check-ups, puzzles, and feet

Every Tuesday we pick up Jenna from school and go straight to her piano lesson at Miss Eliza's home. She recommends parents stay for the lesson, so we know what they are working on and can help them practice. This means I have to try to entertain Liam for 30 minutes in a house without a playroom. I have found it works best to get him worn out in the early afternoon, and then this is his little set-up:

It works well until the last couple minutes when he wants to explore, and I try to keep him from interrupting. I don't even want to think about how we're going to do it next year...

The boys had their 2 year and 4 month check-ups this week. They're both right on track, healthy, got two shots each, cried for about ten seconds, and were super brave.

I think the worst part for Liam was getting weighed. I don't know why but he hates that scale, and didn't like us putting Gavin on it either.
After the appointment Liam entertained the staff by making me chase him through the entire office. Oh what fun.

Jenna has been saying all year long that she wants to be a vampire for Halloween (ever since last Halloween when someone gave her those plastic vampire teeth). Then last week she announced that she was going to be a witch. The next day she was writing a letter to one of her friends from Maryland and I suggested she tell him what she is going to be for Halloween. I thought she'd say either vampire or witch, but she asked to see her costume idea list (that she made sometime last summer). She was studying it, happened to glance up and saw her backpack with Princess Peach on it, and the decision was made. Princess Peach!
I was 100% more excited about this than a vampire :)
We made her crown, bought some tulle, and the rest we already had in the dress-up clothes. She looked so great for her school's trunk-or-treat:

Liam discovered the wooden puzzles and has been obsessed with them all week! He doesn't distinguish edge pieces yet, but he's doing really well matching the pictures up, and can finish them on his own as long as we give him a starting point.

Notice the big scab on his nose? It looks a lot worse in person. He took a nose dive while running on the sidewalk :(
We joked about making him some antlers and sending his as Rudolf for Halloween, but it's mostly healed now.

Gavin has had several long conversations with his feet lately. I don't know what they're talking about, but it sure is funny to watch!

He has also been super patient as Liam uses him as a human pillow.

He just adores his big brother!

Gavin: four months

16 lbs. 8 oz.

26 inches

Gavin has lost what little amount of dark hair he was born with, and is now sporting the bald look. He pulls it off nicely, though!

Paul calls him our "freaker-outer". While he is most often a happy little guy, he goes from perfectly content to total freak out in less than 2 seconds!

When he gets sleepy, I can just lay him down and he will put himself to sleep.  But that's as far as my luck goes; he hasn't slept longer than 3 hours in well over a month (and most of the time it's only 2 hours)! Which means neither have I...
Thank goodness he's so stinkin cute!

Our Gavin's a big boy. He's already wearing size 6 months clothes, rolling, scooting, and just generally growing up way too fast!

mid-October

Paul had to work 7 days this week. 3 of those days he didn't get to see the kids at all.
We just have to keep reminding ourselves that it's his first year at a new job, it's the busy season, and it's only going to get better from here.
The kids miss him like crazy, but Paul is awesome about giving them all his attention when he's home.
I'm lucky to have a husband who works hard, loves what he does, and is really great at it. And he's lucky to have a wife who is understanding and supportive of his crazy schedule (that's what I hear).

With our without him home, life carries on:

Gavin was acting fussy even while I was holding him, so into the saucer he went! And he has been loving it all week! I guess he just wanted some toys to play with. Growing up too fast...

Their first brother bath! Gavin loved watching Liam splash and play, and Liam enjoyed helping pour the water on Gavin.
Jenna is officially a shower-taker now. Again, growing up too fast...

I haven't turned the heat on yet, so we've had lots of snuggle parties!

We don't usually go very big on Halloween decorations, so Jenna tried covering the house in paper bats, ghosts, and pumpkins. And we love our Halloween signs:

Time to make some costumes!

Share goodness

-We are loving this fall weather, and spent as much of the afternoons as we could this week in our backyard. The kids enjoyed collecting acorns, throwing rocks, and exploring the little 20 ft. "woods" behind our house. They can't wait until the leaves start to fall!

-It got so cold at night I felt the need to cover up Gavin's bald little head. Unnecessary? maybe. Cute? definitely.

-Liam is finally really getting into books! His favorite this week was Fuzzy Yellow Ducklings. We read it over and over for an hour one night!

-Jenna decided to take Liam's education into her own hands. She got out her Joy School rug and made him sit on it while she attempted to teach abc's and such. She got frustrated when he only listened for about a minute :)

-I was playing with a photo editing app that my friend developed. It's called Studio and is really fun to "remix" other people's designs.

-The best part of the week for me came rather unexpectedly on Saturday afternoon. We were just hanging around the house, enjoying Paul's first Saturday off in two months when I got a call from the Sister Missionaries. They asked if I would come with them on an appointment. This may not sound like a big deal to some people, but I haven't served a mission or been out with the missionaries before so I was kind of terrified!
We were able to teach a sweet family from Pakistan, and I'm happy to report that it wasn't at all scary! And I was surprised how easy it was. I forget that the simple truths that I grew up knowing are not common knowledge. I had the opportunity to share my testimony of Jesus Christ and eternal families.
I'm happy I got over my fear, and I'm really excited to do it again!

General Conference!

This week was typical and pretty uneventful. I didn't even take any pictures.
We had trips to the grocery store, mall, park, and library and we filled our days with trains, dinosaurs, rattles, piano practice, homework, books, cooking, and watching probably too much Netflix.

The best part of our week was General Conference! I love these weekends so much, and I love that Jenna gets excited for them as well. If you ask her about it, she'll say something about the prophet and chocolate-covered raisins. Whatever works, right?!

There are tons of ideas and activity packets online to help kids pay attention (or at least sit still). This time I printed one out for Jenna, and we tried the treat bag activity. I put each of the apostles' and first presidency's pictures on bags and filled half of them with treats and the other half with stuff to do, like coloring books, stickers, and halloween decorations.

Jenna and Liam really enjoyed it, and it was so funny watching Jenna trying to match the speaker to their picture (except for the first presidency - she knows them). I understand though; some of the pictures aren't updated and to a 6 year-old they all look alike!

Paul had to work on Saturday, but the kids were so excited for the morning session and the boys slept during the afternoon session, so I actually was able to pay better attention Saturday than Sunday. The kids were a little more restless for the Sunday sessions, so I'm glad Paul was home to help entertain them. He and Liam even made us girls breakfast :)

It'll be fun to re-listen to and read these talks, to get the parts I missed and review the messages that I needed and loved!

And for fun, here's my handsome boys dressed up for conference: