Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday Lilly! What a big two year old girl you are!!

We started our day with presents at 630am and then chocolate chip pancakes! Tomorrow we'll have a kickin' pool party.

Check out the cool latches board we gave her :) She can already do two of the doors! What an awesome kid.

Lake

My baby at the lake last week. Doesn't she look all Jones in this picture!

Furniture, Smiles, and Monkeys

I thought the timing of Forrest's arrival before he was would work out just perfect. Well, I was a little too ambitious. I was sure Lilly would be walking by now, but not so much. And I was sure Lilly wouldn't need a crib by July-ish - maybe, maybe not - I don't know. But in the scheme of things, who cares, we will carry on. So we went ahead and set up Lilly's big girl bed anyway!! So what if she can't really get out of it gracefully, that's why God invented pillows and blankets! (And if you are wondering- yes Lilly and Forrest will be sharing a room. I think all kids need to bunk with their siblings at least while they are little!)

She thinks the bed is great! We are trying to teach her to get out of it by sliding backwards on her belly. She prefers to leap out of it face first though. So we just put plenty of padding for her noggin and it all works out. So far she has just napped in it, but seems to be doing well. The room is not baby proofed enough to let her sleep in it overnight yet - that's on the to do list. 

Finally I get a kiss after begging.  Somehow Forrest and Suey never have to ask and they get showered with them. 

Speaking of furniture. Eric and I made a table for the kids. We could never find one to buy that we liked. They were all those crappy plastic tables with cartoon characters on them. The color scheme came from the idea of being able to tell the kids where to sit or have them sit at their favorite color. Isn't Lilly so pretty! 

As for Forrest, he is growing ginormous it seems. He's already 13 pounds and counting. He's currently being squashed in his bassinet. I think I'll have to steal the pack and play from my mom's house to keep him in our room, because I really don't want to have to walk to the other room to go feed him one or two times a night.   He is a major smile machine. You just talk to him and he'll grin for you all day long. He is quite the ladies man too. Young or old, he loves them all!    Check out him holding his head up!

Also, the other day we went to Monkey Joe's for FREE. Family Connections rents the place once a month for kids with disabilities and we get the joint all to ourselves. Pretty awesome. We went for the first time a couple days ago. They have it right around Lilly's bedtime, but we'd figure we'd give it a try. She had lots of fun. Enjoyed bouncing around and sliding. She eventually found some kids tame enough to play with, one was her age, but he was a little shy. 

 

Eric loves his babies.

Great Big Sister

Lilly has surprised me ever since Forrest was born.  I was afraid she'd be jealous and not like her little brother.  But she has been in love with him ever since he came home.  I am constantly begging for kisses and it takes a lot of work to get one, but if Forrest is within reach, he gets about a million kisses (along with slobbery and boogery hair as a result).  Lately, she's taken an interest in helping take care of him.  She insists that he always has his pacifier whether he wants it or not and she's also very willing to wipe his butt! It's hilarious.  I'm so glad she is such a good sister, I know they will be the best of buds.  And I'm sure that Eric and I will get ganged up on by the two of them!! (Oh and Happy TWO Month Birthday Forrest!!!)

Suey

So the majority of the time Suey is the bane of my existence. She's so darn hyper and annoying half the time. But what has kept her here on the Jones farm is her love of children. She is SO good with kids- so she stays. I usually refer to her as Lilly's dog. Here is an example of what I'm talking about.

Terrible Twos

Man. They weren't kidding when they said terrible. I always heard they actually hit when they are 3 though... Fantastic, the one milestone Lilly decides to hit early!! Here is an example of the latest temper tantrum that is actually pretty funny (at least I thought, not so much Eric). She has had these bath crayons since christmas and has shown ZERO interest in them. Really in crayons and art in general. Well she was getting bored of her bath toys, so Eric thought he'd bring the crayons back out. And she loved them! She was scribbling all over the tub... until... she tasted them. Yep, she likes to eat crayons- a delicacy to her. Just yesterday we were making my mom a mother's day card. And yep she likes the taste of regular crayons too. All resulting in meltdowns because they are not listed on the nutritional pyramid.

This color must be particularly tasty, as the missing tip went down the hatch.

Little Things

The days have been flying by since Forrest was born.

I had surgery for my gallbladder a couple weeks ago and am finally feeling myself again. I'll be heading back to work in a couple weeks. Not crazy excited about that :( I still want to be a stay at home mom!! But that's life I suppose.

Eric is starting his internship next week at Invista which is awesome because it is only 15 minutes away! Also, he made great grades this past spring semester.

Forrest keeps growing like a weed! He weighed 12 lbs 3 days ago- yikes. And Lilly is officially entering her terrible two's. Everything is soooo dramatic. I feel really bad for her physical therapist- she gets the brunt of it!! Despite that she is really excelling- she had her PT evaluation yesterday and met all but one goal in the last 3 months (standing alone for 5 seconds).

Life is going pretty well.

Play Mats

This is why play mats are intended for babies, not toddlers.... I refer to her as king kong of the play mat.

Pictures in Passing

Here are a few pictures from the past couple of weeks. Forrest and Lilly are doing great. Forrest went to the doctor last week and was already 9 lbs 7 oz! What a porker. Lilly's PT skills are starting to fly out the roof! She is getting close to walking here soon!!! She can just about run behind a walker and is cruising furniture like a mad man.






















Last but not least- our family Easter picture

Why Lilly Loves Daddy

This is why Lilly is so partial to her daddy these days. They get to go out and do all sorts of fun stuff!

Lilly and Forrest

So we've been home since Sunday evening. Forrest has been doing great. He had jaundice issues, but they let us go home with a bili-blanket to continue the phototherapy at home. Our last visit to the doctor showed his jaundice is getting better so they let us stop the phototherapy this afternoon!!

Now that we've been home a few days, Lilly has started to pay more attention to little Forrest. She has been a great big sister. She hasn't acted jealous at all! She likes to pat his head and will grab his hands (we have to make sure she's gentle though!). She signs baby all the time too. I think they are gonna grow to be great buddies!

Glow Worm

Chillin' in my glow worm bed. They want to get rid of my nice tan! Bah! Don't I look like my cool big sis :)

He's Here!

Forrest has finally arrived! He came one week early just like his big sis Lilly. We got to the hospital at 10pm last night after my water had broken shortly after 8pm. By 1:40am I had a Forrest in my lap! Quite a timely little man. 

He's a big boy weighing in at 7 pounds and 11 ounces and 20.5 inches long. He's eating and sleeping great so far and his pediatrician checkup went super.

The coolest thing about both of our kids now is that Lilly was born on 7-27 and Forrest on 3-23! We think it's pretty cool at least :) 

More pictures to come soon!

Forrest

I know everyone is wondering what the status on Forrest is. He's doing quite well. Until now he has been pretty darn comfortable living on the inside. But as off yesterday, he FINALLY dropped! (that means I can breath again, and his kicking doesn't hit me right under the ribs or gallbladder!) And finally starting to dilate (3cm now). Woo hoo. The doctor thinks it will be within the next week.
Both Eric and I are very excited to see and meet this new little pip squeek. And today in the doctors office, Lilly actually showed an interest in all the little 6 week old babies that came along with their moms. She was signing baby constantly and pointing to them. She kept trying to crawl to one of the car seats that had one in it. So hopefully that is a good sign for Lilly being ready for her new baby brother!!

And for Lilly- this was her afternoon:

Big kid?

What happened to my baby!? She is looking so grown up these days!!!

2011 Wrap Up... Finally

So this post is long over due, as our family and ADHD friends from Connecticut have clearly pointed out (see comments from last post). Better late than never, right...

We'll start with Christmas.

Getting ready for the big day.








This year's Christmas was a blast, as this was the first year that Lilly knew what was up. It only took a few gifts to figure out that underneath the paper lies great treasures. She wasn't the rip open kinda kid, rather she turned out to be the tear and peak type. Very cute. She got a ton of gifts not only from Santa but from grandparents too! Talk about spoiled. Two of her coolest steals were her radioflyer wagon and her cozy coupe. She can just ride in these forever, its awesome. She loves to go on a wagon ride through the woods all the time. For now since she can't "drive" her cozy coupe yet she is pretty content to be pushed around in the garage and yard. And she will let you know when and IF she is ready to get out of her car!
She got a lot of light up and noisy toys too. Kind of a headache to hear them over and over and over, but she loves them.

Christmas day was rainy and drizzly, but that didn't stop Lilly from trying out the radioflyer wagon. I literally pulled her around for about half an hour through the house. And then Daddy let her have lunch in it!







She eventually got to go outside in it.





As for the rest of Christmas it was pretty quiet and nice. We visited grandparents and brothers and sisters. Had a good time overall, just like Christmas should be. We can't wait for this next Christmas- Lilly should be running around by then and the new baby will be around 9 months!











And that brings us to the next bit of news. As everyone knows we are expecting a baby boy at the end of March! We finally decided on a name! It took a lot of deliberating but when we found it we knew that was it! So, ahem, his name is:

Forrest Scott Jones

We are super excited! Everything has been going just fine with him. He's taking a toll on me, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. I just can't wait for him to be born, as I can't say that I love pregnancy by any means... Oh but it's worth it, right Lilly!




And back to Lilly, I'm sure everyone is wondering what Lilly is up to these days. She is still hopping around on her bottom like always, but will crawl probably half the time now (or do a hybrid crawl/hop). Really depends on her mood. She is finally pulling up to a stand on couches and stuff. We're working on trying to get her to "cruise" the furniture. She just looks at us like, um, 'why don't I just sit down, hop, and stand back up- much simpler'. She's so much smarter than us...






As for speech she's really opened up. She signs for milk, all done, more, eat, dog (all the time), music, and she loves to point at everything (especially people at Walmart!). She's also saying a few things too- bye bye, cat, dog, good job, dada, she said all done twice, and book (which she says in her French accent- boooooook). So, does anybody notice what's missing in her list of vocabulary????? Hello she still won't say MAMA!!!!! I've been put in her generic category of 'dat'. Dat is her word she uses for everything else. Oh well, I've resigned to it at this point! Off of that sore subject (ok not really!).
She is doing great with her OT! She had her quarterly evaluation and tested at or above her age on everything! Super proud of her :) She can do a shape sorter like no other and can stick a bean in a soda bottle like child's play! OT is definitely where she shines.

OT zipper skills



Lilly is doing awesome. We really couldn't ask for more. She's such a fun (and funny) little kid to be around and has such a personality! We love her to death.

Other less exciting ongoings 2011

Eric finished his fall semester at USC with really good grades. He's pushing through it and can now see the light! We expect he'll graduate spring of 2013! This summmer he'll probably take a break from school and look for an internship or something, which will help him land a job later on.

Eric also has a new "baby". We built a garage a few months ago. Now he has a place to do all his projects and man stuff. He's been a little kid ever since. And we now have our laundry room back! It's no longer filled with tools and other non laundry room things. And hopefully the ugly shack of a shed will come down and a picnic table and play set will replace it at some point!








As for me, besides Forrest, I found my other new "baby" back in September. I had sold Belmont (my supposed to be show horse) last July. Which he is doing great in his new home with his new job. So I was in search of finding a new show horse since then. I found her just a couple hours from us. She is an almost 3 yr old (her birthday is in April) Hanoverian cross filly, which I named Didi. Sooooo pretty and even more important sooooo sweet. She was a little wild child when we first got her. She had literally been pulled out of the same field she was born in and had no idea the rest of the world existed! She has settled in nicely and is such a good girl. She's finished most of her ground work and will be ready to start her undersaddle training in a few months! Yeah, I know this is boring for most of you, but I'm excited about her :) even Eric likes her, so that is a plus.








One other thing to note for the last year was that I made a huge job change last spring. I can definitely say now that it was the best decision ever. I have been able to work part time, spend time with my family, and just be happier! Good change for everyone!

I think that about wraps up everything worth noting that wasn't previously blogged about. 2011 ended up not being too shabby. No complaints here. My new year's resolution will definitely be to update this blog more often!

I know 2012 will be even better and definitely more hectic! Especially come March!

I'll leave you with this:
I'm a model, you know what I mean....