2 months going on 20!

We always thought the teeny-tiny baby stage was rather boring. Babies this small are usually just little lumps. Adorable to look at, yes. But not all that exciting or fun. But Allie is definitely changing that opinion!

At two months old, Allie already has such an endearing personality. She's is truly the happiest baby on the face of the earth! She smiles and coos ALL the time and just makes you feel so special when she makes eye contact and responds to you. She is already pushing herself up onto her elbows from her tummy (a feat the pediatrician witnessed and said doesn't usually happen until 4 months!), and kicking toys on her bouncy seat toy bar with her feet.

And......drumroll please.......she actually rolled over today!! It has happened before, but we've always attributed it to something else. Oh, we must have put her on her side. Or, she must have had an arm under her to push off of. But today, she clearly was on her belly and managed to roll over to her back!! I was so excited to see it happen for real!! The only problem is, she's my last baby! If this trend continues, she'll be off and running in the blink of an eye and I am not ready for that yet!

Allie had her 2 month well visit yesterday. She's already a whopping 11lb 4oz and 23 1/4 inches long! She continues to eat and sleep well and is just a dream!

Robbie and Scottie are also doing great. We're counting down the days until school starts. Robbie starts back for his 4-day 4 year old class next Thursday and Scottie goes to his 2-day 2.5 year class the following Monday. That means this week is the last full week of summer vacation! How did that go by so quickly?! We took the kids to Sunrise Lake yesterday for a change of pace to make the most of the remaining summer days and the boys had an absolute blast. I even took them in a pedal-boat around the lake. Now THAT is a workout! Thirty minutes of Mommy pedaling by herself while moving an extra 70lbs of kids along with her! If I did that everyday, I'd have less trouble losing all this baby weight! Allie had had 4 shots that morning at her appt, so she was a bit fussy, but still had smiles for Nana as you can see.

And Daddy and Mommy had their Fantasy Football draft night last night, so that's something else to look forward to. The start of football season is upon us!! Let's go Penn State!! And keep it going, Giants!! And a shout-out to Ron's favorite Carolina Panthers, too. Here's hoping for a fun season of our favorite TV sport!

Aaaaa-llieeeeee

Allie is definitely getting more active, alert and responsive these days!! Our favorite game to play with her lately is Copycat. We'll hold her facing us so she can see our faces. Then we smile and say her name, "Aaaaaaaa-llieeeeeee," and she almost immediately smiles with her wide-open gummy grin and tries her hardest to do the same thing. The best is when she manages to get her voice to work. Since her mouth is wide open, it actually sounds like she's repeating her name. We've gotten some great "Aaaaaaaaa" sounds from her, and even some baby babble "l" sounds, too. She just loves hearing her name so much and wants to play along and repeat it!

She is also becoming quite the Daddy's girl already. Her first smiles of the day are almost always reserved for her Daddy and Ron's the one who can get her to smile, burp, or calm down the best. But, not to be outdone, Robbie is getting Allie to respond to him quite a bit, too. She follows Robbie around the room with her head and lights up with smiles when he gets down to talk to her and smile at her.


Scottie shows less interest (he is two, after all), but both boys still ask for "shoulder hugs" from Allie everyday. We hear this from both of them each day:

Robbie and/or Scottie: Do you know who I love best?
us: Who?
Robbie and/or Scottie: Allie!

Another favorite is:
Robbie: Allie is a good little girl (he must hear this from us all the time!)
to which Scottie will answer: Yeah, she's not bad!
It cracks us up everytime -- he's so literal!

Best Pic of the Week

This one is just too good to not post.

Boy, are we going to miss Daddy when he goes back to work next week!

House in Flux

We're still here and still doing well. But our house is not our own. Our kitchen is undergoing a homemade facelife (painting the cabinets -- inside and out -- and walls, and giving the cabinet doors some character with moulding, adding crown moulding, etc.) So NOTHING is where it should be. We have dishes in the living room, tupperware in the den, all of our pantry items on the dining room table (thank God we have a patio table outside at which to eat our meals), all glassware is on top of the piano, and our silverware and serving utensils are in baskets strewn about the house. Not a fun way to live!

On top of all of that, we've hired an electrician to come install new recessed lights in the kitchen, living room and both of the kids' bedrooms, plus rewire some switches, install new outlets and install ceiling fans in the kids' bedrooms, too.

As if that wasn't enough, we also hired a tree service to come and clean up the old, overgrown trees in our backyard. So our family of five has been hiding out in the kids' playroom all week to stay out of everyone's way! (At least the boys had a ball watching the tree guys climb our huge trees and cut down the branches.) Now that the electrician and tree guys are gone, we can continue with the kitchen.

So far, the cabinet frames are all sanded, cleaned, primed, painted, and sealed. About half of the doors have the new moulding on them and are primed. Some of the cabinet doors are painted and back on the frames. We still need to paint the other doors and drawers, and prime and paint the walls after Ron patches all of the holes (we waited on the walls for the electrician to be done). Last step there will be for Ron to install the crown moulding on top of the cabinets and buy a few new accessories.

No pics this week of the "during" process (sorry!) but I promise some before and after pics when it's all done. Can't wait for our kitchen's new look!

Healthy Kids

We had two well visits to the pediatrician this week. Allie had her 1 month checkup and Robbie had his 4 year checkup. I'm happy to say that both kids did great and are growing and learning right on track with their peers!

Allie weighed in at a whopping 9lb 8oz already! And she's grown in length, too, now measuring at a full 22". She's going to be a tall girl if she stays on this track. She's in the 90th percentile for height and 75th percentile for weight. She has been eating like a champ for the last week or so, making us think it must be a growth spurt and we were right after hearing her stats at the doctor's office! She's now finally able to fit into her 0-3 month clothes without them falling off her. I just love dressing her up! We adore our little peanut!

Robbie also fared well at his doctor's visit. He continues to be our stringbean, weighing in at 33lbs and measuring a tall 42". He's only in the 21st percentile for weight, but the 60th for height! This was a fun doctor's visit for him, as there were fun new "tests" and no shots! He was asked to read the eye chart to identify shapes and letters, jump and hop around on one foot (which he continued to do all the way to the front door from the car), and walk on his tippy toes, his heels and one foot in front of the other on a line like a balance beam. He thought he was at a field day activity event instead of at the doctor's office!

And, while Scottie didn't have a doctor's visit this week (much to his chagrin), he's also doing quite well. His latest trick is making up his own stories and songs to "read" and sing to the rest of us. He'll flip through pages of any magazine or book and "read" his stories to us in a voice full of inflection. Most pages start with, "WHEN he was in there, he WAS on there...." Even Robbie will sit down and listen and giggle along with Ron and me in the audience. In the car Scottie sings his heart out to songs he knows, or makes up his own words to songs only he can hear in his head. He's great entertainment on long drives! He's getting a little better about trying new foods, too. His newest discovery is salsa, of all things! As long as he can dip his chips in it, he loves it! At least he's getting some veggies! He now eats fish, too. Tuna steaks, mahi mahi, crab cakes, scallops and clam strips! Roasted chick peas and sweet peas, too! We're making progress! He is definitely still wearing the title of the family meatball, though. He's one solid kid, only a few small pounds lighter than Robbie who has a whole year and half on him.

So we're very pleased parents to have such healthy, happy kiddos. Our stringbean, meatball and peanut are all doing very well!

LBI Trip

We took the family down to LBI for a mini vacation this week. We took everyone to the beach when we got there on Tuesday and the boys had an absolute blast! They loved jumping in the ocean, running away from the waves and finding seashells.

Allie snoozed in the shade with Nana and was a perfect little angel.

Wednesday was overcast, so we went to see the Barnegat Lighthouse in the morning. The boys had lots of fun seeing "Old Barney" and watching the boats and the fishermen.

After lunch, the sun came out so Ron taught the boys how to go crabbing. Robbie is still talking about how he loved "crabbin'" and caught two crabs!!

Allie came along on both jaunts and, as always, just went with the flow without complaint! Both nights, we enjoyed seafood for dinner and cocktails out on the porch.

After some heavy thunderstorms Wednesday night, we awoke to lots of puddles on Thursday. Since all rules can be broken on vacation, we let the boys run around in their jammies, splashing in the street.

Nana and Poppy got to see the boys and Allie morning, noon, and night for a few days and Ron and I got to take advantage of two extra pairs of hands to help. It was a wonderful, relaxing mini-vacation that we all sorely needed and simply loved. All were just exhausted by the time we got home last night. LBI remains as one of my favorite places in the world. I'm so glad we went!

Roadtrip to VA!

We took our first roadtrip as a family of five and everyone did GREAT! We drove down to VA to introduce Allie to Ron's family this week. We left Tuesday morning and did the 6 hour trip in under 7 hours. I simply can't tell you all what an angel this child is! She only cried twice, for about 2 mins each time, and each time was right before we pulled over anyway to eat. No blowouts, no spitups, no screaming. Robbie and Scottie watched one DVD on the way down, then listened to our music, played "I Spy", chatted, etc. No whining or crying, even though neither napped!

We got there around 3pm on Tuesday, and Kate and her 4 (soon to be 5) kids all came over to Ron's parents' house, where we stay. Had a nice dinner on the deck, the boys ran around playing baseball with their cousins, and Allie charmed everyone. Caleb, Kate's oldest son, who is 8, was incredible with Allie! He kept asking to hold her, he fed her a whole bottle, and even got a burp from her! Then Caleb and Price (next in line at age 6), both were just so sweet to Robbie and Scottie while playing outside. They'd reach out their hands to "extend" the base to keep them safe and very patiently taught them the rules when they ran the wrong way, encouraging them to try again instead of counting strikes and outs, etc. It was so nice to see!!

We all went to their pool on Weds and all had a blast. Stayed 3 hours and Allie did great there, too. Sat in her bouncy seat in the shade, looked around while awake, slept, ate, just another sweetie pie day! We must have worn her out because....get this.....Allie slept for just under SEVEN HOURS on Wednesday night!!!

We left there around 11am yesterday to drive back home. Made it again in 7 hrs. Allie snoozed for 5 hrs straight in the car yesterday, too!! Another great trip. Allie went back to waking up every 3 hrs last night after all that car sleep, but we're just so proud of her for traveling so well!

I seriously cannot say enough how lucky we feel to have all three kids be such AWESOME travelers!! Our first road trip as a family of 5 and it went so smoothly!! Next week, we'll drive down to the shore to LBI. We're hoping that our kids do as well down the shore as they did in VA! Nice to be home, but what a GREAT trip!!!