Spring has finally sprung!!!

The past several days have been nothing short of gorgeous!!! Temperatures in the mid to upper 70's ... so glad I'm back at work! Nevertheless, I'm so excited about my flowers blooming. We didn't think they would make it back up through the rock this year. Pretty aren't they? And speaking of the rock ... soooooo glad we decided to replace the mulch. No laying mulch for us anymore!

So anyway, here were are on Sunday afternoon. We spent most of the day outside. This picture would have been better if I had on my PSU hat too! Oh well.

Here's the big man helping daddy do some trimming. Somehow this tree didn't get the top trimmed at the end of last year ... probably didn't have anything to do with the fact that I was the size of a house and we thought we were busy with one little guy. Ha.


Dayton was so excited that we temporarily moved his "ba ball net" outside. Check out the follow through on this shot!

Check it out!

Yep ... that's the big boy sitting in his high chair eating rice cereal and sweet potatoes! I just started trying solid food about a week ago. He's doing pretty well with it. It took about 3 tries until he actually started getting the hang of swallowing. Seemed to like the sweet potatoes much better than the cereal. Go figure, right! We're taking it slow though. He's getting solid food every other day at dinner time for now. I'm afraid to do too many new things all at once being as though he just started daycare too. Before you know it I'm going to have two teenage boys eating me out of house and home ... or we'll actually contemplate buying a cow!

Back to work

Well, for those of you who aren't aware, I went back to work this week. I unintentionally picked a great week to go back ... spring break. There was almost no one there ... including my boss! Made the transition a bit easier in some respects ... I didn't care what time we actually made it in for one. Good thing because while being back at work is the easy part, it's getting two boys ready and out the door by 7:45am that's tough. All Dayton wants to go is go downstairs. We are working on breaking him of that habit. You can't go downstairs when mommy and daddy are both upstairs trying to get ready for work. Well, he starts crying and then we are worried about him waking up Carson. Carson ... thats a whole other box of worms. Since I'm still nursing, I have to fit that in too. You should see me, I get in the shower, put my jammies back on, try to get my hair dry before he wakes up. Then I attempt to feed him before finishing my hair and makeup (that's if he decides to eat well) and throw my work clothes on right before we walk out the door to avoid spit up stains. Well, this week he didn't want to eat great right after waking up so I had to pump one side which stinks because the pump is already packed up and ready to go to work and it extends the time it takes up to get out of the house. ARGH! You should see all the crap we have to walk out the door with too. The pump, my laptop, purse, change of clothes for Carson, bottles of breast milk for the day, our lunches ... it's a 3 ring circus.

So how did Carson do at daycare you ask? sigh OK I guess. He doesn't seem to want to eat out of a bottle well for anyone but me. I thought we finally had it figured out by Tuesday night. He seems to not want breast milk out of a bottle ... so Tuesday afternoon they mixed milk with formula and he took it really well. Great! Well, it worked Thursday morning but not in the afternoon. I hate walking in there each day only to find him screaming bloody murder. It makes me feel so terrible about leaving him. I know all kids go through it with varying degrees of difficulty but it seriously does kill me. Hopefully it will only take him another week or so. I keep trying to put myself in his "shoes". New people that seem to change a lot, new place, new toys, new noises. He was napping pretty well though. I guess he doesn't like his crib too much but they discovered that he sleeps in a swing. That's fine with me ... he does that most of the time at home too. Anyway, wish us luck. Hopefully Carson will be ok at daycare soon!

Brothers don't shake hands ...

Brothers gotta hug!


Ahhh, doesn't this picture make it look like Dayton likes his little brother??? In reality he just sort of tolerates him I think. Sometimes he likes to give him kisses and high fives and stuff, but forget about it when if comes to sharing ... I guess this is a tough concept to teach a 21-month old. It should get really interesting once Carson is mobile and really getting into Dayton's toys :-). We actually had an interesting turn of events just the other day at the dinner table. Eric and I were trying to enjoy our mexican while Eric was holding Carson on his lap and dealing with Dayton crawling all over him demanding "mo rice". It started out very innocent. Between bites of rice, Dayton was kissing Carson. Well, all of a sudden I see Dayton lean in to Carson's shoulder area and Carson erupted into an "I just got a shot" scream! I knew right away, Dayton had bit him. I was proud of myself for the way I handled it. I got up (before Eric even registered what was going on), grabbed Dayton and calmly, sternly, and repeatedly told Dayton that we do not bite people as I marched upstairs and threw him in timeout. He got a nice long 6 minute timeout (which is an eternity for a 21-month old) for that one. I'll tell you, Carson is probably keeping score ... Dayton better watch out eventually! Carson actually had nice teeth marks on his upper arm for a day or so. I seriously still can't believe Dayton did that.

"Ga Ma's" Visit

Well, thank goodness for Grandma's! The first week of April Eric was in Germany for work so I managed to talk my mom into flying out here to keep me company. Ok, by keep me company I mean keep me sane and help me with the boys! We had a really nice time except for the crappy weather. (Oh, and the fact that both boys slept like crap all week.) It was either cold or rainy or windy or all of the above all week. I think we took the boys out for a short walk once. Of course, it was nice the day Ga Ma left though. Isn't that cute? Dayton is finally saying Grandma or his version thereof! I hope we didn't wear Grandma out too much. I guess it was a warm up for when she has them both for a week while Eric and I are in Jamaica! Good times for everyone!

And so it begins

A few days ago, I just said that if I didn't know any better I would swear that Carson was teething. Well, apparently I don't know any better. Yesterday at Carson's 4-month well baby visit to the doctor, he told us that Carson's lower gum is swollen. That coupled with the now constant drooling and chewing indicate that the teething process is beginning. Here we go again! We finally got Dayton done (well at least until the 2-year molars come in) and now Carson is starting. God help us!

So other than the teething, Carson is doing great. He weighed in at 15 lbs (50th percentile) and 25 1/4" long (60th percentile). Almost identical to his big brother for all of you who thought Carson looked bigger than Dayton (myself included). We got the ok to start cereal and stuff so we'll probably going to give that a go sometime during the new couple of weeks. I go back to work on Monday (just in time for warmer weather) so Carson starts daycare then too. I think we may hold off a week or so to start the food ... one new thing at a time. Wish us luck next week. Until then, we will just continue having fun with Grandma!