Flashback Friday

Me and Meyers with Jessica and Elizabeth - June 2010 at the Atlanta Botanic Gardens

*Matching strollers and matching outfits for the girls! What can I say?? We have similar taste:)

Can't wait to see them (and the rest of their family) again soon!

Wordless Wednesday

Five Months

Emery - You are five months old today!

At the doctor about a week ago, you weighed 17 pounds. You weigh more than your sister did at her 6 month check up already!

You are mostly in 6 month clothing.

When we use up the last of the size 2 diapers in about a week, you will be in size 3. You are in size 3 overnight diapers because that is the smallest size they make. You have been leaking out of your diapers while you are sleeping:(

You are finally on 4 (8 oz) bottles a day. That makes things so much easier! You usually eat around 8:00 am, 12:00 pm, 4:00 pm, and then your last bottle at 8:00 before bed.

I was nervous you wouldn't stay asleep going to bed around 8:00 pm, but you are doing great. You normally get up around 7:00 am - sometimes a little earlier and sometimes a little later. You were going to bed around 10:00/10:30, and that makes for a long day! So this schedule is easier for us and you are doing awesome on it!

You take two long naps or 3 shorter naps a day. You are a great sleeper!

 

You are still doing good in the car. The big carseat and kindle watching have been miracle workers!

You are still liking the jumperoo, but the exersaucer is your favorite.

You have been tripodding for about a week now. You want to be sitting up so bad! I can't believe you were doing this before you turned 5 months. That is so not like Meyers. Y'all are so very different!

You still don't have teeth, but are still constantly drooling!

You are still a high maintenance baby, but you are getting better. You can stay somewhat content in some of your toys for longer periods of time. You just need lots of attention. You can be so happy and then I walk out of the room and you lose your mind! You can be the happiest, squealing baby when you want to be. You definitely go the ends of both spectrums - from mad screaming to happy squealing.

We started cereal a couple of weeks ago. Your sister screamed when we first fed her cereal, but you just got a funny look on your face. I think you actually like it now and you do pretty well getting it off the spoon and swallowing. 

I made ALL of Meyers's baby food, not because I'm opposed to jar baby food, but because I thought it sounded interesting. These days, I barely have enough time to stay caught up on laundry, so I'm thinking you will be eating jar baby food. Hopefully you won't need therapy later on in life because I made Meyers food and yours was store bought:) I've bought it, but you haven't had any yet. I need to get on that!

You have been getting up on your hands and knees for the last few days. You just want to move so bad!

Your hair is getting so thick, but it's still light. And your eyes are still blue.

I am thinking you are looking less and less like Meyers these days.

 

Here is Meyers at 5 months. 

Meyers was really bothered that she wasn't in these pictures with Emery, so she had to get in for a few. She was taking pictures of Emery, too, with her Minnie camera:)

You sure do love your big sister!

A Fun and Busy Saturday

On Saturday morning, we busted out the kiddie pool. For some reason, we've never done the kiddie pool with Meyers. On a side note, we just bought a bath seat for Emery. No joke, we bathed Meyers in the baby bathtub in the sink until she was one!!! Emery is still fine in the baby bathtub, but John is the bather around here. So I thought it would be easier on him if he could bathe them at the same time. I know, I'm such a sweet and thoughtful wife:) Emery is wanting to sit up already, so she did fine in the seat in the bathtub, so I thought I could try it in the pool, too.

She loved it! She was content in there for almost an hour, which is super rare around here. Meyers loved it, too. And we were totally doing it redneck style in the front yard. I am sure our neighbors love us for that! But I am terrified of seeing a snake in our backyard, so I didn't want to do it back there if John couldn't be right there with us. He was cutting the grass, so I wanted to stay in the front yard. He told me he did make an executive decision for future pool time and the pool has to be in the backyard from now on:(

I love these cute Target swimsuits!

Meyers had a birthday party at a gym on Saturday afternoon. I wasn't quite sure what she would think about it since she had never been to anything like this before. She was pretty unsure of the whole thing, but participated some at the beginning.

This was right before they got to walk on the balance beams. You can tell she is like "where is my mommy?"

They let the kids take turns jumping on the trampolines. Again - she is looking a little leery here. But she went out there. She wasn't really jumping, though. I asked the boys in charge if I could jump with her, and they said yes.

 My friend, Kristen, took this picture of me and Meyers jumping. She loved jumping with me until I bounced her a little high and she fell:(

Meyers favorite part of the party - food! 

Check out this face drinking her juice. She does not care for juice at all. She will drink it at parties because that's all there is, but she makes this crazy face!

After the party, we ran by the mall. Normally I would prefer to go to the mall by myself, but we were close by and I only had Meyers. I now realize how easy it is to go places with just one. I totally took that for granted only having Meyers! When we got home, John's mom, sister, and nephew were at our house. They watched the girls so that we could go on a date Saturday night.

 

We had made plans with the Tillmans to go see the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou at the Orpheum. John really likes this movie, so I thought it would be fun. We went a couple of years ago with them to see Casablanca there, and it was really fun. Anyway, we ate at Flying Fish before. I had never been, and it was so good! I don't eat fish, but I had a yummy chicken sandwich. After dinner, we walked to the Orpheum. As we were getting closer, we notice there aren't really a lot of cars there and nobody is out front like usual. John and David start laughing about it being the wrong night, and I was totally in denial. Like I thought the doors would just open up when we got closer! Everyone is laughing at me - in a nice way - and I am frantically looking it up on my phone to confirm that it was the night before. SERIOUSLY?? How did that happen. I am way more together usually. I could not believe that I planned this whole night out and the movie was the night before.

Yep, the doors were totally locked:)

And yes, I wear my white jeans at least 3 times a week. Apparently every time John and I go on a date:) They are my favorite article of clothing right now!

So after laughing about my scatterbrainedness, we decided to walk down Main Street to the Cheesecake Corner. John and I had been there before a few years ago. It was warm out, but it was fun just walking down Main Street. We definitely haven't done that in a while. We kept joking that we are all so "out of it" since having kids:)

If you don't include the rude server and the bird cage with poop all over it at the front of the restaurant, it was a great experience:) The server guy was over the top rude to Jennifer when she asked a question. It was like deja vu because when the four of us were in New Orleans a few years ago, a server was over the top rude to Jennifer for asking a question. We were all shocked, but still ordered our cheesecake. We should have left. It wasn't until the end that we saw all the bird poop crusted on this cage, and realized we really should have left, and not just because of the rudeness!

Nasty, right??

We decided we would ride the trolley back to where we parked, but we walked by the Lorraine Motel first. John and I have been before, but David and Jennifer never had. This was one of the field trips I took my 5th graders on when I was teaching.

It was nice to be able to look and take it all in without taking a head count of kids every few minutes like I did on field trips:)

We rode the trolley back to our car. It was so crowded, but a lady let me sit with her because there wasn't even a place to hang onto. They had to stand, so I grabbed a picture of them to document our interesting night!  Even though our night did not go as planned, we still had fun with the Tillmans. We always do!

Flashback Friday

John and Meyers - June 2009 (Father's Day)

Wordless Wednesday

Some Firsts and a Date

Emery's First Cold:
Emery and Meyers had a little cold last week. Meyers is mostly over hers, but Emery still has a funky cough with a low grade fever, so I took her to the doctor today. Dr. Catherine said her cough is terrible, but her breathing is fine. So that's good. Hopefully she will be better soon. I haven't updated about Emery's 4 month check up yet with her stats, but at that appointment 3 weeks ago, she weighed 16 pounds. Today (at 4 months and 3 weeks), this girl weighed 17 pounds!!! We love chunky babies!!

Meyers's First Swim Lessons:
Meyers had her first swimming lesson today. I got lost and was 15 minutes late. I felt terrible, especially when I got there and found out Meyers is the only one in the class. The teacher was super sweet and stayed later for her lesson. Meyers pretty much cried the entire time. She hasn't been in the pool since last year, so I kind of expected it. She confirmed that she was not completely traumatized when she told me she wanted to go back to swim lessons tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be quite as scary.

Daddy Daughter Date:
John and Meyers went on a date tonight to Chili's. It was their night that all (some - not quite sure) of their proceeds go to St. Jude. We were all going to go, but it is hard to take Emery to a restaurant especially when it's close to bedtime. One of us ends up holding her the whole time, while we either wait for the other to finish or attempt to eat one-handed while holding a very wiggly baby. It's just not worth it sometimes. So I told John to go and take Meyers on a date. Apparently she ate a good dinner because he took her for ice cream afterwards:)

Blog Book

I FINALLY ordered our book for the blog for 2011, and I just got it in today. I am so excited! I went back and forth between Blurb and Blog2Print. I went with Blog2Print ONLY because it was the easiest and most straight-forward. I liked Blurb better for the cover options and layout, but you had to go through and manually format it to get it the way you wanted. It didn't give you an option for it to be automatically formatted.

I wish I had the time to go through and manually format the book, but if I had that kind of time, I would probably have time to actually scrapbook. And I don't have that kind of time. So while I don't totally love the formatting of our book, I LOVE that it was pretty easy, that it didn't take a lot of time, and I that I now have all of last year (March-December since I didn't start blogging until March) in a book form for us to have and look at forever.

Now I still need to decide how many I want to buy each year. I only got one for now. They are not cheap, but I want one for me and I think the girls will each want a book from each year one day. Oh, well. I'll figure that out later.

Flashback Friday

Meyers - June 2010

Progress

We finally got rid of our 1980's oven and range. We've had the new oven in for about a month now, but we just got the microwave installed today.

I am so not a cook, and I'm still trying to get back in the groove of cooking every night with two kids, one of which screams a lot:) But it's been so nice cooking with our new oven. And I am a freak about things being on my counter. I like my counter to have as few things on it as possible, so I am loving not having a microwave on my counter.

And it just looks 50 times better in our kitchen now, so that's fun too!

Wordless Wednesday

YMCA

My mom watched the girls the other day so I could run some kid-free errands. We have this frame thing in the kitchen that has a bunch of pictures on it. One of the pictures is from our wedding reception. We had a super fun DJ that had all the props for the Village People, so friends and family were the Village People during the YMCA song at our reception. Meyers was checking out the picture with my mom, and so my mom taught her the YMCA - at least the most important part - "Y.M.C.A!"


Oh my goodness! We have watched this video over and over and over. We are probably biased, but we think it is hilarious! In case you can't understand her at first, she is saying "young man.....YOUNG MAN!!!" and then she is saying "la, la, la, la, la, la". I'm assuming my mom didn't know the words to teach her there:) Then we love how she breaks into this little angelic singing voice to sing the "YMCA" part. We've never heard that voice before!

Baby Blessings Sunday

This past Sunday, our church had what they are now calling "Baby Blessings" Sunday. It used to be called "Baby Dedication" Sunday. We go to a non-denominational church, so there is no baptism or christening or anything like that. It's really just a time to recognize babies born in the last year, and most importantly, a charge to all the parents to raise their children in a godly home and to be their first and foremost christian influence. Our minister reminded us that one of the best things we can do for our children is to love our spouse. So true!

Here is us up front with Emery.

 All of us - somehow we managed to get a picture even though it was time for Emery to eat and Meyers was ready to go, too:)

Baby Blessings Sunday with Meyers three years ago. They used to do it on Mother's Day and this was the first time that I had gone to church as a family in 5+ weeks.

Date Night

Something about having two children makes you realize just how much you need date nights (and lots of them)! We have been having more date nights recently. So nice to get away without kiddos, and then come home to their sweet, sleeping faces.

The Raymonds are our Moe's buddies. We go often with our kids, but it's been a long time since we've been out together without our kids. Like since before Meyers was born - way too long.

So we went to Buckley's tonight and had dessert there. It was delicious! It's so nice to eat your food hot - that is rare these days:) And then we had to go by Muddy's since we were so close to get cupcakes for later. We had a great time with great friends!

Flashback Friday

Meyers - June 2010

Memorial Day Weekend - Part 2

Since we were already going to be in Atlanta for my cousin's wedding, we decided to make a longer weekend out of it and visit the Kelly's while we were down there. Jessica and I have been friends for 20+ years, which is still hard to believe since it feels like we are not that old yet:) Past high school, we've only lived in the same city for about a year and a half when she moved back home after she got married. We have maintained our friendship throughout (even with letters before email and all kinds of other new technology came about!), and I am so thankful for it. It's even more special now to see our girls together and becoming friends even though they don't live in the same city.

It's kind of random that we were in Atlanta last Memorial Day. We were joking that it needs to be an annual thing. That trip holds special memories for me. Meyers and I got to spend a week with Jessica and family. She had just had Caroline, so I got to soak up an itty bitty newborn baby. We had been trying to get pregnant for about 4 months at that point, so I was loving being around her and seeing Meyers handle a new baby. On day 2 or 3 of that trip, I took a pregnancy test and it was finally positive! It was so fun being with your best friend when you find out you are pregnant. Poor John was the second one to know because I came running downstairs to get Jessica to confirm that it was indeed a second pink line. Fun times:) John and his family met us down there for the last part of our trip and we did fun stuff like a Braves game and the aquarium. Since I was barely pregnant, it was fun for John and I to just have our little secret while we were there and think about our future with two children:)

Back to this year:

After we checked out on Sunday, we made a trip to the Varsity and had lunch with my aunt and cousin and my parents before they got on the road. It's a have-to every time we are in Atlanta. We have never been to Ikea before and thought we wanted to check it out. We learned a few lessons that day.

1. Don't drop by Ikea on your way to somewhere else unless you have 8 hours to kill.
2. Don't take your children. (I know they have a children's area, but I kind of crazy when it comes to childcare. Sometimes I don't even like putting Meyers in our church nursery. See, I'm crazy.)
3. Know what you are going for - make a list, a very detailed list.
4. Set aside an entire day because you will need it to make it through even half of the store!

Basically we walked in and realized it was not a good idea with our short time frame and two children. We walked around for about 20 minutes and then spent the next 20 minutes trying to find our way to the exit! Lesson learned!

We finally go to Jessica's after our crazy, failed Ikea experience. The big girls had so much fun seeing each other. Meyers couldn't stop saying she wanted to see "Bebets" and Jessica said Elizabeth was saying the same thing about Meyers. After dinner, we let the girls play outside. Meyers has never played with chalk. Part of it is because I HATE the way chalk feels on my hands (I was so glad to have a whiteboard when I taught!!!) and the other is that our driveway is that rough/pebbley kind. They had fun with chalk, bubbles, 4 wheelers and trikes!

 

Only picture I got of them together in their red,white and blue matching:)

Jessica's husband cooked breakfast for us the next morning. It was so yummy! I told him it's been a year (the last time we were staying with them) that somebody has cooked me breakfast:) John has many talents, but cooking is not one of them! Ha! 

We were not motivated to do anything on Memorial Day. So we finally came up with letting the big girls play in the sprinkler. I went to get Meyers dressed and Elizabeth came with us. They both wanted to get in the pack-n-play with Emery. Cute stuff!

Meyers was not a huge fan of the sprinkler. She's never done it before. I know, I'm a bad mom:) But she loved playing outside with Elizabeth!

 LOVE this sweet picture! 

Elizabeth is a good bit taller than Meyers even though they are only 6 weeks apart. She is such a little mama to Meyers sometimes. It's really cute!

 

Apparently we have some divas on our hands! I was inside getting Emery down, so I didn't get to see this in person. But they said they just propped their feet right up and relaxed!

I love when she crosses her legs:)

 Our plan was to get at least one picture of our girls all in matching outfits. Yes, we are dorks. Jessica and I actually discussed this before we left for Atlanta so I would know what to pack that they had alike. Well.....with four girls 3 and under, we were lucky to get a picture at all. They look precious, but no matchy-matchy. Maybe next time:)

We had a fun visit with the Kelly's, and I'm so glad it worked out for us to extend our trip to visit with them. Can't wait for them to visit us next!