September 26 - October 20, 2015

September 26
We went up to Alexandria, MO to celebrate the anniversary of Caleb's grandma's 39th birthday.

Caleb's grandma with all of her great grandkids.

 Hanging out with Grandpa Tim

 Liam enjoyed the cupcakes

 As did Nehemiah and Ezra

 I know this is kind of hard to see, but Cade was laughing at Liam on the drive there.

 My chunky boy

 These boys are so sweet.  :-)

 

They already like to poke at each other

Week of September 27
One day Liam wasn't taking a nap so I went in there to check on him.  I discovered he had massacred his stuffed giraffe.  At first he thought it was funny.

 But then when I told him he wasn't going to get to play with his giraffe anymore, things changed.

Parents As Teachers
The car dealership in town along with Parents As Teachers puts on an event where they have car seat expert people who check your car seat and make sure it's installed properly.  If it's not or if it's not the appropriate car seat for a child's weight/height, they replace it for free!  They also have a bounce house and free food, etc.  We went last year and had a good time.  Actually my friend Sara from church forwarded me an email of an advertisement for the one this year, and the people in the picture they used look very familiar.

 This year Liam liked the Tiger, but they also had a panther, which I think might be the school mascot.  It had a scary looking face and Liam was literally shaking in fear.  I was pretty surprised, but I can't say I blame him.

 He had a good time in the bounce house

 And he even got to play with his friend, Koleman!

Our Visit with Glenn and Leah
Our college friends, Glenn and Leah (and their baby Everly), came to visit!  The guys mostly worked on recording a song and Leah and I watched the kids. Leah and I did get to go to the local coffee shop without my kids.

Liam shared some of his old baby toys with Everly

 Liam thought Cade needed some nerdy lessons and kept trying to put these glasses on him.

 I love matching outfits.  :-)

Cade turned 3 months old!  And he's 17 lbs!

Leah helped me try to get a good picture of Cade smiling.  I would give him kisses to get him to smile and she would snap the pictures.  :-)

Saturday evening we had a church bonfire/hayride.  It was fun, but I'm looking forward to the day when my kids are old enough to know not to get near the fire and we don't have to watch them like a hawk.  :-)

Some more pictures from this week:

My fortune

 Reading a toy story book before bed in his Woody jammers

 Cade likes to shake his head back and forth to keep himself awake, which has given him quite the bald spot.  (He also may have the squarest head I have ever seen)

 John stopped by one night and watched some tv with the boys

 I got some fish for Oscar but for whatever reason they were quite lethargic.  They would hang out at the top like this but they weren't dead.  They didn't last very long.

Week of October 4
Cade started sleeping around 13 straight hours.  But, back when Cade was about a month old and started having trouble breathing while he slept, I started putting him in his big swing to sleep at night.  The swing had quit working, but it kept him upright to sleep and he slept so much better.  Well, the time has come that he now has outgrown that swing so I had to transition him back into his pack n play.  I didn't think it would be a big deal, but he started waking up every 1.5-2 hours again.  He would wake up enough to realize he was hungry and wanted his diaper changed too.  Every night seems to get a little bit better and better.


Cade has recently discovered his hands and now has become a thumb sucker.  Several people on facebook told me to just let it go and let him suck his thumb, but I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it.  I already had gopher teeth before I had braces, and I wasn't a thumb sucker or a paci kid.  If Cade has teeth anything like I did, he doesn't need thumb sucking to make things worse.

Our Zoo Trip
Liam is soooo into animals.  He sits and looks at books of animals all the time.  He even likes to look at books with zoos.  Since the weather had cooled down, we decided to take a day trip to St Louis and take him to the zoo again.  He absolutely loved it.  Since we went with my parents last time  we wanted to go with Caleb's parents this time but they had other commitments and couldn't go.  My parents begrudgingly went again.  ;-)

Looking at his zoo books.

 

Liam wanted to take lots of toys and his blanket with him, but he wanted Cade to hold it all for him.

 We were very excited that he took a nap on the way there.  I was wondering how he was going to do without a nap that day.

 Of course Grandpa had to get him a smashed penny

 He was so excited to see penguins again

 The polar bear exhibit had a bunch of people around it again so this was how Liam was able to see the bear.

 This was how Cade spent the day at the zoo.  But hey, one less stroller!

 Figuring out where he wanted to go next.

 So happy to be at the zoo.  :-)

 After we left the zoo we went to visit my grandparents who live close by.  By the time we left there it was rush hour traffic trying to get out of St Louis, and it was Mizzou homecoming weekend (lots of people traveling on 70) and there was an accident.  It took us 4 hours to make the 2 hour trip home.  I'm not convinced of Caleb's excitement about sitting in traffic.

While he was at the zoo, Grandpa bought Liam some plastic penguins.  He was soooo excited about them.

The next morning they got to join Liam in eating his apple fritter donut.

BBQ Contest
Every year Centralia has a BBQ contest.  That weekend they also have activities at the city square.  I took the boys up there while Caleb was at Bible study.  Liam got to pet and feed goats and also look at chickens and calves and bunnies.

After that he got to play in a corn box.  I may have to try to make something similar to that this winter to give him a good sensory activity when we are cooped up inside.

Liam got to get his face painted for the first time!

Then we went to the grocery store where they had a hayride and pumpkins and food and stuff.  Liam loved getting to pick out a pumpkin, except he just wanted to take all of the pumpkins home.

Some more pictures from this week:

So squishy!

 Liam was sharing his bed time snack.  ;-)

 He still likes to preach.

 Trying to make a leaf pile

 My mom got the boys matching Batman jammies.  :-)

 Tummy time champ!

 ....well sometimes.  Sometimes he just wants to fall asleep and needs some encouragement

 This is what happens when he hangs out with Daddy.  ;-)  (that chub is just irresistible sometimes)

 We were watching tv one night and looked over to see Liam sitting like this with a toy mouse hanging out of his mouth.

 The little photobomber wanted in on the picture taking

Week of October 11
My parents came to go to church with us on Sunday.  My mom brought me a present from my sister. My sister is having an anchor/nautical theme for her wedding, so she sent me a message in a bottle!  How cute is this!  And to think I just boringly verbally asked her to be MY maid of honor....I'm lame.

According to Facebook, Sunday was "give mom a nap day".  I (jokingly) took this picture to show you how it was celebrated in our house.

In all seriousness though, I did get a nap that day and Caleb is very wonderful about letting me get a nap on the days that he is home during nap time.  I don't know what I would do without him.

Eliot Timothy
Our new nephew, Eliot, was born on October 14!  We got to go visit him the day after he was born.  He was the same size as Cade when he was born, but I really can't remember Cade being that tiny!

 This picture cracks me up.

 Liam's giggles when you tickle him in the backseat trying to keep him awake on the way home is always precious.

Cade had to make a quick trip to the doctor.  I'm not exactly an expert on little boy parts, so I wanted to take him in to make sure that a question I had was nothing to be worried about.  As usual, our doctor wasn't available so we had to see a fill-in.  This doctor told me that I had nothing to worry about.  They weighed him and he's up to 18 pounds now!  He has slightly slowed down on the growing, but I'm really hoping he doesn't get over 22 pounds before Christmas because a convertible car seat from my parents is on his Christmas list.

 Kisses from his big brother

Caleb's Findings
We had talked about someday having a school room for our boys when they got older because we are still toying with the idea of homeschooling.  Caleb went to a silent auction here in town with stuff that the schools were getting rid of.  He came home with a new rocking chair and 5 school desks.  He only really wanted 1 school desk, but it came in a lot of 5, and he only paid $1 for all 5.  The rocking chair he got is pretty nice and really comfortable.  I'm hoping to be able to recover the cushions and possibly refinish or paint the wood.  Not too bad for $5, eh?

 Some more pictures from this week:

He tries to roll over, but he just has a lot to roll over.

 The hipster life has chosen him.

 One day we got home and it started raining on us with blue skies.

 I had a bag of coffee sitting out.  Liam kept pointing to it telling us that he wanted some.  Caleb gave him some just to see what he would do....and he licked it off of his hand and he wanted more.  Three more times.  (at least it was decaf coffee)

 I told Liam to go get a car (meaning a hotwheels car) to take to church with him.  He grabbed this truck and packed one side of it full with hotwheels and then brought me the truck to take to church. Clever, kid, but no.

I gained a lot of weight when I was pregnant with Cade, and I just now can wear my ring again!  I'm still working on getting the wedding band to fit.

 Liam was trying to put the leaves back on the trees.

 That lip.  :-)

 My handsome dude.  I'm not sure if that's a gang sign or what he has going on there.

 Again, matching outfits.  Liam was not interested in sitting next to Cade. 

 He realllly didn't want to take a picture.

 So I bribed him with fruit snacks.

 Liam loves to play with Mr Potato Head.  It may just be the greatest toy to ever come into this house.  Liam has learned that he has to clean up toys before he can get it out.  He also has to clean up all of the pieces when he is done and put it away.  Today he got up from his nap and without me saying a word to him he cleaned up the living room so he could get it out and play with it even though he had already played with it today. 

 This is how I know that he needs a hair cut.

Week of October 18

Sunday kicked off a revival we are having at church.  The guy Caleb brought in to preach is a family friend that he has known for years.  We met up with some of Caleb's family in Columbia on Monday for them to visit.  That means I got to see this little handsome fellow again.

Peeking out at me.  :-)

 He has some freakishly long toes.  Hopefully he grows into those some day!

 On the way home Liam kept wanting to fall asleep but I was trying to keep him awake so he would take a nap at home.  I tried just letting him take some selfies of himself. 

 It didn't work and he still fell asleep.  I couldn't even wake him up.  This meant no afternoon nap for him.  :-(