Three year check-up

Took Julia to the pedi today for her 3 year check-up. She was 38 inches tall and weighed 38 pounds. They also pricked her finger for a blood count and for the first time, took her blood pressure. Everything was great. They also wanted to check her urine. Unfortunately, I did not realize this and she went to the bathroom right before we left home. We finally got her to use the restroom right as we were getting coats on to leave. The white count in her urine was high, so now they want me to bring them a sterile sample so they can re-check it and culture it. Sounds like she might have a bladder infection, although she is not showing any other symptoms of one.

During the appointment, a lady from the local Children's hospital stopped by and needed a picture of our pedi. The pedi asked if she could take a picture with Julia in it. So I had to sign a release form.

Since Jude has developed a nasty cough, I made an appointment for the pedi to see him at the same time. It seems he has just caught the same cold the rest of us have been fighting for the last month. She is having me give him breathing treatments, though, to help open up his airway so he can cough all the junk up. They did a treatment in the office right away and he handled it pretty well, MUCH better than Julia did the first time we had to do them on her! Jude showed no other signs of being sick, no fever and just as happy as even. He just has a cough, which brings up phlegm, which he then chokes on. So this cough is waking him up at night.

Unfortunately, I loaned my breathing machine to my sister for my nephew. Luckily, she was almost done with it and I will drive up there tomorrow to get it.

Hi, hi, hi....

Jude has been saying "mama" for awhile now, but he is still not associating it with me completely. But right now "hi" seems to be his favorite thing to say. You constantly hear him saying "hi, hi, hi, hi......" to someone. It is so funny.

He must just be a friendly guy!

More Christmas pictures

I have some more pictures from Christmas...

Julia playing with her Zippity. She is still learning how to use it, but is figuring it out fairly quickly.


Having a hard time convincing her to take off the chef's outfit!!


Finally have the chef's outfit off and all dresses up to go to Jerrod's family Christmas. How cute are they!!??


Nummmm..... Beads taste good.....


Hanging out...


With her Aunt Ninnie


With Daddy!


One of my favorite pictures of Julia from Christmas.


Great! They got her paints!!LOL Maybe that is why Mike and Bev are so liked by my kids!

Up shoes

Over a year ago I bought Julia these play dress shoes. They are like play high-heel shoes made for little girls. Julia really likes them and wears them frequently. Normally she calls them her play shoes or her dress shoes. On Sunday Julia get out these shoes to put on and play and she says this:

"I need to wear my up shoes."

Up shoes? Well, I guess they do raise her "up" some. How funny!!! So now these shoes are called her "up shoes".

Happy 3rd Birthday Julia!

I cannot believe my little princess is THREE!!! She is growing up so fast! It is weird because it seems like only yesterday she was born, but on the other hand, if feels like she has been part of our family forever!

Julia, I am so happy I get to be your Mommy. You bring me extreme joy and much frustration. You are the most fascinating person. Your Daddy and I are very proud of you and love you very much. We are excited to continue to watch you grow.

Happy 3rd Birthday!!

The cake that I made for her!


Opening presents.... (Jerrod could have zoomed in, especially so you did not have to see me nursing Jude!)




Caillou stuff was a big hit! We have already watched the Caillou DVD my parent's got her several times!!


Blowing out her candles. It was funny because I think Julia was singing "Happy Birthday" the loudest of all of us!!!


Daddy helping her put her Thomas the Tank Engine train together.

"I'm a cooker"

I think Julia's favorite presents have been her chef's outfit and all the food! She calls herself a "cooker".

This is what I see pretty much all day long......



"They will be ready in 30 minutes."


"Here, mommy, I made you some cookies!"

First solids!!!

Jude got a wonderful Christmas present; he got to try solids for the first time!!!

He has been REALLY wanting our food for about 2 months now. He also started waking up every hour or two at night around that time too. I wanted to wait until 6 months to start solids (he is almost 5 months), but Jude was quite clear that he wanted food NOW!!

So since we had all Christmas afternoon and evening free, I thought I would see if Jude wanted a special Christmas treat - Rice cereal!!

It was hilarious!!! I put that first spoonful in his mouth and he just froze! He did not swallow, he did not spit it out; his mouth just froze there open like he was trying to figure this stuff out!!



Umm, WHAT is this stuff?!



Let's just say the rice cereal did not go over well. After about the fourth spoonful, he started refusing to open his mouth and actually was turning away and crying. So I stopped. I guess I was expecting Julia's reaction to it. She was 7 months old before I introduced cereal to her. She ate every bit of it with gusto.

I thought I would try it again today. This time I mixed it with warm breastmilk (last night I just mixed it with water, like I always did with Julia). I thought I would try cereal for another night or two, and if he did not like it, try peas or something for about two nights (Just to make sure it was not the flavor he did not like). If those did not go over well, I would just quit trying solids for awhile.

Tonight went MUCH, MUCH better. He started off the same as last night; the frozen face with the first spoonful. But then he quickly started to swallow some of it. It just got better from there. He still probably spit out about half the spoonful each time, but he quickly started to get to the point where he was really wanting it. He ate the several tablespoons I mixed up and fussed when it was all gone.

I'm not sure if it was because of the breastmilk, which made it taste similar to what he had been eating, or if he just decided he liked the stuff after all. Either way, I think I will mix it with breastmilk for awhile at first before slowly switching over to water.

Now lets see if this helps him sleep any better!

Christmas morning

Christmas was SO MUCH FUN!!! You view Christmas totally different once you have a toddler. Julia was so tired from the night before, she had to be woken up this morning! She loved all the presents!





This Chef's outfit (made by me) was a HUGE hit. Julia got a lot of pretend food stuff too.


Jude thinks his stuffed hammer tastes pretty good!




Having fun playing with her toys!

Christmas eve pictures

We do Christmas eve at my parent's house. It was a madhouse with 7 grandkids, all 5 years old and under!!

Since I never got a picture of Julia and Jude in their Thanksgiving outfits, I tried to get a Christmas picture before things got too wild.


Mom and dad with all their grandkids (well not counting the one that is not born yet)


Just the cousins. I was impress that got them to cooperate!


Jude got a RED tractor!






We had a great time and the kids had fun.

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Christmas is done here. Our living room is a mountain of toys. Julia and Jude are wide awake and happy, Jerrod and I just want a nap!!

Will be posting pictures soon!

Oh, the apron and chef's hat was a HUGE hit!!

Christmas busy!

I have been crazy busy here. Christmas is much harder when the kids are old enough to know what is going on. That means anything to do with Santa has to be done after Julia has gone to bed or with someone else watching her. Luckily I ordered most all the presents on-line, so I did not have to worry about finding Julia-free time to go shopping.

I did stay up until 1:30am one morning this week to finish this for Julia. She is getting a bunch of play kitchen and food stuff. I thought it would be neat to make her an apron and chef's hat to go with it. The oven mitts look a little funny, but I did not have a pattern for them and just decided to make them since I had a little fabric left over.


I am very excited to see Julia in them! Oh, the neat thing about the apron is that the waist strap fastens with velcro, so no need for some one to keep tying strings for her!

Christmas cookies!

Made our Christmas cookies today. I think this is the first time I made Christmas cookies since I have been married. Julia loved it! She helped me roll out the dough by making sure my table was properly floured. She then instructed me on which cookie cutter to use.

After they were baked came the fun part, decorating them!! Julia had lots of fun putting the sprinkles on the cookies. I ended up with sprinkles ALL OVER my kitchen! At least she had fun. (And this is why we did these this morning, BEFORE I started cleaning my house!)

Christmas parties have started.

We had our first Christmas party yesterday. Santa showed up and handed out presents to the little kids.

Julia has finally gotten over her fear of Santa and actually was really excited to see him!


Jude is normally easy going about who has him, but he was overly tired and was almost asleep when he got handed to Santa and he was not happy about it!

Floor time

Occasionally Jude gets company when he is having tummy time. Jude is checking out Gavin and Gavin is checking to see if there is anything in that toy bin for him......



All that playing is hard work!!!!


See that bunch of smiley flowers? If you press the flower heads, they light up and play a song. Jude figured out today that he can scoot up to it and press them himself. I was in the kitchen making supper while Jude was on the floor in the living room (Jerrod was in there to watch him). Then I start hearing the flower, I peek into the living room and see Jerrod has not gotten up, so Jude had to have pressed them himself (Julia was with me). I then hear the flower multiple more times (and watched him press it several times). I was impressed.

Snow fun!

We had our first real snowfall last night. At 6:30am Julia was already asking to go out and play in it.

She did get to play in it later this morning. Luckily her snowsuit from last year still fit!


Liking the snow.


Jude was not too fond of the cold wet stuff. Since his infant seat has a winter cover, he does not have a snowsuit or even a winter coat. So I dressed him warmly, put his hat on, and wrapped him up in a heavy blanket. Jude and I only stayed out about 10 minutes, so he would not get cold.


Jude was mad and Jerrod was telling me that his pants were getting wet!


Julia and Jerrod stayed out longer. Julia has been practicing making snow angels for weeks now, so she was happy she got to make the real things today!