Updated! Grandpa and Grandma are here!

Updates added in blue!


Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Mike, and Aunt Megan all drove in for a short visit this weekend! Of course the main attraction was the new baby:

Uncle Mike meets Amelia
Mike and Amelia
Aunt Megan meeting Amelia
Megan and Mike admire Amelia
They also admire William's car playing stamina
This kid can play all day...
He could also read books all the day long
Grandma and Grandpa read with their grandkids. Please note: I swear I've turned on the red eye function on our camera on. Yet, I still produce demon people when I take their pictures. This may require consulting with the instruction manual *gasp*
On Saturday, we went took William to NASCAR world place at the St Louis Mills Mall. The boys enjoyed racing go karts and William drove a car like this. In other car related activity, the Supervan decided it hated me today*. The feeling is pretty mutual.
The little cars were just a warm up to the superfast race cars! Uncle Mike was a good sport and rode with William...

which was hysterical! William has not ever been on anything like this. Everytime the car went around the corner at top speed, a little scream (of delight? fear? I'm not sure) would escape out of him. Very cute. And yes, that scream you hear in the video is coming from William.
We also rode motorcycles...

and played some air hockey.

It was a little chilly outside, so William wore Aunt Megan's coat for awhile...
Grandma and Megan play puzzles with William
Mike and his new favorite girl: Amelia
Uncle Mike and Amelia

and finally Amelia is really starting to enjoy her toys and play. Here are Uncle Mike and Grandpa enjoying watching her!
Of course, if Amelia is getting attention, William needs to be in on the action. Here he is turning off her toy and trying to take it away from her before deciding to try and sit on her head. Lovely.



*When we went to the NASCAR place on Saturday, Amelia needed to eat. So, I stayed in the van to feed her before joining the family inside. John locked the doors when he took William out of the car and took his keys with him. I didn't realize my keys were at home along with my cell phone. Fortunately, John decided to check this and leave his cell with me when he found I didn't have mine. So, I fed Amelia and changed her diaper. I was sitting in the backseat with her and started getting ready to get out of the car. This isn't an easy task as the two carseats are in the middle row of the van and block the exit. So I reached for the lock button on the drivers side. When I pressed the automatic switch, nothing happened. Same thing on the passenger side. I tried to manually unlock the door when the van unleashed its fury. Immediately after I pushed the button to the unlocked position, the button flipped back to lock. And the car alarm started going off loudly. I didn't have keys, so I didn't know how to turn the alarm off. I tried to manually unlock the door on the passenger side as well as the rear doors with the same LOUD results. It was LOUD and I was very stuck in my own car. This made me VERY unhappy - had it been a hotter day or a different situation, this could have been very dangerous. As it was, I had to wait for someone else to leave the NASCAR play place and come out to the car with a remote to let me out of my own car. This is the part that gets me. IT IS MY CAR!! AND IT WOULDN'T LET ME OUT! Thank goodness John left the cell phone otherwise I could have been waiting a very, very, very long time before someone came out to rescue me. And a word to the van: I'm mad at you. Very mad.

Summer is A Comin' +Bonus Video

It is getting close to summer time! Are you ready? Here are the kids in some of their new summer clothes!

6 weeks old!

Mia Moo, Lia Loo, Chicken Little, BabyDoll, Peanut, Crazy Lady, Sweetie Pie, Baby Girl, Tiny Toes, Little Bitty, Princess, Pretty Girl, Little Lady, Wiggles, Molly Moo, Sweet Pea, Silly Millie, and the list goes on and on. Amelia has so many nicknames! And she is so sweet at six weeks old! We barely had time for pictures as I brought her with me to my 6 week follow up doctor appointment (the weight will not be published here. Not now, not ever).

But, I wanted to take a little time to talk about how much we are enjoying this baby girl of ours. Amelia is still consistently sleeping through the night in huge stretches. A little part of me worries about this, but most of me just really likes to sleep. Most night she is sleeping (the surest way to ensure she will stop is to publish it) from 10:30 to about 7:30am without waking as has been since she was four weeks old. She might have started it sooner if I hadn't been waking her in the middle of the night to eat. We'll never know, I guess. I think we're getting close to working towards a schedule for eating/sleeping with her. I have a feeling she is already doing it or ready to try - I'm just so disorganized I'm holding her back. On the list of things to do this week and next is to pay attention to her sleep/wake times and see where she is at.

Amelia is a smile machine. She smiles a LOT and does quite a bit of cooing as well. I was trying to pay bills earlier in the week with her on my lap. She kept making squeaking noises so I would look down at her. When she got my attention, she would smile HUGE with her whole body. The lips were grinning, her arms were waving, and her legs akickin' away. Very cute. Then she would coo some more at me. I swear it took me over 2 hours to pay 3 small bills. Oh well.

She is just starting to discover her hands and is very interested in them. They are also very interested in her. Her hands wave around her face until she catches sight of them and then she gets very still. She spends a few seconds studying the new object in front of her until...it hits her in the face. And then she cries like a baby.

And when she cries - she does it with everything she has. You cannot hear yourself think when this little lady cries and we all run around like crazy trying to fix her up when she does cry. Which isn't often and rarely without reason.

She is also very wiggly. Amelia has already rolled from her front to both sides as well as all the way to her front and from her front to her back. However, this was totally by accident and doesn't count because she had no idea what she was doing. She regularly unswaddles herself and the day for the unswaddling is approaching rapidly. She gets her arms going and works both arms out of the swaddle on a regular basis in order to clunk herself in the face more often. Amelia enjoys her time on her tummy, although I don't think she gets as much tummy time as her brother did. It is just too dangerous to leave her laying around on the ground with Mr Rambunctious running around at top speeds.

Amelia is a very big mama's girl currently. She definately prefers me to just about anyone else with the exception of her brother. She might prefer him to me, but I don't think she realizes that without us, he would drop her right on her pretty little head. I'm sure that leaves me in first place.

I'm sure there were other remarkable things I wanted to write about, but I can't remember them, so on to the pictures.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was pretty low key this year. Which is to be expected when you have a barely 6 week old baby. Our plans were a lot of "Well...depending on how the day is going..." not to mention the weather and the thousands of other things that can make a day crazy. Then, to top everything off, I came down with the biggest, baddest case of strep throat I have ever had in my life. Late Thursday my throat felt a little scratchy and Friday I felt pretty yucky all day long. Luckily my kids are entertained by the TV (big kid) and the ceiling fan (little kid) as John was having a hard time getting away from work. Late Friday night, it became clear this was more than just a spring cold and I was going to have to go in to Urgent Care when they opened Saturday morning. Tests confirmed I would be spending time on Mother's Day with strep throat* - not my favorite gift to get for sure!

By Sunday morning, I was no longer contagious and I was feeling much better. Not great, but better. The kids gave me (and John) the gift of sleeping until 8am! It felt wonderful to get such a big chunk of sleep, especially when I needed it so much. We particiapted in one of my favorite activities for a few minutes (all of us in bed together reading books and watching cartoons) before getting ready for church.

William waiting for breakfast by copying Amelia
Look at us! We're all dressed and ready to go! Mama and her two kids
William is so proud to be a big helper! A big thank you to Grandma for William's outfit and to Aunt Kaye for Amelia's outfit

What precious gifts we have! We have a lot to be thankful for!

Kisses for baby sister

After church, John cooked up some pancake lunch for us and then spent the rest of the day trying to get us caught up on laundry and other chores. It was a big relief not to have to start Monday morning with Mt Laundry waiting for me along with some of the other chores he cleared up.

The only real tradition we have with Mother's Day is taking a picture of the kids in front of Grandma Heidt's tree in our front yard. This is the tree we received at John's mom's funeral and we planted it in our front yard in her memory. It is a way for us to remember how special she was on this day and start to talk about her as a person with our kids. It is also fun to see how much the kids (and tree have grown every year. For previous years look here or here)

Amelia sitting patiently by the tree

Little tree, little girl
Smiling big kid, little kid, tree.

It is a lot of work to get him to stay under the tree AND smile...you don't want to know what I had to do!
Silly Billy
A different angle. Same kids, same trees
This one actually is pretty good! Miracle!
Amelia did NOT like the wind blowing on her...she kept putting her arms up
Then to top things off, we went to get some fajitas at Chilli's on Monday night (everybody together: Mmmmmmmmmmmm fajitas!). This picture is taken as this is the first time we've been highchair-less and booster chair-less. William did a pretty good job, although we didn't linger over our meal.

*I've talked with both our doctor office and the pediatrician's office about the kids. Strep throat is very rare in children under two years. Both kids are healthy and we are supposed to wash our hands a lot as well as monitor their behavior. If they run temps, act fussy/tired/sick, or change eating/sleeping patterns we are to bring them in. Otherwise, we are just laying low until I feel better. No reason to try and get strep swabs from either of them unless we absolutely have to.

Amelia's First Bow + Bonus Video

This week I was going through some things in Amelia's room (she doesn't actually sleep there yet) and I found some hair bows. Velcro hair bows that will potentially stay in very baby fine hair. So, on May 7th, Amelia wore her very first hair bow. Until her brother pulled it out.

This is a frequent sight lately. I get Amelia all set up with toys/books to enjoy for some tummy time and I come back to two things 1) Amelia is sleeping 2) William has constructed a huge toy viewing area around Amelia - although Amelia is not allowed to actually touch any of the toys.
In this case, I had turned around to get the camera to grab a picture of the bow in her hair while William worked his magic!
Then, when he sees me taking pictures, he needs to copy as exactly as possible the position Amelia is in so I will want to take his picture too. Which, of course, I do want to take his picture. Who wouldn't?

A close up of the bow - and I think these are from Jessica - so cute!

William has obviously been watching us! I went to the laundry room to start the dryer and came back to see this! and sorry it is crooked!

We have the cutest boy on the planet. Remind me about this tomorrow when he is throwing a tantrum about not being able to put on his own diaper, drive the car or cook on the stove.

And as a bonus for you all, here is an old video of Amelia (Amelia is roughly 2 weeks old) making faces and eating her hands. In the background you can hear the soothing sounds of 1231089725 onesies with snaps in the dryer and William playing. At one point, William bumps his arm while playing and then goes ahead and kisses the owie himself. Because he really is that cute.

And here we have William playing golf with Grandma and Grandpa when they were here visiting last!

A Playdate!

Amelia's new friend, Lily came over the play while William was sleeping this last week. The mamas had a great time visiting while the girls slept...and then we tried to take a picture. Obviously, Lily would rather be doing something else and Amelia is just confused. Isn't she the only baby who cries at our house? What is going on? Hopefully next time we get together, the mamas will remember to take pictures before the babies are crabby!

Amelia on the left, Lily on the right

...and Mama's toes on the far right!

Splish Splash at 5 Weeks Old

Amelia turned 5 weeks old on Monday, May 4th! Her umbilical stump FINALLY fell off the day before so we could FINALLY put her in the bathtub! Hurray! The big question on our minds was: would Amelia like the bath or hate it? We waited until William was in bed so we could really focus on enjoying her first bath without everyone's favorite helper around. Mama was in charge of the washing and Daddy was in charge of the pictures and video (video will come later, maybe).
Here are Amelia's 5 week old pictures and pictures of her first bath (they are the same because I am lame).

Getting ready. Amelia and her 876651679687 neck rolls have no idea what is coming.

Time to get naked! The bath is ready and waiting!
Smiles for the Mama!
Peekaboo!
And the moment we were waiting for! So far so good - no crying at least!
An extra washcloth for modesty...and take a look at the belly! No weight worries at this house anymore! I'm so proud of our good eater!
Looking at Mama

Washing the hair

Pinching (gently, of course) those chubby cheeks! How can you resist? And I swear we have the red eye function on our camera turned on. Hmm...I guess I should check it again.