Happy T-day, Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Oops! I'm just a tad late. Time has really flown by the last couple months. Thanksgiving was nice. We had a fantastic time with family at our house for Christmas. Then we went to Kevin's parents house for New Years and spent time with his brother's family from out-of-town. It was a lot of fun seeing Aria (and Emmett) interact with their one and only cousin, Felipe.

Our family on our after-the-turkey walk

Aria and Emmett in their Christmas best

Santa was good to the kids

Baby New Year (aka Emmett)

Happy New Year!

Felipe and Aria playing

Poor Doogan

Here's a conversation Aria and I had yesterday morning after Emmett slept 11.5 hours:

goofydaddy: hey Aria, guess what?
Aria: what?
goofydaddy: Emmett didn't wake up at all last night! Mommy got to sleep lots!
Aria: WOW! ...I don't sleep lots.
goofydaddy: oh? you wake up in the middle of the night?
Aria: yeah.
goofydaddy: we don't hear you on the monitor, what do you do when you wake up in the middle of the night?
Aria: I twirl Doogan's ribbon! (she throws in a quick twirl to illustrate and giggles)

I kinda believed her, but now I really do, because she woke up last night at 3am screaming for me. When I went in, I asked what was wrong. She started laughing that nervous laugh she does when all is not quite right, and held her hand out. It was too dark to see, and then she said "Doogan's ribbon fell off! I need a better sleep buddy!" I hugged her, we laughed a bit, I took the ribbon, gave her another stuffed animal, and she hugged it along with Doogan and went back to sleep.

This morning, Dana tied another bow from some ribbon we have, and I showed it to Aria when she woke up. she got a kick out of seeing it, and understood when I said that I didn't know how to attach it to Doogan. Occasionally throughout the morning, Aria would go to twirl Doogan's ribbon out of habit, and when she would only feel the little string that's still attached, she would laugh hysterically, and remind me that "when mommy picks me up from school, she's going to put Doogan's new ribbon on."

Poor Doogan! he's been through a lot!

Emmett is 5 months old today!

Emmett is a growing boy! I'm documenting some things that are happening below so we don't have to remember...I barely remember yesterday!

He's been home with Daddy for just over a month now while I've been working. I'm usually on the road before the kids wake up. Things are going well and Emmett's been relatively easy to take care of in the morning while Kevin gets Aria ready for school and drops her off. He's not only a goofydaddy, he's a super daddy because he manages to get up early to do his p90x workouts and work 20hrs part-time during naps and in the evening. I pick Aria up by 4:00 so I can get home and spend time with them both before bedtime around 7:30.

Emmett's eating well - thankfully I can provide for him with very little supplementing with formula. He takes 4 bottles that total about 30oz!

He's starting to sleep better and better at night. Since about 3 months he's been great about staying in his crib for about 11 hours (no eating or having to take him out), but there was a lot of waking and needing the pacifier between 1AM-7AM. Recently he's got into the groove of two good naps in the morning/afternoon and has been able to stay awake from 3PM-7:30! I think this is the reason the nights are starting to go better - he's just so exhausted! Last night he slept 11.5 hrs straight with minimal stirring for the very first time. YAY BUDDY!

He currently has 2 teeth that are about halfway in on the bottom. He's drooling A LOT again so I wouldn't be suprised if we see more in the near future.

At about 3 months we started mixing cloth diapers in and it's been going well. Now our routine is to use Nature Babycare diapers until we get a major blowout and then we start using the cloth for the next day or two. We always use the paper diapers at night. We are waiting until things are a little more solid to use cloth continuously like we did for Aria starting at 8 months until 18 months (when she went to school).

Emmett is stubborn in the rolling department. We've caught him rolling to his side a couple times. He even got stuck on his side a week ago! He just likes his back and is content to stay there for now. When we put him on his stomach he quickly moves his arms to his sides and balances on is tummy. He's so silly!

We let him try some cereal/milk a couple times last week and he lapped it up ok. We aren't too serious about spoon feeding yet. I'm hoping to give it more attention over the holidays.

Overall he's a pretty happy boy. He loves watching me shake my head like a muppet - it gets a smile every time! For a while I was the only one to get giggles out of him, but Daddy is falling into his goofydaddy role again and Emmett is responding nicely. He is so entertained by watching his big sister. We all definitely love having him around :-)

His arms are on the way to his sides!

Aria sings an aria!

I was going through some old pictures and came across this video. Kevin and I cracked up and watched it about 10 times. The video is from this past Easter 2009 (you can even see my Emmett belly).

For your viewing pleasure...

update: here's what she's singing...
...on tree
We're bangin on Pop-Pop's tree
we need a lot of help
Mommmmmy we're bangin on the treeeeeeee
Mommy... bang... inon... tha... tree
we'rebanginonthatree.

Following in his sister's...teeth marks!

We've had a drooly, cranky boy on our hands the past week and this weekend we discovered why. Emmett's getting his 1st tooth! He's right on par with his sister at 4 months.

I won't say how many pictures I took to get this one. Haha! :-)

Goofydaddy update: as you can see if you click the picture and zoom up, the second tooth is trying to push through as well. this photo was taken 4 days after the first tooth finally cut through.

We love these guys!

Lean on me!

Aria picked these jammies out to wear so she could match her baby brother!

Back to work

The end of last week I returned to work. After being home for almost 4 months I was starting to get used to it. But, I have to do what I have to do for my family. I'm pretty lucky to have a husband that has volunteered to stay home again (AND work part-time)! It makes it SOOOO much easier to go back.

Things are going pretty well at work. It was a little funny getting into work last week to find out my computer wouldn't start up. It made me nervous, but thankfully I was given a new computer and was back up and running! My computer apparently took the break from work literally.

Aria's starting to readjust to me not being around in the mornings again. Tonight when I put her to bed she sweetly said to me, "when I wake up in the morning you will have cereal with me?" So sweet, but it almost gave me a little knot in my throat! Kevin said she's been real good the past couple mornings with him. Usually when I'm around, she's all about Mommy and doesn't do well with Daddy's directions. I am happy that she's listening to Daddy without me there. And she is continuing to be very patient while Kevin takes care of Emmett's needs.

Emmett seems to care less if I'm here or not. Haha. With Aria around Kevin really hasn't spent a whole lot of time with Emmett while I was home. It's fun for me to see Kevin really starting to connect with him during the days alone with him.