3rd week of May 2015

Maxwell's Kindermusik class has lots of homework this semester.  I'm awful at getting him going on in early.  Good thing I'm getting practice now before he's in school!  Here he is making a building with stairs and windows.

Not so sweetly sleeping.

Writing a letter to Pete the Cat at the library

Reading at the library

Multiple elevator rides are part of the magic of the library :)

My cute family.  

(Maxwell loves wearing his Diego bag.  This boy is going to rock a messenger bag someday.)

We stopped at The Snow Cone Lady for our first snowcone of the summer.  WOOO!  Max waited on the bench for us.

Video - Maxwell yelling at me and telling me he can't drive because he's not a grown up.  LAUGH

I think this may be Emmalyn's first snowcone

#truth

Enjoying some brunch 

She's unhappy because we aren't giving her food fast enough.  She just shovels it in.  I can't keep up.  I cut stuff for her and she's devoured it before I cut the next bite.

playing at the library with Landen

Enjoying Brittany's smoothie

I took Emmalyn for a secret photo shoot for a surprise for Peter (more to come on that...).  It's pretty dang awesome.

We made "ice cream" with frozen bananas, milk, and peanut butter.  EASY and YUMMY

Update on the kids recently:

Maxwell - 

Needs to have socks on his feet at night or he won't go to sleep

He's been scared of the dark lately at night in his room and wants the light left on in the bathroom so he can see a little bit.

Maxwell wants to cuddle and wants me to keep cuddling with him after he falls asleep.  He tells me he's keeping me and I can never leave.

Emmalyn -

She loves to eat fruit, cheerios, and water.  I mentioned above how much she likes to eat.  She will eat a bunch and then scream if she wants more or you try to get her out of her highchair and she isn't done yet.  She also loves to drink water, lots of it!

It's pretty painful lately to try and hold her and keep her entertained while on your lap.  She wants to be down and moving around.

She's doing great at listening and understanding.

She is pointing at what she wants and will scream if she's not getting it.

She is mimicking sounds and will mimic back to us her version of what we said.  She's very chatty!

She loves being outside and being in her bike.

She has super stranger danger.

I am still pumping at work and in the evenings. The stinky thing is that I only get 3-4 oz from those 4 pumpings a day.  It's pretty brutal but I'm sticking with it because I read that even only 3 oz of breastmilk still provides value to your baby.  So now, that is the only breastmilk she gets during the day and then Brittany gives her formula the rest of the time.  

She's starting to identify body parts like legs, chest, and hands.

Her favorite book lately is "bubbles bubbles".  She loves books.

She is walking about 3-5 steps now and she stood up outside all on her own without holding onto anything!
She loves to say "bye" and wave.
She's a Momma's girl and wants to be by me all the time.
She loves to sing!
She won't fall asleep and take a nap in the car lately.
She can go down the one step in the media room on her belly.
She loves to dump things out and can sometimes put things back.
Emmalyn's eyes are the color of Max's and she definitely has my hair, not Peter's.

Maxwell's first day of preschool

Maxwell started school on Monday August 25 (also Peter's birthday!).  We have signed him up for preschool from 8:30 - 3:30 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday normally.  However, we worked with the school director to get permission for him switch and to go on Monday instead of Thursday for this first week.  I figured I didn't want him to miss the "first day of school" by having his first day be Tuesday.  Most of the rest of the children would have had their first day on Monday and so there wouldn't be the same celebration/specialness for him if his first day was on Tuesday.  

We were able to pick exactly which days we wanted him to go to school regularly and we picked Tu, W, and Th so that he could be in the routine of going to school without having to skip days (like going M, W, F) and plus most holidays or days off are on M/F and so this would limit the number of days he'd miss and also give us flexibility to take long weekends for vacations or something like that.  

We chose to have him go all day instead of half days because it was recommended by the school.  If he only went half days, since he is in a regular classroom with kids ages 3 - 5, he would miss part of the curriculum for the day.  I figure it's okay for a 3 year to go for that long, especially since part of the day is a mandatory nap time.  Next year we'll have him go full days every day.

Peter and I both took today off work so that we could drop him off at school together and pick him up.  Normally one of us will drop him off (mostly me) and then Brittany will pick him up after she picks up Hayden from Elementary school.

Maxwell's first school lunch

Sliced deli turkey, pretzel chips, string cheese, strawberries, and cucumbers

(I am planning on always packing a lunch.  I'm not interested in spending 3.00/day for him to have lunch provided by the school caterers!)

My handsome boy in his uniform, all ready to go!

Walking into school

Peter is holding the house plant we had to bring (still not sure why).  Boy, was it a hassle finding a houseplant to take that wasn't poisonous, per their instructions.

Maxwell's cubby in Miss Cynthia's room with 2 changes of clothes, and his hook with his nap mat bag and backpack

He walked over and sort of sat by the rug.  (he's the boy without the book)

After we left the classroom, we stayed in the lobby watching the cameras for a LONG time.  I didn't want to stop watching.  (He's sitting with his legs out in front of him in the above picture.)  Poor Peter was ready for us to go but he was kind and let me stay as long as I wanted.  I think I watched for about 30 minutes.  I seriously would have watched all day if I wouldn't have looked crazy.

Since we weren't working, we did some shopping and went to see a movie.  It was fun to hang out together and a good way to celebrate Peter's birthday too.  I had a hard time relaxing though and just kept thinking about Maxwell and hoping he was okay, happy, and having fun.  I tried to get Peter to let us go back halfway through the day and watch Maxwell via the cameras again but he wouldn't go for it.

Even though we were having fun hanging out together, the day dragged on for me.  I just wanted it to be 3:30 so we could go pick Max up and ask him about his first day!

Finally it was time to pick him up!  We got there a little early so I could watch Max on the cameras before we went into his classroom to get him (I know, I'm crazy).  He was so happy to see us.

To celebrate his first day, we went to get snow cones after school.  We let him pick his flavor - he picked "purple".

We quizzed him about his first day.  It was hard to get much out of him!  He said he did puzzles, numbers, and matching.  They had a snack pretzels and carrots.  He doesn't like carrots and said that they were yucky and that he didn't dip them in ranch.  He said he didn't take a nap because he was scared.  And that's about all we got.  He seemed to have liked it.

That night after we did presents, we went back out again to the grocery store to pick up a cake for Peter's birthday.

He started zoning out on the way home...

...then the yawns started

...and his head and eyes started drooping...

...and he's out!

He was fast asleep by the time we got home at around 6:30

He had a long, busy day and pair that with no nap and this sweet boy was exhausted from his first day at school.

A unexpected birthday surprise!

We were driving home from celebrating Max's birthday at Gatti Town and Peter turns his phone towards me and shows me this picture that had been texted to him.

What?!?!

This is our niece and nephews - - who live in Utah!!!...at our front door!

I was so confused.  Is this an old picture?  Wait...They've not been in Texas since we bought our house...So this is a new picture???  Why are they at our porch without us knowing about it and CRAP we need to hurry home!!!

So we get home and Alex and his family are nowhere to be found.  They seriously wouldn't have been at our house and then gotten back on the road because we weren't home, would they?  But no, they just went to (I think...I can't remember at this point) grab some food since we weren't home.  They came back.  :)

This was such a crazy surprise.  They were up in Nebraska for a cousin's wedding and decided to make the extra drive to come surprise us before driving home.  It was so awesome so have them show up on Max's birthday.  We were able to talk them into staying 2 days rather than just driving home the next day.  I would have loved it if we could have talked them into staying even longer!

Lola, Alex, Max, Jaxton, Tawny, and Payton

Max is into stacking things lately

Max and Lola dressing up.

Peter and I still had to go to work during the day so the kids enjoyed playing and having fun without us.

We introduced them to some good southern cooking at Babe's.

The whole group in the cool round room

We followed up dinner with a visit to the Snow-Cone Lady

Jaxt and Alex

Lola

Cute picture - even with the photo bomb :)

All the kids - They got along really well

We enjoyed every minute we had with Alex and his family and had fun just hanging out.

The second night we enjoyed yummy taco's at  Rusty's Tacos

Arm wrestle wars

We finally got around to unwrapping Max's birthday presents before our visitors got on the road (it was just a few days after his birthday - that's not too bad).

I felt like Max had plenty of toys so we didn't do a ton of presents.  In fact, we re-gifted to him this car that he got for his first birthday but we had put up for later because there were already so many new toys.  So, since I can't remember who gave that to us...if you happen to read this blog and you are the person who gave Max this car for his first birthday - Double thanks!

Basket from Aunt Tawny and fam

He did great at unwrapping all the presents and the kids were so good at sitting back and letting him do it (love Payton and Jaxton's faces in the background - - poor kids...it's not fun when it's someone else's birthday).  Peter was in charge of buying his presents this year and got him some lego duplo cars.

Aunt Brittany and her family gave him this food set that you can "cut" up.  He of course loved it.  She's great at picking out the perfect present for Max.

Another dad picked present (all of which were hits with Max), his own Iron Man figure.

Yeah, we totally look like sisters.

Doing "Noggins" with Uncle Alex

His "cheese" face

Everyone checking out the new toys

Alex loves me

And I love giving him a hard time.  :)

Kisses for Aunt Tawny.  He quickly warmed up to all of them and loved having them here, too.  

Playing with Uncle Alex

Kisses for Uncle Alex

Peter also got Max this bunny rabbit.  He loves it and it must sleep with him every night.  He's never really cared about stuffed animals but Peter picked the perfect one.

Jaxt showing off his moves.  Max was captivated.

We love you guys!!!

Silly faces!

Peter, Max, Kallie, Jaxton, Payton, Tawny, Lola, Alex