Easter Weekend

Wow, I’m so behind on my blogging that I had to go through my pictures to try and see what I missed AND it required going through multiple folders to find where I left off.  Either I take way way WAY too many photos, or it’s been far too long since I’ve blogged…probably a little of both. 

I made Finn nursery letters back in April and they turned out to be really awesome.  I was quite pleased with them and they didn’t even take me that long which begs the question why did I wait so long to do them, I’d bought the stuff just before he was born.  Now they’re hanging lovingly (which means not quite even since our walls are way to bumpy to try and hang anything perfectly) above his bed.

Easter was very exciting for us this year since Reese was ALL ABOUT hunting for eggs, she gets really excited about holidays right now and then we have to hear about whatever holiday was last for a really really long time, I for one was just happy to get Valentine’s day off her mind because somehow St.Patrick’s Day didn’t do the trick for her.  On Easter Saturday we went to base for an egg hunt and then stayed for the Month of the Military Child block party they were having.  For the egg hunt the field inside the track was literally a sea of eggs and each age group got a chance to run out there and clean them up.  Finn and I watched from the sidelines as this massive line moved across the field picking up everything in its path, it was pretty funny.  Luckily Nate made Reese skip past the first few and start further along so she wasn’t bombarded by people every time she bent down to pick up an egg.  She loved running across the field and finding eggs to toss in her basket, and when she was done she excitedly ran back to Finn and I to show us all that she had found.  She’s such a sweet little girl that she even gave her little brother an egg.

 

Once all the groups had gone through the egg hunt the block party began at the gym.  There was a lot of vendors set up inside the gym giving away things like they do at the state fair and then the bank was giving away toys so we put Reese’s name in the drawing and she was one of the first names called to pick something out.  They were wanting every child to walk away with something so even Finn got a little baseball toy to play with when he’s just a little bit bigger.  After we had gone around collecting water bottles and pens, we went out to the parking lot where they had a merry go round and a bounce house.  Reese is a HUGE fan of merry go rounds and she probably rode this one 10-12 times, but she was having so much fun that we just kept letting her go again and again.  She wasn’t pleased when we finally made her stop, but we let her have a quick turn in the bounce house before we called it a day.  I have to say that I was really impressed with the event, I was expecting just a few little things but there really was a lot of fun stuff for the kids to do.

    

That day ended up being a very busy one because once we got home from the block party we had to get started on dying our Easter eggs and making our Easter cookies.  Reese was more involved in dying the eggs this year which was fun for Nate and I.  She would color on the eggs with the crayons and then decide which color and how long to leave them in for and once they came out and dried she put mass amounts of stickers on a couple of them.  It was a lot of fun to watch her be so opinionated about what she wanted, not that she isn’t usually opinionated but this was her being opinionated about something I WANTED her opinion about so it was different.  She also got to open a little Easter present that Nana and Papa had given her so she had fun with that as well.

On Easter Sunday we got up and saw what the Easter bunny had left for the kids and then noticed that he’d also dropped a bunch of eggs outside in our yard so Reese went out with her basket and gathered them all up while Finn picked up the one that she left behind.  It’s funny to watch her hunt eggs because she’ll notice one on the opposite side of the yard and run past a few in the process of getting it and then back track to the ones she missed.  I just realized I haven’t mentioned much about Finn thus far so I’ll say that he was always present and did his usual thing of watching Reese intently.

     

Once Reese had eaten some of her candy we got the kids ready for church early so I could take some photos of them in their Easter outfits.  You would think that Reese would’ve been cooperative after so much fun but she was in fact not.  She was fine for photos of herself but when it came time to take photos with Finn she refused to support him in anyway.  All she had to do was keep his head upright and she acted as if I was asking her to hold up the titanic, I realize he’s a big kid but I’ve seen her lug her stupid rocking horse up and down stairs so I know she’s capable of holding Finn’s head up.  I did manage to get a few decent photos and I guess I’ll always have the memory of how Reese refused to cooperate, plus they looked cute enough in their outfits to make up for the lack of cooperation.

  

My little man looks so studly with his tie on, it made me smile getting to dress him that day especially since I know that some day he’s going to refuse to wear what I pick out, hopefully that day is very very far away.

Spring?

I don’t want to jinx it, but I think it might actually be spring here in Germany.  It has been sunny and warm for most of the past three weeks and now the trees have started blooming and everything looks so spring like.  Since we’ve lived here long enough to now that spring can turn back in to winter pretty quickly, we’ve tried to make the most of the warm weather by playing outside or going to the park.

  

I realized yesterday that Finn is 5 1/2 weeks old and we’ve yet to take a photo of all four of us together, so before we left for church we took a quick family photo and some pictures of my adorable children together.  I love how much they love each other, I hope that lasts forever.  Finn loves to watch Reese and Reese is always asking to hold him or play with him.  They both make me so happy.

Also, we finally caught Finn’s smile on camera last night.

Finn will be 6 weeks old on Wednesday and I have my final doctor’s appt on Thursday.  It’s a little bittersweet knowing that Thursday will be the last time I’ll ever go in to Dr. Jerono’s office, but I’m excited to start working out and hopefully repair the damage that Finn did to my poor body.  I was just comparing photos of Reese and Finn at the same age and I can’t help but notice how much faster I recovered with Reese, I’m going to attribute it to how much smaller Reese was and how much smaller I was when I was 9 months pregnant with Reese compared to 9 months pregnant with Finn.  Let’s hope a little gym time will help remedy the situation.

Finn is 1 month old

Why is it that 9 months of pregnancy tick by as if every second lasts forever but somehow Finn’s first month of life has sped by with no sign of slowing down?  Finn has already changed so much in a month, he’s bigger (as if that were even possible) and so much more alert.  I’m just loving watching his little personality emerge little by little.  He had his first doctor’s appt when he was 3 weeks old and he weighed in at 11 lbs 7 oz, which put him in the 99th percentile for weight, he was 22.5 in long, which put him in the 95th percentile, and his head was still 15 in, which was the 70th percentile, though Nate claims the technician wasn’t very precise when it came to his head measurement and when we re-measured a few days ago it was 16 in.  Side note:  no I don’t make habit of randomly measuring my children’s heads, but I had my sewing measuring tape out to measure for some online shopping so I went ahead and measured them…I don’t remember what Reese was but I remember it was roughly the same size as my head sadly.  Anyways, back on topic:  Finn is a big boy was the moral of that story, but it suits him and luckily he’s well proportioned and 100% adorable.  When he’s on tummy time he tries his hardest to try and rollover which is really cute, if he could just realize he needs to do something with the arm that is underneath him then he’d have it, but that arm holds him up every time.  He’s recently begun to coo which is super cute, I love his little voice, and last night Reese got him to smile in response to her smile for the first time.  He has smiled before but never because someone was smiling at him, but last night Reese was hugging him and kissing him and she was smiling at him while she said “hey little buddy” which is what she’s always saying to him, and he gave her a huge smile in response, I wish I’d had the camera because it was the cutest thing.   

This week has been the start of our normal lives here, up until now I’ve had someone around to help out.  My mom was here for the first two and half weeks and then Nate had his two weeks of paternity leave so I feel very lucky to have had a whole months worth of help.  It was nice to get to relax and not feel like I had to be running around getting everything done.  Now that Nate’s back at work things have actually been going pretty smoothly.  Reese has gotten used to Finn being around and is back to her old self, and I’m getting enough sleep to function and get everything done.  My house is actually cleaner now than it was the last couple months of my pregnancy.  We were spoiled when Reese was born because she slept through the night almost immediately but Finn wakes up once or twice each night.  Luckily he just wakes up to eat and goes right back to sleep when he’s done so there’s no trying to “put” him back to sleep and he’s beginning to go longer stretches during the night so hopefully very soon it’ll just be feeding him once instead of twice. 

Reese loves to hold her little brother:

 

He fell asleep during tummy time:

Pirate eye yawn:

the remnants of a smile:

trying to rollover, his shoulders stay but while everything else almost flips over:

He may weigh a lot but he’s not a chunky guy:

The Things I Love….

I love my little girl, my firstborn, my child that looks so much like her father but has so much of my attitude running through her.  I remember going to my very first ultrasound with her and immediately falling in love with the child growing inside me and when she finally arrived months later she was everything I could’ve ever hoped for.  She’ll be three in just a few months and I love watching her grow and watching her find her own interests.  She loves animals so much and can name the most random animals and her newest thing is telling you what different animals eat or asking what other ones eat.  I love sitting and watching her play with her toys and speak for them.  She loves going to school and gymnastics and will constantly practice the different things she learned at gymnastics throughout the week.  She says the most hilarious things all the time and makes observations that I wouldn’t expect a 2 year old to notice.  She’s had a bit of a hard time trying to find her “new normal” with a new little brother at home.  Her attitude reached a climax during those first two weeks but luckily my mom was here to help with the brunt of her attitude and for the most part she’s back to normal now.  On the other side of things, she’s the amazing big sister that we thought she would be.  She loves Finn so much and wants to help with him however she can.  Every morning she looks in his bed to check on him and when we’re out she loves to show everyone her baby brother. 

 

one week old

two weeks old

I love my new little man so much that I can’t seem to put him down.  I didn’t bond with him during the pregnancy like I did with Reese, it was a more difficult pregnancy and while I knew I loved him already it was that time we spent alone in the hospital that made me fall head over hills with my little boy.  So far he’s been an amazingly content little guy and has made the transition from one kid to two easier than I had imagined (for now).  He’s very quiet, except for when he wants to eat, and LOVES to snuggle with Mommy and Daddy.  I like watching the way he looks at Reese when she comes over to play with him on his playmat, he’ll stare at her so intently as she talks to him and “shows” him how to play with his toys.  He’s the perfect addition to our family and we all love him so much, even if he doesn’t let me sleep quite as long as I’d like to at night.

 

Not only do I have the cutest little girl and the cutest baby boy, but I also have the cutest puppy too.  The best thing about Jaeger is that she seems to be able to sense when you’re not feeling well and comes to cuddle with you and make you feel better.  Whenever I’ve had a long day, which was most of them while I was pregnant and trying to deal with a two year-old, she’d be there to curl up on my lap and watch TV with me.  She’s been a part of our family since we moved to Germany and two kids later we still love the furry member of our family as much as we did when we got her.

 

I can’t forget this guy.  He had to work extremely long shifts and all through the weekend last week giving him basically zero time with us, but he still changed Finn’s diapers in the middle of the night without complaint and comforted Reese in the middle of the night when she wasn’t feeling well.  He started his two weeks of paternity leave on Monday and we’re glad he gets to spend some time at home with us as we try and figure out a new routine.

 

And one last photo of these two on St.Patrick’s Day because they really are THAT cute

We Love Nana

This is what happy kids look like when Nana is in town:

We were lucky enough to have my mom come out to help us when Finn was born.  She arrived the Friday before Finn was born and we had some fun running errands in Trier that weekend, then luckily enough for us I was headed to the hospital that Tuesday and Finn was born the next day so the majority of her trip was spent with two grandkids.  It was really nice having her here to help keep Reese’s schedule the same and just give Reese extra attention so I could relax and have some bonding time with Finn.  As if the hours she spent playing pet shops and “beach blu-au” (a Reese made up game that is essentially a picnic) weren’t enough, she also cooked for us and kept the house spotless.  Oh how I enjoyed those first two weeks after Finn was born, it was like a mini vacation of laziness for me.