"A baseball bat is a wondrous weapon" -Ty Cobb

Connor started tball this week. He's been asking to play for two years now and we finally gave in signed him up. We asked his two besties Kaci & Aidan if they'd want to play too and we were lucky that we all got on the same team. It's really great that they can all see each other like this since Connor isn't at school with them anymore and I know he misses them like crazy :)

The league meeting was this past weekend and it couldn't come fast enough. that's what she said. sorry. We initially signed Connor up for tball in July so about 513 times a day we have to tell him that tball starts soon, tball will be in a few weeks, tball will start when it's cooler outside. finally it's here!! We got his uniform all ordered, though I still don't know what our team color is going to be...it's killing me. I want to buy a shirt for Jeff, Noah and I to match :) Also killing me is that we won't find out our game schedule until 4 days before the first game. The OCD is raging at this. raging.

Our Coach, Coach Paul who is also a realtor in real life :) scheduled practices for tuesday and thursday evenings at 5pm. I'm told this is totally normal for practices to be when the majority of the workforce are still working...um, not everyone is a SAHM or a teacher folks...I don't get it but whateves. Jeff didn't even think twice and is leaving work early on Tuesdays and Thursdays for practices. I love him. We practice in Tempe so it's pretty easy for us to get there since my office and the boys' school is just about 2 miles away from the park.

Papa Van Hook and Grammy & Papa Barnes came to Connor's first practice on Tuesday. My mom was in Colorado and was so sad to miss it...I know she'll be there tomorrow night though so she'll get to cheer them on too. Connor, Aidan and Kaci were so excited to see each other it was like they ran to each other in amazing slow motion.

Practice went about 100% as we'd feared expected. Connor was a ball hog and threw himself down on the ground anytime someone else got to the ball first, which became rare toward the end of practice when he completely gave up catching the ball and opted for tossing his entire body on top of it so that no one else could even have a shot. Awesome. I'm so glad that Jeff was busy doing his assistant coach stuff so that he didn't see Connor melting down. He's three and I know that...he will share toys, but he draws the line at baseball apparently. He's just so damn obsessed. He'll learn but I think my dad's right when he said it's bound to be a long damn season. :)

practice is serious business ok?

stretching and warming up with Coach Paul

practicing running the bases

Connor & Kaci heading home

Grammy Barnes & Baby Bear (aka Noah...)

Aidan did great and had a much, much better attitude than Mr. Barnes

Connor: Aidan I swear I will cut you if you get to that ball before I do.

practice is over, we can be friends again :)

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

When Connor was about 4-5 months old we would hold him up and let him "stand" on us. He loved it so much that he'd fuss anytime we just had him sitting because he wanted to stand. Always with the standing! Since we can't hold him 24/7, we went out and got him a bouncer/walker/exersaucer thingy. Because we're nuts, we bought the most expensive one at BRU but it's been soooo worth it. Connor loved it and it becomes a standing toy when they are standing/walking on their own so he used it for about a year after that just to stand and play with the toys.

About a month ago Noah started with his own love of standing constantly. He gets so giddy and giggly when we hold him up by his little hands and let him stand by himself. Loves it. So we broke out the exersaucer thing and introduced Noah to his new favorite thing. :) He's probably a month plus younger than Connor was when he started using it so we had to prop him up with pillows to get him to remain upright in the thing.

he just loves it. i have a pic of connor in this toy and i need to find it so i can post a comparrison pic.

sometimes i just have to post the weird ones. this is clearly one of those time. wtf kid.

he does a lot of this - eating the seat. I think he's started the teething process over the last week or so. Drool is everywhere.

he loves this football. if he's fussy we just give it to him and he chews on it with serious determination. I'm not sure what he's determined to do but he's focussed on it.

look at these chunky legs :)

Blog Slacker

why do i feel such anxiety when i haven't blogged in too long? it's not my job. i'm fully aware that there aren't hundreds of readers out there awaiting my next posting. i have plenty of other stuff on my plate so i'm certainly not bored. i'm not really sure what it is. i'm 99% sure it's a personality flaw or simply my ocd. yeah, it's def one of those. I know that I have boatloads of pics to get posted so there will surely be lots and lots of updates coming soon, promise.

now for the excuses. more for myself than for the tens of people who will read this. i'm exhausted. Noah was sick all last week, work has been crazy busy and well, football started, and then I came down with whatever Noah has. More than a week later and we're both on the mend but fighting the lagging cough. This past weekend kicked off t-ball so there's another thing.

there are some exciting/scary/promising decisions being made in our family right now that I'm not really ready to blog about but hopefully I'll be able to in the next month or so. sorry, i'm fully aware that was annoying. it's like, i have a secret...oh i can't tell you. annoying yes. sorry again.

God, I hate when my kids are sick. As toddlers, it's horrible but as babies it's just downright scary. They can't tell you where it hurts or how bad it hurts, they just want to be held but then they scream in your arms just as easily, and you can't really do much when it's a viral thing. I subscribe to the "let's just give him antibiotics just in case" theory...unfortunately/fortunately, the boys' doctor does not. So it's a waiting game I suppose. A couple weeks ago Noah started coughing and having eye and nose boogers pretty steadily. The dreaded nose bulb was doing nothing and his coughing and wheezing was getting worse so I took him to the doctor Monday afternoon of last weekend. Bronchiolitis was the conclusion and breathing treatments were prescribed. We had a nebulizer from when Connor had RSV so that was fortunate I suppose.

Noah stayed home all week last week until we finally got him back to school on Friday. The other thing that really sucks about your kids being sick is having to stay home from work. Since I used all my vacation time when he was born, anytime I'm not at work I'm not getting paid. Ouch. For that reason, Jeffrey is typically the one to stay home because the Dbacks have amazing PTO and flexibility. Luckily, I can do a good amount of my work from home so when I stayed home with his this week I was able to get a lot done.

Well, that's about it for this random posting. I'm going to work on getting some pics posted today as well but no promises. I have a lot to post so prepare yourselves!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

We are a family of sports fans. Jeff prefers baseball, but football is easily my favorite. easily. We're all thrilled that football season is finally here. For me, it's like you have to wait through the longest, most boring season (baseball...) to finally be rewarded with football. ahhh.

For years and years, our family has gotten together at the Vine or someother nearby family friendly sports bar to watch the games. We have a fantasy league made up of family members and it's just fun to get everyone together for one day a week. We usually arrive at 10am and stick around for 3-4 hours, sometimes more. There are usually about 10-15 of us but the first Sunday of regular season brought nearly everyone out...I think there were about 25 there at one time. Good times. :)

not really a die hard fan yet, clearly

creepy face

we come with lots of baggage - we bring a portable dvd player with like 5 movies in case his interest in the games diminishes. this weekend, he was content with jacob's nintendo thingy

Noah is continuing to grow and become more of a little person. He's reaching for things way more and he'll turn when you call to him - when he feels like it. He smiles and laughs all the time and is still a snuggler. He'll be 4 months old next week.

this is one of his favorite spots to practice his sitting

i had to have photographic proof of him grasping something. this is a new skill so we're pretty stoked. now, we've just got to get him to learn to hold his own bottle. :)

Fall 2010 School Pics

I know two boys who are competing for cutest brothers ever...and I think they are really bringin' it.

so i wasn't going to order the brother one, but jeff insisted. i like how it looks like noah is trying to escape from all of connor's love. awesome.

Low Expectations

While I find both of our boys amazingly handsome and know they are both ABLE to produce a perfect smile upon demand, I am still 99% sure that when I pick up their school photos today I'll be finding something similar to the gems below. Yeah.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

oh man, this picture is super creepy, but i love that it shows how long his eyelashes are!

Noah is getting so strong!

i found him like this...just doing a little light reading on mario kart. awesome.

happy noah

such a great big brother, turning on noah's music :)

Three Months Old

Noah Jackson is growing leaps and bounds right now. It's amazing. He doesn't have an appointment at 3 months so we did our own measurements at home. We tried to measure him but all we had in the house was one of those huge silver tool box measuring tape things. Not easy, but he came in around 25". By our scientific method (weigh me, weigh me holding noah, figure the difference) he's just about 16 pounds. Is that possible? He's not fat, just super long and sturdy I guess. He does have some delicious thieghs though :)

He's smiling more and more recently which is just so much fun. He smiles as soon as he sees that we're about to feed him which probably explains the twenty pounds :)!! We're religious to his schedule where he eats every 4 hours except overnight. He's been sleeping through the night for several weeks now thankfully. His last feeding is around 10am and he eats again in the morning at 7am. For the most part, he'll sleep the entire time overnight but sometimes he'll fuss at some point, but eventually pass back out. Yes, we're a 'cry it out' household and it works great for us. We get sleep and they learn to self-soothe. As a parent you learn the difference between a real cry and a 'meh, i woke up and i'm annoyed' cry. trust.

We're trying to get him to spend more time on his tummy but like most babies he's not in love with that idea. He'll tolerate it for a bit but then will scream until you give in and pick him up. Then he'll look at you like, finally.

He's still doing great with nursing but it's more of an appetizer for him. He eats 7oz each bottle feeding. When I nurse him, we top him off with anywhere between 4-7 ounces. i love my pig baby. I'm still going and getting him from school every day at 11 to nurse him at my office. I really love it and it breaks up my day nicely. My coworkers love that they get to see him everyday too. :)