mama's big helper

hendrix loves helping out with chores around the house.....

i hope he is still as helpful when he gets big enough to actually be helping me!  ;)

my big little guy

  

 Hendrix will be 20 months old next week. 

It just hit me that he is closer to two years old than one year old.  I know he was growing like a weed anyways, but ever since we told him he was going to be a big brother it seems like he has been growing exponentially into a big boy preparing to tackle that role.  

Before i let too much time get away from me, i want to take a moment to reflect on what he is up to right now....

This kid is joyful! He loves to smile, laugh, giggle and just be silly :) he is going through a 'cheesy grin' phase when i bring the camera out, and it often involves squinty eyes and a scrunched up nose. ;)

he plays with enthusiasm and imagination. He loves to hide and is good at staying in his spot quietly for minutes on end.......he adores gabe and wants to imitate everything he does, which most recently includes playing baseball and working on his alphabet.

Hendrix has always been quite a talker, though recently i am seeing his language evolve.  His vocabulary has been strong and full of both nouns and verbs that he loves to share whenever he sees something he knows (like pointing out animals and cars or trains as we drive across town).  

recently he is experimenting with stringing words together like this morning while we were snuggling in bed and he heard an airplane, he said "mama  airplane  fly  look" pointing at the window.  Or later on when he wanted to draw a picture he said "mama  color marker  please".  Obviously we need to work on all those little filler words to form sentences.....but it is fun to see him starting to try!  

He is also getting very good at using his manners without having to be prompted (most of the time) :).  Oddly enough he is also really good with names.  He can name everyone in my family (which is a lot - 11 people!) both in photos and in person, he knows most of his friend's names (though he does do this weird thing where he sometimes calls two siblings by the same name.....), but most importantly he knows the names of all our friends' and neighbors' pets, namely their dogs. 

Arts and crafts is a serious obsession right now.  He can sit with a pad of paper and some crayons, markers or even just a pencil for up to 45 minutes.  He likes to draw and does a pretty decent job at making a circle (and will tell you that is what it is) but also make scribbles and imagines them as other things (like horses or balls).  

He seems to be left-handed dominant right now, though he does color with both hands, and really prefers to have a marker in each hand at the same time.  I am impressed with his recent coordination of the 'pencil grip'. He also adores playdough (making snakes), sidewalk chalk, stickers and bubbles.

He is starting to understand the alphabet and that it is made up of letters, and when he is trying to spell something he says random letters. He knows that his name starts with an 'H' though i am not sure that he recognizes what it looks like yet.  He loves saying 'X'.  

He is learning his colors. The one that he consistently gets correct is yellow, and all the rest he guesses/ mixes up, but we are working on them since he spends so much time coloring.

He loves music.  He likes to play daddy's guitar and our piano, but mostly he just likes listening to and boogeying to tunes on the radio or computer.  He has got some groovy moves and isn't too shy about doing them in front of other people.  

Recently gabe and riley taught him how to wiggle around saying 'shake your booty' and he loves to do that because it usually is rewarded with a chuckle.

He has mastered jumping with both feet off the ground at the same time.....and this has invited a whole world of animal moves pretending.  His imagination is growing as he pretends he is an animal, or a football player, and he loves to turn even the least likely objects (like an open book) into a hat.  What a goofball.

every minute of each day is filled with a new adventure, and i am trying desperately to take it all in, savor each moment, and enjoy what precious time is left as a family of three ;)

oh, and as you might have noticed from some of the pictures.....we have spent some time working on potty training this week......nothing makes your sweet little boy look more grown up than seeing him in big boy underpants!  more to come on that journey later......

i love you, big boy!

12 weeks {size of a lime}

my 12 week bump.

not much else to report.  i am now down 5 pounds from when i first found out i was pregnant, though my tummy keeps poking out there.  the weight loss isn't because i don't feel like eating, but more because it seems like i am able to eat less and less at one time.  i have resorted to snacking all throughout the day with hendrix, and am trying really hard to make healthy choices, though chocolate is obviously my preferred choice!  lol

my hubby and i enjoyed an overnight without our little muchkin this weekend.  we had fun shopping (i bought a new camera!) eating out, and snuggling at the movies.  

i have this urgent need to stock up on date nights now as i imagine it will be harder to have them come this fall when we need to find someone to watch two little ones.  it is amazing how awesome sleeping in just an hour later than normal can make me feel like a new person!

we also made some serious progress in our basement this weekend.....in fact, we are talking about getting the carpet installation on our schedule.....

it is so close!

more to come on that.......

but for now,

happy monday!

pinteresting for baby

so last weekend i went to a pinterest party.  it was a lot of fun.  several ladies just got together and brought the supplies needed to make a craft project that had been seen on pinterest.  it was the perfect opportunity to actually make a project that i had always had good intentions of working on someday.....

now that i am pregnant again, i have found myself being drawn to baby-related pins more than others.  i had been eyeing several pins with tutorials on jazzing up some plain white baby onesies.  i had a pile of onesies that hendrix barely wore, so i thought i would give it a try!

i liked the sweet ties, but was really a sucker for the fabric flowers and ruffled buns!  

why not make some of each?

i also happened to have some scraps of fabric that all coordinated with each other, leftover from my last pinterest project.  i made the flag banner to use as a photo prop, and thought that having some coordinating little outfits for babies would be an awesome start to a really great photo ;)  

with a $0 project cost because i used all supplies that i already had, i accomplished 4 little onesies in an evening of fellowship with some girlfriends.  i think that is a great success!

and now i am prepared with something sweet and cute whether i have another little boy....

or a sweet lil girl ;)

linking up with:

    

confessions of a 'wannabe-supermom'

alright. 

i confess.

yesterday was one of those days.

you know, the kind where nothing seems to go right.

it was the kind of day that started off on the wrong foot, and continued that way, hour after hour.  nothing that happened in and of itself was really that big of a deal, but the fact that it all happened in one day (after a night in which this hormonal pregnant lady apparently didn't get enough sleep) had me both in tears and laughter, counting down the minutes until daddy got off work.

poor daddy.

this little stinker was the cause. 

(i guess an ornery golden retriever did manage to add one more grievance to my day.....but that is besides the point).

i love my child with a fiery passion. i truly adore him.  

he makes me giggle and he makes me so very proud.

but he is also full of way more energy than me.  

and recently a lot more orneriness than i know what to do with.

my day started out earlier than normal, at about 6:00 with breakfast and some quality family time before daddy left for work.  then hendrix seemed fascinated with some pbs show and i tried to take advantage of the opportunity to catch up on my blogging (this second pregnancy is definitely getting a lot less focus than my first one did, and not because i am any less excited, but just because i am exponentially busier, thankyouhendrix).  

he moved into the kitchen and was playing with his little stepstool-puzzle and i could hear him so i wasn't too concerned that he was getting into something that he shouldn't......when he comes up to me, with his diaper halfway unsnapped, poop smeared all over the floor and his leg, saying "uh-oh mommy".  

um, yeah. 

UH-OH is right.  

so one bubble bath later, after a nice little pep talk about not taking off our diapers unless mommy helps, i set him in front of the tv again so i could hop in the shower and get ready for my day.  (hendrix loves watching shows, but he loses interest in them pretty quickly unless we are watching with him.......which is good i guess......)

i came back to find that he had taken little toddler bites out of every. single. pear. that was on the table in a large fruit bowl.  i am talking like 13 pears, here.  and after taste-testing each one, he had finally settled on his favorite and was gobbling it up!  i was a little perturbed but also happy that he was interested in eating something healthy (though, where he found the room, i have no idea....he had 4 blueberry muffins and a bowl of cantaloupe for breakfast).

another mini-bath later, and we were finally out the door off to work.

work was relatively uneventful until after lunch when it was nap time.  let me preface this by saying that normally our sleep routines have worked really well for us, and i realize now that i had taken that little victory for granted.  

after a song, and the gathering of his blankie and paci, i laid hendrix in the pack n' play, kissed him goodnight and left the room.  all was normal for the first five minutes, and i thought he had gone to sleep.  then i heard the crying.  it was different than an average whimpering refute against sleeping (which really doesn't happen all that often, but occasionally).  in fact, he sounded kind of hurt and scared.  

so i went in there to check on him, and there he was, laying on the ground.  he jumped up and immediately said "woah".  he wasn't hurt, but i think it kind of scared him.  thinking maybe it was a fluke that he had managed to climb out of the pack n' play, and noting that he looked even more tired than ever, i snuggled him up until he calmed down, sang his song again and put him back in the pack n' play.  (was this a bad idea?  i wasn't really sure what else to do with him.......he was tired......)  

he didn't protest and i went about my activities.  about 15 minutes later while i was washing the dishes in the kitchen, he just waltzed in there and said 'hi mom'.  um, what?!?  yeap, he had climbed out again, this time not hurting himself i guess, because he didn't cry, managed to open the bedroom door, and just decided to be done with nap time.  

i didn't know what else to do with him, so i took his blankie and paci away (we only have those when we are sleeping) and let him go play.  oh, but of course the one who really pays when a toddler misses their nap is mama and those hours were still to come in the day.....

he decided to be a turkey at an appointment in which he hollered (mostly in play, but definitely at the top of his lungs) while we were in the waiting room for an entire 45 minutes.  i probably said "shhhh, use your inside voice" approximately 227 times.  didn't seem to matter.  i got dirty looks from the other moms, and found myself actually wishing that their kids would misbehave at least a little bit to make mine look a little less annoying......

he threw a pretty royal tantrum at the grocery store because he couldn't decide which car cart he wanted to ride in, and after trying out all 7 of them, i picked for him.  

and the rest is really just normal overtired toddler moments, added to a little chase around the neighborhood after a wild and fiesty golden retriever.

 my day had just topped the charts as what felt like the longest. day. ever.

i was defeated.  exhausted. discouraged. 

and quite frankly, feeling nervous about even the idea of adding another child into the mix.  if i can hardly keep the one i have under control, what the heck are we thinking?!?!?

and then daddy saved the day......taking over dinner, (we skipped the bath since hendrix had already had a couple) and bedtime, and we enjoyed a late dinner together.  no chicken nuggets.  no flying applesauce.  no tantrums or sticky fingers.  

i was able to tell him about my day, and somehow saw the humor in it though i still really just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep it off.  

he reminded me that those days are not the norm.  those days are sure trying, but they are sandwiched in between lots and lots of other days that involve snuggles and giggles and learning and discovery.  moments that are truly amazing and i wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.  

being a mom is really awesome.  

really hard.  

and lots of work.  

but really awesome.

my hubby summed it up pretty well the other day when he looked back at an entire afternoon spent working in the garden as a family in which all we actually accomplished was planting 4 little tomato plants.  he said "parenting means getting half as much done in twice the amount of time it used to take, while having four times as much fun!"

i still have daydreams about being a supermom, but for now i am content just getting through one day at a time.  

11 weeks

oh my, i am having trouble staying on schedule with my posting this time around.....

i hit 11 weeks on friday and also had a doctor's appointment that day.

it was my first appointment with the doctor, and though it was pretty short and uneventful, we did get to hear baby #2's heartbeat which is always such a blessing to my ears!  it was beating real fast in the 160's which is right on track ;)

both daddy and hendrix came with me, as we thought it would be good for hendrix to feel involved.  i don't think he understood anymore that there is a baby in there after the appointment than he did before, but you never know what they are really taking in. ;) 

my doctor mentioned that my risk of delivering early is higher (30% higher) than in regular pregnancies simply because i delivered so early (at 35 weeks) last time.  

they are going to carefully monitor me, which is going to involve extra ultrasounds to chart baby's size (which will give us the most accurate due date), and also to check that my cervix isn't getting too thin.  if they notice that it is, we will start on progesterone treatments to help baby stay in there until it is time.  

i am really hopeful that all the extra caution is really unnecessary, but i am excited that i will get to have another ultrasound at my next appointment (may 11th).   i never mind having pictures of my kiddos!

nothing else has really changed in the pregnancy, other than looking more and more pregnant each day.  i finally got out my maternity clothes, and have been rocking the bella band nearly everyday.   it isn't large enough to interfere with my snuggles with my current baby boy, so i don't mind it at all yet.  

i started working on some crafting projects for baby #2 over the weekend.....

more to come on that!

wordless wednesday {spring colors}

my yard is full of bright spring colors.....

....and one very curious toddler!

we love spring!

linking up with:

bree: his honey and her mommy, my organized chaos,  

tara's view of the world, jenni from the blog, 

and then - she (snapped) & love.bug.blog

easter recap

boy, did hendrix have fun decorating easter eggs with daddy.  coloring is one of his favorite activities, and he was excitedly chanting "egg, egg, egg" in this photo while he scribbled the letters to his name.  

he knows his name starts with H, and he also knows there is an X in there somewhere........

he really liked the dipping part too.  he would throw the eggs in the glasses (as gently as his little toddler fingers could manage), and every time we would take one out, he just wanted to put it into another glass.  none of the eggs were ever 'done' in his mind!  lol

they did manage to end up with some pretty eggs, if i do say so myself! ;)

hendrix enjoyed hunting for easter eggs far more this year than he did last year. ;)  it really is amazing to think about how much he has changed in the past year.  

he was really getting the hang of it, and thrilled to gather them up and put them in his basket........until daddy showed him how he could open them up to see what was inside them.  

that was a game changer. 

the minute he saw candy, he just wanted to eat his loot and couldn't care less about the rest of the eggs!  

the easter bunny was very good to him this year, bringing lots of fun activity-toys like chalk, markers, playdough and bubbles.  

then he got spoiled all over again at nana and papa's house.

again, he was munching on the candy while he was gathering up his eggs.  he had lots of fun, but sure didn't mind taking his sweet time.  i guess that is what happens when you have all the eggs to yourself......won't be like that forever kiddo!

he was so fascinated with all the bunny stuff this easter.  he likes to hop like a bunny, and loved waving at the easter bunny at the mall.  the basket that nana and papa got for him had a bunny on it, and there was a button you could push to play music.

he. loved. this.

he kept pushing it and dancing around.

i love his 'happy feet'!

happy easter, sweet boy!