hilton head 2009

since saturday, we've been in hilton head, sc with tom's mom and her girls. this makes the second year that we've had a big family vacation, and it's a tradition that tom and i hope to continue for many more years. the great weather has allowed us to enjoy the ocean and pool at our leisure--a great blessing considering how many feeding/naptimes we have to juggle these days! our attempt at a sand castle. pretty impressive considering caleb was knocking down towers as fast as tom could build them up. caleb playing in the sand. he looooooooooved the beach again this year, including the sand...a major improvement over last year when he screamed whenever the dry sand stuck to his feet, or his crocs. caleb has decided to call the ocean, "yucky water" due to the fact that it tastes yucky whenever he gets it in his mouth. despite the yuck factor, he still loved getting in the ocean. asher enjoying himself at the beach. i would have taken more than one picture, but it was the same story, different verse each day we went. guess the sound of the ocean was relaxing. check out the huge crab we found when we were setting up our canopy the first day! he was a quick little sucker, but we managed to trap him in a bucket for a few pics. and yes, we let him go. daddy and caleb mommy and caleb look, asher was awake for part of vacation! hands down, the best part of vacation for caleb was the silver truck we rented. he loved being able to drive it, hold the keys in his pocket, and just ride around the sea pines plantation in it. caleb really enjoyed the playground at harbour town. it was a nice change of pace from the ocean and the pool in the morning. caleb in the pool. daddy managed to rig him up a personal floatation device consisting of his life jacket, inner tube, and a snorkel. the snorkel was the glue that held the whole thing together. remove it, and caleb would slip down through the inner tube...crazy, but it worked.

look what i can do!!!

it's hard to tell from this picture, but asher loves to chew on his fist. frequently, he will find his thumb and is quite happy to trade it for the paci. asher is such a happy little guy. we love to make him smile.

asher at 2 months

asher is growing like a weed! at birth, his weight was 7 lbs. 14 oz. 2 weeks later, he not only had regained his birth weight, he surpassed it at 8 lbs. 4 oz. at that time he was in the 50th percentile for both weight and height. well, he's still growing and at 2 months old he weighs 13 lbs. 10 oz. and is 23 1/2 inches long!!! he's in the 90th percentile for weight and 80th for his height. definitely a change from caleb who has always hung out around the 5th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for height. asher is eating every 2 1/2-3 1/2 hours during the day. he'll also take a really good morning nap, the afternoon one we're still working on, although he's not crabby if he's awake. at night, he sleeps from approximately 8:30-12:00 a.m., eats, and then sleeps again until 4:00/4:30 a.m. eats and will have very light/active sleep until we all are up around 6:30 a.m. i have been thrilled with that schedule! asher is such a happy little boy. he has started cooing and making all sorts of other baby noises. this morning, he was smiling at me and caleb and it absolutely melted my heart. he also lets us know when he's excited by kicking his legs and waving his arms. he loves to lay on his back and have you pull him up to the sitting position. he'll just look around (he has really good head control) with an excited expression on his face. he's doing pretty well with the dreaded tummy time, too. he fusses a little bit, but caleb and i encourage him to lift his head. it's too cute to hear caleb say, "come on asher," and "yea asher." i can't say it enough, tom and i are doubly blessed to have such happy and healthy boys!

caleb at 2 1/2 years old

the first half of this year has been a big one for caleb. he's already mastered sleeping in a "big boy" (toddler) bed, only using his pacifier at nap/bedtime & in the car (this was a big one for us), speaking in sentences, running/jumping/kicking/climbing stairs faster and higher than i ever thought possible, and he became a big brother. quite a lot of work in only 6 months! there's only 1 MAJOR task left to complete...potty training. we've began the process, but that topic is worthy of it's own post. caleb has picked up a few really cute expressions such as, "watch out, buddy!" (he likes to say this when he drives his choo-choo train past the station), "asher love me?," "hey, dude!" (an homage to his uncle patrick), "you kidding me?!" (you can hear this when in the car and the cars in front of us don't go fast enough), and the infamous, "bad gas [insert name here]!!!" who has bad gas differs from time-to-time. often times it is me (his father puts him up to it), occasionally it's daddy, and one time it was even our sweet friend kelley...good thing she has two boys of her own and understands that for a little boy to say you have bad gas is really a compliment! also, caleb has finally started singing his abc's. up until a few months ago, every time i started to sing it, he would say, "no." i thought he'd go to kindergarten saying "no" to his abc's. apparently he just didn't want to sing them until he knew them all. he also likes to sing, "twinkle, twinkle little star," "baa, baa black sheep," "ring around the rosies," "the wheels on the bus," "holy, holy, holy," and one of his catechism songs, "who made God?" he has also gotten pretty good at counting 1-10; only he prefers for the order to go "1, 3, 2" as opposed to "1, 2, 3." crazy kid. his imagination has also started to grow by leaps and bounds. he is very good at playing by himself while i'm feeding asher. he loves to take the trains and part of the tracks off of the table, much to his father's dismay, and place them on the couch in his own order. he also uses them as different "houses" for his trains and cars. he also likes to make up destinations for his cars to drive to. most often it is gran/nanny's house, or ms. sara's...he has a thing for those stegall women :) but most importantly, last week he was crawling on the ground saying, "i lion roooooar." i love how his little brain works! only at 2 years old can you go from this to this and still pull both looks off!

sleeping beauties

when i saw asher sleeping a few days ago, i had a feeling of deja vu. i finally found both pics on the computer. caleb and asher are about the same age in the respective pics. if you forget hair color and weight, they really do resemble each other.

beating the heat

a few students came over this morning to swim in our community pool. it felt great! the t.v. show/movie initial game...tom was horrible at it. snack time for forrest the only part of me that you will see at the pool! kacey, a.k.a. k k a little football action snack time asher enjoying himself poolside

a picture is worth a thousand words...

john piper and starbuck's...enough said.