3 year appointment

Yesterday was Connor's 3 year doctor's appointment. He weighs 28 lb 13 oz (25th percentile) and is 38 1/2" tall (75th percentile). At 3 years old he weighs only twice as much as his 4 month old brother! :) Logan will be beating him up soon!

Although we thought we were going to escape with no immunizations, it turns out that they're giving little ones Hepatitis A vaccines now but they weren't offering them when he was one (when most kids get them now I guess). So he got the shot and teared up a bit but didn't cry. He's so brave! :)

Here are some shots from the boys "playing" together.

Christmas cards

Are you visiting our blog for the first time because you got a Christmas card from us? If so, welcome! This is just our little corner of cyberspace. I (Nikki) try to keep it updated with our latest activities and, most importantly, pictures of the boys. Just a few hints: you can click on almost all the pictures to see a larger version and you can see older posts by navigating through the "Blog Archive" links on the right side of the screen. The posts are in reverse chronological order so the newest info is at the top. Feel free to leave a comment or send us an email! We'd love to hear more about you, too! Do you blog? :) Let us know!

Birthday Week

Connor's birthday was Saturday, December 9th, but the festivities lasted for nearly a week! There are tons of pictures below so don't forget that you can click on them to make them larger!

Birthday week started on Wednesday the 6th with a party at preschool. We made disgusting looking but yummy tasting pudding that the kids loved! Here he is in his birthday crown:

His friend RyanConnor helping with Logan's bath that night

On Thursday we went to see Santa at Flatiron Crossing (I think he's the only Santa in the area with a real beard!). Logan slept while we stood in line and woke up just as Jeremy handed him to Santa.

That afternoon we dropped in to preschool for Connor's girlfriend Rose's birthday party. Her birthday is on the 8th so she's technically an older woman :) Connor calls her Rosie Posie which is absolutely adorable!

Here's Rose...Connor enjoying the partyDaddy and Logan playing at preschool


On Friday night we had Connor's official birthday party with Grandma and Grandpa Marchman. Here he is with his very purple cupcake from his crayola cake. :)

Posing for Grandpa

On Saturday morning Connor got his big gift from us - a big boy bed complete with Spiderman sheets! He loves it!

We also took Connor ice skating for the first time on Saturday.

We had lots of friends join us including his good friend Rhyann. Here they are checking out their skates....

Daddy pushing Connor with his "walker"

Oops...

Connor was brave enough to try it on his own at the end

We also had professional pictures taken on Saturday at Kiddie Kandids. We've gone each year on Connor's birthday and this was Logan's first time! We think they turned out great!!!












Saturday night we went to the Longmont Holiday Parade downtown. Connor was SO excited to see Santa at the end of the parade! Saturday was action packed but a fantastic day :)

Trimming the tree

Ugh it's happened again! More problems with posting pictures. I know I shouldn't complain because Blogger is, after all, a free service but...I'm going to anyway. Why oh why do they make it so difficult?? :)

Anyway, I've found a new way to post pictures so they look a little smaller here but you can still click on them to see a larger version. And hopefully I won't go over my 300 MB limit using this method. Why only a 300 MB limit??? I'd be willing to pay for more space!

Anyway, we trimmed our tree on Sunday. Here are just a few of the pictures we took that day...

Yummy hand!

Throw the ball....you know you want to...it's right there...come on!

The human tunnel

Our perfect presents hanging out under the tree, watching the choo-choo go round and round. Logan would get angry when the train would do out of sight (hey! what happened to my train?) but then would be giddy when it came around again. Talk about an emotional roller coaster. Poor kid!

I love my brother!

Stop! No more pictures, Mom!

Snow and Logan's 4 month appointment

Yesterday we took Logan to his 4 month doctor's appointment. He weighs a whopping 14 lbs 5 oz and is 26 inches long. The doctor said everything looks good! He also got his 4 month shots and had pretty much the same reaction to them as his 2 month shots - no crying for the first poke, a bit of crying for the second and third but calmed down fairly quickly, followed by a horrible night :) Again he got a fever and his legs are sore and he is soooo cranky. Our doctor said this is actually a good thing since it means he has a great immune system that is trying to fight off the vaccines. However, that's not comforting at 3 am! :) Here's a picture of him just before bed last night. Notice how blonde his hair looks in this picture! I think he looks more like me as a baby in this picture than ever before. Don't forget that you can click on the pictures to see a larger version!




















And we can't leave out Connor! It snowed quite a bit yesterday and he loves to play in the snow. Here he is in our front yard in his "Hanta" hat. For some reason he likes to drop the S in Santa - he can say it the right way but chooses not to!

Thanksgiving

Did you have a good turkey day? We did! On Wednesday evening Jeremy and Connor went to pick up the turkey we'd ordered from the Honey Baked Ham store. See, we were trying to have a low stress Thanksgiving since we have two kids and cooking a big meal while taking care of them is a major feat. So we figured we'd eliminate the biggest part of the meal by getting our turkey prepared elsewhere. However, Jeremy and Connor got to the store and were told "Uh, sorry, our supplier didn't deliver any turkeys to anywhere on the west coast." What??? We're turkey-less??? The day before Thanksgiving??? After Jeremy threw a fit (yay, Jeremy! I'm rubbing off on him! LOL), we got a $50 ham for FREE! Anyway, I still wanted turkey for Thanksgiving so we scrambled to find a fresh one within a 50 mile radius. Turns out that they had tons of them at the Safeway in Louisville so we were able to get one and turkey day was saved! :) My Dad, Sue, Jeremy's Mom Willy and her husband Mark were all here to help us enjoy all the food. Jeremy took this picture of Connor and I through our front window - we were watching for Grandma Willy!
















And we can't leave Logan out, though he slept through most of the preparations and the entire meal on Thanksgiving! Here he is after a bath...



















Friday morning Jeremy got up super early and waited in line at Best Buy to buy us a new tv. The tv in our living room has been dying for months; it shuts off randomly and can only be turned back on by hitting the side of it. Connor has watched us do it so many times that he thinks that's how all tv's are turned on - ugh! So after waiting outside in the cold from 3:30 to 5 am Jeremy bought our early family Christmas present alongside hundreds of other tech-crazed Black Friday shoppers. I only wish I could've been there - I love Black Friday shopping! I know, there are too many people and you have to get up soooo early but that's what makes it so fun! And I can't pass up a good bargain :) I can't wait until next year!

Here are just a few of the things we are thankful for this year: Jeremy, Nikki, Connor, Logan, Bailey, Grandmas and Grandpas, family, friends, love, health, jobs, home, preschool, baby giggles, toddler screams, milky smiles, So-Do-La-Fa time, bubble baths, "pizza", "people", and "baby Logan". The ones in quotes are from Connor, of course!

Chalk drawings

Check these out! These are the drawings we had done at the craft fair yesterday. I love them! This woman was amazing - it only took her about ten minutes per picture and Connor's was done despite his moving around non-stop. I said yesterday that I thought Logan's was more true to life than Connor's, but I think they're both great. I think I'm just thrown off by the coloring in Connor's, since his hair is so blonde and that's hard to portray in a black and white chalk drawing! She definitely got his eyelashes right, though! What do you think? Leave me a comment or send me an email!

Something you don't hear too often...

Only our kid :)
We felt like we'd prepared Connor for this whole flu shot business - we took him with us when we got ours, talked about it a bunch like how it would hurt for a minute but that it would help keep him healthy. A few times he would say he didn't want one but other times he would say he was excited to get it. This morning he was ready; he wanted to go to the doctor's office as soon as he woke up. We had breakfast out (mmm bagels and fruit) and then went to the office. As we walked into the pediatric area there were obvious signs of distress - a girl walking out who'd been crying and several other kids who knew what was about to happen to them and didn't want any part of it. Connor, though, loves the doctor. He went right away when the nurse called his name, hopped up on the table and was staring at all the band-aids laid out on the counter. Jeremy tried to turn his head so he wouldn't see the needle go in, but he turned it back and watched it. He said "ow" sort of quietly and then watched her put a bright orange band-aid on his arm. We were telling him how great he did and he looked like nothing had ever happened. Jeremy helped him down from the table and Connor said "Thank you!" to the nurse and walked out of the room. The nurse said she doesn't see that reaction too often! He was COMPLETELY UNPHASED by it. He just wanted to go back and watch the fish in the waiting room! YES! While other kids wailed in other exam rooms, ours thanked his nurse and went on about his day. :) Too funny!

We went to a local craft fair today and had an artist draw both Connor and Logan. I'll have to take pictures of them and post them tomorrow - they're amazing! Logan's picture is a bit more true to life than Connor's, in my opinion, but they're both great. Keeping Connor sitting still was impossible, though, so it's amazing that she was able to draw him at all! :)

Do the cabbage!

So a while back I shared this picture with my coworker/friend Brent (the one who lives in Paris for another 20 some odd days):

It happened to be the same day that he shared the following YouTube clip with me (click the big 'ol play button to play):


He noticed that Logan looks strangely like a cabbage in the above picture and the name has stuck. So, Logan has become our little cabbage, or sauerkraut when he's a bit cranky! Yep, you probably had to be there for it to be funny... :)

Let's go back to letter writing...

Argh! It's a problem that I've experienced many times before but I have obviously not learned my lesson yet. Blogger updated it's software and is now encouraging all users to switch to the beta version. It seemed stable enough, after all if you were to sign up for a new blog today you would only see the beta version. They must be confident in it if they're forcing all new users to use it, right? Well, I fell for it and converted my blog to the beta version. It's terrible! They used to interface with this great photo posting software called Hello (no, really) but no more...so now I have to do it the old fashioned way (well, relatively speaking, lol). Sigh....why oh why don't people test their software before they release it? LOL - at least I'm not the tester this time! :) I enjoy laughing at buggy software when I had nothing to do with it...

To continue on a bit of a rant, my company switched payroll companies so our next three paychecks are live checks, no direct deposit. Do you know how long it's been since I had to pick up my paycheck on pay day, drive to the bank and fill out a deposit slip for it? I think about 7 years!

Here are just a couple of pics from our Thursday session. Unfortunately most of them turned out blurry since I managed to have the camera on the wrong setting. I'm having a bad technology week!

On a positive note, we bought my guitar last night! Our favorite music teacher, Madelyn Clair, is offering lessons for parents so we can play along with our kids. We'll learn three basic chords and will learn to play 20+ kids songs. We'll also learn how to play while our kids do the strumming and how to tune a guitar. No music experience is necessary so it sounds perfect for me! I played the recorder in second grade but I don't think that counts as musical experience...haha! I've always wanted to learn to play an instrument and since Jeremy knows how to play so many and Connor is so interested in all of them, it seemed like a good idea! It's my early Christmas present and I'm really excited about it. It's always fun to learn something new!

Tomorrow is Connor's flu shot. Wish us luck! :)