Some photos from Lex's bday

Again, I was lacking my own camera for a birthday party :( I've got to remember to keep that thing with me more often! Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate Lex's birthday with us. He had a blast.

See the scrapes I was talking about from him falling down?

Lex and great grandpa John

"Hey cool, people are singing!"

Mmmmm...Cake

I don't think I need to go into much detail about what all
that blue frosting does to a diaper the next day, do I?

Pretty much the messiest I've ever seen her.

Lil' ladybug

Sophia is getting there with her sitting. Today she held herself in a tripod position for a good 5 mins before she started complaining. For your viewing pleasure, here are a few pictures!

We've also been working more on her tummy time. She's comfortable staying on her tummy for about 10 mins now before complaining. She's getting close to rolling. Any day now I expect.

Fitness Milestones: Month 2

I am now 4 months post-pregnancy and 2.5 months back into working out. Unfortunately, I was injured for most of this past month and unable to run :-( A visit to the doctor only confirmed that I needed to take some time off running and I needed to retrain some muscles to avoid further injury. The doc wasn't sure if I pulled/irritated my piriformis muscle (a deep butt muscle) or if I strained my sacro-iliac joint. He was leaning towards joint issues since I had so many problems with all my pelvic joints while I was pregnant. It didn't really matter which it was, though, because treatment for both are pretty much the same. Stretching and building up all the muscles that stabilize the pelvis.

So I took 3 weeks off running, much to my dismay. I'm just starting to get back into it again. In fact, my first night back out running I thought it would be fun to do a 5 mile trail run. Ha! That was a mistake. I only ran about 2 miles before my hip/back hurt too much and then mom and I got lost in the woods. Ooops! We did find our way back eventually (obviously). However, three days later I ran my first post baby 5K. I ran it in 34:33 and I'm pretty proud of that. After only 6 weeks of training and a 3 week break I consider that time a success! I haven't tested myself to see what I can run a 2-mile in, but because of the big break in running this month I'm putting off testing myself until the end of October.

Sit-ups and push-ups are still improving. I could pass either if I had to take a PT test now, but just barely. Still working on it! I've taken up yoga this past month to help build those core muscles even more...not to mention the stretching is divine.

Tomorrow morning I'm headed in to do a cardio assessment with a personal trainer. I'm excited to see how efficiently my body processes oxygen and get an individualized work out plan to improve it. I also signed up for 4 personal training sessions this month and I've got 10 boot camp work out sessions to use before the end of November that I hope to start using this month. Lastly, I'm starting the training program for a 10K as soon as I get through the cardio assessment training plan. The goal is still to run a 10K on Thanksgiving.

As for the weight loss...I've only lost 5 pounds this month. Eh, I'm ok with that considering how much I had to cut back working out. I'm curious to see if I'm going to stall at this weight, though, since this is where I hovered at post pregnancy after both Evie and Lex until I stopped breast feeding. Apparently my body likes to hold onto those last few pounds until I'm done. I hope with the right exercise and eating habits I can continue to lose, at least slowly, since my goal weight is still 15 pounds away (and that's 10 pounds below pre-pregnancy too).

2 years, 4 months and a little update

Yesterday we got to take a little trip to the doctor's office for Lex and Sophia. The schedulers tried to convince me to bring in all 3 kids so Evie could get a flu shot, but they must not have 3 kids within 3 years of each other, lol. I did one trip to the doctor's office with all 3 kids when Sophia was 2 weeks old and I vowed never to attempt that again. Evie will have to make a trip for the flu shot some other day.

Lex was seen for his 2 year well child visit. He now weighs 29 lbs and is 35 inches tall. He's in the 66/67th percentiles for both. His head, as it has been since birth, is sitting in the 90th percentile. The entire visit he talked with the doctor and his resident, eliciting comment of surprise with how much and how well he talks. I certainly know he talks very well but it always amazes me how much more he talks when Evie isn't around. His inability to sit still for any amount of time during the visit (and the giant scabs on his head from his fall a week ago) also earned me comments about how he must keep me busy. Uh, yeah. Overall for the appointment, he's hitting all his milestones perfectly!

Sophia was seen for her 4 month well child visit. Her growth is definitely starting to slow down. She was weighed at 14.5 lbs (which is the same I estimated at 3 month old) and she's 24 inches tall. That puts her weight in the 73rd percentile and height in the 44th. Her head, unlike big sister and big brother, also falls into the 44th percentile. Gosh, no wonder she was the easiest to push out. Just like the other kiddos, she's also right on for all her milestones. She's pushing her head up, she's attempting to roll (soooo close), she smiles and coos, she follows people by turning her head, etc. We were given the go-ahead to try rice cereal in the next couple months if we want to, but I think we're going to skip it. There's not really any nutritional value to the cereal and we never had success with the other two actually eating it. So I was given the okay to wait until 6 months and just start with the fruits and veggies then (which the AAP recommends waiting until anyways).

And what's an update without including all 3 kids? Evie's been a handful lately...and I mean that in the most loving way possible. She's back to waking up entirely too early at 4:45 am. *sigh* I'm 99% certain she's only doing it because she wants to climb into bed with me and Shaun. I wouldn't mind that so much if she actually slept. I also don't know how to break her of the habit without messing with Lex's sleep. Since they share a room we'd have to bring her back into the room he's sleeping in and she definitely wouldn't be quiet about it. One kid awake before 5 am is better than 2 or 3 kids awake before 5 am. We've also had to pull her out of swim lessons. I'm not sure what happened but now she HATES going to swim lessons. She's fine with getting in the water and swimming with me or Shaun, but she doesn't like lessons. I'm not sure if it's the teacher (gosh, I hope not, she's my coworker!) or if it's the structured lessons that she doesn't like. She cries hysterically while getting changed into her swim suit, cries throughout her lesson and comes up with every excuse to get out of the pool possible. So we've canceled her lessons and we'll try again in a couple months. If anyone's got any tips for dealing with the early wake up, getting her to stay out of our bed, or getting her re-engaged in swimming, please feel free to share!

Preview for upcoming blog posts: video of Sophia giggling, pictures from Lex's birthday, fitness updates and Shaun turns 30!

Lex, 2 years old

My little man is growing so fast! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXANDER!

Yep, this day 2 years ago we added another little person to our family. The birth of Alexander Thomas put our family into the stereotypical American family category. Two parents, house, dog, two kids; one girl and one boy...all we needed that that white picket fence, lol.

Anyways...as soon as Evie was born we were already planning to get pregnant again as soon as possible for two reasons 1) since it took so long to get pregnant with Evie we weren't sure how long it would take for baby number two and 2) my next younger sister and I are 13 months apart in age and I felt that was a perfect age gap. Five months after Evie was born we found out I was pregnant again. Perfect! That put us at about 13.5-14 months for an age gap.

Ummm...yeah, siblings that close in age is great from the perspective of the kids. I didn't put enough consideration into how hard it is on the parents. Lex came into this world surrounded by what would be the last minute of calm our family would experience. He was a great baby with bad sleeping habits. Evie took to him right away and it took no time at all to see them start to form a bond that will (hopefully) last them the rest of their lives.

I was blessed to be able to stay home the entire first year of Lex's life. He grew so fast, faster than Evie, and it was nice to be able to enjoy each of those many milestones babies go through in that first year. This past year he has bloomed into his own personality. He still adores and follows Evie everywhere. Copying things she says and does, but he is also an individual.

He's our rough and tumble little boy. He enters into his second birthday with 'road rash' across his face (wait til you see the pics). He jumps, climbs and runs head first down hills. I fully expect he'll be our first ER visit for an injury of any of the kids, though hopefully not for quite some time to come.

He loves super heros, cars, dinosaurs and Diego. He talks, he sings, he loves church and his sisters. He's helpful and compassionate. I don't think it's possible to ask for a better kid. I love my little man to pieces and I'm looking to celebrating decades upon decades of future birthdays with him.

*MUAH* Happy birthday Lex!

Ren Fest and other

So you're probably wondering what happened with those pictures from the Renaissance Festival. First, I didn't go :-( The weather the day we planned to go was rainy and cold. We weren't keen on taking Sophia out for an entire day in that weather when she already had a cold. However, Shaun did take the other kids. Which leads up to problem #2...no one who went knew how to work my camera, lol. Luckily, they did figure out how to work the video camera so you will get a couple videos, albeit short videos. Then #3, if you haven't heard already my computer completely went dead. Mega sad face! I did manage to get most of the information off of it before I said my final goodbye but it left me computer-less for a few days. Problem solved! I write to you now from my new computer!

Without further ado, here are a few videos for your viewing pleasure:

This is Evie meeting the Fairy "Twig" for the first time. Evie has been talking about fairies and pixie dust for months now. Twig did give Evie and Lex fairy stones and Evie has talked about it just about every day since.



This second one is of Lex riding an elephant. He had been talking about it for a week prior to heading to Ren Fest. You may recall that last year this elephant ate Lex's bottle; taking it straight out of our stroller! Anyways, thanks John for the commentary, lol.



These next couple videos aren't from Ren Fest. Instead they just highlight the enthusiasm the older kids show towards their littlest sister.

Are they related?

Just click on the picture to see them bigger.