Train Ride

The boys and I met some friends and rode a train today. If you live in the Fort Worth area, it's the Forest Park Train Ride. Noah was amazed to look out and see the water below us. He was quiet the whole ride, for a whole 45 minutes! I think he was just taking it all in. It only cost us $5.50 for a whole morning of entertainment. We enjoyed a fun picnic lunch afterwards.

here we are waiting for the train ride to begin
meredith, sawyer, and jax
it's hard to tell from this picture, but there were 3 rows back-to-back of babies in Bumbo seats- so cute!

we enjoyed a nice picnic lunch afterwards

noah ate about 3 bites and spent the rest of the time in this car

Storybook Parade

Noah participated in the Storybook Parade at his school yesterday. He in my opinion was the cutest one, but I'm kind of biased :)

noah playing with his friends
noah loved getting the candy!

noah and one of the church office personnel were dressed alike!

actually he was dressed like 2 of them!

our family waiting for the parade to begin

Trunk-or-Treats

On Sunday night we went to a Trunk-or-Treat at a local church. (Thanks Bufkins for inviting us!) And on Thursday night we went to another Trunk-or-Treat at University Baptist Church where Noah attends the Early Learning Center each Tuesday and Thursday. Noah got lots of compliments on his "good arm" when he threw a ball at one booth. I told one guy, "You should see him on a tee!". Noah was a train conductor. The overalls were courtesy of my Aunt Tiger and the accessories were a gift from Grammie. Jude was decked out in a pumpkin suit, handed down to us by Aunt Kaykie. I love to see the boys dressed up!

toot-toot!
all smiles (for a little while) in his pumpkin suit

the bufkins- justin, meredith, sawyer, and jaxon

our family- clay, noah, me and jude

the sanks- michael, meg, and naomi

jude zonked out

noah and sawyer chatting it up

the life and times of baby elmo

You may have seen in a previous post how much Noah loves his Elmo. He treats him like he is his own personal baby to care for. Lately we have found Elmo in various places around the house. Elmo has been sleeping in Noah's bed with his "bapoo" (Noah's yellow lamb), enjoying Jude's exersaucer, eating bananas and drinking milk at the table, sitting with Noah while playing his guitar, and being rocked to sleep. We find Elmo's adventures quite funny at our house.

elmo and "bapoo" sleeping in the bed
elmo relaxing in the exersaucer

elmo eating breakfast at the table

family visit part 2

The Fort Worth Zoo

noah and carson posing at the pumpkin patch
the rainwater family- jake, kk, and carson

landon and jake attempting to rock climb

uncle landon posing with 2 of his nephews

our family- clay, me, noah, and jude

family visit

My mom, KK, Jake, Carson, and Landon came for a visit this weekend. They came on Friday afternoon and stayed through Sunday morning. The weather was great, so we enjoying being outside and took a trip to the zoo on Saturday. Here's some pictures of our fun visit!

my smiling jude

noah and jude wore matching shirts on friday- so fun!
noah feeding carson a snack- we're not sure why :)

noah and carson enjoying their lunch together

carson and noah helping grammie roll the crescent rolls for dinner on friday night

grammie and baby jude

weigh in and stings

Just wanted everyone to know the size of our linebacker. Jude measured in at 18 lbs. and 25 1/2 inches at his 4 month check-up! WOW! He's on the all-clear to start solids, so we may start rice cereal soon!

Also, a quick story... Clay was off on Monday (because he worked on Saturday), so we decided to take Noah some place fun for the day. Well, Jude too, but you know he doesn't quite appreciate it like Noah does, so anyway... We started off by attempting to go to the Cowgirl Museum. All of the exhibits from the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History are located at the Cowgirl Museum because of renovations to the history museum. We got everybody loaded up in the doubler stroller, paid up and were ready to explore. However, the exhibits were shut down for an art show and we were told they wouldn't be back up and running for a couple of weeks. We decided to enact Plan B and took the boys to the park. Noah had a great time climbing ladders and sliding. Then all of sudden he started crying. I peered into the opening of the slide and there appeared to be a bee on his hand. I was scared to death, didn't know what to do, and just screamed, "Clay!". I'm afraid of any stinging insect, so I panicked. Clay threw Jude in my arms and hit the "bee" with his hat. It turned out to be a yellow jacket and that mean thing stung my baby's hand! We quickly went to CVS and made sure we didn't need to give him any Benadryl. We then took the boys to Chik-Fil-A for lunch. I usually don't get him ice-cream, but I figured he deserved it for his traumatic experience at the park. Now, several days later, he just looks at his hand and says, "bee?". I guess everybody has to have their first experience with stings.

I remember my sister, KK, had her first bee sting (or was it a wasp?) and came into the house telling us all that the insect said, "Hey KK and then it bit me". We've told that story for years. My first sting happened when I was in first grade. It was a Sunday afternoon and my dad was taking me to play over at Sarah Nelson's house. We went to get into his old blue Ford truck, I lifted the handle and a wasp was waiting for me. I didn't like that sting then and I don't like them now. In fact on Tuesday I only pumped half a tank of gas because there were bees swarming the trash can by the pump and I was terrified!

What's your "sting story"?

Jude is 4 months!

Jude turned 4 months old on Saturday. He has his check-up tomorrow and I'm so anxious to see how much he weighs! At his last appointment (2 month check-up) he weighed almost 15 pounds!! My boys just seem to come big and keep on growing big. Noah has evened out now and is in the 50th percentile on height and weight, but when he was Jude's age, he was in the 100th percentile on both! We'll see how Jude measures up tomorrow.

Here are some pictures I took of Jude in his "game day" clothes. Enjoy!

my lil' lsu fan
chillin' on the boppy
look how good he is at supporting his head when he's on his tummy :)

naming colors and sucking thumbs

Noah never sucked his thumb. He started loving the pacie around 6 months and didn't let it go until last week (26 months). Jude on the other hand LOVES his thumb. We've tried giving him a pacie since he was a month old. He takes his Soothie every once in a while, but really prefers his thumb. Sometimes he sucks to put himself to sleep and sometimes, like in the picture below, just for fun. I never knew how incredibly cute it looks for a baby to suck his thumb. I will just have to worry later about how to get him to stop once it's time!

my little thumb sucker
Jude will be 4 months tomorrow!!

Noah has been absorbing information so much lately! He can count to 10 (with assistance), can do 1-to-1 coorespondence with 3 objects, speak in 2-3 word sentences, anticipate sequencing in familiar books, and can now identify at least 3 colors. This video shows him naming red, blue, and green. He's still a little shaky on yellow and orange, but he's got these other 3 down. We can even ask him, "What color are the trees? What color is the grass?" And he responds, "geen". So fun!

baby elmo

Noah has become quite attached to a friend named, Elmo. He received him for Christmas last year from Grammie and Pops. Little did we know that Elmo would become his "baby" when Jude entered the world. Elmo usually tee-tee's in the potty during the day, gets rocked in the rocking chair, takes frequent short naps, and is loved very much by a sweet boy named Noah. We have all found it funny that Noah has enjoyed being such a good pal to Elmo when he doesn't seem to know that his brother exists!

Yesterday I found Noah praying with Elmo. He was putting Elmo "night, night" for about the 5th time that morning, when he closed his eyes and helped Elmo pray for everyone in the family. Then he kissed and hugged Elmo and left him to take a nap. I thought it was pretty funny and sweet at the same time. First of all, he's pretending which means he has a good imagination. He's also nurturing which will make him a good daddy one day. Finally, he's paying attention to us. When Clay and I put him to bed at night, we always pray with him, then kiss and hug him. Even when he doesn't seem to care about these prayer times, he's learning and it's becoming an important ritual to him!

brothers and pacies

I managed to get a couple of pictures of the boys together! No one told me how hard it is to take pictures of a toddler and a newborn!

I figured it would be easiest to let Noah lay down in the floor with Jude...
... But then I discovered that Jude could sit on the couch next to Noah.

This proved to be the best way to get their picture taken. Notice how cute their matching shirts are! My mom got these for the boys a while back. Noah's been wearing his since before Jude was born, but Jude's just now wearing his. And the shirt is 12 months!! That kid is growing so fast!
A huge milestone occurred this weekend. We have been cutting Noah's pacie for about a month now, so that we can gradually get him off of it. Clay cut a little more right before bedtime on Saturday night. I asked Noah if he wanted to throw it away. He said yes. (He loves throwing things away.) We took him outside, opened up the lid, and in went the pacie! I thought it was going to be this huge ordeal, but it was quite easy. I don't think he's missed it at all!

the circus

On Saturday we took the boys to the circus! I have such fun memories of seeing the trapeze artists and riding the elephants. We wanted our boys to enjoy the excitement as well!

The circus was too dark to take any pictures, so I just have a couple.

Noah was glued to the excitement the whole time. He really liked the tigers and the elephants. He also like the motorcyclists as they raced around in a cage. I, on the other hand, didn't like that a 10 year-old boy was participating in that dangerous activity. What kind of mom would let their child do that?!

Jude mostly ate and slept during all the excitement. He did jump when the cannon fired and when a clown car backfired!
here's a blurry picture of noah riding the elephant

playdate fun

Friday, some friends came over for a playdate. There were 6 adults and 7 children. The kiddos played inside and then we all went outside for a picnic. Here's the breakdown:

*Me, Noah (2 years) , and Jude (3 1/2 mths.)

*Meg and Naomi (7 mths.)

*Maron and Carson (11 mths.)

*Meredith, Sawyer (2 1/2 years), and Jaxon (1 year)

*Stephanie and Claire (almost 2 yrs.)

*Aunt Ashley

me and my sweet baby jude relaxing on a blanket
precious naomi
cute claire mowing the grass
naomi, jaxon, and carson enjoying some snacks
noah clapping for sawyer after he made a good hit

Noah can use the potty!

We have been trying for many months for Noah to sit and use the potty. For the past couple of months, he has become very interested in sitting on the potty, only. We encourage him to tee-tee and poo-poo, but alas just sitting occurs. Lately he sits for long periods of time and even grunts. He reads his Elmo potty book in which that shrilly voice exclaims, "Elmo can use the potty!" This has gone on for a while now, but we had a break through this week. Noah tee-teed (spelling?) in his potty on Wednesday night and Saturday night! I think we're a long way from getting out of diapers, but maybe a step closer. Then I can spend the extra $40/month elsewhere- oh yea, on another couple of packs of diapers for Jude :)