Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Happy Birthday to Papaw!

On Wednesday night, our family gathered at Cracker Barrel in Kennesaw to celebrate Papaw's birthday!  We had a big dinner - and a gigantic table!  Papaw enjoyed everyone coming out and eating with him to celebrate his 82nd birthday!




It was also a big night for our little man SJ, too ... it was his first time to ever sit up in a restaurant highchair!  He absolutely loves his new highchair/shopping cart cover. 



*I know all these pictures of SJ kind of look the same, but they were all so cute that I could not choose which ones to delete!  Also, his little cut on his face is self-mutlilation ... he scratched his cheek at daycare today with his fingernail.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

SJ's New Bath Seat

Now that SJ is a wild man in the tub who wants to sit up and splash around, it was time to upgrade to a more mature bath seat for him.  I ordered a great seat from Amazon - the Dream on Me Baby Bath Seat in yellow.  He was so excited to sit up in the water and play!


 

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Beautiful Belle


Katie Anne is so excited about going to Disney for her birthday, and she wants to have a dress-up birthday party after we return from our trip so that she can be her favorite princess at her party!  Now, who her favorite princess is changes quite often.  She goes back and forth between Belle, Ariel, and Tiana every couple of days.  Today, I wanted to make some pictures of her in a dress-up outfit for her birthday invitation, so I let her choose what she wanted to wear for the pictures.  She chose to dress up as Belle, complete with her dress-up wig!  
 
She looked so precious running around the front yard, all decked out in her Belle dress and fancy hair.  
 
 

We can't wait to see her dressed up with her favorite princesses at Disney World in a few weeks!

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Guess Who's 7 Months Old?

This guy!

That's right - SJ is seven months old!  

Not too much has changed in the last month for SJ.  His eating, sleeping, and playing patterns are all basically the same as they were at six months.  
Eating:
He loves to eat - especially fruit - and would eat baby food all day if we'd let him.  He still likes his food very smooth and isn't into any textures yet.  If I make his food the slightest bit chunky, he chokes on it.  He loves chewing on fruit in his net feeder!  A big developmental step for SJ in self-feeding was learning to hold his own bottle just before his seven-month mark.  He shows a definite interest in what we've got on our plates, so we may try some finger foods soon.

Sleeping:
Unfortunately, SJ still isn't sleeping through the night.  Even with watering down his nightly bottle, he still wakes up every night at least once - sometimes even three! - times between his 8:00 pm bedtime and his morning wake-up time of around 6:30 am.  Luckily, he does go back to sleep very quickly when he wakes up - especially if you give him a warm bottle - but that does make for one tired mommy that we're still getting up every night in month seven!

Personality:
Luckily, his disposition hasn't changed, either!  At seven months old, SJ is a very cheerful, happy baby.  He loves to babble, giggle, and he's definitely learned how to let loose with a high-pitched squeal this month!

He loves laughing, playing with toys, trying to grab hair and pull it, and chewing on everything.  SJ would love to crawl - he's desperate to move around and tries to crawl or pull himself along the floor a lot.  He's drooling nonstop and teething all the time, but so far he hasn't had a tooth pop through yet.

SJ loves to watch Katie Anne and mimic everything she does.  Here, he's wearing her cowboy hat, which we all found hilarious!  One of the cutest things that he does is lean way over to his side and look out of the corner of his eyes at you with a silly little grin.  He is a big ham and loves to play peek-a-boo with a burp cloth, toy, or hat.  He is a lot of fun - everyone loves to play with him!

We can't tell quite yet, but it looks like SJ's eyes are turning brown this month.  They aren't the blue-gray color they were before - there's a brown starburst in the middle of both his irises now, and his eyes definitely look darker.  We've had to cut his hair again this month because it grows so fast, and it is hard to really tell what color it is for sure.  It looks medium brown, light brown, blonde, or reddish depending on the light.  His coloring is definitely lighter than the rest of the family.  He looks a lot more like me as a baby than Katie Anne did - she looked a lot like Saunders's baby pictures.

SJ is a wonderful baby, and we're so glad to have him!

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Baby Nirvana

Baby Nirvana has been achieved.

Do you know what Baby Nirvana is?

That's the day when your baby can/will hold his own bottle, and this is one milestone that this busy mommy of two has been waiting not-so-patiently for!  SJ has been playing around with the thought of holding his own bottle for about a month, but it will only last for a few seconds before he drops it.  Today, SJ held his own bottle for almost the whole feeding!


Hallelujah!

*And I know this isn't the most masculine bottle, but SJ says real men don't have a problem drinking from a pink bottle ... and they aren't ashamed to use hand-me-down baby products from their big sisters!  I actually thought about trading out for a more manly-colored bottle before I made these pictures, but when you're experiencing Baby Nirvana, you don't take any chances on messing it up!

Saturday, March 12, 2011

A Birthday Surprise...

Even though it's a few weeks until her special day, we had an early birthday surprise for Katie Anne.  Since Katie Anne's fourth birthday is her "golden birthday" (turning 4 on 4/4), I wanted this birthday to be something special.  We started planning this surprise in January, and we've been waiting to tell her for months!  Now that our surprise is about a month away, we decided that today was a good day to tell her about it.  So, I wrapped up a box of clues to the surprise.  Can you figure out what the surprise is?
Katie Anne was so excited to open the giant box!


Time to open!


Checking out the clues...


Studying the photo album... wondering why she would have a Minnie Mouse photo album with no pictures inside.
Wait a minute...
"Am I going to Disney World!?!"
Yes!
When Katie Anne figured out what she was going to spend her fourth birthday in the Magic Kingdom, she got so excited!  It was definitely the reaction we were hoping for... she flipped back into the chair, slid into the floor, and squealed with excitement!
I took a video of her opening the gift and her reaction, but I took it with our real video camera, not the digital camera (I was using it to make still shots).  If I can figure out a way, I'll upload the video so you can see the conniption that took place when she found out she'd be celebrating her birthday with the princesses in Cinderella's castle!

A picture of the future Disney World princess with her new dolls:
She's just a little bit excited about her special birthday!
We can't wait for our trip!

Lily's Tea Party

On Saturday, we celebrated Lily's 5th birthday with a special tea party!  
Katie Anne was so excited to get dressed up in a fancy dress and have a tea party with her friends.  Vanessa did such a great job of planning the tea.  The fun started when all the little girls got to make fancy hats...
 
 
 

Then, it was time to for fancy manicures and pedicures... 
 

Finally, all the girls got their makeup applied before the actual tea party began!  

Then it was time for a fancy afternoon tea - using Vanessa's wedding china!  What a brave woman!  The little girls loved the petit fours, fancy marshmellows, fruit, and everything else dainty and petite.  They used their best table manners, too!  
 

After the tea party, Lily got to open all her special presents.
 
 

Lily and the girls loved the gift that Katie Anne had picked for Lily - a PlayDoh Cake Making Machine.  They busted into it and started making cakes right away!
 

It was such a fun tea party for sweet Lily and her friends!