Mama!

You know that phrase "swells with pride" it isn't just a phrase of adding motion to something that doesn't have movement - this really exists. When my daughter out of no where said "mama" and smiled at me that is exactly what I felt: a swell of emotion from the depths of my chest through my heart and spilling out my eyes. My daughter uttered her first word at the YOUNG age of 4 months and 17 days old and it was about ME!

She was sitting in her swing and I was sitting next to her and she was cooing away and making noise and then out of no where she just said "MAMA" very clear and precise and then I looked at her and she got the biggest grin on her face and started kicking her feet in excitement. Ace who was zoned into a tv show even turned around and said "mom, sister talked! ... she said mama!" I know!!! I'm so excited. I can't stop grinning.

I'm so happy for her and her advancements and I know that this 'mama' might be a rare treat until a few months down the line and I know that 'mama' will be used for other things and babbled about - just the same as after Ace said 'dada' for the first time - but I'll give (and take) credit where credit is due and my little girl has said her first word and it was for/to me! :) I love her. She makes me smile every day.

This needed to be documented immediately...

Ace is such an adorable kid and I feel his antics and insights need to be memorialized in print in case he outgrows them. After his nap he asked to play outside in the water. I turn the faucet on just a dribble and he entertains himself by filling up buckets. After a while he brings his chair over to the door and asks to go sit out on the front porch and eat some carrots. This was not a one time thing. Earlier in the week he proclaimed he wanted to wait outside for his dad to come home, eating carrots, and reading his new magazine. haha I love that kid!



Today, while enjoying his carrots outside Ace heard the ice cream truck and came inside to get me to show me the ice cream truck down the road. As we were walking back to the house, I asked him if he would like some and he said yes and so I grabbed him a mini dove bar out of the freezer and went back outside. He took one sorta bite as the chocolate coating started to crackle and melt on him and the following takes place.

Ace: I don't want this anymore.Me: Are you sure?
Ace: Yes... I don't like ice cream it's too expensive and too messy. I'm just going to eat my carrots.Me: Oh...ok.

I love my kid and he is still out on the porch crunching on a ton of carrots. Silly and healthy boy! :)

Too Fast

...yet again! If you remember when Ace was 11 weeks and 2 days old I had a freakout that I had just put my son is a 6 month outfit. Then when he was 14 months old I had a chuckle at the fact he was wearing that same outfit, yet again.

And just recently, Mae put on those very same pjs again - this time at 16 weeks and 5 days old. It is crazy to me that my little ones are growing so fast. Ace of course couldn't even remotely fit in these pjs now even I tried my dernest. He's a giant now - over 3 feet tall. Mae, while not having worn these pjs for the first time until 5 weeks past her brother - it still is too fast! She's pushing being 5 months old - when did this happen?

She's cutting teeth - or is on the verge any day now. She's rolling all over the place and can scootch with extreme concentration and a lot of patience and endurance on her part (aka not very far or fast) and she already has stopped being cuddly all the time. She still snuggles with me at night or when she naps though. It's crazy to me how we're almost in JUNE?! WHEN. DID. THAT. HAPPEN?!?!?! Slow down time - my baby is already no longer a newborn.

Pretending

Growing up there is nothing better than an imagination. Ace in recent weeks has really started to develop his imagination - including once when baby elephants had to be let inside from our front door so that they could play with him upstairs in his room. It was the first time that I had really seen him take nothing and turn it into a lot of fun. He really enjoyed that.

Like all kids they like to play with things that they see adults playing with. Of course he loves to talk on his phone and he loves loves LOVES to cook. He's owned a grill now for about a year, something I found on craigslist for not too much. It had been the plan that for this upcoming Christmas, both he and Mae's "big" gift would be a kitchen - I had been eyeing a particular one by Step 2 and it had been on my 'list'. A little over a week ago we drove by a garage sale and they had a kitchen and they only wanted $50 for it. Super! The one that I had my eye on was $140 and this particular model this family was selling, sells new for $220!! The woman also had drawers and drawers of utensils, dishes, pans, and food! So much food! We offered another $50 for all of it, which after some research after the fact I discovered she had well over $200+ worth of food alone. For $100 we walked away with so much imagination and excitement for the boy (and the girl, eventually.)

He loves it. He wants to play with it all the time, he wants to cook us food, he wants us to cook with him. He makes food for sister. It's pretty adorable and I love that he's playing with it so much. It certainly is bigger than one that we would have chosen, but I have a feeling that he will be playing with it for a long time to come - so it has ample space for he and his sister to play simultaneously with it.

I have to go ... I have been requested to go cook with Ace!

A Growing Beauty

Mae weighs 12lbs and 2oz (25%)

She is 24" long (53%)

And her little noggin is in the 25th percentile...

And yet still so tiny!

Four Months Old

Wow what a month of excitement - first I'd like to say that Mae escaped any major illness in her 4th month of life - which mommy and dad are very thankful for after her severe illness she had in March. No fun for sure. She did have a tiny cold just before our road trip, but overall has been quite healthy. We are very thankful for that.

Mae's firsts this month: her first road trip, her first time in OR, ID, UT, CO, NM, TX, LA, and MS, her first time in a hotel room for that matter, her first (official) Easter, and rolling back to front and her first attempts at crawling too! and finally teething began this month.

Yes, in the mobility department just in the last week Mae has made incredible progress. Since her first few time rolling from tummy to back she only has occasionally repeated this process. Well last week she started doing it much more regularly and just this past Sunday Mae in a very concentrated effort, after several minutes mastered back to front. She's so happy that she can get herself in the position she wants to be in and in fact is quite the roller now. She doesn't quite understand that she can roll to get to things at the moment she's just satisfied with the act of rolling. She also is trying desperately to crawl. She's got the back leg part down, she can get her knees tucked up and under her but her arms still do not have the strength to help her with that - so on occasion she does get enough traction with the carpet to push herself forward - she's been working on that these past couple of days and is actually pretty good at it, but she gets frustrated so she doesn't make any distance of much measure. But she's on the verge and I'd guess by her next "birthmonth" she'll be mobile officially (her brother was crawling at 6 months so we'll see!) She also really enjoys to 'walk' and does really well to lift up her legs and move her feet forward while we hold her hands and give her support. It's pretty adorable.

Mae continues to be a very happy baby. She's almost laughing and she smiles a LOT. She's also quite the talker - she will ramble on and on and just talk to you. It's adorable and I'm glad I have that on video to remember later.

Sleep wise, Mae is doing pretty well - with the road trip and the new place we've kind of gotten off track on her longer stretches simply because it was all new and different, but she still is going for longer stretches on the first stint. Although she unfortunately has decided, like her brother, that 7:30am is WIDE AWAKE time. This is unfortunate for her brother because he doesn't get an hour+ of mommy-alone time first thing in the morning. However, Mae is good to take a morning nap - often in her swing and that is the time that mommy and son can play.

Teething is in full and sad force around here. I can see some tooth buds below the surface and Mae's doing her best to bring them in. She chews on everything and is a faucet a lot of the time with drool. She is definitely a drooler with teething. Ace never had any of that he was dry as a bone. Still think we're a ways off from the teeth breaking through - Ace took about a month to actually 'teeth' before his first tooth broke through.

We don't have a pediatrician yet, so we do not have 4 month stats yet - so I'll be getting those in a separate post. She is still pretty itty bitty and it's funny because everyone thinks she looks SO BIG in her pictures - and we agree her head looks huge in pictures compared to how tiny it really is. After all she was in the 10th percentile for her head size at 2 months. Apparently the camera adds 10lbs to babies as well ;-) We're looking forward to a fun summer with our little girl and sharing more SUN with her!

Mother's Day!

Sharing Mother's Day with my family is a great joy - Loving Husband does a good job to make the day special for me and now that Ace is getting older he is able to 'help' some in doing his part. This year I again got to 'sleep in' and have breakfast in bed. Mae didn't quite get that memo so I was still up well before 8am. Ah well. I was greeted by a giant gummy grin, so I can't complain one bit. Next up I received a card from my family and I love it. I've read it a lot. :)




After my loving card and breakfast in bed, I grabbed a shower (another Mother's Day treat, hehe) and then we all got ready and posed for some pictures with my little ones.
Then we went out for a walk. We took about a 2 mile walk to a local park and packed some picnic supplies and enjoyed just being out and about. It's not too hot here yet, but we were still pretty warm - we are NWers after all.

On our walk we saw our first alligators not in a zoo! The first ones we saw were just babies, but then the boys saw one giant guy that was lurking in the next storm drain. Apparently he was massive, I missed him - and I'm not too sad about it.


We enjoyed the park and the marina for a while before heading back home for nap time. It was a great afternoon out and about.

Rolling Back to Front!

She did it! She did it! Just one day shy of four months old our little (strong!) girl rolled from her back to front. What a great Mother's Day gift from my little girl! Now that she's doing it and has figured out the secret, she keeps doing it over and over. She only is going in one direction but she's making progress across a room - although I don't think she's doing this with purpose just yet. It's so exciting to see her learn these fun milestones! Although SLOW down little girl, time is flying way too fast and you're so advanced! Congrats, Owlie on this wonderful accomplishment!

To see Ace's first roll over that direction, click here.

A new hair-do

Ace's hair was getting pretty long. I had the best of intentions of cutting it before the scissors were going to be packed... but that didn't happen happened and somehow that box still has not been unpacked (I'm still a bit perplexed as to why.) However, since we have no major event, holiday, photoshoot ;-) coming up I decided a quick buzz by the husband with his beard trimmer over Ace's hair would do until scissors could be found and properly utilized once again. So while Mae enjoyed her exersaucer for the first time - Ace enjoyed his first buzz cut. :)