Big boy!

As of yesterday morning, Ezra is diaper-free! We are so proud of our big boy and we can tell he is proud of himself too. Good job Ezra!

To granny's house we go

We went to visit my mom for a few days, and as always had a great time there. What's not to love about hanging out in the country? 

 Ezra and Ivy with cousins Bonnie, Kellen, and Noelle

 My mom keeps Noelle during the week so she and Ezra played a lot together. One day we all went on a walk on the road behind my mom's house. Ezra and Noelle ran ahead most of the time and had lots of fun.

 Still having fun...

 And then they realized that they had to walk allll the way back the way they came. So Chad carried them a lot of the way.

 This little girl just chilled while the big kids played and the adults relaxed. She got her fair share of being held as well...did I mention Chad's mom was there too? Between two grandmas and an aunt, she got lots of attention.

 Noelle and Ezra hanging out in the playroom.

Superkids program

Ezra had his program at school a couple days ago. The theme was "picnic in the park" and the classes sang a lot of songs about bugs. A few weeks ago Ezra started singing a song with the words "Head, thorax, abdomen" and I found out at his program that this was one of his class's songs. He got up there and got shy this time. 

 He sure did clap when the audience did though.

 Toni and Charlie came to watch Ezra.

From the last few weeks

 Ezra has been obsessed with his easter eggs. The whole easter egg thing caused quite a lot of drama in our house (Ezra wanting all the candy at once, wanting to take his eggs everywhere with him, etc.) Then he figured out he could put egg halves on his fingers. Endless uses for these things.

 Ivy is loving her new perspective.

Ivy is 3 months

Well, it's official, Ivy is no longer a "newborn." And that is perfectly okay with me! I love watching my kids grow and do new things. And I love it when a baby can hold their own head up. :) I am also partial to sleeping, and she is getting better about that all the time.

This little girl is so happy and laid back. People comment all the time about how smiley she is. All you have to do is smile and talk to her and she will give you a crinkle-nosed open-mouth smile. It is so sweet. She loves to talk to anyone who will listen. She likes to just look around and observe. She especially loves it when Ezra gives her attention, unless he is running right over the devil when singing "roll the gospel chariot along" and Ivy's head gets in the way of his fist. Then she is not a happy camper. Totally hypothetical situation.

I would say Ivy is a really good sleeper. She is used to laying down awake and will put herself to sleep most of the time, unless she is overly tired and then she won't have it. But she is also perfectly fine with being held and rocked, so if I wait too long to put her down, I will just hold her for a little catnap. She has also slept all the way through the night about 4 times, and most other nights she wakes up around 4 a.m. so she is almost making it through the night. I really don't mind her waking up, because I can feed her pretty quickly and she goes right back to sleep. I usually wake her up at 8 a.m. because most days we have somewhere we need to be by 9. Her naps vary from one hour to sometimes 3 hours. At this point Ezra took pretty short naps and was still up multiple times a night to eat, so Ivy is a piece of cake compared to Ezra.

She is a good eater. I feed her anywhere from 5 to 7 times a day, depending on if she wakes up at night or not. She goes about 3-4 hours between feedings during the day. She will nurse or take a bottle.

Ivy is also pretty good in the car. Sometimes she gets tired of sitting there, but once again, it's nothing like Ezra. Longtime blog readers will remember that for the first few months of Ezra's life he HATED. HATED being in the carseat. No fun. I avoided going anywhere that I didn't have to go, and if we went grocery shopping it was out of the carseat and into the front carrier. On long car trips, Ivy will sleep most of the time unless she is hungry or just a little restless. 

I don't know how much Ivy weighs but she is a good size. We'll go in a few weeks for her 4 month appointment but my guess is she's somewhere around 13 or 14 pounds. She's wearing size 2 diapers and on the second set of snaps in her cloth diapers. She could stand to move up to size 3 diapers though. She is also in 3-6 month clothes or 6 month size (like Carter's). No shoes fit her yet though...she has tiny, skinny feet and long toes. Sadly, she is losing her hair.

This month Ivy went to Bible class for the first time and has been once since. The teachers have told us that she does great and seems to like all the singing. I pray that she continues to enjoy going to Bible class like her big brother does. We also visited my mom's house for a few days and Ivy enjoyed lots of attention from granny, gramme, her aunt Erin and cousins. I'll blog about that later.

That's about all I can think of for her third month. She is such a sweet joy and we love her so much.

Running through the sprinklers

It's a rare occasion that we turn our sprinklers on (and you can see that from the look of our grass), but Chad has planted some new grass seed that he is trying to get started and Sunday was our day to water, so he turned on the little local sprinkler to water the grass seed. Ezra took this as an opportunity to get soaked and freezing cold. He had a blast but you can tell as he's running through the water that he was sooo cold. 

 And a random picture of Ezra and Trevyn that I took today while Trevyn was playing at our house. That boy looooves to wear those goggles.

Ezra--32 months

Ezra is creeping closer and closer to 3! I have heard that the 3's are pretty difficult, so I am savoring every moment with him as a two-year-old. Other than a couple weeks after Ivy was born, he has been so fun and so easy lately. As he gets older, he says some really funny things, and just cute things I want to remember.

"Whatcha doin', momma?"
"I'm cooking dinner."
"Yeah, you cooking dinner. That's cool."

His favorite thing to ask these days is "Wha happened?" when he is watching a show or a movie. Most of the time I'm not paying attention to whatever he is watching so I guess I need to work on that. He also asks "Where ya going?" and is ready to head out the door well before it's time to leave usually.

He asks "Want to play catch with me?" and "Want to read this with me?" on a regular basis. Of COURSE I do, sweet boy. How can I say no to that?

At bedtime, right as I'm getting up to leave, he says, "I wanna SNUGGLE!" Then, "How bout, scratch back? How bout, scratch belly? Scratch nose? Scratch head?" One stall tactic after another.

He is all about the baby talk jibberish these days. I know it's a phase and it will end soon but it's pretty annoying.

He likes to point out other people's emotions. If Ivy is crying, he'll say, "Ivy's sad. It's okay Ivy." Lately he has enjoyed watching "The Neverending Story." When the horse sinks in the mud, he said, "He's sad."

He still imitates whatever we say to Ivy. Yesterday in his little baby voice he got in her face and said, "Hiiii sweet guhl!" It was so cute. He will tell her "You're so beautiful!" I pray that they always love each other like they do now. It is so special to watch. He really is such a good big brother to her. I can already tell that she loves to watch him, and he can make her smile every time he talks to her. Another thing he imitates is telling me where he is going and what he is doing, and saying, "I'll be RIGHT back." I guess I say that a lot to him...otherwise I hear "Momma, where are you?" over and over again.

He put these on today and said "Momma, do you like my rabbit glasses?" (he got these today from his superkids teacher. A few months ago, you could NEVER have gotten Ezra to wear something on his face like this.)

You can't tell Ezra that something is going to happen in the future without him talking and asking about it constantly. When my mom was visiting a couple weeks ago, she started getting Ezra all ready for Blue Haven and talking to him about mountains, and woods, and butterflies, and hummingbirds, and bears. Ezra has since thought we are going to Blue Haven much sooner than when we are actually going, and he talks about it. A lot. I have learned to prompt him about things we are doing either the night before or the day of the event. He can usually understand when I say "after you wake up" but other than that, he doesn't have the concept of time (days, weeks, months) yet.

This month, it finally happened. Ezra told me he loved me, unprompted. My heart melted. And he always responds now with "I love you too" when we tell him we love him.

He is becoming increasingly independent. He loves his friends, he loves to do things himself, and he loves being a big boy. When he hurts himself, he might cry for a bit, but then he says, "I'm a tough boy." In fact, he just enjoys describing himself in general. "I'm Ezra. I'm silly. I'm goofy. I'm big. I'm cool." Luckily he also has quite the self-esteem.

As far as sleeping goes, we have put an alarm clock into effect. When Ivy was born we were having some issues with Ezra getting up super early (like 5:30 in the morning) and thinking it was time to be up for the day or waking up crying at midnight. So he has this alarm clock that lights green when it's time to be in bed, and turns yellow when it's time to wake up. He got the hang of it really quickly and is now back to sleeping from 8:30-7:30 every night. He still usually takes a nap during the day, but if he misses it he is fine. I just put him to bed earlier on those nights and he is always ready to go. In fact, at night now when we ask him if he is sleepy, he usually says yes.

I wish I kept better track of all the fun things Ezra says and does, but I guess this is better than nothing. I know it will be fun one day to look back and see all of this stuff, even if it's not very interesting to most of you who read this (yes, mom, I know you think it's interesting). Time goes by too fast, and we are enjoying this season in our life with our sweet kids.

Easter egg hunt at superkids

Ezra had an easter egg hunt at school today and I got to be there and watch for the 3.2 minutes it took the kids to find all the eggs. Ezra was so cute. He would pick up an egg, put it in his basket, and say "I got eggs! I got eggs!" It's so fun to watch as he grows and gets excited about stuff like this.

Fun outside

This time of year is the perfect time to spend the afternoons outside. The other day our whole family was hanging out in the backyard and I decided to get my camera out. 

 I love these three...

 Right now our garden is a big dirt square (let's be honest, so is most of our backyard) so Ezra likes to go back there and move the dirt around and dig with the spade. He's a boy, what can I say.

Happy Saturday

Barbara (Chad's mom) called this morning and requested an updated picture of Ezra so she could print it and update the one in her office. I didn't have any on hand, so we went outside and did a little impromptu photo shoot. I sure do love my little boy...especially when he says "Cheese!" and looks at the camera. :)

Recent videos

For some reason I am not able to give little explanations in between the videos. Most of them don't need them. These are just little glimpses into our everyday life for those who are interested. Some of the videos are a little long, but it is my way of keeping a record of the kids and remembering what they were like.

March/April menu

I'm back from my menu-posting hiatus. I've been cooking again for about a month, but just no time to post menus. After Ivy was born, my dear, sweet, wonderful friends from church brought us meals every other day for four weeks. What a blessing. But alas, after those four precious weeks of not having to think about what we were going to eat, I once again had to take responsibility. So here is our latest menu...enjoy!

Baked creamy chicken taquitos
Chicken cordon bleu
Chicken pot pie
Black bean & rice stuffed peppers
BBQ meatballs (I use frozen homestyle meatballs and the sauce from pioneer woman's meatball recipe) & mashed cheesy cauliflower
(I have been wanting to find a cauliflower recipe that our whole family will enjoy for a while. This one's a keeper. Keep in mind that it calls for 2 tablespoons of roasted garlic so you will want to make sure and roast your garlic bulb earlier in the day when you make this recipe). 
Pizza spaghetti
Chicken taco soup (like regular taco soup but with chicken)
Creamy chicken & artichoke pasta
Brisket
Chopped BBQ baked potatoes (made with leftover brisket)
Lasagna
Braided sandwich loaves
Fajitas
Steak bites
Sour cream enchiladas
Chili
Taco salad (using leftover chili)
Smoky pork tacos
Sriracha burgers
Chicken gyros with tzatziki sauce (I plan to check our favorite greek restaurant to see if they have their gyro bread for sale in the little market; otherwise, I will try the bread recipe)
Grilled chicken bruschetta

What's happening

Well, it's only 7:30 and both kids are in bed so I thought I'd get caught up on posting pictures to the blog. I am going to try and post some videos too but that will depend on how long til Ivy wakes up to eat again.

The biggest news around here is that Chad finished everything for his master's degree! We are so excited and relieved that he is finished. Chad went through the same school that he got his RN from, Excelsior College, and it's a distance program based in Albany, NY. So he had to go there for 4 days to present his final project, and my mom came and stayed with us. We had a great time and she was a huge help, as usual. Ezra LOVES his granny.  

 We had a little problem with Ivy while mom was here. One night she woke up around 11, and usually during the night I just feed her and she goes right back to sleep. Well, this didn't happen that night. She cried like she was in a lot of pain all night and would only sleep if I was holding her. It was so out of character for her that I took her in to the doctor the next morning and he agreed that that amount of fussiness was unusual for a baby her age (she was still crying as we were in the doctor the next day). So he ordered urine and bloodwork (traumatic for me) and an x-ray of her abdomen. I saw the x-ray before we got the results of the labs back, and it showed that her entire abdomen was filled with gas. I was so relieved. She wasn't completely herself for another day or so, and she slept the entire next day except when she was eating. Poor thing was so exhausted. Thankfully, she is back to her normal self now. She is seriously the sweetest, smiliest baby and she really doesn't cry much at all. Once she sleeps 12 hours in a row at night she will be the perfect baby! :)

 And finally, daddy came home, and we were so happy to have him back.

 I have also started keeping Ezra's little buddy Trevyn again. Ezra saw that Trevyn was wearing a baseball hat one day and just had to find his too.

 Here is Ivy having some tummy time and big brother keeping her company.

 Giving me his best "cheese face."

So that's the last few weeks in pictures! I am in the process of uploading videos so look for another post soon.

Friends

I just had to share this picture of Ezra and his friend Aiden. Ezra has two BFFs, Aiden and Trevyn, and he talks about them constantly. When he has to leave them, he gets very upset. He always asks to go see them. I just love the little moment these two are sharing. I hope Ezra stays friends with these boys for the rest of his life.