Ready to go

On your mark...

When daddy's around all eyes are on him, her little face lights up and she smiles like this; a smile only daddy gets. What a lucky guy.

Deep in thought.

Blowing zer-burts at mamma.

Taylor Eve is growing far to fast. She's rolling over (for about three weeks now) and starting pushing herself up a week ago and is already starting to push off, like trying to crawl. She's trying to catch up with her brother.

Slow down baby! You're making your mamma sad, you're so big and so strong already. I fear we haven't had enough nuzzle time yet. Your daddy and I hope your like us and grow to not mind being close to your mom and dad even though you'll be so big and so super cool.

Love you my little lady bug.

Mamma

Yum :: Yum

She looks so much like my baby pictures here, I just can't get over it.

Yes, our baby is already eating solids. She's also teething quite badly so I decided to try a teething biscuit. Austin loved these things when he was a baby and never even came close to breaking piece off even when he had teeth. I know all you moms out there are thinking I'm nuts for giving my 4 month old something hard to eat...she loved it and my eyes didn't come off her the whole time she gummed away at it. Please don't mind that I don't always follow the rules.

These aren't exactly the most angelic images of our little lady-bug, but a history of her first year would not be complete without a few shots of her first food. Enjoy!

After school treats

Austin had a rough couple of days the second week of school. Being what some may consider a bully, but Chris and I feel in our hearts that he just doesn't have it in him to be a bully, that rather he's been trying to assert himself in ways that are just not acceptable. So we have made huge progress and he hasn't had any mishaps in 2 weeks! (knock on wood) Each day after school I give him apiece of candy if Miss Barb reports no bad behavior. I think I'm going to have to switch to maybe something a little healthier though....like say a special activity. He asks for candy all whenever he does something good now, which luckily for this momma is more frequent than not. Anyway, here's a couple pics of my handsome little man enjoying a starburst, his grammy's favorite candy.

Verde

We kept our house plants outdoors for the summer months and when Chris decided to bring the jade plant back in, there was a little fellow that came in with it. We named him Verde and kept him in Austin's bug habitat for a day. We all agreed that he was the cutest bug we'd ever seen, despite his enormous size and beady little eyes.

Here's a picture of Austin holding Verde just before we let released him back into the wild. I think we would have kept him a little longer had it not been for the fact that we couldn't identify him so we didn't know what to feed him and we really didn't want to have a burial for him, being that he was so darn cute and all. If any of you can identify him let us know. We looked online all over...thought he was a leaf bug because he blend quite well in the leaves, but found that leaf bugs look much different from Verde.

All the Spanish Austin is learning in school is paying off. When I suggested we name our lovely bug Verde, he corrected my pronunciation, "No Mommy. It's Verrrrde,"as he rolled the R in Verrrrrde. Good going pal, glad to see you're paying attention to Senor Juan at school.

We're Huggers

Thanks to my hubs leaving this up on the laptop, I just found my new favorite site.

:: treehugger.com ::

Getting his Kicks in

Chris and I couldn't be more proud at how well Austin did at his first soccer practice. Besides being one of several hundred kids on the playing fields and getting a purple shirt instead of his favorite color red, Austin did exceptionally well kicking the ball, stopping the ball, dribbling it down the field, he even made a couple of goals. There's nothing very serious or ... organized about the practice, but he's learning the basics and running around like crazy and man alive did he sleep well. Taylor did great as her brother's cheer leader. I don't think it'll take much to get her used to sitting on the sidelines, that is until she's old enough to play. Little sweetie ::

Just gotta love those little shin guards, the smallest they make and they're still a little big on him. The soccer balls the team practices with are too much, I've seen grapefruits bigger. Well it's started, not sure if I'll take the title of soccer mom quite yet...we'll see if he can get past wearing purple again next week. All in all we're really excited with Austin's not so organized first experience with team sports.

By the way, thank you so much for all your well wishes on a quick recovery from the surgery. I managed to loose all but 3 lbs of my baby weight. Chris says there are better ways to loose weight and I'll have to agree with him on that :o) Miss Erin asked if I had a tummy tuck, not an appendectomy.... I wish that was the case and thank you for the compliment but really I was sucking the gut in :o)

Have been working a ton so sorry for the lack of blog updates. Will try to be better about posting. Would love to hear from you all.

Little Miss Muffet

Taylor's laugh is sounding more and more like a big girls every day. She's rolling from side to side now, onto her belly and can even push herself up onto her hands. I think she works so hard to do this all because she's always got to have Austin in her site. She adores him so much. She's teething quite a bit, chewing on her hand and fingers a lot. Just a little love, sitting soooo pretty.

Little Sweetie

Our little love is getting so big. Rolling over and laughing all the time. She's my sunshine and just lights my life up day in and day out. Enjoy the pics.

One less organ

So many of you already know, but I am down one organ. Had an emergency appendectomy Thursday night around 10pm. Wednesday I started having pain in my abdomen, above the belly button, like a band or cramping. Didn't think anything of it, just thought maybe I needed to eat. So I drank some water and headed to bed.

Slept a bit restless that night and woke up with Chris who was going to work only a half day and use the other half to hang with us and get ready for his trip to Peru. By 1pm I was in so much pain, I could have birthed 10 children with no medicine and still had felt better than I was at that point. And then it got worse. I began throwing up yellows and greens that I've never seen before. I called my doctor who told me to get to the ER immediately. After waiting a few very long hours in the ER, I was given a pain killer that actually worked very well. A few hours after that and a ton of tests later, they decided to take out my appendix.

I'm recovering, not as quickly as I was expecting, but forcing myself to take it easy, which is one of the most difficult things for this mommy to do. I miss holding Taylor and being able to chase after Austin. I had to stop nursing because of the anesthesia and antibiotics they had to give me. My milks way, way down despite doing everything under the sun to prevent it from going down.... makes me sad.

Hope to have some happy little pictures up soon for you all to look at. With all the being sick and without an appendix I still haven't been able to play with my new camera :o( don't really trust myself on these pain killers, same reason why I haven't been holding my Taylor much :o(

Oh and yes, Chris had to cancel his trip to Peru. He's quite sad about this, but glad he decided to stay back and help me get better, though he has enjoyed giving me a hard time about this... like I had any control over my appendix crappin' out on me. Gotta love my hubby's sense a reason. Thank god he decided to stay behind though, there's no way I could have done this without him. You've been fantastic babe, thanks for all the help. I love you.

Thanks for checking in. --Liz