Last Hurrah

Today was my last day of maternity leave. Done. Over. Finito. Sigh . . .

So what did we do? I took my munchkins to the zoo. Luckily the weather cooperated. It was cool, but not cold and sunny. The animals cooperated for the most part and were out to be seen. And the field trip kids, while numerous, were well behaved.

Here's Alex & Laney are ready to see some animals.
Laney & one of juvenile the giraffes.

As usual, Laney got to take a ride on the carousel. Today she picked a tiger.

The obligatory I took it myself photo. Alex spent a few minutes in the front carrier but mostly he was in the stroller - I think he might already be too tall for the carrier! He was bumping my chin today.

I actually managed to get a family shot thanks to a nice lady on the carousel.

It was a good morning. The grind stone awaits.

Visiting Grandmama

Valentines weekend we drove a few hours to visit my Grandmother ("Grandmama" to Elena) and introduce her to her newest great-grandson.

We got the complete tour of Grandma's assisted living center (laundry room and all!). She had a great time showing the kids off to her friends and the staff. And Elena got to ride in style.

I post this for it's cute value. I tried Elena's Valentines outfit on Alex, after all he managed to wear some of her Christmas outfits. Not so much with this one. It was about 3 inches too long.

Statistics

Alex is now 2 months & 1 day old. We went for his 2 month well baby check up yesterday. He’s 24.25 inches tall and 11 lbs 7 oz. For those keeping score, he's grown 5.25 inches and gained 3 lbs 7 oz since birth.

The other statistics make me sad. I have one full week left before I return to work part time. I have a total of 1 Monday & 1 Wednesday left, 2 Fridays, and 3 Tuesdays & Thursdays left of maternity leave. Sigh. That's 3 more Story times and only 2 more Mothers of Young Children bible studies.

Turning away from feeling sorry for myself, some Laney pics. Here she is finally getting to make a pinecone bird feeder the way that Special Agent Oso taught her. We've had these pine cones since October, I think.

The finished product:

And on Saturday Elena got to do a couple of things she's been waiting for - first, I let her feed Alex a bottle. I nurse primarily, but he gets the occasional formula bottle for convenience. Also in this picture is her Build-A-Bear wearing her new Cinderella costume. Elena had purchased the outfit that day with her Christmas gift card.

We also caught up with Kayla, Elena's godmother, at last. Elena got her birthday and Christmas gifts from Kayla and we gave Kayla's son, Andrew his Christmas gift.

Kayla meets Alex.

And a Kathryn update, she brought home Honor Roll certificates for the second & third six weeks, which makes the entire first semester that she made honor roll. Right now much of her energy is focused on the Solo & Ensemble competition in 2 weeks. We'll see if she makes ones for the fifth year in a row.

6 Weeks Old

Alex turned 6 weeks old last Friday. Here are a couple of his Toby pictures:

Today I took him for professional portraits with the good folks at JCPenny. Of course, he decided last night that sleeping was something other people should do - not him or me. So by the time we got to take pictures he was sound asleep. I'm counting myself lucky because the other option with that little sleep was screaming his head off. These are some of the poses we purchased:

I loved this creation they put together, but it was a little too expensive for my taste.

The boy did open his eyes for a couple of shots - this one cracks me up - he looks like he's making faces - nyah nyah nyah nyah.

Somebody order winter?

We could break another winter record in this neck of the woods. December was colder than normal, but January has been pretty cold for us Gulf Coasters. We're due for our coldest tempatures in 10 years and single digit wind chills by Friday. We're also looking at our longest sustained freeze in decades.

Today at Preschool story time we read books about winter and the craft was making icicles out of aluminum foil and glitter. When we got home the girls made paper snow flakes to decorate our kitchen window.
On another note - can you believe it has already been a month? I've been taking milestone pictures of Alex with Toby Bear - here is his one month picture. I forgot to take the picture until my mom called last night at 9 PM so I had to take it while he was asleep. (Toby got moved back to his spot on the dresser after the picture was taken.)

Have a Happy Twelth Day of Christmas tomorrow!

A little bit of Christmas

We've had a busy few weeks since Alex has been home. The first week was spent mostly getting in to the groove of having another person in the house. The following week we really started to prep for Christmas.

Laney is going to school two days a week while I am home on leave. One of the days she was home last week we did some baking. Here she is helping make gingerbread for her Aunt LaLa.
Over the weekend, Rob, Elena & my parents went and got our tree. We decorated it on Sunday.

Here's my little man in one of his multitudenous Christmas outfits. It says "I've been super good all year." Not hard when you've only been here two + weeks.

My girls

Rob, Kat & Elena ready for Christmas Eve services.

Alex made his debut at church Thursday evening, so I got to hear Kat play in the Christmas band . . .

And see Elena sing with the Children's choir.

Christmas morning was fantastic. Although it started later than expcted. Laney had been so excited for so long we expected to have to stop her from opening presents before her sister got up. Instead she crawled in bed with us for a bit and failed to notice that there were new presents under the tree until we pointed them out.

Kat was ver pleased with her haul this year.

Elena kept wanting to stop opening presents to play with each toy. At least we know she liked them!

My brother & his wife came over later in the morning for the day. Here they are with the new nephew.

Enjoy the remaining 9 days of Christmas!

Alex is Here

Today was supposed to be Alexander's birthday; however, he had plans of his own. My water broke last Thursday night a little after 9 PM. Alex had arrived by 12:30 Friday morning.

He picked a record breaking day to arrive. Friday, December 4, 2009 is now on record as the earliest snow fall here.