Omaha/Hunting Trip '09

The first weekend in November my mom and I packed the kids up and went to Omaha while my dad and Evan went deer hunting. We did this last year, but then it was only Denver and we went to help Kim get ready for the arrival of Jacob. Crazy how 1 year, can change so much!

We had a great time. The cousins had a blast playing together and it was fun watching Jacob wanting to keep up with Denver and Makenna wanting to keep up with Jacob. They help encourage the other to try new things! We spent almost our entire time at Kim and Jeff's house as 3 littles ones of all different ages usually means someone is sleeping. We did find time to make it to the park to play for a little while which was nice to help them get all of their leftover energy out before bedtime.

Here are some pictures from our weekend. I wonder what's in store for our trip next year!?

The kids had a lot of fun playing at the park, especially Denver. He loves to swing, slide, and run! I of course had a great idea of taking a picture with the pretty leaves that were still on the trees (unlike our ones at home at this point)....this was quite the experience...I did a little editing so that I had 5 heads looking at me, but I'm quite impressed we got a half way decent picture! :)

Makenna started eating food before we left for this trip, but hadn't been at it for too long. Finally on Sunday I stripped her naked to feed her because sitting in the bumbo seat instead of the highchair seemed to make her a messier eater and she thought she needed control of the spoon a lot of the time. Here's some pictures of her mess of sweet potatoes!

We played in the leaves before leaving Sunday afternoon. Kim and I had hoped to get some good, fun cousin pictures, but that didn't really happen. Denver HATED the leaves. He's a little obsessed with being "messy" and it bothered him (in our return trip for Jacob's birthday and baby dedication he was okay playing in them, thank goodness!). Makenna and Jacob enjoyed the leaves though as you can see.

Oh, and I suppose I should inform you on the deer hunting results. Evan got his buck and Dad got a doe. They both returned the Friday after Thanksgiving so Dad could get his buck and Evan got his doe. (For some reason the pictures of them and their deer are not loading, so sorry no pictures.)

Some 6 Month Facts

So a month ago or so I promised all of you a post with some snap shots of Makenna and her 6 month stats.  Here's the long awaited post.  I was going through pictures for this post and realized....I'm like any other mom and her 2nd child....way less pictures!  Sorry, this is all that I could come up with that was worth my time of uploading.

As far as 6 month information that we learned at the clinic for Makenna.  She has slowed down in growth!  While this maybe doesn't sound good...it is to me.  I can't carry any heavier of a baby around (especially when I have to carry a 2 year old with her at times) and I decided I like my "little" baby (my Denver who was always on the small size).  I know most people think a fat baby is a cute baby, but I don't know that I agree.  I definitely think that Makenna is cute, but I just like less rolls...maybe where she's at now is good.  Now that you've read all of that babbling here's the information you actually wanted to know....

19 lbs. 2 oz. (about 80%)

26 inches long (about 55%)

Makenna has been sitting up for quite some time now.  She still tips over from time to time, but doesn't get mad very often anymore when that happens.  She is really good at bending all the way down with her face practicially to the floor to reach for something and coming back up without tipping.

Makenna loves to eat and will easily down a whole container of baby food and she LOVES her sippy cup. I don't think she actually drinks that much from it as she usually ends up pretty wet, but she loves to chew on it.

First taste of peas.

She doesn't give much of a reaction, but she likes them.  She's not picky, but I think peaches and bananas are her favorite....those are the only fruits she's had so far though too!

"Who is this baby?"

Makenna loves to look and play in the mirror!

2 Years Old!

Denver is 2 years old as of November 17th!  We've been a little busy so I haven't had time to blog or download pictures.  I finally got some pictures downloaded from one of Denver's birthday parties (if I ever got caught up there will be more to come to blog about the day of his actual birthday...we celebrated at Chuck-E-Cheese again the night of his birthday).

It is so much fun to have a 2 year old in our house.  There is never a dull moment and we are just amazed at how much he has learned and how far he has come.  Its hard to believe that 2 years ago my little boy was so little and now he's so big!  Denver loves to play (play cars, farm (feed the cows, like Papa and Grandma), and to fix (also like his Papa!).  Denver also likes to watch TV and movies, especially the movie "Cars".  This has become a bit of a problem as if we'd let him he'd sit and watch TV all day!  Some thing Denver hates is to be messy!  Don't get me wrong he makes a mess with his toys all the time, but if he gets his hands dirty he cries "messy!" and wants to be cleaned up immediately so meals get a little interesting.  We have been trying to teach him its okay to be messy and we just try to eat neatly and then clean up the mess when we're all done.  What a concept for a 2 year old!

Denver talks a lot! (What a surprise, huh?)  Every day his vocabulary and structure of sentences gets better and better.  Its just amazing watching that develop and how he learns the concepts of different things.  We laugh lots because of what he comes up with to say. 

The following pictures are from Denver's birthday party with his grandparents, great-grandparents, and aunts and uncles.  He had an absolute blast.  Hopefully when I get the other birthday pictures and 2 year pictures posted I can post a video of him opening his gifts.  He would open one up and start jumping and saying "yea, yea"!  It was so cute and he continued to do it with each one!  Denver loved every bit of attention he got!

Grandpa David got Denver a John Deere fishing pole.

Denver's love for the movie "Cars" made it easy to pick a "theme" for his party..."Cars"!

In my next post I'll try to include anything else about Denver that he's doing that I forgot now, but leave me a comment if there's something you'd like to know about him and I'll make sure to include it!

Makenna Betty's 6 Month Pictures

Makenna turned 6 months old on November 5th.  This day came WAY TOO FAST for me.  I thought things went fast with Denver, but they have gone super fast with Makenna.  I always feel like she's doing things early and then I think about it and realize she's older than I think she is and she should be doing those things!  I decided to not make all of you wait any longer for the long awaited 6 month photo shoot.  I was looking forward to this photo shoot since she was 3 months old or so as I had planned to do a tutu for this shoot.  I originally was going to make a tutu for this photo shoot, but I found this outfit before I made one; hence I've put off making another tutu (since free time is so abundant around here, ha, ha, ha!).  Since I've been so excited about this shoot I also had my expectations really high; therefore I spent WAY TOO MUCH time trying to get just the right shots.  I spent most of her 6 month birthday taking pictures and then the next day Daddy was home and in 5 minutes we were able to get what I wanted and then I was satisfied with my photo shoot.  At first I didn't know if I considered it a successful photo shoot, but now that I've had time to look at the photos and just relax about it I'm in love with them!  I just love my little girl so much!!

I may not be done editing pictures, but as of now I am so here they are along with a collage of one with many of the pictures because there were just too many that I thought should be included (it's easier to download one compared to 10 or whatever it is).

"This tongue sure is good and fun!"

What a doll!

All smiles for her Daddy!

(Who wants to look at Mommy with a camera in front of her face!)

"Mom, I'm so tired, I'm done!"

"Oh wait...I found a baby in here, how fun!"

"Look at me, I'm a big girl!"

"Did you just say we're done with this photo shoot?!"

Our Happy Girl

Due to all the illnesses going around I have decided that I will only enter the pediatric clinic once therefore Makenna's 6 month checkup has to wait until Denver turns 2 (unless I call and complain...as they won't let me bring Denver in before he's 2 so Makenna has to be pushed back on her immunizations instead...grrr!) therefore I do not have a new weight to tell you, but I do know this....she's HEAVY!  I can barely lug her around in her carseat anymore.  I'm guessing her "stats" will be similar to her cousin Jacob's at 6 months...I'm wondering if she won't even be bigger.  Maybe when I have her 6 month check up information I can do an assortment of every day pictures of her.

We are adjusting to having a "big" baby compared to a "little" one.  The poor little girl gets lots of little nicknames dealing with fat, chubby, etc.  At least she's too little to care or have hurt feelings from it yet!  I am thinking she will start slowing down (or at least I hope) as she finally learned how to roll from her back to her tummy 2 weeks ago or so and now loves to roll.  She's also has been more willing to do tummy time since this discovery which is wonderful as I was wondering how we'd ever get her to work those muscles well enough for crawling and all those other big girl things if she didn't spend more time doing tummy time.

Makenna loves to spit!  She has learned how to projectile spit and thinks its great.  I on the other hand am not so sure about this as now that we're 6 months old we have to eat food and I don't care to be covered in food.  Makenna loves to eat and has tried quite an array of foods already considering I didn't start feeding her much until about 2 weeks ago or so.  At first she loved peas, but the last time she had them she didn't like them and continually spit them out.  She still is unsure of applesauce.  Bananas on the other hand she thinks are delish and that's how we got her to like her oatmeal that I switched her over to from rice cereal (as Denver preferred oatmeal to rice so I thought she would too).  Another love is carrots.  The first night she had them I was afraid she'd turn orange as she ate a whole container of them in one sitting!  Today she tried sweet potatoes and while I don't think they are in the love category they are definitely in the like as of now anyway.

Another thing that Makenna loves to do is talk!  What a surprise, right?  LOL!  Makenna makes the cutest little sounds and does a lot more of "different" sounds than Denver did...or at least I think.  She makes little sounds when she's sleeping or trying to go back to sleep after being awoken (which happens quite frequently....and believe it or not its not usually her brother's fault...she just easily awakens).  Makenna has also become a cat napper due to this easily awoken state.  If she falls asleep nursing before nap time and wakes up as I'm laying her down....there's a good chance the nap is over and its not nap time again until the time is up if she had her normal "long" nap.  I try to make her cry herself back to sleep until she's slept at least a hour total, but that doesn't always work.

I think that's all I have for Makenna at 6 months old.  If I forgot something I'll have to include it with her checkup later in the month.  I hope you enjoyed catching up on our "Kenna Betty" (Denver walks around looking for "Kenna Betty" all the time).

Yea! (Clap, clap, clap) Yea! (Clap, clap, clap!) Yea! (Clap, clap, clap)

YEA!  It was we heard in our house on November 5th!  Yes, Makenna turned 6 months old, but it wasn't her we were "yeaing" and applauding, it was her big brother.  Denver FINALLY pooped on the potty chair!  How silly to be so excited about some thing like that, but maybe, just maybe this means my little boy is ready to start THINKING (not actually doing all the time, but to start thinking about possibly doing) about getting rid of diapers!  I wish we could've recorded our little session in the bathroom AND the phone call to Daddy afterwards (including both ends of the conversation....quite the conversation to have at work, huh?).  We have been trying to encourage the potty, but we are not pushing it and letting him do it in his own time.  I had gotten pretty much every thing ready for potty training, but was waiting for Denver to give me signs that he was truly ready before I really worked at it.  Usually, IF Denver will tell me he has to poop its too late, but this day it wasn't so we went running.  For those of you who don't care to "hear" the story skip the next paragraph, but for Denver's sake (or maybe not...some day he'll probably be embarassed instead) I want to blog it so it's written down in case he never gets any scrapbooks! :)

On our way to the bathroom I was telling Denver what we were going to do and to just wait and he was crying back at me "no, no, no" and I said "just let mommy show you first", so I showed him if he went on the potty his potty books were here and there was this yummy candy he doesn't otherwise get to pick from if he went, etc, etc.  In the end he said "yep, sit on potty" (or something of the sorts) so he sat.  There was some gas and I thought oh great, false alarm, but he was willing to continue to sit and then said "done" and I said "no you aren't, you didn't go, how about one of your books to read?" and he said "yeah!".  I gave Denver his tractor book that is only for when he's sitting on the potty and we sat and talked about all the different tractors and all of a sudden he goes "oh!" real excitedly and quits looking at the book and starts pushing and sure enough he went!  Before he was even finished going he was asking for his treat!  Too cute!  We were so very proud of him and made a big deal out of it the rest of the day!

Here are some pictures of our potty training! Isn't he so cute?! :)

Reading his books that we bought for him to only read when he's on the potty.

He loves trains so we got him a pack of "Thomas the Train" books.

                    

Reading the newspaper and taking care of business, just like Dad! :)

(Doesn't he look like he's really interested in what he's reading? Oh he's just so cute!)

Trick or Treat?

So, it's been awhile since I've even had time to think about posting....let alone think about what I've missed since my last post...so we'll pick back up at "Halloween" and if I remember (or find) something else that I really wanted to post in between I'll do so out of order.

We had a busy "Halloween" week. I can't remember anymore, but I think the beginning of the week we carved pumpkins.  Well...2 out of the 4; mine never got done and Makenna's was a little one so I planned on painting hers', but I ran out of time and energy.  Denver thought it was great "picking" pumpkins.  We didn't have time to go do the whole pumpkin patch thing this year so we just ran to HyVee to get some, but that was good enough for Denver; he still talks about "pick pumpkins".  (I just have to add in here...Denver gets to be more fun every day...he's talking more and more and putting sentences together and you can have a simple conversation with him...it's just so cute....oh I just love being Mommy, can you tell?)  Here are some pictures from our "pick pumpkins" evening.

Before we left to go get pumpkins I was having a wafer and Makenna took a dive to try to eat it!  She wants EVERYTHING and it all goes to her mouth!

Our beautiful little girl crashed when we went to get pumpkins.  Look at those eye lashes...they are getting long...now we just have to wait and see if they'll get as long as Denver's!

Cleaning out the pumpkins.

"Hmm....are pumpkin guts good?"

The silly picture won't turn the right way, sorry, but here is Evan and Denver lighting Denver's pumpkin.

Denver's pumpkin is Mickey Mouse...great idea, Dad!

(I've been meaning to get a picture of Denver with his finished product, but that hasn't happened so this will have to do)

On Wednesday evening we went to our "Harvest Festival" at church.  This includes games, inflatables, candy, puppet show, and more.  I had this great idea to take along Denver's girlfriend Abby.  (They go to our church, but her parents were out of town so she wasn't going to get to go and I felt bad for her and for Denver because I knew he'd want to spend some time with her....our days our limited...they're moving...yes, very sad, but that's a post for another day).  Little did I know how much work it takes with 3 kids!  I think I now know how parents of triplets or 3 close in age feel...maybe?  They had a blast, but did like to split on me at times and had me a little nervous...but since we were at church I knew they'd be okay.  Denver also loved the puppet show and wanted them to keep going when they were done.  He was also quite funny during the show; he would laugh and say "funny, funny".

"Hugs"

Picture Time...Denver was not into pictures.  They took a bunch that I'm hoping to get, but this will have to do for the blog.

The Girls

Makenna

Going down the slide with Dad, what fun!

Thank goodness for a friend (and co-worker of mine), Becky! She helped us out by playing with Makenna when we became exhausted from keeping track of the 2 big kids and lugging Makenna around!

Pumpkin Bowling! Denver did great; you throw little pumpkins to knock over bowling pins. Denver also played a basketball game and whatever that game is called that you throw a little ping-pong ball in the different buckets...I think it comes from the "Price is Right". Our youth helped run the "Harvest Festival" and one of the boys said to us, "I've never seen a little boy with such a good arm!".

Monkey see- monkey do!  The bigger kids were throwing themselves into the bottom of the slide and "bouncing" off.  Denver thought that looked like fun so he started doing it too.

The "bouncy house" was probably the favorite for the night. I was worried because there were big kids in there, but they had a blast. They let them stay in for 2 turns and then I went in and drug them out.

I love Denver's expression here...."Abby isn't this so much fun?!"

Picking up ducks....or just playing in the water! :)

On Halloween we had a crazy day as I had worked the night before and had other committments that day, but we did get the kids in there costumes and made it to see 2 of their great-grandparents.  If you can't figure it out from the pictures Denver was "Joe Mauer" from the MN Twins and Makenna just wore a onesie that said "Cutest Pumpkin in the Patch" with a tutu and headband that I made her.

Great Grandpa Melvin with the kids

(Notice the Case tractor and wagon!  Even a John Deere guy has some Case in his house! :))

Great Grandma Mabel with Denver....eating treats, yum!

I had hoped to have a picture of my 2 little munchkins in there Halloween outfits, but that never happened either.  Notice a theme?  Things just don't always happen in this house anymore!  Stayed tuned as our little girl turns 6 months old tomorrow!!!!!!  I have had her little outfit for this photo shoot picked out since my birthday and can't wait to take the pictures.  (There probably won't be a 6 month post until after the weekend though, sorry, too many things to do!)