Happy Happy Birthday

Last week my little girl turned 3 years old. It's kinda crazy.

She has been looking forward to September since June when we celebrated Jeff's birthday. There were even tantrums that went like this: "Is it MY birthday yet???? Is it September? I want it to be September!!!!"

A few days before her birthday, I took her to Dollar Tree after her dance class to pick out some party supplies. She picked out birthday hats, a purple table cloth, princess napkins, and cupcake paper plates and streamers.

Of course Tangie Bear came to the birthday party, and one of Christine's best friends in the whole world came all the way from Houston- POOH BEAR!

GiGi came too, she caught a ride with Pooh Bear.

 I made Christine a little felt house that she was pretty excited about

  She loved her little party. We really enjoyed getting to spend Christine's special day with GiGi.

 She may have gotten a little spoiled.

The day after her birthday, she woke up from her nap crying, and told me that we forgot to unwrap one of her presents, and where was it? I think she dreamed there were more presents. Luckily Nana and Papa had sent some packages in the mail and the birthday fun could continue.

The Month of August

Time for the summary of the month of August over at the Hamaker's.

August was HOT HOT HOT. Holy smokies it was hot! Everything that had managed to stay alive in July died in August. At least in Houston even when it's hot in the summer everything is very green and lush, and there are big exciting tropical storms that poor buckets of water in mere minutes. Not here. I think I have forgotten what a real rain storm looks like.

Christine's favorite toys right now are leggos and little people. Christine build these little cars for her people. I had assumed that Jeff had taught her how to make them, but when I asked Jeff, he said no. Christine is always surprising me with her creativity.
Right now ALL the stuffed animals have their own blanket. The Hello Kitty Babies share this green one that was originally made for Jacob.

A highlight of this month was getting a "big girl bed" for Christine. She finally moved out of the crib and into a twin bed. For a little while she was sleeping on the crib mattress on the floor, but I finally made up my mind about what bed to buy and bought it! Now the crib is free for Jacob to move into (because he is almost too big for the bassinet! he is so long!) Christine LOVES her big girl bed. I was REALLY afraid she was going to drop her nap time if she was able to just play with all her toys and not be confined the crib (one of the BIG reasons why she has stayed in a crib for so long-- both she and I NEED nap time!!!) but she is still napping (hooray!!!) and stays on her bed until I come get her in the morning.

Christine asks me every morning what day it is. She loves talking about what happens on Monday, Tuesday, etc.  Monday is the day we make "cupcakes" ("Muffin Monday", except she calls muffins cupcakes) and Tuesdays and Fridays are very exciting because those are trash days. haha not sure why it's so fun to help mommy take out the trash.

As you can see in our little garden in the background the cantaloupe were still alive at this point, and the grass was still green. I was hoping our unplanned cantaloupe would produce a melon or two, sigh.

Jacob is doing well. He's very strong. After learning how to roll over, he learned very quickly how to hold his head up high. Now he can roll around several times to get where he wants to go. I'm afraid he is going to learn to crawl early. I know he is going to be quite the trouble maker around here!

Jacob

I'm was getting ready to write my August summary post (it's coming!) and I found this post I had started. I was just going to hit delete, but then I thought, eh they are cute photos of Jacob. I think I will hit "publish" instead of delete. So here you go, Jacob age 3 months (July) notice how much hair he has in these photos then compare them to the photos from Christine's birthday in September.

Rolling Over for the First Time

On July 29th (almost 3 months old) Jacob rolled over for the first time. We were all hanging out in my sewing room, while I was cutting a new dress for Christine. 

Christine was making a mess, playing with anything she could let her hands on.

And Jacob was chillin' on his blanket. I looked over and he was on his stomach!

 

 What a sweetie

The Month of July

Ya, ya, I'm behind in updating the blog. Life is still in "crazy survival mode" Here's a brief summary of July

July started with Jeff beginning residency. This is Jeff on his first day of residency wearing lovely green VA scrubs. It's really weird that people call him Dr. Hamaker. Residency is good as far as residency goes. Waking up at 4am, taking night call, only getting 2 weekends off a month.

We all looked pretty for church so we ran outside to take a couple photos. We had to rip out that bed of yellow flowers because we had a rat burrow in there (EWWWW! We put out traps and killed several and haven't seen any since. phew!)

Getting ready for church

Jacob turned 3 months old on July 30th. He's has GERD and colic (what?!) We give him quite the regimen of medicine/probiotics/gripe water/gas drops. At first the screaming was pretty bad, but we got it all under control. It's nothing compared to what Christine was as a baby.

Jacob's not the best sleeper in the world. I pulled out my trusty baby sleep training books and started implementing some changes that have started to help. I am sure looking forward to getting a good night's sleep. I think that is the turning point in regaining my sanity. I'm praying that day is coming soon.

Christine is a good big sister. She's very helpful most days. (see that wreath on the floor? it finally got hung up on the wall- about the only decorating that's been done on our house)

 Jacob loves his swing, especially the bears. He is so fascinated by them. It gives me a full 5 minutes to do things like make Christine's lunch.

Christine is so smart. She surprises me so often by her language skills.

 July was my birthday. Jeff managed to find a little bit of time a few days before to make some cheesecake brownies for me (we never know when Jeff will actually be home so when he got home early we decided it was a good time to celebrate, but then Jeff got paged back to the hospital so it had to be postponed one more day). I bought myself a serger for my birthday. I've just done a few things with it but it's awesome!

 Christine wanted the piece in the very middle

Other highlights of the month:

- Our visiting rabbit "floppsy" had little babies that like to eat my zucchini blossoms.

- SOOOOO hot. It feels so much hotter here than in Houston. I miss the green of Houston, and the rain storms. Everything here in Temple is dead and brown. Next summer I might just go to Utah for the whole summer to get away from the heat.