Another 1st for Leah - the NFL!

Yes, Leah got to attend her very first NFL game yesterday. Rams vs Bears. She has now been to see a professional hockey game, baseball game and football game. She behaves amazingly well! I don't think she really gets into the game itself but loves the music, lights, cheerleaders, and food. Oh the food! When Leah walked in the door yesterday afternoon I asked her what she saw. She replied with, "I had ice cream!". Paul quickly added, "we weren't supposed to tell mom that part!" Of course Paul spoiled her with cotton candy and soda too. I hope the food was enough to convince her to want to go again since I enjoyed a quiet day with Jonah. I have to give credit to Paul for taking her out to a big event on his own all day. He was pooped when he got home.

Rocking Out

So Leah attended her first Motley Crue concert last night via the VH1 Classics channel on our TV. I think I must have gone to listen to too many bands while pregnant because she loves rocking out to loud music. That or she inherited her love for loud music from Paul. He says Motley Crue is his favorite band ever. This is just a short clip but Leah jammed out for close to two hours. Jonah was pretty enthralled with it as well. If these kids insist on listening to music at the volume level their father does I'll surely be deaf here before too long.

Photo in Need of a Caption

This photo cracks me up! Really, my kid cracks me up. This photo needs a good caption. Anyone have ideas?

3 months

Seems quite crazy that it's already been three months since Jonah joined the family. I keep thinking that Jonah reminds me so much of Leah as a baby but looking at these pics of them both at 3 months makes me realize how different they look!

Jonah @ 3 months

Leah @ 3 months

Mommy has a headache

So between Jonah wanting to be wide awake for the day at 5:30 am and Leah refusing to take a nap in the afternoon, I am not getting much sleep. Yesterday my lack of sleep resulted in a nice headache. Leah and I had this conversation about it.

Leah: "mom, mom, mom, mom"
Me: "Leah please be quiet. Mommy has a headache."
Leah: "mom, mom, mom"
Me: "Leah can you please be quiet for five minutes"
Leah: "No I can't"
Me: "Why not?"
Leah: "Because I want to talk to you"
Me: "What do you want to talk about?"
Leah: "Daddy doesn't like squash, but he will try it."

Oh the joys of conversing with a two year old.

Autum Antics

I haven't mentioned much here about our house or our neighborhood, but it's a pretty nice place. There are a whole mess of kids that live around the cul de sac that play outside in the evenings. We have had unseasonably warm weather this week and the kids decided that making a huge leaf pile to jump in would be fun. Now, they decided that underneath the small tree in the front yard was the perfect place for the pile. They quickly realized however, that the small tree didn't offer quite enough leaves for a good pile. Smart kids that they are, they came up with a fabulous plan. The boys got their rakes and snow shovel and ran off to their yard to fill up leaf bags. They hauled about 10 bags of leaves from their back yard to the neighbors front yard. I'm sure their parents were thrilled! Anyway the pile was huge and all ten kids, including our little Leah jumped in just as the sun set. They then threw leaves in the air and screamed and danced and did belly slides into the leaves. It was a lovely reminder of the abandon of childhood. All the parents standing around really wanted to jump in too.

I tried to recreate a big leaf pile for Leah last night but it wasn't the same without the other kids. Made for some decent photos though.

Leah Finger Toes

first off - Leah took a nap today!!!!

So for as long as Paul and I have been together I have been disturbed by his "finger toes". I don't know that his toes are especially long but they have disturbing powers. He is able to pick up the remote control off the floor with his toes and has been know to pinch me under the covers with his freakish digits. Strange, I know. Well we discovered a year or so ago that Leah had inherited this odd trait when she started picking up her pacifier with her toes. And this is what she did last night at dinner. No, she didn't manage to get any bites in her mouth, but she did manage to give us a good laugh.

This is finger toes plus her favorite funny face!

Will Power

So I feel like I am involved in a serious battle of wills around our house these days. I know I should probably be thankful that I have a strong willed child who knows what she wants but when I am the one testing her will, it's not pretty.

The biggest battle now is that Leah is refusing to take a nap. She has taken one nap in the last 5 days and that was after a 90 minute battle to get her to rest. Now really, I can get over her not napping if she will stay in her room and entertain herself for at least an hour. It's the playing in the bathroom, smashing the light in the spare room, undressing and putting on her swimsuit in November that I'm not loving. I guess she is entertaining herself though. I am just sad that my two hours of peace and quiet to regain my sanity each day are over. The only plus is that last night she went to bed at 7:15.

Tantrums are on the rise as well. Leah screamed for an hour last week since her mean momma refused to give her anymore juice. Today I dragged her (literally) kicking and screaming out of the mall. She wasn't ready to go. Some lady in the parking lot patted me on the back and said "bless you momma" when she saw me wrangling my two year old over my shoulder while Jonah was in the sling on my chest.

I'm not sure why I am blogging about this. I feel like I am whining. Guess is just documentation of what life is like this week.

Oh and a funny Leah story to end on a better note! We took the kids along while we were voting yesterday. Leah did pretty well but REALLY wanted to run around. All was well until we were filling out our ballots and she tripped. Tripped right into the voting stations and nearly took out three of them. Paul hurried to straighten them up before the domino effect happened. We were quite the sight.

More Halloween

I guess I was in a candy induced coma this morning because I forgot to post about the funniest thing Leah did last night. She as very into her candy and decided that Sweet Tarts were her favorite. She kept telling us "they're not to sour, they're good". Eventually I told her that the one in her hand was the last one for the night. She asked many more times but didn't open it. I didn't realize that she had been stock piling a whole stack of "last ones". When I took her bunny costume off to put her in her PJ's ten little packets of sweet tarts fell out. She was taking them out of the candy basket and storing them in her costume for her friends for later.

Halloween

Well we had quite the night! It was amazingly warm here and quite the change from Halloween festivities in Wisconsin where kids have to wear snowsuits under their costumes to stay warm! We prepped Leah all week for "trick or treating" and she was thrilled to put on her bunny suit. We got Paul and Grandma set up around the fire pit in the driveway to hand out candy and gramps and I hit the neighborhood with Leah. She figured out the deal pretty quickly and was soon saying "say trick or treat to more people!" We made it to quite a few houses but headed home when she refused to walk anymore and wanted to take her costume off. We spent another hour handing out candy to trick or treaters and enjoying the fire. Jonah was a good sport too and slept through trick or treating.

Tall Grass

Almost 5 years ago when my parents moved into their place they started working on restoring some of their land to natural prairie. This time of year the grass is quite an amazing thing to see. It it so tall it feels like you are driving through a tunnel when you pull up the drive way. It makes me wonder what the country side looked like when the pioneers came to Iowa back in the day. My dad says that back then you could drive from Chicago to Des Moines without seeing a single tree. Everytime I go for a walk out back at their place now I wonder when a buffalo is going to come sneaking out! (well not really anymore since my dad informed me of the regulations and types of fences one must have to actually raise bison) Anyway, I love the tall grass and finally got Leah to venture in it this fall! She is learning to love the "tickle grass" too.

New Blog

So over the weekend my sisters, mom, and I decided that we need a family recipe blog. Here it is.

Slap The Turkey/

Fun times at the Grandparents

This past weekend Leah, Jonah and I headed up to my parents for a much anticipated visit while Paul was in New Orleans for a business trip. Leah and I even made a paper chain to count down the days until we go to go! Anyway, Leah had a fabulous time and it was very nice for me to have other people around to entertain the munchkins. Leah is still talking about the projects she did at grandma & grandpa's and her auties & Peter & Ryan!

making spooky spiders!

helping grandma make breakfast

Jonah chilling with grandma

"A Nightmare in My Closet" with grandpa

(this photo deserves a post of it's own)

on a walk to see the pond & where the bees live

What a difference a year makes!

Yesterday was what will hopefully be our playgroup's annual visit to Daniel's Farm and Greenhouse in St.Peters. Honestly, looking at these photos I can not get over how much Leah has changed from a year ago. Of course, I guess lots has changed since then since Jonah was not even a twinkle in our eye then! I know that everyone says your kids will be grown before you know it and it all goes to fast. Well, it really does.

Our Boy

I totally forgot to post about Jonah's 2 month "well baby" doctor visit. Anyway, it was last Thursday and he did just fine. He wasn't too happy the the four immunizations he got but he lived. He weighed in at 13 pounds and is 23 inches long. That puts him in the 75th percentile for baby boys his age. SO yeah, he is growing just fine. He continues to be a happy baby most of the time. He fusses when he needs a change of scenery or when he has a burp to get out. Unfortuneatly he is sort of a crappy sleeper. HE wants to sleep in bed with us all the time. He snorts and grunts and such in his cradle in the middle of the night. Hopefully we'll get that all sorted out here before too long.

Leah sings her ABC's

She has been doing it for awhile but I finally got her on video. I have to thank Paul for really helping her get it down. Now we just have to learn which letters are which.


oh and I'll snazzy up the appearance of this place when both of my kids agree to sleep at the same time!

excuse the wierd stuff

So I decided that I want my blog to look cute. In the process I have ended up with some pictures of someone else's kids and weird links etc. Please just ignore it until I figure out how to fix it. Thanks!

FFF - Fall Family Fun

Now if my sisters just read the title of this post they are thinking "FORCED FAMILY FUN". It's what we used to call family time on weekends when we were teenagers and would rather have been doing something with our friends. It's sort of silly because looking back we usually had a good time during our "forced" family time.

Yesterday was FFF day at our house. Paul probably would have liked to spend the day napping in the recliner watching football but I had other plans. I really enjoy all of the fall activities but had never been apple picking so off we went to Centennial Farms. It was a long winding drive through some gorgeous Missiouri countryside. Had we not had the air condiditioning on and the windows down there may have been some car sickness. This was how Leah spent the ride.



We were a bit bummed when we got there that very few apples were left on the trees due it being a busy weekend but there were enough for us to have the experience and bring home a few. Paul and Leah of course had to sample the merchandise and Jonah slept through it all.






Oh and Jonah did join in the fun of our family day. He woke up for the hayride!



. . . . Now, to figure out what we should do next weekend!!

He Smiles

So Jonah has been smiling consitently for about two weeks now. It's just been really hard to catch him doing it on camera till now. Usually when I pull the camera out he looks at it with a very serious furrowed brow. Here's one of our smily boy though.

A trip to the Pumpkin Farm

Today we ventured out to the HUGE pumpkin farm in Chesterfield with our playgroup. Leah wasn't too keen on posing for all the cute photos I would have liked to get. Jonah wasn't too into it either. Leah was thrilled that one of her best buddies, Brayden was able to come along at the last minute. (aren't they too cute holding hands, Leah LOVES her friends) Paul was able to join us for a bit too which was a nice surprise!