The Big 3

Ethan is showing that he is 3 by holding up 3 fingers.


It is Ethan's birthday today and he turned 3. He has grown up so much these past few months...especially now that he is a big brother. He loves to sing his ABC's and counts up to 20. He is starting to sing songs with us and loves to be read to. He really enjoys going to the beach and getting sand all over him and has recently started playing more in the water. He is pretty much potty trained and he is usually running around in just his underwear (partly because it is easier and partly because it is so hot lately). He's using so many new words lately that we can actually have little conversations with him. He loves to wrestle with his daddy and whenever I get down on the floor to clean up or something, he jumps on my back ready to play. We've had to explain that wrestling is only with daddy. :o)


We had a party with some friends from church and had a great time. He seemed a bit overwhelmed by it and got whiny toward the end...but I think over-all he had a great time too. We had swimming in our blow up pool, a pinata (which took too long so we ended up tearing it open and dumping it on the ground), dinner and cupcakes and then topped it off by opening presents. Happy Birthday our sweet little boy!

our explorer

Since Jude has been scooting around more and more he is getting himself stuck in corners or on top of toys. He then lets out a big cry to let us know. This is a picture of Jude trying to crawl under the excer-saucer. I think he saw some fun toys underneath and he thought he could just climb on in to get them. Then he got mad becaue his head kept hitting the top...but a cute moment to click a picture.

5 months old

Jude is 5 months old today. He has really changed so much in the past month. He smiles a lot and laughs. He loves to move around the floor and explore everything he can get his hands on...or mouth on. His new move is to go from crawl position to almost sitting while he leans on one arm and looks like he's taking a break for a minute. He loves to give me kisses by grabbing my hair and sucking on the side of my face...Jason thinks it's gross. He growls and can scream extremely loud when he's playing. He grabs his feet and puts them in his mouth. He now likes to ride in the car and the stroller (big accomplishment) He loves to eat food and hasn't turned his nose up to anything yet. His new thing is the mesh bag that you can put whole pieces of food in it (see picture below). It keeps him quite entertained. He's quite the cute little kid (if I say so myself) and we all love him so much. God has blessed us with another great little boy!

we all scream for ice cream

Ethan and I have enjoyed our ice cream in the evening. I bought some ice cream cones the other day and Ethan and I agree it has made it even better (Jason likes his in a cup with milk and chocolate syrup). On this particular evening Jude was scooting around and came up to Ethan. If I zoomed the picture in you could probably see the drool dripping off his chin....let's just say he's looking forward to ice cream in the evenings too (...and don't worry, Ethan does have underwear on in this picture. It's hot here but not hot enough to go naked .... well maybe it is but we don't).

yummy papayas

We've tried giving Jude a variety of foods. We want him to be a good eater like his big brother so hopefully trying new things will help him to not be picky...we'll see. There are papayas growing in our back yard and a friend of mine told me how to make them into baby food, so we gave it a try... as you can see he seems to like them. We've also tried peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, peaches, applesauce, pears...and our next new food to try is the avacado. So far he seems to be a good eater and hasn't turned away any food we've given him. Sometimes we can barely get it to his mouth fast enough.

fun at the beach

Well Jude had his first real beach day. Usually we would put him in the front carrier and let Ethan run around and play in the sand and water. But we decided it would be fun to get Jude's little swim shirt and trunks on and see how he liked the beach. It was a little challenging since Jude can't sit up on his own and he loves to chew on his hands...so trying to keep him somewhat sand free was a little tricky. But he seemed to like it.

water table fun

Sand and water tables were a great invention...especially when we don't really have much of a back yard. We had some old rice that I threw in there since we didn't have sand for the other side. Ethan had a blast mixing it all together and driving his cars through it. It's a great way to stay cool...until he decided it would be fun to dump the whole thing over and all of the plants below were covered in sticky rice. We then had a great talk about not doing that again. :o)

sugar high

Well thankfully potty training is going well. Ethan has seemed to get the idea and we have had few accidents. We're still using pull-ups at night and naps but hopefully as he gets older we won't need to use those anymore. What size do they go up to...? :o)

A piece of small candy has been a great motivator for potty training. Sometimes the thought of a piece of candy would get Ethan to go without me asking him. Sometimes he would go a few drops (since he just went 10 minutes ago) just so he could get another piece. So I'm wondering how do I phase out the candy?

baby Jude

Besides scooting around the floor and trying to chew on anything he can get his hands on, he recently discovered his feet. It's amazing how flexible little babies are. He loves to grab those little feet and bring them up to his mouth to chew on. Glad it keeps him entertained.


Jude has been so much more giggly lately since we've discovered that he's ticklish just like his daddy. It's fun to get him to smile.

crazy kid

Thought this was funny. For some reason Ethan loves to pile on the blankets and pillows when he sleeps. I think he was made for cold weather. It doesn't matter how hot it is or how sweaty he is...he insists that he have at least 5 blankets and 4 pillows in the bed with him...which is pretty hot with no air conditioning. I try taking them out and then the next morning he's got them all back in the bed with him.

And for some reason he loves his pajamas lately. He wants to wear them all day long...especially the froggy and superman pajamas. A couple of times we've gone to the grocery store with the superman cape and all. Or as Ethan calls it his "cake".

We're still working on how to put shorts on...I've explained that there's two holes. One for one foot and one for the other foot. Tricky concept for an almost 3 year old.

6 years together

Crazy how fast time flies. I can't believe Jason and I have been married for 6 years now. We had a nice time going out for dinner and just walking around and being together. It's rare when we get a chance to be together outside of the house without kids. It was nice to have adult conversation and dress up a little...and to be in air conditioning.

The traditional anniversary gift for the 6th year of marriage was iron, wood and candy. So we follow tradition each year and find something small that fits the traditional gift. It's kind of cheezy, I know.

he keeps going and going...

Well Jude is starting to move and it's caught us by surprise. I didn't even think of babyproofing this early or even keeping my floors super clean yet. :o) But he has started figuring out how to move. It's not very fast but I can't put him down and then expect him to stay there. He gets in the crawl position and kind of rocks back and forth and then does a belly flop...and so on. I think his legs know how to move but he hasn't figured out how to move the hands without falling face first. He can move a couple inches at a time, so it works. It is nice though because it keeps him busy and entertained. He especially loves it when Ethan is down there playing with him. This next picture is him eye-ing the game cube...

...yes a game cube. Jason brought it home from the youth group because he thought it would be fun for him and I to play Star Wars after the kids go to bed. I must say I was a bit addicted to it. Thankfully it is going back to the youth group next week because Jude seems a bit too interested in it.

rub a dub-dub...

...two kids in a tub. This was the first time both the boys took a bath together. Ethan loved having someone to play with and Jude, I think, was a bit overwhelmed with all the splashing and noise from Ethan. He just sat there wide eyed...

...but it was much easier having them both in the same place for bath time and Jude took a longer bath with all the entertainment to keep him occupied. I'm sure some day they will both be splashing and making noise and there will probably be more water out of the tub then there is in the tub.

4 months old

Jude is 4 months old today. I love seeing more and more of his personality. He's doing so many more things lately (as you can see on previous posts). We are so thankful for our little boy!

another big day!!

Ethan is learning to use the potty. Praise God! It's amazing how changing baby diapers makes Ethans diapers seem so much worse. Especially since he's such a big kid anyway. We were on the last size of diapers so it was about time we attempted the potty training thing...again. It definitely seems to have clicked for him. Don't worry, none of the pictures I will post will be of him sitting on the potty (although he does look pretty cute in his little Thomas the Train tightie-whities). But we did want to show you his sticker chart which he is very proud of. So far we've added 3 stickers today.

big day!

Jude is growing up so fast. Today was his first bite of solid food. He had rice cereal. He ate it okay but didn't seem to like the taste too much. Maybe we'll try it with a bit of fruit next time. It's hard to believe he's 4 months old.

And today we tried sitting him up by himself to see if he could do it and he did...well sort of. He wasn't quite sitting up straight but he sat there without falling over. Does that count?

on the move...almost

These are pictures of Jude trying to take off. He is quite the strong little guy. These first few pictures are of him trying to get in the crawl position. Thankfully he hasn't figured out how to move much from that, but we're thinking it might be sooner than we think. I think he's ready to get up and run around with Ethan. He loves watching his big brother run around and play with his trains.


This next picture was just funny. Jude is training for crawling by doing his baby push-ups. He actually stiffens up and gets his legs and belly off the ground.

Happy Independence Day!

This is my favorite summer holiday (not that there are many summer holidays). My memories of the 4th are family get togethers, sparklers and watermelon.



Ethan and I started out the day by going to a parade a few blocks over. He got a balloon, candy, a paper Republican fan (notice the picture of Jude holding it...we're starting him young), popcorn, popsicles and a kazoo which he played the whole way home. We had a good time!

We celebrated the later afternoon/evening over at a friends house. They had quite the set up with a pool, trampoline, hot tub, great food and their own little display of fireworks in the street (which I missed because I had to take Jude home to go to sleep and apparently Ethan didn't like the noise, so Jason didn't see much of it either). But I was very excited about the fireworks display on the beach again. The great thing about living so close to the beach is that I could actually see the fireworks from our lanai, so even though the kiddo's were in bed we could still enjoy the fireworks.

So what a great day of not only food, friends and family but to thank God for our independence as a nation and for all of the men and women that are making sacrifices for that!

our evening walks

Although we have such mild days here, the sun is usually really intense until about 6 o'clock in the evening. The weather is absolutely perfect this time of day with just the right amount of a breeze. So we've started going for our evening walks after dinner and have enjoyed them so much. Ethan loves to get out and run around. And he always asks if we can stop to feed the ducks too (yes, those are the ugliest ducks I've ever seen...maybe a cross between a duck and a turkey). So we've made it a habit to save the ends of our loaves of bread just for this. Jude even loves being out and we usually don't hear a peep out of him the whole time. It's a great way to end the day.