Hippity Hoppity....

...Easter's on it's way!! On this chilly dreary day we dyed eggs! Sorry, colored eggs... every time we'd say dye eggs, he'd just look at us and ask "die"? We'll be working on our homophones next!
The kit that we got was for Marbled eggs, so you wore plastic gloves, added a few drops of dye and rolled it around in your hand...easy peasy! Cole immediately ripped a large hole in his glove, not that we were going to let him anywhere near the dye anyway! and Caden dyed a few, after realizing how un-scary it was by watching me! Cole pulled his Mr. Rachel Ray, trying to see how many eggs he could pick up and hold. Only one fell. The second sacrifice occurred when Cole decided to bang 2 eggs together. Happy Easter everyone!

7 Weeks of fun!

Miss Cora is 7 Weeks old today! This week went by with not many pictures, but not to say it was boring! Cora is smiling much more now, and you can easily get a smile when talking to her. She is still growing as you can see by her growing belly in this picture! And her chicken legs are starting to fill out to match the rest of her!

Otherwise in the family, Rob and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary on Sunday.. I had great ambitions of scanning in pictures of us in college and throughout the years, but... sorry! never got to that.. perhaps next year! Each year our anniversary tradition is to try a new restaurant, and usually a restaurant we would not normally eat at during the other 364 days of the year. This year we went to the Hanover Street Chophouse in Manchester, which is run by the same owners as C.R. Sparks, where we went for our 3rd anniversary! I think CR Sparks is better, but this was definitely delicious. We made the mistake of not making reservations, assuming if we went right at 5 o'clock (with the blue-hairs as Rob says!) we'd be fine because it was early... well you know what they say when you assume!! There were no tables, so we ate at the bar.. not quite the same ambiance, but we were fine with it. And I got to have a pomegranate martini. Mmm!

Last weekend we had our first family split up... Rob and the boys went to a birthday party in Rhode Island, while Cora and I went to a baby shower! Cora slept just about the entire time.. opening her eyes in the very end when she decided it was finally time to eat!

Other happenings this week.. Cole is picking up new words every day. This week my favorites are monkey, pillow and play. He also has started grabbing at your leg and saying "come" when he wants you to come see something out the window, go somewhere with him, etc.

The boys spend a lot of time at the bay window watching the squirrels dig up our yard in search of acorns that they buried last fall (Grr!). We put up a bird feeder in a tree outside the bay window on Saturday afternoon.. Sunday morning we stood at the window watching the bastard squirrel knock it down (somehow completely fraying the rope hanging it), spilling the birdseed everywhere and breaking the bird feeder, Mr. Squirrel is lucky it can be fixed!

This week I was finally able to go for a walk with all three kids! We walked to our favorite spot where the kids throw rocks into the water. We went there A LOT when I was on maternity leave with Cole.

Also this week we met young Liam who is a baby of a friend of mine from work. She also had another son right before Cole was born, so we are on the same baby track! We also had visitors at our house... Aunt Barrie stopped in for a visit, and the Temm ladies travelled from Maine to meet Cora (and make us a DELICIOUS dinner!! Thank you!!)

Cole with frozen blueberries all over his face.. hiding under the table so we can't wash it off!

6 Weeks!

Cora is 6 weeks old! This week she has become noticeably more active in her legs! She pushes against us now when she is mad. Thankfully her spitting up has lessened, for awhile there it was pretty grody! Going through a burp cloth a feeding! She still has her moments, but I don't have a nasty perma-white shoulder anymore! because even if there is a burp cloth there for her to spit up on... it inevitably ends up anywhere but the burp cloth! And you can see in the picture to the right (if you look really hard!) there is a dimple evident! At least on her right side.. my dimple gene did not die!
Cora still snoozes most of the day away, and her alert time remains from about 7 to 11 pm... we are wondering if she'll ever be on the boys 7:30 bedtime routine! She remains a good night-time sleeper, getting up around 1:30 and 4:30 AM to eat. Rob is the greatest Daddy and husband ever to let me feed her between 9:30 and 10 then he stays up with Cora while I go to bed! Glorious sleep! It is probably our imaginations, but it seems as though she has grown a couple inches!

Cole is still a terror, and can't be trusted with Cora alone, I'm not sure he'll ever learn to be nice, hopefully she'll start fending for herself soon!! I think she's already started, below she is saying "No Cole, don't jump on/hit/pinch me. I'm sleeping!"

Today was a rainy day, so we decided to do a craft I remember doing when I was little... Easter Bunnies! You can probably tell I did most of Cole's. We had a great time today not leaving the house and not having to watch the clock (except for Cora's eating!) No preschool schedule to keep and no rushing out the door, a good day to be a pretend stay-at-home-Mom!!

All in all we've been having a lot of fun with the new addition to our family! Caden still adores her.. and in the end, I am sure Cora and Cole will be best buddies!

Cole's 1st time holding Cora.. when told to say "cheese" he lifted up both hands into the air! Good thing Rob was (very) close by monitoring him to catch her!

Daddy and his boys!

5 Weeks Together!

The past 5 weeks have certainly flown, this maternity leave is by far the fastest moving, mostly I think because the boys keep me busy, especially having to bring Caden to preschool, etc. Cora is growing big and strong, this week I officially started dressing her in 3/6 month clothes to give her a little more variety! She still can wear her 0/3 clothes, although she only really has 3 outfits, the rest are sleep and plays (pj type), but most of her 3/6 month are short sleeve, so once the warmer weather hits she'll be lookin' mighty fancy!

I love feet pictures!! I still need to get some hand pictures!

As long as Caden is getting his way, the boys get along great! I love when they play together!! and don't fight! It makes life SO much easier! It makes me smile every time I hear Caden say "Come on Cole-bear, over here buddy!" Caden has also taken to picking Cole up.. Cole is tolerant of it, but not super happy about it at the same time. Yesterday we had our parent teacher conference at Caden's school. I am sure they say the same thing to everyone, but they did say he is a very good boy, and as we know... LOVES to learn. He is doing very well in his writing and drawing.. and he even participates in music at school.. at home whenever kid music is on and I start singing along, he tells me that I have to stop because I am not in the song, and he virtually never sings... except apparently at school! He's also branched out of his 2 friends only regime, and talks about all his friends now, and the teachers say they are at last breaking out of parallel play and starting to play together.

In a couple of weeks we will be signing up Caden for T-Ball at the YMCA, his first sports class that won't have started as a parent-tot class.. should be interesting! But he'll have his friend Cole with him, so hopefully it'll go smoothly! On the same day we may have Cole have swim lessons, so he can have an activity as well, instead of having to watch Caden all the time.

Here the boys are looking at a worm!

Caden waiting for Cole to give him a ride on the Jeep.. but the Jeep needs some charging!

Cole admiring nature

Cole's pouty face because I wouldn't open the door to the screen porch for him!