September: baby announcements, Bubs first day of school, random pics

Here we are at September already! :) It's only the last day of February as I type this. Better late than never.

September brought first smiles from Baby Girl, and Bubs had his first day of school. We also send out birth announcements, which is kind of a funny story. A friend of mine offered to do our announcements for free, and so we were emailing back and forth on all the details. Long story short, after I had them printed I realized the wrong birthdate was on there. I had told my friend Baby Girl's due date instead of her birthdate. Oh well! I guess I was more sleep deprived than I thought!

Bubs goes to 3 year old Mother's Day Out one morning a week, and he loves his teachers and going to class. He looks forward to it every week. He's not so much into learning or sitting still, but he loves the playground, snacktime, and especially playing with his friends. He is our social butterfly for sure. He will walk up to kids at the park, iJump, McWane, wherever and ask them to play. And in two minutes he's made a new best friend. :) We are interested to see how he does in K4 next year, when there will be actual learning and teaching taking place. He is doing better on his attention span though, and a few times a week we work on our letters. He recognizes his name now and can name the letters in it, and can even roughly trace them if I can get him to sit down long enough to do it. :) He knows all his colors and can count a little past ten. He's not big into arts and crafts like the Bean, but he does like painting and cutting with scissors. He's always very proud of the crafts he does in school and can't wait to show them to Daddy. Even though he requires a lot of my energy, I will be a little sad when he's in school three mornings a week next year! He is such a precious little boy, with his charming little grin!

Trying to get a pic for birth announcements...have I mentioned that I'm terrible at taking pictures??
Bubs assisting with the photoshoot...

This is the pic we ended up using for the birth anouncements...

I thought this one was sweet. Bubs LOVES Baby Girl and dotes on her a lot.

Baby Girl with her great-grandfather at my parent's house.

Bubs on his first day of school!

Snoozing away...Baby Girl prefers sleeping on her tummy...

What a sweet smile! Don't you just want to squeeze those cute cheeks?!

Nothing escapes the Bean's craftiness, including Baby Girl. Those hearts on her jammies are stickers. The Bean decorated Baby Girl when Mommy wasn't looking. :)

Just being precious...

Random pic having fun in the rain...

August 2: the Bean's birthday

The Bean's birthday was also in August. Since we had a 6 week old at the time, we wanted to have the party at home, and basically have someone else besides myself run the show. :) I was super excited when someone told me about a girl at our church who does character parties. She does Snow White, Cinderella, Pinkalicious, Fancy Nancy, and others. The Bean is still super into princesses, and so we chose Cinderella. "Cinderella" did an INCREDIBLE job! I highly recommend her. The Bean and all her buddies had a blast. "Cinderella" arrives in her rags and goes through the whole storyline of Cinderella. She talks about how her stepmother and stepsisters mistreat her and make her clean, and she gets the girls to help her dust using dustrags. Then she gets an invitation to the royal ball, and the girls help her get ready for the ball. Then they learn a dance for the ballroom, and rush "home" by the stroke of midnight where they fall asleep. And of course at the end they all get to try on the glass slipper. She really involved the Bean as the birthday girl, and they sang several songs from the the Cinderella movie. It was absolutely precious. And all I had to do was get a cake, and "Cinderella" did the rest - she even cut the cake for us!

My friend Sara N. let me borrow this adorable carriage. I'm terrible with flowers, but I think it turned out ok!

Cinderella arriving in her rags costume.

Getting ready for the ball...

Falling asleep at the stroke of midnight...

Making a wish!

I took a picture of each girl with Cinderella and mailed it off with the thank you notes.

All the girls had to hug Cinderella before she left...

A magicial time was had by all...and they lived happily ever after. :)

The End.

August: church, first day of school

Getting back to church...you can't really tell in this pic, but a sweet family friend made all three kids matching outfits. Baby Girl has on a dress almost just like the Bean's.
Bubs shorts match the girl's dresses. He didn't want his picture taken...

Sweet baby girl is/has been a great sleeper from the get-go!

She's about 3-4 weeks old here...

Our first Sunday back at church...note the Bean's necklace. Her friend Lynley made it for her and she wanted to wear it everywhere for a while. The Bean loves her accessories. :)

Bean on the first day of school

Bubs, as usual, wanted to make friends immediately even though this was the Bean's class. :)

More church pics...

Baby Girl was very mobile in her first few weeks! She rolled over at 8 weeks several times (then didn't do it again for a few months), and would "crawl" over her boppy. I found her like this one day. I know she looks uncomfortable, but this sweet content little girl didn't fuss one bit. :)

Baby Girl made transitioning to three kids very easy for us. She is/was a great sleeper, and got up every 4 hours in the middle of the night from the day we came home. There literally was never a night that she fussed and wouldn't go back to sleep. Not one. She would just drift right back off into dreamland. :) And during the day she was content to be in her swing most of the time. During the day she ate every 2 1/2 hours or so, and would sleep most of the other time. She is definitely the "laid-back" third child. So precious and happy!

The Bean started K5 in August as well! This was probably a bigger transition than having another baby. :) We all had to get used to the Bean having to be at school by 8 am EVERY morning. Her school gets out at 11:45 am each day, so I am thankful that I still have my afternoons with the Bean. Next year she'll go until 2:20 pm, so I am trying to soak in every minute till then! She didn't know any of the girls in her class initially, but she has made some good friends. She loves her teacher and continues to do well in school. Kindergarten has been more "academic" than I thought it would be...the Bean has already had two "reports" that she had to research (with help from Mom and the internet, of course), write out (even though it was only two sentences), and present to the class. She is reading all the books they send home, which is amazing to me, since she wasn't reading at all at the beginning of the year. We are so thankful that she enjoys school!

July part 2: Coming Home and Firsts

Leaving the hospital! No "coming home" pics, since my parents still had the kids when we got home, and we didn't try to conjure a coming home family pic later that night or next day. :)

Baby Girl was/is the center of attention around our house!

The kids wanted to make sure Baby Girl knew she had her very own toys. :)

My first outing with all three kids by myself: we went to Costco, ate lunch, got diapers and a few other items, and went back home. Baby Girl slept through the entire trip.

First bath: Baby Girl was not a fan!

I had good helpers!

Whew - it's all over!

Mainly just wanted a pic of Baby Girl's "lil sis" daygown...apparently she didn't want her picture taken!

At the Baron's game...always a fun event. Ray's office has it catered on one of the balcony area thingies, and they have bounce houses and face painting for the kids. It was hot, and the kids were having a ball running around...hence the sweat. :)

The three Skinner kids. Not sure what Bubs was doing here. :)

The rest of July was a blur. Having a newborn is crazy enough, but long story short, I ran a fever off and on for 2 1/2 weeks and had a few doctor's appointments after Baby Girl's birth before they figured out I had a retained placenta. That is what it sounds like, and I had to have a procedure to get it all taken out, and after that had no problems. Other than that we were just settling in to life with three kids under age 5! These pics of random little things we had going on, and a few from a Baron's game...a client event that Ray's office had.