Eliana's Prayer

This was Eliana's spontaneous singing prayer this morning:

"I love you God.  You are my favorite.  Please be with us and bring us more warm.  Thank you!"

Absolutely no prompting from me.  She melts my heart!

5 months old

Happy Thanksgiving!  We managed to survive five days of travel with mostly good spirits.  David and I both had Thursday through Sunday off, so it was a great chance to go back to Indianapolis and spend lots of quality time with our families.  Eliana was extremely excited to see both sets of grandparents.  We left Columbus Wednesday afternoon and came back on Sunday.  It was a really nice trip with Eliana behaving pretty well despite the lack of napping.  Right up until our drive home Sunday afternoon.  By that point she was very overtired.  I was hoping that would mean she would pass out as soon as the van hit the road.  Instead, she was so tired that she cried the entire ride home.  Anything I tried to give her to entertain her, she threw on the floor.  She said she was hungry, so we got some fast food.  Eliana then proceeded to throw her food on the floor.  It was a great trip.  :)  After a really long nap yesterday and sleeping in today, I think we are FINALLY getting back to normal.  Boy, it takes Eliana a long time to recover from vacation!  William, well, what can I say?  He is so calm and easy going.  He says, "So my naps got thrown off?  So what?  I'm still the happiest baby you will ever meet.  Nothing can shake me."  He is just about perfect.  He even managed to sleep through Eliana crying in the van, and sleep through several night of her crying as she went to bed.  He is the best baby!

And now he is five months old!  According to the ol' bathroom scale, he is 18lbs!  So as not to be shown up by his big sister, William also got his first tooth two days before he turned 5 months old.

This is what William always looks like - sucking on his middle two fingers

Eliana hates for William to be lonely

I just love how they are looking so intently at each other.  William loves his big sister so much.  He watches her every move and she can make him laugh so easily.

This is also how William always looks.  He loves chewing on his feet!  I think the cloth diaper get in the way and prevent him from pulling them up to his mouth.  But as soon as diaper change starts, he gets those feet up in the air and then the toes go in the mouth.

Check it out - a tooth!

This is how I found the kids this morning.  Eliana told me that she had put a skunk scarf on William (it was leftover from his skunk costume).  He is also surrounded by medical equipment because he was "very sick".  Luckily Eliana is a doctor so she fixed him with a bandaid.

Working nights

Last night I worked my first night shift in over two years.  I am sure most people who follow this blog know this already, but just in case you don't, I switched jobs after William was born.  I am back in the NICU working with precious but sick little babies.  While my other job in the Infusion Clinic was not terribly interesting, it did have a great schedule.  So now I am back to working some nights, weekends, and holidays.  It stinks, but those babies need nurses even on holidays.  I will be working a rotating shift, which means that I will be working about half the time on days and half the time on nights.  It is a little crazy, but at least not all of my shifts are at night. 

So David had the kids all to himself last night for the first time.  I actually put William to bed before I left for work (he goes to sleep around 6pm).  On my way out, I gave David a kiss and wished him luck.  For me, William usually gets up about two times a night, around 11pm and 4am.  Sometimes he gets up more, and on the really good nights, he just gets up once around 3am.  I was a little worried about David getting up at night, but he used to do it with Eliana, so I knew he was fully capable.  I came home in the morning and anxiously asked David how the night went.  Do you know what that little stinker did?  He slept 11 hours straight!  David didn't have to get up until 5am.  William has never done that before.  What a glorious night, and I didn't get to enjoy any of it!  What do you think the chances are of a repeat for tonight??

Not all the pictures can be adorable.  This one just makes me laugh.

I might not get much sleep, but at least I get a smiling baby to help me do the laundry.  Totally worth it.

Leeds Pumpkin Farm

The last weekend in October, Eliana, William and I met up with some of Eliana's friends from her old daycare.  She seriously talks about Jack and Jake all the time!  Sometimes I think she has an imaginary friend named Jack, because Eliana is always talking about what she did with Jack even though this is the first time she has seen him since her last day at daycare.  She was sooo excited to see them.  She ran up and gave them both hugs and the three of them immediately started chasing each other and giggling.  Eliana leaving daycare was one of the hardest parts about leaving my old job, just because she had made such good friends there.  I am glad we had this chance to see them.  Plus we met at an awesome place called Leeds Pumpkin farm!  They had giant slides, hay mounds, zip lines, a petting zoo, a hay ride, and Eliana's favorite: a banana bus ride.  Plus there was plenty of stuff to buy like pumpkins and caramel corn and pie.  We will definitely be going back there next year.  Actually, Eliana often asks to do the banana ride when I ask her what she wants to do for the day.  Sorry, that ride is closed for the season!

The three musketeers: Jack, Eliana, and Jake.

The kids did a great job of sticking together.  They are all holding hands with Jake's mom Rachel on the left and Jack's mom Angie on the right.  It was the most perfect day in October to go.

Playing in the corn bin.  It is like a giant sandbox but with corn instead of sand.  The kids loved it.

The corn bin also had lots of trucks and buckets to play with too.

One of the many giant slides.  Eliana really liked going down the slides with her friends.  But both boys left soon after this, leaving just her with William and me.  She wanted to go down the slide again, but without her two friends leading her, Eliana got scared at the top and started crying.  That was the end of the slides.

So we took a break and ate some pie!

William wanted some too, but I said no.  :)

The banana bus ride!  The first time she rode this, she was too scared to ride by herself.  So believe it or not, I squeezed into one of those barrels with her while wearing William in the Ergo.  It was tight, but we did it!  Then Eliana realize how fun the ride was and didn't need me to ride with her anymore.  She rode it at least four times!

The banana bus traveling by the pond.

She has grown a little since this picture last year.

William actually had two Halloween costumes.  My mom gave his a skeleton one, but Eliana insisted that he be a skunk for trick or treating, so I had him wear the skeleton costume to the farm.  Eliana was not exactly excited about the photos that I wanted to take.

But then when I started taking pictures of William by himself, Eliana stopped playing on the hay and jumped right in.

We had a great day!

Slate Run

 So as you can tell from the clothing, these pictures were not taken recently (we had snow yesterday!).  But it has been on my to do list to post some pictures that are just sitting on my camera, so here goes.  These are from our trip to Slate Run Historic Farm with the play group in September. 

One of the main reasons I wanted to post these pictures was for this one picture here.  Eliana is so cute!  There are several little chairs on this porch which Eliana always runs to sit on.  Kids just love kid sized things!

A little scared at first, but when she figured out she wouldn't fall through, she didn't want to get out.

William was just along for the ride.

Checking out the sheep.  We spent a very long time in the barn checking out all the sheep, cows, and horses.

4 months old

 A little bit late, but here is William at 4 months!  He is wearing his winter snuggly outfit.  At his doctor's appointment, he weighed 16 lb 12 oz (75th percentile) and was 25.5in tall (65th percentile).  All looks good except his poor skin.  William's face is constantly covered in a rash.  This will be the third time we have been to the doctor about it.  Dr. Ferguson gave us a prescription cream for his face which we are only supposed to use when he has a rash.  So I put it on his face for a few days, the rash goes away, I stop using the cream, and the rash comes back a few days later.  I don't know what to do!  Poor guy.  Doesn't seem to bother him though.

 And the bonus picture:
Eliana wanted to have a "sleepover" on the couch with all of her stuffed animals.  Then William got to join in!  Eliana even covered him with her purple blankie.  I asked Eliana what people do at a sleepover.  She said "sleep!" of course. 

A day at the park

 While the weather is still nice, we are going outside as much as possible.  Last Friday we went to the park and played all morning.

This is the most adorable hat ever.

I just couldn't get over how cute he looked that morning.

First time in the swing.  He didn't like it.  He started crying pretty quickly after this picture.

Look at our two kids!  It is so awesome to be their mommy.  It is going to be so fun to watch them grow up together and play together and love on each other. 

By the way, look who joined us at the table