I can't believe how fast the time is flying by. Cora is so fun right now. She smiles and coos. She loves her play mat, especially the light up star at the top and she loves to smile at her brothers. Cora is still sleeping pretty well. She goes to bed at 7:30 and her night time feeding has been stretching later and later. Now, its usually around 4:30 or 5. She is up for the morning around 7:30. Cora went to the doctor for some goop in her eyes last Wednesday and she weighed 11 lbs 5 oz. She is by far the biggest of the Baum babies at this stage. I'll update her length when she has her check up on Tuesday.
Warning, picture overload coming up! :) We had a fun time putting up the tree. The boys were really into it this year. They also helped Roger decorate the outside of the house. Cora enjoyed looking at the lights and pooping through two Christmas outfits.
First gift of the season.. ornaments for the tree!
Curious George: Cruz's favorite Book is "8 Little Monkeys", his lovey is a stuffed monkey and he acts like a monkey. :)
Pink Onesie: Cora, for obvious reasons. :)
Alex the Lion: He's from the movie Madagascar and Rowan went to see his first movie in theaters this year. He saw Madagascar 3 on a special date with Daddy.
Cruz is SO uncooperative for pictures right now.
Hard work...
Perfect.
In her second outfit of the day with her ornament. :)
The Baum family has so much to be thankful for. This year I was especially aware of God's great goodness to us. We had so much fun celebrating the day together.
We started out our morning with church. There's no better way to start off a day of giving thanks than with worshipping the giver of all our blessings.
We are so thankful for our three children. They are each an important part of making our family the way it is. Roger and I couldn't feel more honored to be their parents despite their obvious dislike for picture taking. :)
The boys helped me set the table and pick out the paper goods. I love that they want to be involved as they are getting older. Rowan also helped me prep the turkey.
I thought place cards would be a cute touch. Roger found them quite funny seeing as there were just five of us.
The boys played outside all afternoon while our food cooked. They played so nicely together which Roger and I were so thankful for.
Our little princess on her first Thanksgiving. Whenever Cora gets all dressed up one of the boys will always comment that she looks like a princess. They just love her so much. I hope that Rowan and Cruz will do a great job teaching Cora how she deserves to be treated by boys as she grows up.
The Schmidt's invited us to join their family for dessert this evening. Rowan and Cruz had a blast playing and jumping on the Schmidt's giant trampoline. Cora enjoyed being passed around and was in such a happy mood. We are so thankful to have friends who are like family to us.
When we got home we got in our PJ's and continued our tradition of ushering in the Christmas season with a movie. We watched a cute one called "I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown."
Wanna hear what we're thankful for this year? Here's a little video. We decided that we couldn't just say that we are thankful for our family since those are a given.
The rest of this weekend will be spent getting the house decked for Christmas and Miss Corabelle's baptism a week from Sunday. We are so blessed.
The boys had their annual Preschool Thanksgiving Program today. I was on my own since Roger had to work. Cora slept like an angel right until the program started, of course, so I did my best with the videos.
Cruz's class was kind of shy and quiet so they are hard to hear. Cruz is the second little boy from the right wearing a light blue/dark blue shirt. I was so proud of him. He was one of the kids who did the actions and sang the songs. He's grown so much since the beginning of school!
I thought I'd add this video that I took at the park today. Here is Cruz exuberantly singing his program songs. :)
Rowan is the first child to go (the letter G). He very enthusiastically said his line.
I missed the very beginning of this song. Rowan is still at the same spot. Hear the baby scream in the middle of the video? That's Miss Corabelle.
Sissy got all decked out to go watch her big brothers.
The little stars.
Our greatest blessings. SO thankful for these little ones.
This video isn't interesting at all but I had so much fun dressing her up this day so I wanted to remember her outfit. :) Also, she's usually buckled into her swing but I put in her in it solely for a video and was right there the whole time.
Cora is definitely our chubbiest little baby and I love it!
You can't tell from this photo but these two have been fighting NON STOP lately and its driving me nuts.
I am so in love with Cora's newborn photos. I left out the two pictures we used on her birth announcement but here are the rest of them. She was 5 days old in these. Oh, and Cora wasn't the most cooperative so they weren't able to get a lot of varied poses but the ones of her sweet face are my favorite anyway.
Cruz is so into "guys" these days. Any little figure can be a guy. He has some Mickey Mouse characters, superheroes, lego people and even a little Elmo. All of them fit into his "guys" category. Cruz is usually found carrying around a guy or two. He also loves to line his guys up, make them drive cars, or do scary dives off of tables. I love watching his little imagination at work.
Our pre-school has a wonderful phonics program that starts in the 2 year old program and builds through Pre-K. Cruz loves that he is learning using the same animal characters as Rowan. The animal for B is Bubba Bear. Cruz can recognize and name the sound of each letter a-g. This amazes me considering he never showed any interest in this before!
Here's a bit of his Good-bye Song from school. School has been so good for him this year. Its given him confidence to stand on his own two feet instead of relying so much on Rowan. We are so proud of Cruz.
Here are a couple Cruz phrases that I want to remember:
-Where us guys goin? (when we leave the house)
-Can I please have mores? (love the added 's' on more)
-No cryin' Cora, sweetheart (melts me every time)
-I love you soooo much, Mama! (spontaneously tells me all the time)
I still have a hard time believing that I have a daughter. She was a dream and a prayer for so long. Cora is the most precious little thing and I'm not the only one who thinks so. :)
Cora's big brothers love her so much that they fight over who gets to hold her hand while she's getting her diaper changed. They fight over who will hold her while I shove a bite of food into my mouth. They fight over who loves her the most. This little girl gives her brothers big giant smiles all the time now. She is just as much in love with them as they are with her.
Seeing Roger with Cora melts my heart. Rog loves the boys so much but seeing him with his little girl is so sweet and different. When she first started smiling, Daddy was the only one who was guaranteed a smile. Roger (though he may not admit it) loves to see her all dressed up and will comment if Cora doesn't have a bow in her hair. The skinny jeans she was wearing today were a favorite of his (and mine)!
Thank you God for the blessing that is our Cora Grace.
Rowan's class sang in chapel on Wednesday. This video isn't the clearest but Rowan is the child at the far right wearing a white polo shirt. Thanks to my friend Renee for video taping this for me. It was so convenient that her son Monty just happened to be standing right next to Rowan. :)
We had so much fun Trick or Treating this year. Our friends, the Schmidt's, hosted a little trick or treating party. We had pizza and cupcakes and then hit the streets in their neighborhood. The boys trick or treated for almost the full two hours and came home with TONS of candy. Both Rowan and Cruz kept saying how much fun they were having. It was so sweet. Cora didn't sleep all that much while we were out but she made up for it with a seven hour stretch of sleep last night. This is her second seven hour stretch this week. Hopefully it will become an every night occurrence.
I took too many pictures but my little boxers and Minnie Mouse were just too sweet. Rowan and Cruz didn't wear much of their costumes for most of the night so I'm thankful I got some pictures of them with the robes and gloves on too.
Don King and his champion boxers.
I couldn't decide which was my favorite of the boys so I posted all three. :)
Tough guys.
After visiting Disney World in April, Disney has sort of become the theme of our year so coming up with Cora's costume was easy.
Sweet Girl didn't exactly behave like this the whole time we were trick or treating. She's not a fan of her car seat AT ALL so most of the time she was snuggled in someone's arms. :)
I can't believe its November already. Bring on the Holidays!!!!
