Baby it's COLD outside!

Geez, is it cold outside! Obviously we were with the majority of the country that got hit with the Blizzard of 2011. We didn't get as much snow as other people in our community, but Jesse said that when he shoveled it was a layer of light snow, heavy snow, then light snow, so it wasn't the easiest to move. It is quite "fun" to see all of the huge snow piles at corners!

Lena learned to roll from her back to her front last week and once she realizes she can barrel roll, we're in trouble! She no longer goes belly to back while she's awake, but she'll do it in her sleep, which I think is hilarious. Milo didn't roll from back to front until he was 7 months old, so Jesse and I were very surprised when Lena did it at 3.5 months.

I thought Lena would still want to sleep in the wedges at night to keep her on her side, but that lasted 1.5 nights until she was making some noise and I checked on her. She had managed to still get on her belly in the wedges, so out them came!

Lena's first nap on her belly in her crib. She napped for 2.5 hours this day, when she usually naps for 30 minutes! When she was "learning" to fall asleep on her belly I had to let her cry it out, which we've never needed to do with her! She was so mad/excited that she was on her belly that she refused to put her head down and relax. Now, the ONE time that she cried it out, it only took 2-3 minutes and she was out. I found it quite amusing, since she usually either just falls asleep or only fusses for a few minutes, rarely does she scream!

Just a cute picture of Lena in the hat that Great Aunt Linda got her! It was huge on her when she got it and now it's almost too small! It's so cute, though!

Milo wanted to hold Lena the other morning so I whipped out the camera and took some cute shots. Then yesterday he cuddled up next to me and Lena while I was feeding her and said, "Lena loves me and I love her." LOVE IT!!! He's such a good big brother!

The last thing is that little Lena is allergic to amoxicillan...yeah...She was on it for her ear infection two weeks ago and got a rash one day after finishing her medicine. It went away, didn't bother her at all and then showed up again Wednesday. Thursday morning after she woke up I was changing her and the rash was in the same place, just bright red. I took her in and they said it's the allergic reaction and dry skin. We now get the joy of buying new baby body wash and putting mineral oil on her instead of lotion (for the dry skin). Oh yeah, and my little chunk-a-wunka is now 14 lbs 11 oz! She's gained a pound in less than a month!

Have a great weekend!

Quick Cold Update

Wow, have we had some snow! I think our house got the least amount of snow out of everyone we know! Saturday morning when Jesse and Milo went out to shovel we had about 18 inches, almost everyone else had over 24 inches! Craziness! It is currently snowing again, and we are under a Lake Effect Snow Watch until 7:00 am Thursday morning.

Lena had her three month check up on Monday morning and she's 13 pounds 6 oz. The nurse measured her length wrong, he said she's 23 inches. Not sure how that's possible since she was 23.5 inches last month...Jesse and I haven't measured her ourselves yet, maybe tonight.

I'm pretty sure Lena's going through a growth spurt, last week I had two days that she ate every two hours. Milo never did this, but he ate closer together than she does, so I was not mentally prepared. I.do.not.care.for.it. I felt like a milk factory and nothing else. Oh well, we made it through and she's still a happy baby, so that's all that matters!

Lena has lengthened her first stretch at night to at least eight hours before she eats and goes back to sleep!

Milo is doing well, I took him to the doctor this morning for a nice cough he has, which he might be on the verge of bronchitis. This doctor doesn't like to just give out drugs, which we greatly appreciate, so she said to give it a day or two go see if it gets better and if it doesn't, then she'll put him on antibiotics. Let's hope it clears up!

Milo is so funny and creative! About a week and a half ago we went down to Jesse's parent's house for dinner and Beatle's Rock Band. Milo wanted to play one of the instruments but we didn't let him because if you do too poorly it quits the song and you have to start over. Milo got a play guitar out of the toy room and played just like he was playing the game! He watched the tv, hit buttons, and jammed right along. He even bowed at the end of the songs. We were all dying! At one point he even brought out my mother-in-law's sewing machine case, told us it was his speaker, and pretended to plug his guitar into it.

There are other stories, but I'm coming up blank at the moment!

Stay warm and safe with all this snow!

Testing

This is a test to see if I can upload this video of Milo with his new bowling game he got for Christmas. He LOVES it!

Christmas is almost here!

I can't believe that Christmas is only three short days away! Whenever Milo gets asked what he wants, he replies, "presents". I can't decide if this is a good answer or not, it leaves so many possibilities open!

We had an exciting day yesterday, Lena decided to roll over from front-to-back! I was very surprised. I put her on the floor to do tummy time and went in the kitchen. I heard her fuss after a minute and when I came back out, she was on her back! I couldn't believe it so I put her back on her tummy and she instantly rolled over again! The next time took her a minute or so, and then she wouldn't do it for the camera, of course. She wore herself out and then took a nap. She's 10.5 weeks old, which is why we were so surprised, Milo didn't do this until he was 4.5-5 months old. She did roll over a few more times yesterday but every time I had the camera on her, she wouldn't do it!

We had our Mother's & More holiday party last Friday and here is Lena in her Santa outfit.

I just LOVE this picture!!!

She even sat on Santa's lap. I don't know what she told him she wanted, though, she's kept it a secret.

My adorable kiddos!

Milo helped me wrap presents last week. He worked on Lena's present the entire time I wrapped the rest of them. Her present still looks like this! He's proud of himself and that's what matters.

Milo and I went out and shoveled the sidewalk last week and then played in the snow. He's so cute while playing!!! My neighbor was telling me that she told people at work about Milo playing in the snow and trying to throw "snowballs" (it was NOT packing snow) at me.

I buried him in the snow. He was having a blast! We even caught snowflakes on our tongues! He loves to help shovel, our neighbor's mom even bought him a shovel last winter after seeing him out there helping Jesse.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas!!!

Picture Update

Okay, I haven't put up pictures in awhile, so please bear with me and the 16 I just put on here! Of course they're not in order, either... :)

Lena had her 2-month check-up yesterday and she's healthy! She's 11 lbs 14 oz, up exactly two pounds from last month. She's 23.5 inches long, too, up half an inch. She also got three shots, boo. She screamed her little head off for about a minute, then was fine. She also chose yesterday to start coo-ing a TON! She was very smiley and chatty yesterday, which was great! Jesse was playing a game with Milo last night while she started "talking" to me and Milo came running out saying, "Baby sister calling for me!" So cute!

Milo's doing well, he has a new pair of boots, thanks to a friend of mine who was giving them away, and he loves to wear them! He's also still talking about when Santa comes to visit. As of yesterday he was saying that he and Santa are going to work on Daddy's broken remote control airplane. We are going to a holiday party on Friday and Santa will be there, we will have to see if Milo even talks to him.

Look! Look! She has red eyebrows!!! There may be some of me in her!!! Nothing like taking her places and EVERYONE (including MY family members) says how much she looks like Jesse. :)

Obvious...this is the only one she was smiling in, but her eyes are closed...

Jesse got to go to CA for work last week and we went to pick him up from the airport. His flight was delayed so we went in to wait and Milo loved it! He didn't want to go home. Although when we dropped Jesse off the only thing Milo could talk about as we drove away from the airport was how much he was going to miss the ipad.

We watched a Special Agent Oso one morning and he was learning to use chopsticks. Milo wanted to try some, so I gave them to him for lunch that day. He had fun trying to pick up pineapple, and he did succeed!

Smiling during tummy time. She's getting better at liking it. In the beginning she just wanted to put her head down and go to sleep, now she looks around.

Her first time in a dress!!!

Realizing there are animals that move around on the swing! Now she talks to them!

We went to Hensler's tree farm to get our Christmas tree and this is Milo playing on the train.

Jesse and Milo on the hay ride out to the back field to find our tree.

Lena while we were getting our tree.

Milo and Jesse cutting down our tree.

Me and Lena out in the field.

Obvious, again. She grew so much in a month!

Help! There's a monster in Milo's train table!!! I didn't know he had taken apart his table before and Jesse had told him not to do it again. I walked into his room to find this and thought it was hilarious! Oh well...

We went into Cleveland for the Kain Hanukkah party this last weekend and went back to "A Christmas Story" house. This is the house where they filmed a few scenes for the movie. Here's us with the infamous "leg lamp". We now have pictures of both kids at a few months old touching the butt of the leg lamp!

You know snowmen, have you ever built a "leafman"? Especially one with a Milo head?

It's snowing here, it's actually the most snow we've gotten during this week's storm. The majority of the snow hit west of 31. It's "pretty" snow now!!! We might go play in it after Jesse gets home from work.

Have a great week and stay warm!

Another Quick Update

Things are quiet on the Midwestern front. Lena is still easy going and keeps amazing us with her sleeping at night. Last night she slept from 11-6! All the last week she would sleep between 5 and 6 hours during her first stretch.

Lena also smiles a lot now! The problem is trying to get the camera to snap one in time.

Milo is doing great, too! He loves seeing the houses decorated with lights, he keeps telling us that Santa will only go to the houses with lights (something about that's how he knows where to go). He also has told us that when Santa comes to our house he's going to plays cars and trains with him. I've tried to explain that he'll be asleep when Santa comes, but sometimes it seems that certain things go in one ear and out the other. I did say something last night about how maybe we'll make some cookies on Christmas Eve to leave out for Santa and Milo said, "We need to leave milk out, too!'

Hopefully I'll put up some pictures this week, although we are busy EVERY DAY!!!

Have a great week!

Update

Here are some pictures from the last week:

I took a picture of Lena asleep on the couch and therefore had to take a picture of Milo pretending to sleep...

Lena passed out of the couch, she even put herself to sleep!

You KNOW she's passed out when she spits out her paci! Most of the time she doesn't even fuss to get it back.

Me and Milo walking along Lake Michigan in St. Joseph, MI. We went up there on Saturday and went to the Curious Kids Museum, which we have no pictures from. Milo's favorite part was the apple picking room. They have a fake tree that you can pick "apples" from, put them on a conveyor belt, turn the wheel, and it raises the "apples" to fall back into the tree. They even have a second building and when we were done there, Milo wanted to go back and pick more apples. Jesse and I preferred the second building, there is a big carousel that we all rode, Lena even woke up for it!

We thought we parked in the correct spot to walk out on the pier, but we didn't. Somehow there's another thing to walk out on and as we were going along, Milo found random holes in the cement. He had to stop and look in almost EVERY HOLE and tell us that he couldn't see anything down it...This is him checking one hole out.

On November 2, Jesse had the day off for Election Day (rough job he has...), so we went to the Studebaker Museum. The special exhibit is "Star Cars" and once we saw that the General Lee was there, I knew we'd be going. Jesse will claim that we had to go because they had the Muppet Car, but I think we all know who the fanatics about cars are in our family. This is Jesse, Lena, and Milo with General Lee #72 (they used 300 cars in the making of the show).

This is me with the Muppet Car. It ends up that they used poster paint on the car because it was cheap and that's why most of the color is gone. They have a donation box where they are trying to raise money to get the car repainted.

Jesse has Thursday off for Veteran's Day and we're going to start the day with Lena's first doctor's appointment. What excitement!