Well, Ellie is officially over 4 weeks old now :) I have to say, I have had the BEST time at home with the kids, especially Caleb. He is learning so much- we are working on colors and words and counting and tons of other things. He even pooped in the potty chair today!!!!

(Here we are practicing sitting on the potty- he really likes the Elmo:)

It's funny when that is such an exciting part of the day! haha.....we weren't planning on potty training, but we saw an Elmo potty chair at WalMart and Caleb loved it- so we went ahead and bought it. He is just getting used to the idea, but we are not going to push it until he is ready.

Big brother Caleb:
He is such a great big brother and so much fun to hang out with now! Here he is walking Sam (or "Ham" as he calls him):


AND, Baby Ellie grew out of her first outfit- a definite milestone! Especially since she didn't fit into anything when we brought her home (even the newborn clothes were huge and we had to get Preemie diapers :)) She is really growing, and still has all her dark hair. And on Saturday, I saw her smile for the first time...I am convinced it was a REAL one! She is such a sweet girl.

All ready for church:
Daddy giving Ellie her first bottle! We wanted to practice so my mom could watch Ellie on our anniversary. It was so nice to go to dinner and a movie!

We celebrated Caleb's birthday with a car cookie cake (which he didn't want to eat! wierd! so he fed it all to daddy :))
Here he is blowing out his candle:

Caleb went for his 2 year check up on Friday, and he is 30 lbs and 34 inches tall now! 50th percentile for height, 75th for weight, and 95th percentile again for his head- it has been this way since 4 months! haha...
He also had to get LOTS of shots, and he was super-scared this time (I think this is partly due to his stitches incident)

We have had lots of fun visitors lately and we had a nice visit with Grandpa Mike last weekend as well...he came bearing gifts, all of which Caleb absolutely loved! He is getting pretty good at hitting his baseball :)


Here are a few pics of our pool party with our awesome friends (Ellie loved her first pool party- she was almost 2 weeks old- she slept the entire time!) Caleb, on the other hand, does NOT like to swim, but he had fun playing with the fountain and the ball :) We will have to work on this next year...maybe swim lessons?? Or does he just take after his "Aunt" Ann- afraid there might be a fish in the water..haha...




Want to hear about my latest "bad mom" moment?? Well, Monday morning it was sprinkling outside, but I decided we needed to get out of the house and do some shopping, so I took both kids to run errands. Little did I know, there was a MONSOON coming (I never check the weather channel- who has time to do that with a 2 year old and a baby?). We were just getting ready to leave WalMart (which is stressful in itself- Caleb was screaming and saying "UP! UP!" because he wanted out of the cart, and Ellie woke up and was crying by this point) and my cart was overflowing (there is NO room in the cart anymore b/c Caleb sits in front and Ellie's carseat takes up the whole cart!! If anyone has a better system for grocery shopping with 2 kids, PLEASE let me know!). So I look outside and see torrential rain pouring down! Pouring!!! Of course, I have no umbrella (don't even know where it is) so I just stood there in a daze, wondering what in the heck I was going to do, since we had no rain attire and I only had a thin blanket for Ellie. I had tears welling up in my eyes.....just then, a really nice lady (who also had kids) came up to me and was like "AWWWWWWW....I will help you!" (really she said that! I must have looked desperate...) She offered to watch the kids so I could go get my car.....don't worry, I didn't take her up on that....I have seen way to many lifetime movies to fall for that one :) So, she went and put her kids in the car and brought back a big umbrella. Then she held the umbrella and we RAN to my car. Caleb started screaming and crying because of the thunder and lightning and rain, Ellie was screaming because she was wet, and every piece (EVERY SINGLE ONE) of my clothing was soaked! As we were running though the parking lot (which was practically a lake), Caleb's potty chair flew out of the cart, so the nice lady sprinted back and got it. We loaded the kids and the soaked groceries, and I got in my car, took a deep breath, and thanked God for taking care of us- What would I have done without that lady???? So, we won't be doing that again for awhile.....

Anyway, just wanted to share- gotta go because Caleb pooped (not in the potty chair this time) and Ellie is waking up- love you all!