Disney 2012

While we were in Florida last month, we decided to do a day trip to Disney. Florida isn't John's favorite spot to vacation, and I figured we better go ahead and get in a Disney trip,as this might be it for awhile. And, Harvey is in OVER-drive with princess love for "Cindalella" and her posse. Can you tell his bff since birth (Mary Helen) is a girl?

We're working on making sure he has plenty of boy influences (side note: he deperately wants to be Cinderella for Halloween this year. Desperately), and he was definitely excited to see Lightening McQueen, Woody, Jesse and that whole crew. But, he had PLANS for Cinderella. He wanted to "Go to hers castle and talk wif her, and kiss hers on da cheek". Wow. Specific.

He was pretty devastated when we went into the castle, and walked right on through to more amusement rides. It took a trip on "It's a Small World" and a parade to show him Disney had more to offer than Cindy. And eventually, we did see her. As she cruised by on a float in the second parade of the day. But, that was good enough for Harv. He had already seen another parade, danced with Woody, ridden a few rides, waved to some other characters (the lines to get an "autograph" and a photo are ridiculous), and purchased a few toys. So, he was all set.

Here are some photos from our Disney day.

Family Vacation 2012

We decided to do a family vacation this year......since we've been selfish and have only taken "John and Sarah" vacations so far. :) Harv has been so young up until this year, and we felt he wouldn't even notice if we didn't do an official family vacation. And, he hasn't noticed. The odds of us being able to leave him again while we go on vacation without him noticing: slim to none.



For our first "official" family vacation, we decided to go to the beach. Beach vacations are not really John's style (as he would rather go and explore a new city, rather than just go sit on the beach), but they're so my style. I really just want to go and sit........and sit some more.........and then eat and sit again. Now THAT'S a vacation. So we compromised. We went to Madeira Beach, FL (near St Pete) so I could be at the beach, we were close enough to Tampa so we could go to the Ray's stadium and cross another stadium off the 'ole list, and we were only a couple of hours away from Disney for big Harv. Something for everyone! John's parents also came along with us and were a huge help. It was so fun to be able to do all of this together.


Something I probably should have realized------vacation with children is like working, just in a different location. They still needed to eat (gah, the nerve!) and sleep, and nap, and play, and throw fits and need to be disciplined, and stay on some kind of schedule, even though we were AT THE BEACH! Didn't they get the memo that we're supposed to layout and relax, and eat and relax, and have no schedule??? And did I mention RELAX? Going to the pool and the beach with these guys was the opposite of relaxing. Making sure they didn't drown, float away, walk away, eat too much sand (yup I allowed them to eat some. Totally impossible to keep Charlie from sampling it every.single.day), it was a full time job. And don;t even get me started on how much crap we had to take to the beach everyday. Wow.

But, so totally worth every single second of it. They loved it so much, and that is why people do family vacations every year. And, this further solidifies our plan to do a week family vacation, and then a weekend/week long mommy and daddy vacation every year. We need to unwind sometime too.

Here are just a *few* photos from our vacation. I'll do another post soon with our Disney photos. Don't want to totally overload the internet all in one day. :)






Omg, the car rides there and back. Brutal. That's all I'm going to say.
















Oh, hey yous guys! Sorry you had to sees me wike dat in da car! All better now!




Yeah, whatever he said.

Chugga Chugga Charlie 10 Months

Wow, we've been busy, busy, busy this past month. Lots of pool time, taking it easy because it's summer time, going to the beach, going to Disney World. Busy. But, the perfect kind of fun busy. Here are Charlie's photos from his 10 month birthday. He turned 10 months old during our first day at the beach. Perfect photo shoot location!




 

















I just want to pway wif my ding dang calendar at da ding dang beach!!! Yous guuuuuuuuuys!!!!!







 



















I love this photo. A lot.




Naturally, I never posted his nine month stats, and I put his paper "somewhere safe". Aka, I'll never find them again. But, here's what I can remember.

Weight: 25 pounds. Maybe a touch more.

Length: 31ish inches (maybe a little more).

Head: Large and in charge.

He's 95th+ percentile in all areas. That's what is important. He's heavier than Harv was at this age, and just a hair shorter. Probably literally his hair makes him shorter. Remember Harv's awesome hair that stood straight up? :)


 Charlie at ten months:

Nothing really new and exciting. He's getting around more, not really crawling officially, but scooting and getting where he needs to go.

He is a blanket/tag lover just like big brother.

He is SUCH an easy baby. Still. As long as you feed him on time, he's so content to do whatever. Fourteen hours in the car was no problem for this guy. Seriously, amazing.


He LOVES the beach. Especially the ocean. This guy is quite the kicker, so the water is his natural habitat.

Charlie 9 Months

Charlie turned nine months old last week (can you even BELIEVE I've waited this long to post this? Well, believe it......mama's busy). And to mark such a special occasion, he even had the nerve to cut his front teeth on top. Total defiance. Growing older AND changing all at once. But darn it, he's so dang cute. So, he can totally get away with it. This time. Here are his super official nine month photos. Feeling rather deep and nostalgic on his nine month birthday. Hmmmmmmm........is dat a biwrd out der? Or is dat a cat? Oh wait, maybe is just a flower.......gots to learn some new words and stuff. Maybe some flash cards would help.......




  Now he's feeling more like himself.



 





Some fun facts about Charlie at nine months:

 *He just cut two more teeth on top, bringing him to a grand total of four.

*He's still big time into table food, but he has a definite allergy to soy (which, btw, is in EVERYTHING. For real.), and has reacted to the acid in tomatoes and has had some mixed results with peas. So, I'm going to hold off on peanut butter for a bit until we can sort out some of these allergies.

 *He finally rolls over and scoots around. I was starting to worry about this kid. But, some tough love and baby boot camp have proven quite effective. He now gets around and is making me crazy paranoid about all the stuff I have to re-baby proof. Geeze. Harv is really good about alerting me when Charlie is in danger. "Charwie, what do you have buddy?". Or, even better, "Charwie, NO SIR!" (you think Harv has heard that a few times in life??) That's how I know, I need to stop making dinner/drinking water/going to the bathroom/sending a text message and go figure out what he has going on. :)

 *He sleeps like a champ still. Even with his two teeth coming in, he wasn't all that bad.

 *Charlie had his first real illness just before he turned nine months old. He had an ear infection, likely from a virus that the kids passed around plus his teeth coming in. So, first round of antibiotics in the books. Fortunately, he wasn't allergic to that. *He is a blanket and passy lover. I really wish he would suck his thumb, but the passy (upside down) is totally his thing. Whatever makes him happy, I guess. 

*It looks like he's going to have some curly locks. If that ends up being true, I want him to grow a sweet little fro. Perhaps no haircuts for a little while. :)


 *Sizes: Clothes/sleeper:18 months. Shoes:Size 4, I think. Diapers: Size 4.


 *One last fun fact: he wants to sit up, all the time. Including bottle time. It's like bottle feeding a calf. Pretty amazing.


 We'll have official height and weight type stats next week when we go to the doctor. Should be a good time!

Beginning of Baseball Season 2012

A few weeks ago we loaded up the boys and headed to St Louis for our first baseball weekend of the year. We left the house at 5:30. AM. Yes, we're that intense. The plan was to meet up with Tom and Chloe Ann in Benton and caravan into St Louis with them. Literally 1 mile from the exit where we were going to meet them, traffic stopped. We could see a huge cloud of black smoke ahead, so we knew it was potentially going to be quite a wait. Uhhh, little did we know, we would be stuck on the interstate for two and a half hours. Holy moly. With a toddler and a baby. That had both been up since 5:15. Fortunately, they were pretty good. We had our dvd player, and since everyone was literally parked, we got out and played on the side of the road.



 












Oh baby, there's our swagger wagon.

 It was so weird to see all of these empty cars on the road. I told John it looked like a scene from Left Behind. And, bad news, we're still here to see it all. Not good, Clore. Not good at all. :)



 So, once we were finally two and a half hours behind schedule, we met up with Tom and Chloe Ann, and we were on our way. Then, when we were just 10 miles from St Louis, another traffic jam. This time, it was *just* construction. No big semi on fire, but also not good. This put us even further behind. We were listening to the game on the radio and it was going unusually fast. Awesome.

 Long story, but we finally got into the game during the seventh inning stretch. Then all kinds of walking around, trying to get our tickets and get in (yet another ordeal), and we finally got into our seats in time for the ninth inning. Pretty amazing. And by amazing, I mean lame. We spent the night in St Louis, just a few miles from the stadium, so there was no way we were going to be late for Sunday's game. No sir. Here are some photos from Sunday.


  Harv hanging onto his loot.






  The fireworks were so not his thing.





 
Day two with no morning nap AND no afternoon nap----it's hard on a little guy.







 
After much rocking and walking, I finally got him to take a little nap. I was too afraid to even smile for fear of waking the baby beast.   Uhhh, bless his heart, and anything else southern I should say here.







  The aftermath. Such a fun, memorable weekend.

Hopefully less traffic-y next time around. :)