time. I was going to schedule to pick up my groceries on the way home from my moms group today. It was going to be perfect. Well after more than an hour of selecting all my groceries online and trying to figure out how many bananas are in a pound, I tried to select a pick-up time and all of Tuesday was unavailable! Talk about first world problems. I couldn't get someone to gather my groceries and place in them in my car for me. Ugh. So anyway I sucked it up and shopped for my own groceries. With my three little peeps of course. They were good and only 1 out of the 3 fell asleep.

Hoping for the school to be open tomorrow and the flooding to go down!

First Time Camper

My great Aunt Thelma passed away last week. She was 92 years old and was the sweetest, well dressed, sharp, and spunky, Christian lady. She had a long and good life with many kids, grand-kids, great grand-kids, friends, and family to celebrate. Last spring her friend made her pose for all these pictures in the bluebonnets. They were entered into a contest for the radio station and she won! I love these pictures and this is exactly how I will remember her - full of life. I hope I look that good and am that fun if God allows me to live to my 90's.

I wanted to go to her funeral in Austin and decided to take Colton with me since it's hard to be away from him while breastfeeding. The Lord was so gracious to give me a safe and easy trip. Colton slept the whole way there and back. He was pretty squirmy during the funeral service so toward the end I had to step out with him. He was pretty good during the reception.

Greg and Cambry had a camping trip planned with a few other dads and kids for Friday-Saturday. Since I went to the funeral Saturday he took Lainey with him too. This was her first time camping. He is such a brave and good dad. Lainey needs constant and close supervision so he had a busy job. She enjoyed it!

They headed for Huntsville State park after lunch on Friday. Greg took Lainey in the kayak this time. The kids ran around as usual collecting sticks and playing in the tents. They had a great time. Greg said at one point they were all awake in the tent in the middle of the night for about an hour, ha! Sleeping wasn't the best but it's not that great around here with Colton either.

It was just me and the baby boy all afternoon on Friday. It was so different and quiet. I really enjoyed the time of just the two of us. I soaked up all of his baby noises, giggles, snuggles, and expressions. He grows so fast and it was nice to have an afternoon and evening to slow down and enjoy him. I played with him, took him on a walk, got to listen to a podcast, gave him a bath, sang to him, and after bedtime watched Fixer Upper. I couldn't get over how quiet the house was. It made me miss the girls and the chaos of our days. It was nice when the 5 of us were all back together Saturday evening!

Life at Three Speed

I often get asked how things are going with three. Things are going well. It is our new normal. Sometimes it is chaotic, but it is fun, and it feels normal now.

Although it feels normal, things changed when we went from 2 to 3 kids. It's not just the responsibility of keeping your eye on 3 little people at once making sure no on falls off a couch, or gets put in a headlock, or swallows Elsa's microscopic removable shoe (why would you do that, Disney?). It feels like a lot less time. Less gets accomplished during the day, and therefore gets pushed into nights and weekends. And not all of that is related to having 3 kids. Part of it is related to having a newborn, period. But still, things are busy and time is tight. This is what we are working with these days...

Lunches are made at night. 

Maybe we are slow to figure it out, but I thought Greg was genius to realize this. We make both girls' lunches each night even for non-school days. Whenever we have a morning outing we get home at the peak time of everyone's neediness (is that a word?) and hunger (mine too). It helps tremendously when I can pull out the lunches in seconds and begin nursing Colton while trying to shove food in my mouth.

Weekend Errands and Online Shopping

I buy many more items online these days.  Although I still haven't tried Amazon Now, I do use Prime all the time. I also buy many things from Target and I do a lot of clothes shopping online too. I try to do my big grocery trip on the weekend by myself, and save additional smaller grocery trips for during the week with the kids.

Blonde hair, don't care

I am trying to stop highlighting my hair. WHOA. Since I don't have any kid-free time during the week to make hair appointments, I have to do them on weekends. But that is precious family time. I hate having 3 hr long appointments that cost me an arm and a leg (or about 8 boxes of diapers, ha!), just to have my roots grown out 3 weeks later. So I am attempting to go back to my natural color but am worried I will hate it. I think I will slowly fade in low lights. We'll see how this goes.

More kids = more coffee

If I made a graph of the number of kids we have compared to my coffee consumption there would be a direct correlation. Before Cambry, I drank coffee only at work. I never made it at home. I don't think I even knew how to use our coffee machine. After I had Cambry I drank coffee, but I don't think it was every day. After Lainey I drank coffee ERRY day. Now after Colton it is often twice a day (although I don't do full caf).  I really need to start buying it from Costco.  

Less Blogging

At the beginning of this year I had to stop blogging for Houston Moms Blog. I had no extra time to do it and felt like I hardly had any time for my own blog. I still feel like I have no time for my own blog but I do try to keep up with it. I've never been interested in making my blog into a business, and I don't need a lot of followers and readers. I know some family and friends read it but the main reason I blog is for me. It is my journal/scrapbook for our family's memories. I would hardly remember anything without this. I love going back and reading past blogs or remembering a family vacation through pictures or how things were with Greg and I before we had kids (what was that like??). Just recently I read a day in the life post I had written when Cambry was just a few months old. I wrote about how I would put her in the bouncer in the bathroom while I showered and then blow dry my hair while she napped. Hahahaha. I would never attempt those things during the kids' waking hours now, cause #aintnobodygottimeforthat (see also: cloth diapering, homemade baby food, and sanitized baby toys).

I'm sure there are more changes to our new normal that I am not thinking of now. But I haven't slept through the night in 5 months so it's hard to think. But life is GOOD. And I am thankful.

Can anyone guess who piled all these toys on him?

It starts with an L and ends with an AINEY.

Chewing on the same toy at the same time.

Watch out buddy Brooks, she is coming in with a kiss from the side.

Nightly shenanigans where they both lay down and begin rodeo kicking.