Sunday, November 25, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We enjoyed a family-filled week for Thanksgiving.  We drove down Tuesday and spent the night with my parents.  Wednesday we went to visit my grandma for a while.  My poor grandma, I knocked on the door, but Robbie just wanted to go see the fish, so we took off and left Matthew and Alex standing at her door.  Luckily, in the craziness my grandma recognized Matthew and then my mom came in after being on the phone with her sister.  Robbie loves looking at the fish and playing with the seashell decorations.  When my grandma finally caught up with us Robbie opened her walker looking for crackers.  She always keeps some and Robbie knows they are in there.  We spent some time outside before leaving to have lunch at Jonathan's Chick-fil-a with Chat and the kids.  The kids enjoyed playing (though we had a hard time helping Robbie up the tunnel's steps) and getting ice cream for dessert.  The plan was to go to a nearby park to run off the rest of their energy, but Robbie and Alex fell asleep, so we headed home.  Robbie was so upset when he woke up back at the house!

Jonathan, Chat and the kids came by my parents' house for a while before we went to my aunt and uncle's for lunch.  It was so nice of them to host the family and I was impressed that we were able to fit in their house, though I miss the kids table.  Lunch was so good and there wasn't much left over.  Afterward we watched a video that my aunt and mom put together for my grandparent's 45th wedding anniversary.  It was fun seeing the pictures and hearing their story.  It was also great to spend time with my aunt, uncle and cousins.

From there we went to Matt's aunt and uncle's house (which is very close to my aunt and uncle's!) to visit with his family.  We missed Brian and Jamie, though.  Alex loved the leftover sweet potatoes and left a serious dent in their leftovers.  We weren't there for too long, but we were glad we were able to see everyone.

Friday Chat brought the kids over for some grandparent time while she and her friend went shopping, so Robbie and Alex got in a little cousin time before we met up with Matt's mom.  We were going to go back to the park that we didn't go to because Robbie fell asleep, but it ends up that the park was closed.  Luckily Barbara knew about another park that was open, so we played for a while.  We checked out the ducks and goose (yes, just one).  We tried to see the turtles, but there were other kids that scared them into the water.  Later Robbie was talking about the "noisy turtles".  When Robbie sat at a picnic table and said he was very hungry, we knew it was time to go.  We met Mimi, Gramps, Monet, Mark and Bridgette for lunch.  Well, Alex wanted to sleep, so we ended up resting in the car, but the few bites I had were good!  Robbie took a nap back at Barbara's and woke up shortly after Mimi and Gramps arrived.  We stayed through dinner and then headed back to my parents' house and got there when they were finished eating with their guests, Jonathan, Chat, Mia and Nathan!  Robbie was excited to see his cousins again.  They play well together.  He was asking where they were the next morning.  It was kind of sad telling him they weren't coming.

We packed up Saturday morning and met Jim, Jean, Brittany, Patrick, Mariruth, Caitlin and Will for family pictures.  As soon as I saw the photographer I knew I knew her.  It ends up we were in Campus Crusade together 12 years ago!  She did a great job and both her and her assistant were very patient with the kids.  I would have been exhausted after our session, but she said she had another one to go to later in the afternoon.  I hope she was able to get in a nap!  We spent the rest of the day at Jim and Jean's house.  Jean has been slowly adding to their toy collection so they have toys when their grandkids come over.  We also exchanged Christmas presents with the cousins since we won't see each other at Christmas.  The kids had fun looking for the cats, though the cats didn't come too close to the kids!  Pat and Mariruth left before dinner and we left after dinner.  It's nice to know that we will see everyone again in a month!

Even though I thought about it a couple of times, the camera stayed in the bag.  Hopefully we'll get some photos from others that took pictures!

Saturday, November 17, 2012

I love avocados!

The doctor said that we should be letting Alex feed himself more, so I gave him some avocado at dinner.  Alex loves avocados (this week) and enjoyed feeding himself.










Luckily we don't mind messy babies, but I think next time we'll put a bib on him!  But what a cute messy baby!!

Friday, November 16, 2012

Alex is 9 months old!!!!!!!!!

It's funny because November seemed like it was going to be a slow month after Robbie's birthday and Halloween, but here we are again celebrating another month of Alex being with us.  It's been a week full of celebrations: Wednesday was my dad's birthday (happy birthday Dad/Abuelo!), yesterday was mine and Lisa's birthday (happy birthday sister/Aunt Lisa!) and today Alex is 9 months old.

Alex is getting to be a fast crawler and does not liked to be left behind.  I'll take Robbie to his room to change his diaper and sure enough, Alex shows up a minute later.  He still pulls up on everything and we have even seen him cruising on the couch and in his crib.  The doctor thinks Alex will be walking before he's a year old.  It's getting a little harder to go out with both of them because Alex doesn't like to be in the stroller for too long.  He talks up a storm and even Robbie gets into conversations with him.  Alex also has his two bottom teeth.  He got the first one right before he turned 8 months and his second one last Wednesday.  It's so cute to see those two teeth when he's smiling, but not so cute when he bites.  He is 19.5 lbs and 28 inches (50th percentile for both).

In Robbie news, he is becoming very independent!  He can climb into his booster seat and his car seat by himself.  I don't always let him get into his car seat because there's a much stronger possibility that he will skip getting into his seat and head straight for the front seat so he can drive.  We are still working on sharing, but it's so cute when he does.  He will still give Alex nice hugs (that's what he calls them) and kisses. He's also good about throwing trash away without being prompted.  Now I just have to get him to not get upset about putting on jackets in this cold weather!

Alex 1 week


1 month


2 months


3 months


4 months


5 months


6 months


7 months


8 months


After multiple attempts to get his picture...














...these are the best we got.




Here is a video Matthew took at Alex's appointment this morning.  I think he looks so much like Robbie in this video!



Yesterday was a great day.  After going to the gym (and coming home to shower), the boys and I met up with Matthew for lunch at Hurricane Wings.  Rather than cook me dinner, Matt convinced me to go to Kan Ki for a free dinner.  We sat at a grill table, which was fine most of the time, but we didn't realize how much both boys would hate the fire show at the beginning.  After calming them down they were fine, though Robbie did not take his eye off the chef for the rest of dinner!  I think the chef made it up to him with the onion volcano and train.  After dinner Matthew was walking around with Robbie.  When they came back to the table, Robbie tripped and hit his face on the hand washing station.  Why they have one out in the restaurant I'll never know.  I've never seen anyone use it.  (Hopefully they are washing their hands in the kitchen before coming out!)  To make him feel better we bought some fish food and went to feed the koi.  He loved it!  It was so cute because every time he threw food in the water he would say "fishy, here you go!"  Luckily one handful was enough for him, but mostly because he threw in one piece at a time.  I think Robbie would go back next year. :)

Monday, November 12, 2012

Weekend with Grandpa and GiGi

Grandpa and GiGi came up this weekend to celebrate Robbie's birthday and check out the swing set that they bought him.  We met them for lunch Saturday afternoon and then they checked in to their hotel and we brought the kids back for their nap.  I got a break in the afternoon because Jim was the one pushing Robbie on the swing.  They also gave Robbie a remote control firetruck.   He loves it!  We went out for pizza (Robbie's favorite) and then came back to play for a while before the kids went to bed.

Saturday we drove down to St. Augustine and went to the Alligator Farm.  Unfortunately, Robbie didn't want to see alligators, he wanted to see frogs and lemurs.  Luckily, they had both!  There were also a lot of alligators.  (I guess that isn't surprising.)  We made our way around the zoo, got some popcorn and then watched them feed the alligators.  We learned that alligators don't eat as much in the winter, so it wasn't too exciting.  For lunch we went to Conch House.  We hadn't been there in almost 3 years when we went with Lisa and Erik for our birthday.  Even though we were sitting inside, they had the sliding glass doors open, so there were pigeons that came inside.  They weren't aggressive, so it was easy to forget they were there.  When Robbie was done eating he wanted to chase the pigeons, so I'm sure they were glad when we left.  After lunch Jim and Jean went home.  It was a quick weekend and we are looking forward to seeing them and more of our family at Thanksgiving.

Pictures from the Alligator Farm:

Baby alligators


Looking at the alligators






Robbie was excited about sitting on this alligator.






Poor Alex!




Snake handler Robbie.  (He loved going to both openings.  It was hard to get him away from it!)


He's too cute to be dangerous!


You can't really see Alex


Kimodo dragon ready for his close up!


Glad he can't fit through!



Buck toothed alligator




Sleeping lemurs


Just for you, Dad!


Cuban crocodile


Cuban crocodile




What's in the pumpkin?


Zookeeper feeding the alligators


Can you see the white and orange rat?  That's lunch!


Toucan


When we got there, a lot of alligators were "talking" to each other.  It was really interesting to hear their noises.



The kimodo dragon



Robbie feeding the alligators



During the alligator feeding



This one isn't great, but I love hearing Alex in the background.  He was excited about watching the alligators eat!



This is more of what you think of when you hear "alligator feeding".  (Thanks guy next to me for getting in the way!  You hear his camera rapid clicking in some of my videos.)

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Robbie and Alex

Matthew and I have both had times pushing Robbie on the swing and thought he might fall asleep.  Today he actually did!  It's pretty nice outside, I almost just let him nap in the swing, but then I didn't think it would be too comfortable.


Alex has been working on crawling the right way rather than his gimp way.  I think he almost always crawls the right way now.



If you listen closely to the video you can hear "Bubble Guppies" on in the background.  Robbie is still napping and I don't turn it on for Alex to watch.  Yesterday they showed a Halloween episode and I thought I would watch it to see if Robbie would like it or if it would scare him.  I think it might scare him, but he's also scared of the big, bad wolf and the green witch thanks to "Bubble Guppies" and trust me, even the meanest character is still very nice!