Daddy Dolls

Joseph and Madelyn got "Daddy Dolls" for when daddy is away! Aren't they so cute?!!!

Joe is HOME!

It's been great having Joe home! He's been back at work already for a week and will work another week and then will have 2 weeks off! We have a little family vacation planned to go to the Outer Banks, NC for a week while he is on leave. This will be our first family trip out of town (as a family of 4)! Hopefully it will be a fun time!

A photographer came to capture the moments of us seeing Joe when he got off the boat! She did an amazing job and these are pictures I will treasure forever as it is the first deployment for us with children. There is a program called http://www.oplove.org/ that you can get a professional photographer to come take your homecoming pics and it's FREE! They even send you a free album of all the pics they take! I ended up buying a cd of all the pics from the photographer. She did such a great job and I wanted to be able to post the pictures and also order several of them to put in frames around our house. The photographer also used a picture of Joseph that she took as her background on her website under the Operation Love United button on the bottom of her page! http://www.rsutherlandphotography.com/

Thankfully we got a new desktop computer last week so I'm back in business with blogging!!! I'm trying to figure out my new iMac apple computer. So far I LOVE it, but it is quite different from a regular "Windows" computer so I'm trying to train my brain to a MAC right now instead of what I've been used to using for so many years. I LOVE the photo program on my new computer and have also downloaded Photoshop as my photo editing program! So in my spare time (haha....that's not very often these days with 2 small kids), I'm trying to learn more and more about editing pics to enhance them and make them more pleasing to the eye! I'm also trying to keep up with both the kids scrapbooks also. Whew!!!

If you want to see all the pics from homecoming, click on the homecoming link on the right side of my blog under photo albums.

Enjoy these homecoming pics.....






I can hardly believe how fast my little boy is growing. Isn't he just so sweet?!!!

I LOVE making him laugh! One of the best sounds in the world!!!

My sweet princess is growing up fast too. I could just kiss her cheeks all day!!!

One of my favorite family pics. I love how Joe and I are looking at Joseph and he's looking at Maddy and she's looking at the camera! Perfect!!!

Daddy couldn't wait to play with his "mini me"!

Interviewed by the news crew...

This one will be treasured forever!

Heading home...

More pics from July...

Hanging out with my babies...

Boat fun in the pool

Joseph learned to push his body up in the water (holding on the stairs) to float! He's so proud of himself!

Cereal time...

Merry-Go-Round at the mall

Happy Maddy

Yummmm

Play-Doh

Silly boy

4 month well baby appt.

Maddy's appt. went great yesterday! She weighed 13lb 4oz and is 24 inches! She's in the 25-50th percentile for both! Joseph weighed 15lb Ooz and was 24 and 1/8 inches at 4 months (I still think it's crazy that he weighed 2lbs less than her at birth, but weighed 2 lbs more than her at the well baby visits, but just glad they are both so healthy). M got 1 shot and 1 oral vaccine (rotavirus) yesterday! I continue to space her vaccines/shots out just like I did with J so we end up taking her every month for shots instead of every 2 months and that way she doesn't get more than 2 per visit.

I forgot to mention in the last post that Maddy is rolling over great now! She's been rolling over for 2 weeks (front to back) and she's quite good at it too! It's just so cute to see her use her strength to roll!

Maddy loves her oatmeal cereal now and sucks it right down! She continues to nurse frequently also.

Have a wondeful week! xoxo, CC

Computer troubles

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. :( My desktop computer that I blog from that has all my pics and videos has crashed. Thankfully we've been backing up all our pics/videos/documents, etc. on an external hard drive so I haven't lost any of them (6 years worth of pics)! I'm now waiting for Joe to get home from deployment before we get a new computer and I don't want to download thousands of pics on my laptop. Hopefully I'll be up and blogging again in the next couple of weeks! R.I.P. desktop computer! You were great to me for 6 years! :)



Our latest....



Madelyn is 4 months old today! I can hardly believe it! She's growing so fast. She's wearing 3-6 month clothes now and filling them out well. She has her 4 month well baby appt. this week and I'm eager to see how much she weighs and how long she is now! Maddy had an appt. with her G.I. dr a couple weeks ago and he wanted me to start cereal for her at 4 months. He thinks it will help hold her reflux down and reduce the numerous hiccups that she continues to have daily. So....tonight was the big night!!!! I put my baby girl in the high chair and she was just so small sitting in there compared to her big brother. She was too cute! She was very hungry and actually really liked her single grain oat cereal mixed with breast milk. Sounds delicious right? Haha! Well, Maddy sure thought so. She ate quickly and smiled and cooed too. She's so precious! Thanks to Nan for videoing me feeding her for the first time and taking pics for me! :)

Joseph continues to grow and amaze me! He is very active and a busy little boy these days. He loves to play outside and in the pool, read books, sing songs, play with musical toys, climb on furniture (yikes), color, play with play-doh, and watch videos of Elmo and Barney. His vocabulary is picking up and he's saying more words these days and attempting to say everything we ask him to say. He also loves going to the water park and aquarium that we have season passes to! He understands so much these days and it's so fun to watch him think and learn.

I have recently been keeping Joseph very busy in the mornings so I can get him to give up his morning nap (yes, my child is still taking 2 naps/day at 2 years 2 months old....crazy right????). He sleeps from 7:30-7am most days and is ready for his morning nap by 9am. He usually sleeps and hour and half in the morning and then he will nap for 2 and 1/2 or 3 hours in the afternoon. I've found that if I keep him very busy in the morning, I can feed him lunch early (11:30ish) and then put him down around noon and he will sleep until 3pm. That seems to be working well so far, but if we are sitting at home and not on the go, he starts having meltdowns and is laying in the floor crying by 9am b/c he's tired (and it's pretty tough to keep him out and about all the time with Maddy in tow also...but thankfully my parents have been helping me keep Joseph busy lately to help with his new napping schedule). He loves sleep just like his mommy! I hope this transition to 1 nap/day will continue to go well b/c he is starting 2 morn/week preschool at the beginning of Sept. and they don't have morning nap sessions when his class is just from 9am-noon.

Well, Joe's big homecoming is right around the corner!!!! I am so excited for him to get back home and see how much his children have grown in the past few months! He will be walking off the aircraft carrier this time instead of flying a jet home (which I'm a little bummed out about), but I have a professional photographer coming with me to the ship to capture the first few moments we see each other and he sees the kids! I can't wait to see how those pics will turn out! Check back soon and I hope to be able to post pics from the homecoming when we get a new computer!

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer! It sure is hot here, but I love summer, so I'll deal with the heat as long as I can get in the water! :) Check back soon! Love, CC

Maddy's playdates!

Madelyn had her first playdates a couple weeks ago. This is her friend Paige Noelle Hinton below and she was born about a month after Maddy.

Sweet girls!

This is Payton Ashleigh Ferguson and she was born almost 2 months after Madelyn. She is the daughter of my friend Missy!

Here is Payton saying "Enough with the paparazzi"! Stop taking pics!

Madelyn is lucky to have 2 great friends already! Can't wait to see them all grow up together! :)

2 year checkup and 3 months old...

I took Joseph for his 2 year checkup at the beginning of June. He weighed 28 lbs (50th percentile) and was just shy of 3 feet tall at 35.5 inches (75th percentile). We switched to a new pediatrician shortly after Madelyn was born, so this was Joseph's first time at the new office with the new dr. He played in the waiting room, but when his name was called and we headed back to the room, he was a bit nervous. I had to pick him up and carry him. The nurse wanted him to step on the big boy scale (this was the first time he didn't sit in the bucket scale or lay on the baby scale (which kindof made me sad b/c my baby boy is growing up), but little Joseph wanted NOTHING to do with stepping on the scale. I finally bent down to his level and held his hands while he stood on the scale and that seemed to work great. Then, he needed to put his back to the wall to get his height measured and that wasn't a favorite either. I think he was scared that the nurse was going to do something to him and he didn't understand that we just wanted him to stand next to the wall. I managed to hold him up to the wall for a few seconds and the nurse was able to get his height! The dr checked him over and he didn't get any shots since he was all caught up on those! She said he was a healthy, growing little boy and the keep doing what we're doing! It was nice to get such a good report!



Madelyn turned 3 months on June 18th! Since we have a baby scale at home, I often weigh her and so on that day she weighed 11 lbs 12 oz. I looked back in Joseph's baby book and he weighed 13lb 10oz the day he turned 3 months old. I remember Joseph being much more chunky at this age than Madelyn, but I was shocked that he was almost 2 lbs heavier when he weighed 2 lbs less than Madelyn at birth! Maybe my sweet little girl will be petite as she grows! We'll see! She is such a good baby these days! Her reflux is under control now with the Prevacid dissolve tabs that she's taking each night. She continues to take frequent naps during the day and has started stretching out her sleep at night!!! Lately she's been making it 8 hours between feedings at night. She goes to bed around 7 or 7:30 and usually doesn't wake until 2:30 or 3am to eat! Joseph NEVER did this at this age (he was still up every 2-3 hours), so it's been a pleasant surprise for me and I'm getting some much needed sleep!

Since I have so much fun taking pics, here are lots for you....

Ever since Joseph started jumping in the bounce house, he now thinks it's ok to jump on the couch. YIKES!!!! Daddy will have a fit when he comes home, so I'm constantly reminding Joseph that we SIT on the couch and not jump!

Madelyn prefers to lay on the couch and look at the fan.....haha

Joseph bending down to give his little sis a hug...

First time in the Bumbo chair...

Tummy time with an audience...

Joseph loves "eyes" and he loves saying the word "eyes" so everyday he points to Maddy's eyes. Sometimes he gets a little too close for Maddy's comfort and actual pokes her eye (if I can't get there fast enough). Girlfriend DOES NOT like that and she sure lets him know! I think this one is too funny.... (This is the look I got when I told her she had to go to the dr get a couple more shots.....)

Joseph being the best big brother ever....

My sweet babies...

Again with the "EYES"....(and you can see him saying it too)...

Hi Joseph!

He fits in his tote bag..

Joseph's big boy underwear. I'm sure he'd be furious with me if he knew I was posting this, but it's just too cute. He LOVES Elmo so I found some Elmo undies for him and when I asked him "Where is Elmo?"...this is what I got...(you probably can't tell, but there are little Elmos all on the undies and he's pointing to one.....by no means is Joseph ready for potty training, but I just bought the underwear to try to get him moving in the right direction and wanting to take an interest in the potty. We'll see if it works!).

Sweet boy...

Sweet girl...