November 2010 Snapshot

The folks over at Building Cathedrals, a blog I like, started doing a "Thoughts for Thursday" thing a few months ago where each writer basically gives a snapshot of their home and family on their particular Thursday.  I really liked this because it preserves in time all the little, mundane, ordinary things your family is up to at that moment, that when looked back upon, really are extra-ordinary.  With that goal in mind, I thought to start doing monthly snapshots of our family to keep you all updated on the things we can't capture in a real snapshot, and to capture the memories of all those little, yet amazing, things that we might not otherwise remember.  Here's our first go at it:

What Are We...
Reading:
Cody- Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe;
Erin- Just finished Northanger Abbey and just started Persuasion, both Jane Austen.  We are also reading The Virtue Driven Life by Fr. Benedict Groschel for our reading group this month; 
Sean- Happy Halloween Curious George, Curious George Counting Book, and Winnie the Pooh's Treasure;
James-the word "Exersaucer" printed on his favorite piece of furniture.

Cooking/Eating:
Cody and Erin: we just tried a new Butternut Squash soup recipe and it was delicious!  Trying a new Potato Soup recipe for the crockpot later this week. Other than that, the usual grilled chicken, stir fry, tacos, etc.
Sean- Peanut Butter and Jelly-- lots of it.  He also gets a treat after dinner if he goes all day without an accident.  He has been choosing his lollipop as his treat lately-- and working on the SAME one since Halloween night.  It goes in the refridgerator in wax paper in between turns.
James- rice cereal, green beans, peas, squash and sweet potatoes!

Talking about:
Cody and Erin: How to configure the car for a long trip to Michigan; Cody's criminal defense attorney's CLE; the gubernatorial election in SC; how to say goodbye to good friends. 
Sean: "Seannie Seannie hear a Thomas (train) outside,"  "Daddy pick you (me) up," "Mommy put your (my) mittens on you (me)."  Sean has also mastered the concept of "two weeks," as in, "Seannie Seannie go to Michigan in two weeks."   Sean's favorite number lately is 4, and almost always asks to "read 4 books" when going to bed, or "want 4 pieces of egg" in the morning.
James: Starting to babble with "B's" and lots of giggling, mostly at his brother. James used his first baby-sign a few weeks ago--"milk."  He does it while he's eating and he lights up if you ask him if he wants milk while using the sign.

Praying For: 
Cody and Erin: Meg-- as she is working though a tough illness and a mysterious auto-immune disorder diagnosis; for guidance about the next steps in our careers and our family.  I am also constantly praying for pregnant friends and those giving birth, like Susie just did!  There is something about friends being in labor that makes me so anxious all I can do is pray for them all day.  Praise God baby Carson is here and healthy!  Next up is Bridget and her little bundle!
Sean: In this order: Aub, Neece and Michael, and Greta.  Then its fair game who come next.  Micah, his dog, GG and Dada, Eva, Mama Peggy, Pop and B and Uncle, Emmy, Gretchen, or when Riley babysat him last week "The Big Bad Wolf." (pray for your enemies, i guess?).
James: more milk.

Listening To:
Cody and Erin: A few new songs from the Crazy Heart soundtrack, a lot of Willie and Van Morrison, and the new U2 album. Oh, and a lot of Darius Rucker. 
Sean: Anything by Bono, Beautiful Boy remake by Ben Harper (I told him it is his song since the original says "darling Sean" at the end), and The Priests
James: The exersaucer songs.

Thankful For:
Cody: That we are all healthy, and that someone brought in Starbucks to work today. 
Erin: Being home all day which makes it possible to wake up sweet, warm, cuddly boys from naps.
Sean: New matching Christmas-monkey jammies from Mama Peggy. (see below)
James: milk. 

Milestones/Special Accomplishments
Cody--shaved his beard and looks exceedingly handsome; had a great result on a trial he prepared for all week night and day but then ended up pleading to a very good result at the last minute. 
Erin-- I am mastering the coupon+sale method of grocery shopping, plus making a few pretty cool christmas gifts--working on the "home economics" side of being a stay-at-home-mom. 
Cody and Erin: We had our first night away from children in almost 2.5 years this past week.  Many thanks to my mom who stayed over night solo with the boys while Cody and I enjoyed a night out in Savannah--just husband, wife and breastpump!  We left in the late afternoon and I was back by late morning, only missing two feedings with Jamesie.  It was so nice to have a date with my husband, and in such a wonderful and romantic city!  We basically just copied Denise and Michael's first date in terms of restaurant and bar selection, and we loved it.
Sean: lots of "dry days" in a row lately with no accidents!  Which mostly requires a poop on the potty which is a huge deal around here.  The other day in the grocery store he sounded out the word "B-I-G" mostly by himself. 
James- Got his first two teeth literally on the day of his 6-mo check up.  On Sunday he was chomping down on our fingers and we didn't feel a thing.  On Monday morning the doctor nonchalantly says "I see his teeth have come in."  I looked like a negligent mother that I hadn't even noticed!  I was trying to convince him, "I swear those two teeth were not there last night."  James also sat up by himself for the first time this week--just over 6 months!

That's all for now.  Anything else you'd like to be updated on for future editions?

I went to Costco and got a two-pack of cute boys.  Just kidding-- we just got the monkey-jammies there.

Happy Belated Halloween, All Saints' and All Souls' Day!

Pope Sean the First! (with trick-or-treating bag).  We were up in Boone, NC visiting Meg and Tim last weekend, where Sean did his trick-or-treating (to two houses).  The weather was awesomely-fallish and we had a blast.  Unfortunately, I left our camera and the rest of our pics in the back seat of Tim's car--hopefully we'll get it back soon.

Sean says, "A Pope does this" while he does his papal blessing.  He did awesome with his costume and everyone loved it.  I just giggle everytime I look at this.

And here is the Pope's faithful servant the rosy-cheeked St. Francis, with Beth the Girl.  He and Beth hit it off smashingly this weekend (Beth and Micah and Jake the Dog came up to meet us as well), I think Sean might have some competition.

I am so in love with our family. 

Sometimes I seriously wonder if I'm going to be like Octo-mom and be addicted to having babies.  Look at those two (not to mention the handsome husband)-- how could you not want more babies!?

Getting Ready for Halloween (Sneak Preview at the End!)...

Pumpkin patches, sewing costumes, bookstore trick-or-treating and Halloween painting!  We have been in full Halloween mode over here for the last few days, so I have a lot to document.  I'll give you a sneak peek at the boys' costumes at the end, with the promise of better pictures to come after the Big Day. 

Jamesie and Crunchy Cody at the Pumpkin Patch last weekend.  James wore the appropriate pumpkin-picking attire, cody forgot his pumpkin John-John at home.

Sean is getting really good at using complete sentences lately.  In this picture he was saying over and over, "That is a pumpkin.  That is a pumpkin."  Yep, sure is.

We went pumpkin-picking with Sean's farming buddy Gabe.  Gabe started school (yes, he's only 1-- he's a genius) a few months ago, so Sean hasn't been able to see him as much and gets SO excited at the prospect of hanging out with Gabe... 

...so excited that neither rain nor snow nor hazardous materials can stand in their way of a good time.  Looks like these two got caught just in time.

On the way home from the pumpkin patch Sean told me he wanted to paint "a little mouth and some little eyes" on his pumpkin.  When it came time to paint, this was what he actually wanted. This was all his idea ("Yellow Hat Man on Seannie's and Georgio on Jamesie's pumpkin")-- I am merely the conduit of his genius. However, the other side of the Man pumpkin has a little mouth and some eyes that a two year old hand painted.  Its pretty cute, i just forgot to get a picture of it.

Today we went to Barnes & Noble for the weekly toddler storytime.  Gretchen and I like to meet there on Thursdays with the kids because they are so entertained with everything going on we can just sit and chat for a few hours.  We're usually the last to leave.  Today all the kids dressed up and "trick or treated" around the store.  It was a good pace for the little guys, and Sean nearly had a heart attack when he realized people we giving him candy for nothing.  Jamesie is reusing the St. Francis costume of Sean's from two years ago...

...and looking cute as ever. He is just killing me lately with how sweet and adorable he is. 

And Sean is again aiming high and told me he wanted to be "A Pope" for Halloween, once I described to him what costumes are and that we can chose to dress up as something.  We have been working on the costume for a few weeks, so he has been getting more and more excited about it.  He looked awesome today.  In this picture he is sheparding his flock (Greta the Farmer) to get cookies from Mr. Jeremy, the story time reader. On the way into the store Sean was (audibly) chanting "Seannie is a Pope, Seannie is a Pope." 

The Pontiff enjoying story time.

Bless you, my children. 

Fun in Anderson

We went to Anderson to visit Cody's family and friends a few weeks ago, and I never got around to posting the pics, probably because there were so many good ones, I couldn't decide how to sort through them all.  In an effort to document at least part of the full weekend, I just grabbed a smattering of cute photos from the weekend below:

This speaks for itself.  Amazingly cute and hilarious.

Ditto for the baby on the John Deere.  I couldn't get enough of this one.

So much so, our family picture was centered around the Baby on the Deere.

After church on Sunday we played outside for a long time, in pretty warm temperatures.  Sean took all of his clothes off, save underpants, navy blue socks, George hat and loud blue velcro shoes, and ran around for hours like this.  

On Saturday cody's friends Allen and Jill came over with their two boys.  The eldest is about 11 mo older than SB, and the little guy is just weeks younger than Jamesie.  Suffice it to say clothing was optional during this playdate. 

Sean at breakfast with Scooby Doo--found in Aub's room where he slept all weekend.

Another new friend for James and Sean-- baby Hogan came over to play for a little bit on Saturday.  He is one month younger than Jamesie...

Same Moms and same babies about a year ago!!  My how they have grown!

Halloween Crafts on a Budget

I read about this easy and cheap craft in a paper last year, and now that Sean is old enough to enjoy some arts and crafts time, we tried it this year.  I thought it turned out pretty cute:

We collected glass jars for a few weeks, cleaned them out and painted them.  Sean used Halloween colors and made "stripes and dots" on his.

I made a cute little ghost family. 

Then we put candles in them and made them light up! (Sean's candle in the foreground)

We put them outside last night on our front porch for festive decorating :)

Sean gave his candle to St. Francis

and paid him homage.  Appropriate for all-hallow's-eve.

Cody showed Sean the full moon and night sky as a just-before-bed treat last night too. 

Stay tuned for some painfully cute halloween costumes in the next few days!

Game Day

Special thanks to our wonderful babysitter, Victoria, for the matching ND shirts!  She is a freshman at Holy Cross this year and brought back these sweet presents for the boys on her fall break this week.

First Spelling Lesson

Sean has a ton of magnetic letters on our refridgerator that he likes to "spell" with.  The other day he told me he spelled "Cody."  I turned around to see "pne+t."  He then pointed at it and told me he had spelled "Bridget."  At least he has an imagination.  At the time I was doing the dishes and couldn't help him re-spell immediately, so I told him to find a c, an o, a d and a y and told him what order to put them in.  He was so proud with the finished product (so was I!) that he actually let me take a picture of him with his handiwork, which he rarely does.

After the thrill of spelling Cody, he told me he wanted to spell Mommy.   We had to get creative with an upside down W (sean's idea), and two n's stuck together to make all those M's in mommy.

These pictures memorialize how Sean addresses us lately too... Cody is "Cody," and I am "mommy."  E.g.,

"Cody will be home for dinnertime?"

"Cody play fish with Seannie?", and

"Mommy watch George with Seannie," and my favorite from the other day:

"Mommy need her coffee."