This and that

Merlin, guardian of sleeping children. Non-believers have postulated that he is just there for the warmth....



...like Father, like son. Oooooooh! Compuuuuuterz!

Roll-roll!

...this is what happens when you put your baby down on the ground to get dressed... forgetting that he can roll everywhere now! Whoopsie, Sean, almost lost you under the bed!

We love our Grampas!

Great Grandma Connie requested a few pictures of Grandpa Bradley and "the boys" - so I decided to chase them with a camera this evening.

Grandpa B and Sean.

It was hard to get everyone to look at the camera AND not have certain 4-year-olds or certain 29-year-olds making faces.

Ben and Grandpa B look nice in this one. The boys are not cooperating.

Playing on the floor with Grandpa.

A sandwich with Dad, Mark, and Sean.

And last, but never least, Grandpa G and Sean.

Roll-roll-roll!!!

We officially have a mobile baby. Sean rolls all over the place! Aaaaah! Must. Vacuum. And. Mop. Floors.

I love my Mark...

I told Mark to take off his shirt for bed, and it turns out he was wearing 4 shirts on top of each other. One for each day I told him to put on a new shirt. Next time I'll have to specify taking the old one off first!

A few black and white baby pics...

Sean was so excited to play with his naky feet that he wouldn't look at me, but I think these are pretty darn cute anyway!







More pics of Mark will come soon... he is a bit camera shy these days...

...a few more baby pictures for Gramma!

I'm curious to see what color Sean's eyes are going to end up being. Mark's eyes were very blue by this time, with no dark rim around the edges. Sean's are grey with a very dark rim, they sometimes look navy blue, sometimes almost green.

Sean is getting really good at soothing himself to sleep. He still cries every now and then for a few minutes, but usually he talks himself to sleep while playing with his texturosaurus or his taggy blanket. He likes to pull a blanket or something over his head before falling asleep, then he turns his head sideways. We always check to make sure he can still breathe, often uncovering him at night once he's asleep...

We got Sean a jumperoo for Christmas - since he LOVES bouncing with his little chubby legs when someone holds him. He is still young enough that we only let him play in the jumperoo once a day for a max of 10 mins (don't want to hurt his back), but BOY does he go to town during that time!

You have to see it to believe it. He bounces and BOUNCES and bounces, but it's not out of control, he can stop himself right away if he wants to (to rest, or to play with the attached toys).

Sean likes to do these little "airplane" exercises. I sometimes lie down on the floor and do them too - it's a lot harder when your arms and legs aren't stubby!

Sean can roll both directions now, he's a pro at rolling from his tummy onto his back, he only sometimes rolls the other way.


"Hi! I am all the way down here, on the entryway rug! Ok, pick me up now... people walk on this thing!"

5km walk with our church

Our church did another 5km walk/run on Jan. 2, and a friend just gave us some of the pics that were taken along the way:

We are waiting for everyone else to be ready. Lincoln was admired by many!

This time we didn't take any breaks, Mark did great on his walk-bike, and Sean slept the whole time in his sling, inside my coat.

It was COLD, but we bundled enough that we actually were too hot after a while.

I seem to remember Ben saying that Lincoln would wear himself out and would stop pulling on the leash. Well, at this point we had walked about 4km... does the dog look tired yet? (the Momma was huffing and puffing after the up-hill stretch... I should have let Linc pull ME!)

Almost back at the church!

There were lots of folks cheering at the finish line!! We did it, and finished together!

As a reminder, here we are last May, walking the same stretch. I was about 5 or 6 months pregnant.

That time we finished very near the end because Mark needed to rest. This time we were much quicker!

Mark quote

me: "Wow, Mark, look at all the stars in the sky tonight!"
Mark: "Yeah! Like millions and millions of helicopters!"

Sean is 4 months old!!!

We just got back from Sean's 4-month appointment. He is 28 inches long, and weighs 17lbs 11oz (71.5cm und 8023g). Big, healthy boy.

Hair cut and rolling over

On Saturday I had to run some errands, and very innocently asked Ben to cut Mark's hair while I was gone. The end result was that I came home to a 4-year-old whose head feels like Velcro. Judging by the pictures Ben took during the cut, I suspect they had fun:

First Ben gave Mark a "high and tight" soldier-ish cut...

...then he turned it into a mow-hawk. This is Mark's "bad" face.

...a friendly mow-hawk-guy...

...and finally, the end result! I think Mark is a good-looking little fella any day, but I think I prefer him with more hair...

On a side-note, Sean learned to roll from his back onto his tummy today. He's been rolling tummy-to-back for a long time now. He actually traveled a decent distance rolling. Then he seemed to forget how, and flopped around like a stranded fish and screeched for help...

Just a regular old day...

There is nothing particularly interesting to report. Life is good, and fairly mellow.

Mark had fun playing with the "paint" program on my laptop. I like this photo because you can see his reflection on my screen, where he is drawing white on black. Sean happily played next to Mark.

...a baby smile for Gramma!

1st week of 2011!

Mark has always been more of a morning person than anyone else in our little family, and he likes to come into our room, fully dressed, to wake us up at what I consider to be ungodly hours (aka before 7:30am).

On the bright side, Mark enjoys watching Sean while I get dressed.

Sean gets a real kick out of his big brother!

Look at those chubby chubby legs! Nothing is scrawny about this little guy...

We really really loved having Dad around so much during the holidays! He had 6 work days off, with 2 weekends.