1,2,3... Jump

My boys love reading blogs of our friends and family. They especially love watching videos. The other day they saw a cute video of my cousin Kelly's little boy jumping off a little stool into a pile of pillows and since then they've been begging me to let them do it. Cruz insisted we use the big step stool and he and Cora had a blast.

Ready for his first jump. Cruz's room is pretty packed so there wasn't a lot of room to back up and take pictures.

Sis needed a hand with the jumping so I only got her "after" pictures. You know its fun when there's drool. ;)

Thanks Kel for inspiring a fun pajama morning! :)

Little Coco Bean

If we could keep any two toys for Cora, it would be this old Coach purse of mine and a baby doll. She literally carries them with her all day.

Taking a quick break to feed her baby 

and give it some "loves." 

Watching her play with her dolls makes my heart so happy. :)

Rowan is 5.5

We celebrated 5.5 years of sweet Rowan on Monday. He was so very excited. It was fun to talk with him this year about WHY we celebrate half birthdays. He said its one of his favorite traditions. 

Finally ready to celebrate after a long school day. 

Rowan let Cora & Cruz open one of his gifts

Adventures in Odyssey and a whole collection of characters from Mario Bros.

A little math homework came next.

We capped off the day with Rowan's favorite spaghetti and a special birthday cupcake.

We are so proud of our sweet five and a half year old. Rowan continues to amaze us with his math and reading skills. He is starting to really enjoy reading. His favorites are Fly Guy, Frog & Toad and Magic Tree House. Rowan is still a little math whiz and is excelling at math with the first graders. 

Sweet Rowan enjoys getting hot lunch at school on the days they serve waffles and pizza, he is excited to play another season of t-ball, enjoys playing the Wii and continues to be an amazing big brother. He always keeps an eye on Cora when we're out and helps to take care of her. He plays so nicely with Cruz and is often putting Cruz before himself. Rowan's relationship with Jesus is growing too. He loves reading his Bible and remembers all the important details in the stories. He talks almost daily about Jesus living in his heart and how he wants Jesus to live in other people's hearts too. He enjoys listening to Adventures in Odyssey and connecting the episodes to his own life.

We are so thankful for five and a half years of our sweet, intelligent, Rowan Christian. 

Cora 16 Months & Other Stuff

I haven't had a whole lot to post about the past month. Rowan has been busy in Kindergarten. He had a big Math test, which he did fabulously on, he's been learning about the continents and continuing to enjoy reading and has even branched into some longer chapter books. Cruz loves being the biggest brother to Cora during the day. He's been perfecting his letter sounds and listening skills at preschool, he's still doing swimming lessons and loves playing games and doing puzzles with mommy at home. 

Sissy turned 16 months yesterday.

She had her second haircut this month. The sides and top are growing pretty slowly so we've been keeping the back shorter to prevent too much of the "mullet" look. Her hair still sweetly curls in the back after her bath.

She still loves her babies and pushing them around in her stroller. She keeps a sippy cup on the folded hood of her toy stroller, which is where I keep her water bottle in our umbrella stroller.

We tried a new church this morning and Cora did great in the toddler class. She looks so grown up.

Puppy is still Cora's special lovey. She is really starting to enjoy reading books and her vocabulary is growing daily. Some of my favorite new words are, "nummy, ball, birdy and bow." If we see a mom with a baby carseat, Cora immediately starts yelling, "baby, baby!" She doesn't even need to see the baby, she just knows that its in the infant seat.

Cora had her first real time outs this month. She is very stubborn and opinionated and has thrown several tantrums as well. She's still my sweet snuggler though. She's definitely a mamas girl. Last month she started saying "mommy" instead of "mama." So sweet.

We had our first Gymboree class on Friday. Its so fun to do something special together while the boys are at school.

Pretty purple toes!

We recently learned that the age cut off for the 4-6 t-ball division is April 30th meaning that the players have to be 4 before April 30th to play even though the season starts at the end of February. Since Cruz's birthday is April 4th, that meant that he could play this year. We signed him and Rowan up on the same team. Cruz will undoubtedly be the youngest on his team but we just couldn't pass up the opportunity for the brothers to play a sport together. Who knows if that will ever happen again.

I guess a post like this is what happens when I don't update for a while. :) Oh yeah, one more thing, Rowan, Cruz and Cora are going to have a new baby cousin in September! So excited for Amanda, Nate and Jade. 

Children's Museum

We put one of our Christmas gifts to good use on the boys' day off of school yesterday as we visited the Children's Museum. Grammy was in town for the weekend so we got to drag her along with us. 

This was actually a picture from Sunday but I love it the snuggles. Cruz got new glasses and they are adorable on him.


The boys have been dying to come back to this museum since the last time we visited last March.


Coco enjoyed climbing on everything, of course.


She also enjoyed cooking in the kitchen.


And washing her hands in the pretend sink.


The boys, as always, enjoyed the bike car wash, car racing, and ball tunnels.


Best big brothers. Rowan rode them around and Cruz periodically put his arm around Cora to make sure she was okay.




Cruz loved this pencil car.


We dropped Grammy off at the airport which is close by and headed back home to play outside. I had a really nice 30th birthday weekend. I very much missed my Grandma, who was going to come visit along with mom but wasn't feeling well and had to stay back home in Chicago. I am thankful that Mom got to come though. My birthday was a lot more fun having her here. :)

Frozen

I'm sorry if the pictures on the blog have been slow to load. I'm doing it the same way I've always done it but I think the picture hosting site I use (Flickr) made some changes. Hopefully this is better.

Last week a surprise came in the mail. We referred some friends to the kids' pediatric dentist and as a thank you they sent us four free movie tickets. I've been hearing my friends talk non stop about the new Disney movie Frozen so these tickets gave us the encouragement to go see it. It was such a fun, colorful, musical movie. We all loved it.

Love these sweet little guys. It was fun to take them somewhere without the distraction of our sweet Coco.


Waiting for the movie to start... and waiting for Daddy to come back with their popcorn!

Love how he's gripping the arm rest, totally in to the movie. After we left we asked if he liked it and he said, "no, it was a girl movie." I think this pictures exposes that lie, Rowan buddy! ;)

15 Month Stats:

Just thought I'd update with a few pictures of Cora. She finally had her check up so we now have her official 15 month stats.

Ready for the doctor. Pup Pup had to come, of course.

Little Mama taking care of her baby.

21 lbs 8 oz (30th percentile)

33 inches (97th percentile) 

Christmas Wrap Up

We spent December 25th with my maternal grandparents and Aunt Marianne. The kids had so much fun enjoying special treat bags and playing new games. Growing up, my Aunt Marianne always bought us new board games and she's continuing that tradition for my kids.

Sweet Coco, ready to party.

Loading up to leave Grandma's house in Morton and head back to the Chicago area.

Brrr!!!

We read the Christmas story and listened to Christmas music on our three hour drive.

Jade loves reading books, especially with her mom.

Reading books under the tree


Rowan got right to work on the word search book that Aunt Mar gave him in his treat bag.

Girl cousins playing sweetly.

On December 27th we celebrated Christmas with my dad's extended family. This is always a fun highlight because there are extra kids to play with. My cousin Kelly's daughter Summer is a few months younger than Cruz and her son Colton is about 5.5 months older than Coco. Rowan, Cruz and Summer had a lot of fun playing together this year. The kids were blessed with some fun gifts including tickets to the aquarium! They are excited to see sting rays.

The Whole Gang! We didn't quite get a perfect picture since sweet Colton slipped off the footstool right when the camera went off. There were a couple other shots but Cora isn't looking at the camera so this was the best of my gang. ;)

That wraps up our Christmas in Illinois! So glad we were blessed with safe travel and lots of fabulous fellowship. :)