3 months

Poppy is 3 months old now!

After many requests (and semi-guilt trips) I had some baby pictures done by my lovely friend, Crystal (she photographed my shower, too). Despite the awkward 3-month-old phase, they turned out beautifully. This is one of my absolute favorites of the bunch.

It blows my mind that my tiny little girl has gotten so big!

She's a smiler and giggler.

She still hates having her picture taken, though. 

Wearing size 2 diapers (about to move up into 3's soon) and 6 month sized clothes (and some 3-6 month stuff).

I'm guessing she's around 15-16 lbs, we'll find out at her 4 month appointment, next month.

She loves being held. She's very sociable.

She's always afraid she'll miss something.

When you talk to her, she grins and buries her head in her hands or turns away, shyly.

She loves water. Baths, swimming, as long as the water's not too cold.

She loves to play peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, and this little piggy.

Her eyes have little hazel rings around the pupil--which makes me wonder if I'll actually have a baby with brown eyes.

She always has her hands clasped together and she just discovered her feet. They're fascinating!

She's trying very hard to roll over and can get on her side and kick the top leg over, but hasn't figured out the final step.

She's also trying very hard to push off when she's on her belly and to sit up. If she's in her bouncy seat or boppy pillow, she does her little baby sit ups. She can bear weight on her legs with assistance. They're bionically strong and she can bruise you with her toes.

She's got the bald spot on the back of her head where she moves her head around. Her hair seems to be lightening up, but I seem to remember James's doing the same thing, so it's hard to say what color everything will be in a few more months.

She's making peace with her carseat.

She goes to sleep between 9 and 10 after her bath and last feeding, then sleeps til around 5-6 am. I usually pull her into bed with me and she'll sleep another couple hours there after she eats. She'll get up around 8 (or whenever the boys wake us up) and stay up for a few hours before her morning nap. Then she's up until around 2 or 3 pm, then all three kiddos take their nap. They all get up around 2 hours later, we play, eat dinner, take baths, read stories, and then it's bed time all over again. 

We're up in Tennessee visiting for my sister's wedding shower, so I had to make the 7-ish hour drive with all three kids and the dog by myself today. I tried to plan it around Poppy's nap schedule, so we left super early. The drive went much better than I'd anticipated, thanks to the sleep sheep, timing, preparation, and nearly 7 hours straight of praying!

Beach

Happy Memorial Weekend!

It's a 4-day for Jason, meaning some much-needed time off work and with family! His school schedule's been awfully demanding and with all the end-of-school-activities for the kiddos, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. 

If you followed us last year, you know we frequent Callaway Gardens beach. At a mere 40 minute drive, it's a waste not to go! And this weekend, they opened it up for the season, so where else to spend our time?

It was Poppy's very first beach/swimming trip! The first dip her little toes took in the chilly water, she scrunched up her little face and cried out. After that, she was golden and loved kicking around in it.

The boys swam and played in the sand with Daddy. Riley was floating around the water like a little fish. Made me a little more confident about putting him in swimming lessons this summer. 

Our neighbors met us there and the boys got pruney while we sunbathed with the babies. They brought a little tent for us to shade the little ones in and boy was it a lifesaver. It was a scorcher!

The beach wore the babies out! 

Poppy even napped the whole drive home! She was all smiles. Little water-baby. Good thing with our upcoming location change!

I'm seeing an early bedtime in our future. There's a pile of damp swim-clothes in the hallway, sand on the bottoms of our feet, brown babies (except for the littlest one who's still baby-white) that smell like coconut sunscreen who are running around the living room still in their inner tubes and arm floaties. The picnic basket still needs to be unloaded, I have spots that I obviously missed putting sunscreen on (nothing like weird firework-shaped-sunburn on your knees!), I have no idea what we're going to eat for dinner, and I'm pretty sure Riley just pooped...but all that can wait til I finish my strawberry-daquiri wine cooler, right?

Mother's Day Date

Happy Mother's Day!!

A year ago, I never would have thought I'd be spending my next Mother's Day as a mom of three.

Now I can't imagine my life without these three beautiful babies!

With James in preschool this year, I've gotten to spend some wonderful one-on-one time with Riley. Storytime at the bookstore. Playdates at the museum and the park. Lunch out. Breakfast out. Shopping. Playing. Snuggling at home on the couch watching Sesame Street. 

On Wednesdays, Poppy and I get time alone to run our errands and snuggle. All the attention is on her.

 It's been great! 

But with all that comes zero one-on-one time with James. Any school functions and field trips I go to, I'm always carrying along two younger siblings in tow, so my attention never gets to be fully on him. 

Jason asked me the other day what I wanted for Mother's Day and as usual I wrote it off. "I just want to spend time with ya'll. That's all I want." But as the day went on I started thinking about how I don't get any time to spend alone with my firstborn and I decided right then and there--I wanted a Mother's Day date with   James.

We got dressed up and snuck out while the younger two were napping and headed to a pizza parlor in town. The cook gave James a ball of dough to play with while our pizzas were in the oven.

After pizza (he ate the whole thing!) we headed to the movie theater to see "Pirates: Band of Misfits". We got our movie tickets, popcorn, an icee, and our 3d glasses and went in early to get seats. There was no one else in the theater at first and James kept asking where everybody was. I told him they were just watching other movies and it meant we would get to laugh louder.

After the movie it was time for frozen yogurt! James got 3 different flavors and pretty much every topping there was.

We chatted on the drive home about how funny the movie was and our favorite parts and listened to his favorite song. It was such a good time, I didn't even mind when he didn't want me to kiss him or take a picture when we got home. Okay, maybe I minded a little.

My sweet little four year old. Today made me realize how big he is. Time just goes so fast that when you stop for a minute you realize how much has passed you by. 

I just wish they'd stay little, longer.

Happy Mother's Day!

Strawberry patch

We wanted something fun to do as a family this weekend. The weekdays are cram-packed with meet-ups and playdates, preschool and Armor school, errands and housework (which is pretty impossible to keep up with these days). So we wanted to do something other than chilling out at home (although those breaks are pretty nice most weekends). I did a little searching around and found a strawberry patch less than an hour away from us in Alabama, so we dressed in pink and red (anticipating the stains), turned on the dvd player for the boys and the sleep sheep for Poppy and headed South.

 Backyard Orchards is in Pittsview, Alabama. Right off the highway and easy to find, we met rows upon rows of ripe, juicy strawberries to pluck into our baskets.

 The boys did a lot more eating than picking. I had to sift through the baskets later to pull out all the berries with big bites taken out.

 We ended up with 3 baskets full, plus a small basket of their first peaches of the season and 3 giant zucchini!

 The boys played while Jason checked out and I fed a very hungry Poppy in the car.

 Everyone had pink mustaches.

 We drove off to pick up some lunch and we decided that since it wasn't even noon yet, there was more fun to be had.

We grabbed a picnic lunch at a drive thru, a pack of hotdog buns at the gas station, and headed to the park. After lunch, the boys played on the playground while Poppy and I took a little walk around the lake. Then we found a nice little flock of geese and threw some bread crumbs out for them. 

 We walked down a little bit and found a mama duck and her babies and threw some out for them, too.

 Then a crapload of geese and ducks and even pigeons swarmed us.

Luckily it didn't turn into a Hitchcock film.

Everyone napped very well that afternoon. 

And ate a ton of strawberries.

catching up

What can I say? We've been busy.

I ran the Dirty Girl 5k in Atlanta with some friends. 

I'm still scrubbing the mud off!

One of my very best friends, Laila, visited from Japan. She ran kids all over the place with me, did all our hair (oh boy did we need it!), and we even managed to squeeze in our traditional Italian food date and saw "Think Like A Man" in theaters.

Much better!

James's preschool class had their field day and Laila came along to watch before driving across the states to visit family.

Riley wanted to play, too. I had to distract him with suckers and the read-to-me-app on my phone.

We were all trying to urge him to go around the cone like he was supposed to. He decided to just take a break and bounce, instead. Oh boy.

It was so hot! 

Goodbye's came too soon.

Poppy slept the whole time in her stroller, but we had to snag one photo anyway.

Laila and I met our freshman year of college. She was actually how I met Jason. It had been a year and a half, since Laila and her husband moved to Japan, since I'd seen her, and it was so good to catch up. Between all the family and friend visits she made in her short visit to the states, it was so sweet of her to go out of her way to come see us.

Now that Jason has started Armor School, we've gotten orders! This fall we'll be moving, but not out of the state! Fort Stewart is in our very near future. I know how fast the next few months will go, so I'm already feeling the moving mode. I'm excited and anxious. I've heard great things about the post from friends who've been there or have friends there. I'm trying to pick their brains about where to live, what to do, etc. We've been looking at housing and schools and are planning a trip there this summer to check out the area during one of Jason's long weekends. It's so convenient and lucky that we'll only be 4 1/2 hours or so away, that we can actually scope the area out first. But in the day-to-day, I realize how much I'm going to miss Columbus.I wish I could just pack up our friends and the house and the kids' school and take it all with us!

Boys love tanks!