Second week of December 2015

I am loving the holiday season this year.  It's fun so far!

I accidentally took Emmalyn's baby carrier car seat with me and should have left it for Peter to use to take her to Brittany's.  Luckily, we had just ordered Emmalyn a new, big-girl car seat and it was sitting in Peter's office waiting to be installed.  Because he was late he quickly put it in and took Emmalyn the 5 minutes to Brittany's . I think she was pretty excited to be looking forward!  (Hope she didn't enjoy it TOO much... It's going to be another 4 months until she gets to do it again.  Gotta be 2 years old!)

Peter sent me this pic from the photo calendar I made from him.  How stinking cute was Emmalyn a year ago?!  I don't feel like she's grown until I look back at things like this.

Enjoying her broccoli

The big girl car seat is now backwards in Brittany's car.  Peter takes her to Britt's in her infant carrier and then I bring her home from Britt's in the carrier but while in Brittany's car she gets the big-girl seat.

All dressed up at the park

I took a day off from work to get some errands done and relax a little.  I started my day off with breakfast at Einstein's - yummy.

I did other things like dropping off dry cleaning, shopping, etc.  and then picked up some Mexican food and went to the dealership and waited for more than 3 hours for my car to be worked on.  It was temping to working but I avoided it as much as possible and spent some good time blogging.  It's really nice every once in a while to have a day to myself without having to do my work job or my mom job.

The fit I got to enjoy at home

All better, the ipad does that

Video - Emmalyn reading a book and showing off the noise that an elephant makes

I made some rice krispie treats.  Haven't done that for YEARS!!!  I kept Emmalyn busy by giving her some marshmallows to play with.

Maxwell was all dressed up to go visit with Santa and after wards we decided to go out to eat.

Selfie at Mooyah

"To Dad and Mom if your reading this then you know wener (wiener) is coming".  Apparently Peter told him to write that because he was getting a hot dog.  hm.

We put up the mini tree in Maxwell's bedroom and he had fun decorating it.  My Mom helped me decorate it the first year we put it up, she would have love knowing he was using the bows she created.

The finished product

He begged me to let it stay lit after he went to bed.  So I gave in and let it stay lit and at 10 pm (way past his bedtime) I hear him singing Christmas songs.  I go in there and he tells me the tree is distracting him, and was totally awake.  So I quickly turned it off.  :)

Two cuties in Costco

Look at that hair!  Too funny.  It cracks me up but as silly as it is, I enjoy being able to do something.

Having fun working on a puzzle.  She hasn't really shown much interest in them before now.

Emmalyn's drool is finally getting better and her face is healing!  I am so happy, I feel like she had those poor red bumps around her mouth forever.  We remind her to wipe her face when she's drooling and she will mostly wipe it straight up her face.

She is putting together phrases and simple sentences such as "I'm ready", "there it is", "stop it", lots of "thank you" and "you're welcome",.

She will make us sing goodnight to each member of the family and prompts you with the one she wants next.  She always remembers to gives kisses and say goodbye to each person (this includes saying goodbyes to each person at Brittany's which we are leaving).

Maxwell is doing a great job with his glasses. I don't have to remind him much and he's good at taking care of them.  He wants to take them off before he goes to the potty so they don't get dirty, 

Max is really into Christmas and asked me about how Santa can fit down our chimney.

3rd week of June, 2015

Gotta love the "cheese" face

Maxwell and dad playing badminton/baseball/tennis with the ball girl, Emmalyn

Helping daddy 

Playing with cousins.  Wish you could see Emmalyn's little cowgirl dress.  It's pretty cute.  :)

Look! Maxwell picked a strawberry!  That's two off the plant!

This is a very special cheerio.

Happy as a clam when surrounded by her favorite cheerios!

Enjoying her bottle

Sleeping sweetly tonight with his "special delivery bear"

Fun at Kindermusik

Soccer - - He's standing there for kickoff with his hand in his shirt.  Everyone else doesn't know this, but I know what he's doing.  He's self-soothing by touching his nipple.  When I see this, I know he's tired and ready to be done.

Ooh!  He's running.  Good to see he's got a little bit of gas left in the tank.

I was doing some weeding in the back and found a worm.  I got Maxwell to look at it and even got him to touch it.  

Snowcones!

Emmalyn is really aggressive to get what she wants.

I have been watching some teeth on her bottom right that are getting close to popping up and found that her big tooth next to her canine on bottom left popped through! Before her canine came in, too!  I couldn't believe I had missed that it was that close..

If you ask her what sound any animal makes, she will make a growling noise.

Maxwell and Emmalyn are engaging and talking to each other.  Maxwell makes her laugh, which I love.

It's fun to see Maxwell continue to grow and get more independent

Remember how Maxwell didn't call Peter "daddy"? Instead he always called him "Peter"?  Yeah...and people were super worried and uncomfortable with it?  Well, Peter is more "daddy" than "Peter" now.  It's a little sad to me.  :(

Maxwell is so great at staying in his bed and never getting out on his own (He calls for one of us when he wakes up and we go get him).  This week, he was in bed during a nap and he needed to go potty. So, he got out of bed, went potty, and went back and shut his door and got back in bed.  Nice although we couldn't believe he got out of bed on his own!  Not sure if this is a good thing or not.

I got a text from peter while I was gardening and Maxwell got my phone out of my pocket, read the text to me, and then called peter through Siri to answer his question.  Crazy that he can do all of that!

Maxwell and I were leaving and I was telling Maxwell that Daddy was going to take my car somewhere and he goes "No,  daddy's a crazy driver! He drives me crazy."  :)  funny!

First night away from Max

November 12 - 16 was almost a normal work week...except for one thing.  I had my first overnight work trip on the 13th.  To this point I was able to keep my travel to day trips that allowed me to fly somewhere in the morning and get back that same day.  That wasn't going to work anymore. 

I struggled with whether or not to bring the pump with me and pump while I was gone.  I decided not to bring it since it was just 1 night away.  My trip was to San Jose, CA.  It was soooooo nice to be back in Northern California again.  Driving down the freeway in my rental car, I just felt home.  It felt so good to feel the California sun, breath the California air, see the rolling hills and eucalyptus trees.  I miss California!  It was fun to work retail in Cali again.  I was busy with my employees until like 6:30 which was good because I didn't have time to miss Max.  But the bad thing with that is that I didn't get a chance to talk to Max before he went to bed and then my phone ran out of juice and so I wasn't able to talk to Peter either.  In the long run, it was probably better because I would have missed them more if I had been able to talk to them but it was still hard. 

Luckily, I had a great friend to keep me busy!  I was able to meet up with my friend Shannon who now lives in San Jose.  We would have NEVER guessed years ago when she was coming to visit me in Roseville that eventually I would be coming to visit her in California!  We met up at a restaurant for food and lots of good girl talk.  She's one of those few, great friends that when you are together, it feels like you were never apart.  Hopefully someday we will live in the same city again. 

I slept awfully that night in my hotel room.  You would have thought that it would have been a nice fitful sleep since I didn't have to worry about taking care of my boys, but NOPE!  It was no fun.  I missed my baby and husband.  It was so nice to get back home again.

Here are the pictures from that week -

This is Max's "I'm still tired and shouldn't have woken up yet from my nap" look

He perked up though!

The boys playing in a fort.

My happy pirate

Brittany took the boys to the play area at the mall.  She sent me these pics of him playing.  I had differing thoughts about this...

#1 - oh my, I didn't think he was big enough yet to play at the mall!

#2 - bummer, I wanted to be the first one to take him to the play area

#3 - Brittany is awesome to take the boys and I'm glad he was having fun

I got home from California a little past Max's bedtime but Peter kept him up for me so I could see him.  He was happy to see me but immediately wanted to nurse.  Of course I gave in.  He lasted just a few minutes and then fell asleep.  I let him sleep for a long time because it was just so nice to be back with him and I didn't want to lay him down in his bed and have him away from me.  Look how sweet this little boy is!

Max went to hang with dad after his workout in the morning.

2 boys sharing Brittany's lap

Peek-a-boo!

I see you!

Max likes playing under the table at Brittany's.  My mom would have loved to see her grandsons playing like this under her table.

Max made a rare night trip to Costco with me.

Video - On the way home from Costco Max and I were singing Old McDonald and it was so cute I had to record it.  Just listen, there isn't really any video to see since I was recording at night in the car.  This is one of my most favorite recordings of Max.

Video - Max giving his dad some sweet kisses and then playing with the ipad.

1. Max had a new tooth break through
2. He tries to do the snake and bee sounds.  Sometimes he will quack for a duck.
3. Since Max started eating solids I have been prompting him to say "more Momma, please" accompanied with the sign language move for "more".  Peter also prompts Max with the "more" sign.  Max never really caught on to the sign.  He has been saying "more" though.  All of a sudden this week, he broke out the "more" sign.  I couldn't believe it!  I had stopped doing the sign for awhile because he never caught on.  It's so sweet because he will sign it while saying "moh momma eeze"