The Cannon Nanny

Sadie LOVES George.  She wants to hold him ALL the time.  It wasn't very hard when he was a month old but he seems to be growing faster than Sadie can handle.

George is nearly half her size and still she insits on holding him. 

 

Happy Birthday to me!!

The day was pretty fantastic.  I had breakfast in bed.  Jack went to preschool and George napped.  I ate lasagna for lunch and Chase came home early so I could go to the dentist to pick up my mouth guard (stress makes me clench my teeth) and get a tooth drilled.  When I got home we went to Tarka for some delish Indian Cuisine.  It's ok to gain 5 pounds on your birthday right?

George eyed the coconut curry.

Sadie decided to be a "special" puppy.

...and Jack copied Sadie.

When we got home Chase surprised me with a GIANT spice cake made by JoAnn.  I love spice cake and it's so hard to find in bakeries these days.  A friend of mine told me I am getting old because only the senile like spice cake.  George does NOT like his Bumbo chair.

Jack helped me open my presents.  I got some new muffin tins!! My old ones are rusting over and will probably give us some sort of poisonous disease if we bake in them again. Chase also surprised me with the much sought after Frye Melissa Button boots.  I've been wanting these ladies for about two years now and have never had the guts to buy them for myself.  Thanks for being brave Chase. 

He also surprised me with a babysitter!  My sweet visiting teacher Jessica came over and watched over our chiddlers while we went to see Hunger Games (SOOOOO GOOOD!)  It was a fantastic birthday and everyone made me feel very loved and special. 

A couple of days later the ladies celebrated with me at Chuy's.  I love the people here in Texas.  I have to admit I thought something was wrong with me when I lived in D.C. because no one ever wanted to hang out.  Maybe it was the extreme weather conditions that kept people indoors but life in Virginia was for the birds!!   It  probably was me.  Maybe I stink and don't know it but in Austin these girls like me anyway (despite my weirdness:-)  Everyone is always up for getting together and they'll throw a baby shower for a woman's 6th kid just because we love having an excuse to party.  Everything's "better" in Texas:-)

 I got myself some flan and enjoyed the best ambiance and conversation Texas has to offer.  Thanks for the fun dinner ladies!! 

Three's a charm

Well, it finally happened.  I got more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep!  George gave me the best birthday present ever and slept 6 hours.  It's amazing what sleep can do for the deprived.  I've decided that if I could just get 8 hours of sleep a night I could be super mom.  Imagine the possibilities if I had more energy.  Nothing could stop me!!

Three months has been good for George.  He has developed such a sweet and fun little personality.  He loves to talk to me and it often resembles a squawking bird with high pitched coos.  You can't tell from the pictures but he's a really smiley guy (but somewhat suspicious of cameras:-). 

He LOVES to be outside.  Sometimes after he eats we'll lay out a blanket on the front lawn and use the trees as natural mobiles.  He could look at the bright green leaves all day.

We took him in for a nurses visit and he weighed 13.9 pounds.  He's rapidly gaining weight and growing out of his clothes.  Some outfits require a 6 month tag at this point but most of the time he's wearing his 3 month onsies very comfortably.   

He's started to prefer some people over others.  Sadie claims she is his favorite and she's not far from the truth.  Next to his milk factory (me), Sadie could quite possibly be the next in line.  He loves her!  He has gotten in the habit of not sleeping as well if Chase rocks him to sleep.  He likes to know I'm around. 

Like I said above, George finally slept through the night, kind of.  I'll take 6 hours over 3 any day!  He's a silly sleeper during the day.  I can usually get 40 minutes before he wakes up from a nap and then I transfer him to his swing where he could sleep forever.  I often have to wake him to eat if he's snoozing in the swing.  He's also been a funny eater this month.  He'll only eat on one side and then he's full.  I can't get him to even try to eat on the opposite side.  I've been pumping after every feeding because the lopsided look isn't really my style.  After this exhausting week I finally stretched out his feedings to every 4 hours and he seems to have more of an appetite.  We need to keep those thighs as chubby as possible!

He has really discovered his hands this month.  He can take a binky out of his mouth and sucks on his two middle fingers like they were candy.  He also loves rattles and other toys we give him.  He's really an easy kid and doesn't require loads of attention.  He can roll around on a blanket for a while with a toy and be totally satisfied. 

 

He's changed quite a bit from last month.  He holds his head up better and is just so squishy!!  I love, love, love my little Georgie Porge!

Closer to 40 than 30

Chase is officially a middle aged man, well kind of.  I guess you have to be 40 to claim that status but he doesn't like having close proximity to his fourth decade.  We partied anyway because we love our Chase and he deserves to be celebrated.  It was a busy day for me.  We started out with some visiting teaching and then I raced home to cook all of his favorite foods before I had to take a cake to his work for all the colleagues.  I estimated that after the work cake, frosting, home birthday cake (angel food), whipped topping, and shepherds pie (his favorite dinner...yuck!) I used my Kitchen Aid 5 times.  I literally cooked all day and then headed to NFP with the three kids in tow.  Everyone loved the Chicago Cinnamon cake and wanted to eat little George too.

When Chase came home he ate his shepherd's pie (the rest of us had something else:-) and then we sang Happy Birthday!

We all blew out the candles (I could only find tea lights:-) and gobbled up the angel food cake. 

Shopping for each other is kind of funny because if he really wants something he usually just goes out and buys it.  In the past month he's already purchased himself a new lawnmower, and some ridiculously ugly basketball shoes which he insists are TOTALLY cool because they're original throwbacks from 1992 (he forgets that the early 90's weren't kind to fashion:-). 

So I bought him practical gifts instead like a new set of pillows (he destroys a pillow about every month just by sleeping on it), his favorite trail mix, some gardening gloves and I surprised him with another casserole of shepherds pie in the freezer.  He can eat it when we're in Utah this summer. 

I love this man so much!  He gets better looking every year.  I can't wait for the eye candy his middle age years will bring. 

On a pillow of blue bonnets and a blanket made of stars

Ever since we moved to Texas we have greatly anticipated seeing the blue bonnets.  They never came last year because of the terrible drought so we continued to wait. Texas received a lot of rain this winter so we were blessed with an array of spectacular wildflowers.  I was told there is a field about an hour away covered with specs of blue.  We tried to make it out there almost every weekend and something always got in the way.  Next year for sure I'll plant the kids in that field and take the "blue bonnet picture" that every Texan has in their home.  We did find some small patches near our neighborhood.  Aren't they pretty? They lined the highways and brightened my day.  I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it again, I LOVE TEXAS!!

Sometimes 2 pm church is really hard!

"E" for Effort

Everyone looked so dashing in their Easter garb we thought we'd snap a photo (or 20 before we finally got a suitable one). Thank goodness for digital cameras.

Jack is fixing to be a preacher and Sadie is clearly annoyed:-)

Trying to keep George from crying.

Finally, they're all standing still and not crying.

Lets go eat some ham!

Easter 2012

This was the only Sunday I was grateful to have 2 pm church. We had all morning to hunt for eggs and have a spiritual message about Christ. Our littles sure had a fun time searching for eggs and were surprisingly sad after the He is Risen movie was over. They wanted to watch another one.

Some eggs were up WAY too high:-)

And some were just right.

Jack was so enthusiastic and everything he said ended with "Sadie." "Here's a green one Sadie. Look at that one in the tree Sadie. I found a pink one Sadie." Her approval and validation is apparently very important. Sadie was so sweet. She could have TOTALLY swiped most of the eggs but made sure Jack got some for his basket too, especially if they were easy to find. She was all about the challenge.

This was a "scratch your head" kind of moment. How does one so small get an egg down that's so high? Sadie was pretty smart. She would shake those trees as hard as she could to get those eggs to fall out. Most of the time it worked!

George was there too. Our little blob is always happy to hang out on Dad's shoulder.

Happy Easter!!

Incognito

We hid a TON of eggs this year!

I wonder what our neighbors thought when they saw two people with head lamps walking in our house and scouting the yards outside. I probably would have called the police.

I'm married to a pretty good looking Easter bunny.

I'm sure after seeing this pic he would say the same thing about me:-)

Getting ready for our furry friend

I left buying egg dye up until Saturday afternoon which meant there wasn't any at the store. We used Kool Aid this year (thanks Pinterest). It certainly smells better but it bubbles and peels if left in the liquid for too long. We aren't big fans of hard boiled eggs around here so we just dyed them for fun and they're still in our fridge probably not smelling very good anymore.

Now that the house is clean and the eggs are dyed, the Easter bunny can finally come!

Candied Conference

Pinterest has sort of changed my life. I discovered it about two months ago and am finding all sorts of fun ideas for the kids and delicious recipes to try for dinner. One such idea was to get candy for General Conference and label each bowl with a religious word like "church, Jesus, Joseph Smith, or Temple." If the speaker says one of the words, we get to eat a candy. We had high hopes that this "game" would keep the kids quiet and allow us all to learn more from the speakers this time around (and help Mom and Dad stay awake too).

Jack and Sadie couldn't believe their good fortune. When else have they ever been presented with such a platter? Mom and Dad must be smoking something. We weren't expecting the speakers to say "Jesus, family, and faith" quite so many times.

Needless to say, Sadie and Jack LOVED general conference this year.

Jack loved it so much that at the end of the day he puked it all up. I think next time we will just have four words and we'll pick harder ones like "Wilford Woodruff" or "Apostasy."

You live, you learn.