Saturday, January 26, 2013

No sleep for the weary and non-stop ear infections!

My poor sweet baby has had non-stop ear infections since the beginning of December! We did two rounds of oral antibiotics, 3 doses (shots in each leg for 3 days) of rocephin, and then another oral antibiotic...and you guessed it, we were referred to the ENT. So, poor baby got some tubes put in her ears to help keep these infections away! The other part of the title of this post is also true...she has not been sleeping at night and neither has mommy! And sometimes waking up Caden, too. In our new house, their rooms are connected by a bathroom. She was crying the other night and I heard several doors open...one from caden's room to the bathroom, the other from the bathroom to Ensley's room, then from Ensley's room to the hallway, and then into our room telling me that the baby needed me. Sweet big brother checking on his baby... Ready for surgery
From iph 11413
Literally about an hour and a half later
From iph 11413
Daddy was out of town, so we are beyond thankful for our friend, Tara...we had to be at the surgery center at 7:15 and Caden's school doesn't open until 7:30, so I dropped Caden off at Tara's on the way to the surgery center and she took him to school. She has two bigger dogs, so he was excited to be able to play with them for a few minutes.  Then, when I picked him up, he asked me why Tara wasn't picking him up and told me that he wanted to go to her house...way to make me feel loved, Caden :).

Playdates

Funny thing, before we had kids, we had girls nights pretty regularly...now, after kids, we have playdates :).  There are still girls nights, but those are fewer and far between...

From iph 11413
Sorry for the picture quality, but we wanted to get a quick picture before they all moved and this was in he dark with my phone...

This was right before Christmas...there were about 13 kids over that day. They played hard in the yard and then came in to watch a movie in the theatre room (great thing about this room is that the previous owners of the house left everything for us...including the couch!). We love having a house that we can entertain in!

Some of our fall/winter outings

I try to do as much fun things as I can with the kids on the weekends. Inevitably, there are those weekends that we just stick around the house and don't do a whole lot, but we try to go to at least one fun place or have one playdate each weekend. These are some of our fun outings that we did over this fall and winter.

Caden loves animals and our friends live way out in the country with chickens, horses, dogs, etc.  He loves to go out there.  He and his little friend, Bo, chase the chickens, catch them by the tail and put them in the dog crate.  Once they get them all, they let them go so that they can catch them again...yes, I know, these must be some patient chickens...

From iph 11413
From iph 11413
We took a trip to the junior museum to see more animals and some dinosaur skeletons!
From iph 11413
From iph 11413
And snakes...not mommy's favorite.
From iph 11413
We went to Caden's fall festival at school and of course rode the ponies...
From iph 11413
And that same day, went to the air show and toured some military planes. The airshow was good and Caden loved it, but it was quite possibly the hottest I have ever been. Note to the coordinators of this...walking around looking at airplanes on the hot tarmac would be better in a really cold month!!
From iph 11413

Thanksgiving

We packed up into two vehicles with two kids, two dogs, and two adults and headed to Macclenney for Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Eve :). And with all that, I forgot my camera...good thing Aunt Carly is never without hers, so she gladly took all the pictures that weekend. Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Andy bought so much stuff to keep the bigger boys entertained...including head lamps. They were searching for treasure!
From Thanksgiving 2012
Like I said lots of stuff to entertain the boys...air hockey, shuffle board, arts and crafts, and they did ginger bread houses with Pops!
From Collages
Cousin Jack loved giving his baby cousin Ensley hugs :)
From Collages
Silly Pops!
From Thanksgiving 2012
Ensley's first Thanksgiving!
From Thanksgiving 2012
Hello there blue eyes!
From Thanksgiving 2012
From Collages
Sweet Harrell Cousins! And all smiling! All be it in two different pictures, but smiling!
From Collages
And an unusual occurence...Daddy helped cook some of Thanksgiving! He and Uncle Todd made the rolls, the turkey, the dressing, and mashed potatoes...so, of course, we had to get some pictures as evidence.
From Collages
A tradition at Grandmother's...the lighting of the tree to start the Christmas season!
From Collages
We had a great Thanksgiving!
From Collages
From Thanksgiving 2012

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Leo

Caden's  teacher was meant to be a pre-school teacher more than anyone I have ever met.  She has the cutest, clever ideas and of course just loves the kids.  One of her things is backpack buddies...there are two.  Leo is a backpack buddy - he's a lion backpack with a book, journal, and another stuffed lion inside.  Caden loved Leo...He was so excited when he got to take Leo home over the weekend.  We took Leo everywhere with us!  He went out to eat with us, he went to sleep with us, he went to our soccer game, you get the point.  At the end of the weekend, we have to write in the journal about what we did with Leo and usually the parents take a picture and put it in the journal as well.  This was our picture with Leo.  The look on Caden's face just captures his feelings about Leo perfectly.

From iph 11413
When Monday came around, the look on his face was not so happy...

Pops (the other one)

My dad was Pops to Andrew (the only grandkid here when he died), so hence the title of this post. I have had all of these shirts of my dad's for years now and was looking for a good seamstress to make something out of them. So, while I was on maternity leave this summer, I found a quilter and asked her to make two quilts from all of the shirts (one for Caden and one for Ensley). It's just perfect...
From iph 11413
I remember him wearing all of these shirts. Since this blog is how I am trying to keep track of Caden and Ensley's lives and big events, I thought I would also share some memories of my dad, so that they will have them here as well. Caden is at the age where he is asking more and more questions about the man whose picture is right next to my side of the bed.

Robert Allen "Al" Johnson, Sr. (Pops) October 22, 1944 - May 8, 1999

Most of the shirts that were used to make the quilts were long sleeved, collared shirts. I don't have very many memories of my dad wearing shorts (I know he did in his earlier years, but later on, his staple was long sleeved collared shirts and khaki pants). He would wear t-shirts, but with khaki pants.

My dad also didn't cuss (at least we never heard him). Maybe some of my uncles could disagree :). If he was mad (which was rare), you could hear him say "hot dog-it", or "golly" (pronounced gaw-lee).

He listened to the oldies station all the time (or even tapes of oldies songs). And you didn't change his radio station in the car...Robert, my brother, once joked that Ryan and I were the only kids who knew all the words to all of the oldies songs in elementary school.

He loved to cook and he loved to sing when he cooked...mostly made-up songs. My favorite was "I got to go to Mexico, I got to get away to Mexicay". I'm not sure why, but most of his made up songs were about Mexico :).

There are so many more memories of him, but those were a few I wanted to share. I hope to tell Caden and Ensley a lot more stories when they are older so that maybe they will feel that they knew him, too...

Our end of 6 month fashion show...

The clothes are just so cute...I love all of the little clothes. I still can't part with some of Caden's. I know it's foolish to think that they will dress their kids in them someday, but part of me hopes. Although I did see a cute idea where you can make a pillow with some of your favorite baby clothes, so that's an idea too. Some of my favorites taken with my phone...
From Collages
From Collages
And she started to get a little fussy after a few outfit and bow changes...

Milestone...She started sitting up around 6 months old and could sit herself up around 7 months old :).

Monday, January 14, 2013

First Foods

Ensley was 5 1/2 months old and she was over her rice cereal...well, she started blowing raspberries with every bite, so she was doing more playing than eating.  So, we decided to start foods.  First up, sweet potatoes...
From 2012_11_01
From 2012_11_01

Halloween

We moved into our new house the day before halloween, so it was chaos!  We didn't have a pumpkin, but we managed to get some candy to give out and went trick or treating in our new neighborhood. 

Now, remember, Caden was in the hospital last year for halloween, so he really didn't understand the whole concept since the last time he went he was 2.  So, I explained that he needed to knock on the door, say "trick or treat" and they would give him candy.  He thought that was amazing.  After the first few houses, he would grab the candy, turn around to me, and say "LET'S GO TO ANOTHER HOUSE!".

Here he is (ironman - he picked it out) with his little bumble bee before we set out for trick or treating...
From 2012_10_31
Ensley's first halloween (she slept through most of it)...
From 2012_10_31
From iph 11413
From iph 11413
Her cute little halloween outfit before the costume went on...
From iph 11413
During the move, I actually ended up being able to go to Caden's halloween party at school. His teacher was Alice in Wonderland and her assistant was the Queen of Hearts (love them). All of the kids marched out of the room and did their parade of costumes.
From 2012_10_30
From 2012_10_30
From 2012_10_30
The class was full of super heroes this year...
From 2012_10_30
From 2012_10_30

1st Trip to the Dentist!

Caden went to the dentist for his first visit in October. I had no idea how they would get him to keep his mouth open (we can barely get him to at home just to brush his teeth) and how they would get him to lay still...but the dental hygenist must be magic because she got him to do all of those things and even managed to take x-rays of his teeth. Why is it that your kids will do these things for other people???
From iph 11413

End of Year Soccer Pics

Better year for Caden in soccer (this was our second year). He likes playing the goalie because he can use his hands...the only problem is he also likes to get caught in the net, so sometimes he couldn't free himself when the ball was headed his way :).
 

Life is full of random moments

Sometimes I forget to capture the little things that happen in our life...like when I asked Caden if he loved his baby sister and told me "yeah, because she poops." Or when I picked him up from school for almost an entire week because daddy's truck was in the shop and he told me he was angry at his dad for not picking him up, then 5 minutes later told me he had to tell me a secret and again the secret was that he was angry at his dad for not picking him up. Or when Scott said the other day that he wanted a pistol for Christmas and immediately Caden said he wanted a parrot. No idea how the two relate to each other.