six months and two and a half

We have been parents for two and half years now.  We have been parents of two for six months.  These two keep us on our toes, give us lots of laughs and love each other more than any other siblings I have ever seen!  These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago and we are just now getting them up.  Hope you enjoy our babies that are getting big way too quickly! 

we are coming along...

We have been coming along here in Cincy, kinda.  Originally we were suppose to move into our new house about a month ago and as can be seen by the lack of posts, that has not happened quite yet.  Even though the house is coming along pretty slowly, we have been pretty busy with life without moving into a new house!  Charlotte and Oliver are the best of friends.  She thinks he is the sweetest, "cuuuute witta brodda" and he thinks the world revolves around her.  Just tonight Jay and I both enjoyed watching them both giggle at each other for the longest time!  I have been settling into the swing of school and I think I am starting to get comfortable and with the swing of things with my new teaching position.  Jay is about to get really, really busy, so he has been holding the whole family together while I figure things out at school. This weekend we had a good time with a bit of relaxing, spending time with family and doing some planning for the future.

We went to the Cincinnati Zoo with Grandpa, Gibby and Ben to see some "aminals" and had a nice time!

Our little house has some major plans this week to get painted on the inside and get flooring, so we decided to put our first marks on the house this evening.  The four of us had a good time writing some great verses that we hope to remember throughout the years as we grow as a family.

We will keep everyone posted on the progress of everything growing and changing including kids and house.  I have been working diligently on gathering some fun antiques for the new house, artwork that I am pretty excited about and refurbishing an old dining room table.  Fingers crossed that everything comes together soon! -Melissa

six months

Oliver James came to us six months ago and although he came into our world with gusto, we soon discovered his sweet well mannered personality.  Over the past six months Ollie has traveled for days at a time by car and plane, lived in two different houses, still has not had a room of his own and not yet slept in a "real" bed.  Some children would let you know that their little lives has been crazy, but he has always been sweet, gentle and one of the happiest babies I have ever seen. Ollie has recently mastered the skill of sitting up straight as a board on his own and now can interact with his big sis like never before.  We know that sooner than we will be comfortable with, he will be following right behind her and keeping up with her just fine!  His current favorite foods are bananas and pears and eats a huge amount every day.  We are concerned about our future grocery bill!  Although watching Charlotte is his favorite activity, he did have a great time at the local philharmonic orchestra we went to a week or two ago.  We ended up leaving the concert early because he was being so vocal about his love of the music!

His six month pictures are the perfect example of his lovely little personality.  These pictures were taken with him having a decent fever.  We could not decide to take them or not because he had slept for the most part of the day, including a five hour nap in the afternoon and just generally did not feel like doing much except being cuddled.  We are not sure if the fever is due to teething (note the fingers constantly in his mouth) or just a little bug that is going around.  Either way, this is him with a fever, pretty sweet just the same!

We hope you enjoyed the pictures of our little man!  He is the perfect addition to our family and his personality is loved by everyone he meets!

a busy week with pools, ponies, potties and more!

We have really lived this week up.  Saturday through Friday was actually a bit ridiculous with everyone in our family somewhere different almost every day.  We did get to have a bunch of fun followed up with some training for the kids. Early in the week we went to my parent's, neighbors' house to play in their pool and both kids had a great time.  It was a cool morning and the pool was really warm.  Oliver got in his pool float and spent the whole morning there.  Charlotte spent most of the time practicing her kicking and floating on Jay's back like she was a dolphin.

We also got to meet 3/4 of the Smith Family at the Indianapolis Zoo.  It is a great little zoo and the shrieking coming out of all the kids as they were once again reunited was priceless.  Thanks to Gibby for taking Ollie for the day, he would not of enjoyed the zoo as much as the rest of us!

Wednesday was our nine year anniversary so we shipped Charlotte to Gibby's and left Ollie with Tiki.  We took a super simple trip to Lexington Kentucky to the horse park.  I really wanted Jay to get some shots of some barns for me to hang in our soon to be dining room.  We had a really nice time, got some good shots and stayed in a very interesting bed and breakfast!

To round off our crazy week we took our first visit to the local county fair.  It seems fairs, festivals and amusement parks are what C majors in lately.  She knew all the rides and was super comfortable on them.  She also knew to expect some animals to play with and of course a treat later on that night.  We had a great time and got to spend some time with Rachel, Ben, Grandpa, Gibby and Tim and Dee.  Jay and Oliver were super interested in the tractor pull that was happening that night, but that event didn't start until 7:30.  Way past the kids bedtime, especially after the busy week we had completed.  Maybe next year.

To slow things down a bit and yet go against what all parenting books tell you we decided to simultaneously sleep train Ollie this weekend and potty train Charlotte.  If we wait until we are not in a middle of a major life event and times have settled down a bit Oliver will be seven and Jay will still be rocking him to sleep and I will be changing Charlotte's diapers before she goes to elementary school.  We started yesterday morning and so far Oliver has caught on fairly quickly and slept his longest ever last night and Charlotte has had both success in the number one and two categories on the potty.

Here is a shot of Oliver after his first, "I refuse to submit" nap, he actually looks great compared to Charlotte's way back when and of course a shot of C in her "big girl panties", although they are actually big boy hand me downs from Ben!

We have blocked off our schedules until Wednesday to try to really help the kids master their new skills.  Here is hoping we continue to improve and parents do not go stir crazy!