JAKE, HOLLI, CARDER & BRENN

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Nihao

(forgive me while I am still playing catch up...)

The last weekend in June, Jake's younger brother returned home from serving a 2 year mission in Taiwan. We made a quick road trip up to Salt Lake to see Parker and attend his homecoming and also to introduce miss Brenn to Jake's side of the family.

Carder with Uncle Parker...he felt especially excited that he could now share the small bit of Mandarin he'd picked up from his kids show Nihao Kilan

Annie with Brenn (who is about 3 weeks old here)

Jake's sister Allie had her baby exactly 2 weeks after I had Brenn...Here is Jake with Mr Carson

Brenn is always sleeping with her hand up to her face...I dunno if it's a sign she is going to be super dramatic or that she is just a girly girl

Brenn with Great-Grandma Apostol

Jake with baby Jacob

Brenn & Carson
(3 weeks) (1 week)

Jake, Annie & Allie with their babies

The cousin count doubled this year with the arrival of three new babies (Brenn & Carson in June and Jacob last December) Jacob is a pretty solid kid and looked humongous next to the two new babies so everyone started calling him Big Jake.

Friday, August 5, 2011

2 Months

Brenn had her two month check up today and she got an A+ from the doctor. She was 22 inches long (25-50%), weighed 10.7 lbs (25-50%) and had a head circumference of 38 cm (25-50%). She has been such a good baby (if she wasn't I dunno if I'd be able to handle both of them!) She still sleeps quite a bit, only wakes up once at night (which is amazing since Carder pretty much ate every 2 hours night and day), and has started smiling and cooing more and more which Carder especially loves (he gets so proud of himself when he thinks he has made her smile). She is holding her head up really well and is starting to move around more so I can see her rolling any time now (its a little harder to just leave her on a blanket on the floor with Carder, we usually have to put her in her swing or cradle to protect her from a certain 3 year old who sometimes has a little too much love to give).

People are constantly asking us who she looks like. Its hard to say. Sometimes I see glimpses of Carder in her, but she still totally has her own look. I took pictures of Carder at the doctors office at his 2 month check up, so I tried to recreate those today when I took Brenn to compare...

CARDER

BRENN

Milestones

I try and get the kids pictures taken at certain milestones (newborn, 6 week, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 1 year, 18 months). Well I had yet to venture out of the house too much with the two kids, but with my Mom's help I went to get Brenn's 6 week pictures done with only a day to spare til she was 7 weeks (whew!!) I took advantage of one of those sweet coupons I got in the mail from Sears because at 6 weeks you are lucky to get a gassy smile captured in a picture, so my expectations were low just expecting them to capture basically what she looks like at this stage. Last time I do that one. I get the pics back and they are on that flimsy photo paper that you use with your at-home printer...what the heck! But here are the few that turned out somewhat decent...gotta love all the goofy faces :)

Along with remembering milestones...A few weeks ago Brenn had her one month check up and she measured 21 ½ inches (50-75%) and weighed in at 9.1 lbs (25-50%) head circumference 36 ½ (10-25%)

My Baby Is 3!!!

This is totally out of order, but I guess I had never got around to posting about Carder's 3rd birthday which was on May 24th.

I took Carder to the doctor for his 3-year-old check up the same time I took Brenn for her one month check up (I know, I know only about a month and a half late, but with the arrival of a new baby and recovering from a C section, I am lucky I got him there at all). He was measured at 38.25 inches (50-75%) and weighed 31.7 lbs (25-50%).

Jake's little sister was born on his 4th birthday, and he always tells the saddest sob story about it. I guess he woke up and his grandparents were at his house since his parents were at the hospital. Anyway, at some point in the day he tells them that this is his worst birthday ever (even though he admits it was probably one of the sweetest bdays he ever had because they totally doted on him all day...Kids sure know how to work us adults!) So after hearing his story I had a little bit of a complex about Carder's birthday. I was already feeling super guilty about being a dud mom for the past few months since I was sick and then put on bed rest, so I really wanted him to have a special birthday before the arrival of his new little sister and his world got turned upside down. The week of his birthday my doctor cleared me to slowly come off of bedrest, so my parents brought Carder back up to me and we all celebrated his 3rd birthday together. We went to the "Knight show" at the Excalibur hotel on the strip the night before his birthday (only because they were closed on his actual birthday) then on his birthday Jake came home at lunchtime so he could open his presents and that evening we had a little "knight" themed family get together. After it was all done he told me "Mom this was a really great day," so that helped ease my guilt and made me just love that boy even more.

At 3 years old Carder ...

Knows all his letters and letter sounds and is reading some words. He loves to point out any letter he sees. He will constantly tell us the letters he sees on signs etc and ask us what that spells or give us a word and ask us how you spell it. He can verbally spell Carder, Mom, Dad, Jaxon, Mimi, To, And, The and Bob (thanks to Kelsie for working at Bob's pizza).

Is totally into sports. Once when I asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up he told me a Basketball player. For a while he wore a little basketball jersey everyday and then made Jake put a basketball jersey on the second he got home from work. Then he would have Jake play basketball with him on his little tykes hoop where he'd be Jimmer and he'd call Jake King James (Lebron). Jake didn't like his role assignment so he has since convinced Carder to amend his title to Jackson Emery. He also loves football (he tells me he is number 11, I dunno why he picked that number but he sticks with it) as well as baseball (he loves Babe Ruth thanks to Sandlot and Grandpa Apostol's Yankees hat, and loves to tease his dad by singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and instead of saying "root root root for the home team," he puts in Cardinals (my dads favorite team) or Cubs (Leons favorite team) where you'd normally say home team since Jake is an Atlanta Braves fan.

LOVES LOVES LOVES music. He will sit and have us make him his own Cds on Itunes. He knows all the songs by their album artwork and will point to which ones he wants included on his mix. Some of his favorite jams are: Matt & Kim "Daylight" Taio Cruize "Dynamite" Metro Station "California" ACDC "TNT" and "Zombie Nation" by Kernkraft 400 (thank you, BYU basketball games) among others. He also loves singing his ABCs and Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

Can memorize like crazy. I have been working with him on reading a little bit and sometimes its frustrating because he will just memorize the book (seriously he has half of his books totally memorized, if you didn't know better you'd think the child could read). This memory has made some trouble for us too. We let him watch Sandlot a few times and then he started monologuing from it, and repeated some words that you don't really want to hear your 3 year old say. That movie has been put up high for the time being until he can learn not to say the naughty words. (That movie also gave us a chance to have good talk on the Word of Wisdom due to the carnival scene...Oh my what this kid makes us do!)

He still has more energy than anyone I have ever met, and can mess up the house in a blink of an eye. We are working on cleaning up his messes, but it is a slow process.

He is still wearing diapers...We have done the potty training thing so many times (he was doing so good last spring right as Jake was graduating from law school) but something always seems to happen. Like we move, or I get put on bedrest or he gets sick etc. He does pretty good sometimes, and now I have decided I am not buying anymore diapers...Our pediatrician said to wait to do the potty thing for Carder until Brenn is just a normal part of our lives (not sure exactly what that means) so we will see how this all goes...