Carson and his Red Shirt

Now I know that if you read my blog you probably don't see me on a daily, weekly or regular basis. Well except my Mom. :) But if you have seen us since 2012 began then you would have seen my sweet boy in his red shirt. Carson has been wearing the same red shirt, day and night since 2012 began. We make him take it off for church but other than that its just not worth the fight. We are not sure what caused this love affair but every time I think it may have passed and I get him to wear something else to go to bed or something when he wakes up he immediately starts saying, "take this off, take this off. Put on red shirt!" My sweet mother got him these pajamas for Christmas and ordered him another pair for washing. I've alerted all of his friends in his playgroup that I will hand out a reward if they can get him to take it off...none have been able to. I hear this is a two year old thing... let me tell you so fun. :)
He wears it for everything. The other night I couldn't find him when it was time to get ready for bed. I finally went into my room and flipped on the light to find this:

My sweet boy and our sweet dog. The fact that she made room for him is a big deal.
Carson is phasing out his nap and when he is awake and Camilla is sleeping we try to do some fun activities. After our painting day we definitely had to give red shirt a "bath."

He wears it when he hops, hops, hops all over our house. He also went through a brief phase of wanting to wear only my socks, but luckily that has passed.

Even when its freezing outside, he wants to wear only it when he goes to play in his new house. I scored this baby on the side of the road on trash day. I made Aaron pick it up after he got home from work that night.

Carson is in love with drums lately. He turns all of his toys into drums and can find anything to make his drum sticks. One night he came out of my bathroom with two nail files and immediately asked me for his drums. (I use old containers or food storage containers)

Carson is a very unique boy, said with all the love in my heart. Now that being said I better go and do some laundry and wash shirt #1 while my angel boy sleeps.

6 Months

Our darling Camilla had her 6 month check up this week. I seriously love this age, it is the best! She is so interactive and social and fun, yet not moving...quite yet. Although she is giving it her best effort by already trying to crawl. Luckily she can usually just take one step and then falls over. But that is how we find her in the morning or after naps or anytime I leave her on the floor. Up on all fours, rocking, just waiting to make her move. :) Height: 26 1/4" (75th) Weight: 16 lbs. 5 oz. (55th) Head: 17.5" (90th) She's just growing away and we are loving the chucky, chunky legs! Big news for this month are that Camilla already has 2 teeth. (I didn't even notice when the first one broke through while we were in Arkansas for New Years) Random fact: Carson also got his first tooth while we were in Arkansas for New Years but it did not come in quite so smoothly. :) Also Camilla started eating rice cereal.

At first she had a hard time swallowing but now she loves eating up the whole bowl. Camilla continues to be our happy sweet baby. One morning Aaron went in to get her after she woke up and he came back into the room and said, "I think we should look up a word that means happy and smiley and rename Camilla to that." Its true, its how she is all the time. She wakes up happy, goes to bed happy and laughs her little heart out when we play games together.

Camilla is sitting up and falling down. She's not crazy about sitting when she has the possibility to be held in a standing position.

One day I decided to give the pacifier another try and she took it! I was so excited. It has made going to bed so much easier and quicker. I have loved having a baby who will take a pacifier. She also started sleeping more. I still wake her up to eat right before I go to bed and she sleeps the rest of the night. It has been nice to get more sleep. Although I still feel very tired. She is making this adorable grunting noise when she tries to talk to us. She loves to hold onto her feet and grab at everything. I find her in her room trying to hold onto her feet when she should be going to sleep. She loves to jump, juump, jump. When she is being held she wants you to hold her so she can jump and bounce. She has officially been for a run in the jogging stroller and enjoyed it while Aaron was out of town. The weather has been beautiful so we have also been on lots of walks which she loves. She is loving her bath time with her brother. I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of the two of them. Camilla has the cutest chunkiest legs. We love them.

Sometimes your kids poop in the bath tub...it happens. And when it happens at our house we make an emergency transfer to the shower to disinfect, which luckily my kids also love.

Arboretum

We decided to visit the Arboretum on a beautiful December day before heading to Arkansas for New Years and Cole's baptism. It was seriously beautiful weather and we had a wonderful time wondering around the arboretum with our family. Soon after we got there we were joined by Carson's cousins and my sisters in law and my Mom. The arboretum looks so different in the winter time but it was still so beautiful. Carson loved running around everywhere and especially all the water and ponds. When we went this fall we didn't even make it through a half of this place so it was fun to be able to see more. I wish that it was closer and we could go more often because it is so beautiful. The kids were worn out by the time we made it to the car they both fell asleep before we made it to the highway. Aaron and I were pretty worn out too.

Love my sweet family and loved having Aaron join us!

Christmas Day

As soon as the kids were up we prepared Carson to come out for a big surprise. He walked into the living room and immediately gave it a scan. Well we had out for him a new bike, a t-ball set, and his new books. Well this little boy breezed right past the bike and toys and straight to the new books. He picked it up, came straight up to me and said, "mommy read it." We cuddled up on the couch and read it again and again until I told him that he had to check out his bike. He was pretty excited about it, perhaps a little more about the helmet. We rode around the living room until Camilla was up and we were ready to open presents.

Carson wasn't particularly interested in opening presents, like we thought he would be. But he did love them after he opened them. He did insist upon holding onto each present while he opened the next one. Camilla was also very excited about her new (to her) bouncing exer-saucer. It was a fun morning filled with all of Carson's favorite things. I filled his stocking with mandarin oranges which he got to eat while reading his new books. Then we had sausage rolls for breakfast.

After a wonderful church service, we headed down to visit Adam and Cassie and their brand new baby, Ella. Later we went to Arlington to eat dinner and open presents with my family and my brother, Stephen, and his family who had arrived early that morning. There Carson played with his cousins, Camilla enjoyed meeting her Aunt and Uncle and cousin, Abby, and we opened lots of fun presents. It was a fun, relaxing day spent with the people we love the most.

Christmas Eve

These pictures just show you what my life is like with this Angel girl. This is how it is with my princess every day but I love how these pictures show how much fun we had the night before Christmas. I am pretty sure that I love the night before Christmas much more than the actual day of Christmas.

We started off the evening with an amazing dinner made by Aaron. We decided to make salmon this year for dinner and it was perfect. It tasted so amazing and was a fun change up for us. Aaron is amazing on the grill and this year he had his little helper. Plus someone had given Aaron a huge steak bone from a dinner out with his firm that week so Josie had a bone to enjoy the whole time. After dinner we read the nativity and tried to act it out with the Little People nativity. Carson was not so into it. I said, "Carson after dinner we are going to read a story about Jesus." He said, "hm....how about Alphabet Adventure?" I said, "no, a story about Jesus." He said, "no, Alphabet Adventure." Well we compromised on the Nativity and then Alphabet Adventure. And then Popsicles in the bathtub.

Then we got to open our Christmas pajamas. Well the kids got pajamas. Aaron got work out pants and I wanted lounge clothes because well, I live in them these days. Plus we let Carson open a present, a book, of course. He was so excited, Christmas could have ended right then and he would have been thrilled. After Camilla went down, we played with Carson and ran around the house, chased each other around the house, and scooted around the house. Finally we were all worn out and it was time to get to bed. Mom and Dad being much more excited about the coming morning than either of the kids.

December Fun

AS part of our Christmas holiday fun we went with my family to the Gaylord to see the Ice show and do the sledding. Okay the ice show was SO cold. It was amazing to see the detail in the ice but poor Carson had a hard time getting into it. There was a slide at the end and I hope you can see the pure terror that came over Carson as he slid down. He did not like the fact that I put him on that slide to go down alone. By the end of the show our lips were blue but the end of the show is the coolest part. We were lucky enough to have Aaron come with us and that made it such a fun night.

How to take a walk...solved.

And we are all very happy about it. :)