More "Barn" friends

We always pick LG up first from her preschool before we go get Carson because she wants to see "all her friends." These are a few of her favorites!!

Ms. Laverne, Ms. Mary Beth, Ms. Becky

(from left to right)

Ms. Mary Beth

These two had a special bond :)
I am so glad we are back at the Barn!!!!!!!

The Barn

I know I've mentioned before how much we ALL love Carson's daycare, The Lil People's Learning Barn, AKA "The Barn!" LG loves it because she used to go there and it's like visiting family when we go pick up Carson! Carson loves it because they spoil him ROTTEN. And Andy and I love it because our children love it and they love our children! The 2 pics below are the nursery room workers.

Ms. Valerie

(Carson's the baby on the mat)

Ms. Valerie is always there when we pick Carson up. LG gets in the car and says, "We are going to see Ms. 'Balerie!' YAY!!!" Notice in this picture she is sitting on the floor feeding another baby but is staying close to Carson too. I think that is so sweet and rare! Most workers would sit in a chair so they could be more comfortable and not worry about that other baby. Not Ms. Valerie~she is making sure she is tending to all the babies under her care!
Ms. Monica

Ms. Monica is there in the mornings when we drop Carson off and was there 3 1/2 years ago as LG's nursery room worker. That says alot about a person when they stay dedicated to one job and it also says alot about the job, that it's a great place to work. The barn has a very low turnover rate which is uncommon in the daycare world. Most of the teachers that were there with LG are still there and in their same rooms. BTW~could Carson be any fatter??!!
I can't say enough good things about this place!! If you move to Southaven or Olive Branch or anywhere close and are looking for a daycare, The Barn is the place to go!!!!!!!

10 weeks

These images are dark but you get the idea! :) When the flash is on he closes his eyes so I turned it off so you could see his big beautiful eyes!

Carson is getting bigger everyday! I want to take him by the dr's office to get an official weight but I am sure he is 15+ lbs. He is in 6 month clothes and eats 7 oz every 4 hours. He is such a happy baby! The only time he cries is when he is hungry and then he gets really mad! He is starting to hold his head up more and for a longer amount of time. He watches LG's every move. I am not exaggerating! I can be standing right in front of him, talking to him and if LG is any where around, doing anything, his eyes are glued to her!

I am going to Hot Springs this Saturday with some girls to have a spa day. We are spending the night, so Andy will have the kids all to himself! :) He can do it! He is such a great daddy! I am soooo excited! I will post pics of my relaxing weekend!

Do they look alike?

People always ask if a child looks like his/her brother or sister...I wonder why? Hmmm...well, anyway, I'm not sure if Carson looks like LG and I'm also not sure who he looks like between the rest of the family members. I know he looks more like Andy than me but he really just looks like Carson to me. :) I guess you can be the judge.

Lilley Grace

Carson

1st trip to church and 2 months old!!

Carson wore a sweater vest and khakis to his first church service. :) Isn't he cute??!! He did not attend the nursery because we needed to feed him at 10 am, which is right in the middle of Sunday school so we just kept him with us. He slept most of the time. During prayer, Andy was feeding him, he sat him up to burp him and he (Carson, that is) let out the loudest POOT!!! It was hilarious, the entire class laughed!

Carson was 2 months old on Sunday. I can't believe how fast it is going. He is still so sweet. He hardly ever cries and when he does it sounds like he is singing. He says, "Laaaaaa, Laaaaaaa, Laaaaaaa" so as a result, LG has started calling him, "LaLa," "La," or "La~ler. " Now we all call him, "La." The fact that she has a nickname for him is so precious to me.

The Dynamic Duo

Everyone keeps asking me how LG is adjusting to her brother. As you can see in the picture below, she loves him very much. She was watching Dora last night before bedtime and asked me to bring Carson in there with her so he could "watch it with her." When I came back in there, she had put her lovey beside his head and covered herself and Carson up with her Dora blanket. I had to get a picture of this sibling love. Andy also noticed that Carson is throwing up some hand sign. :)

She is very helpful with him too. She wants to get his paci and help bathe him, etc. This was them all bundled up this morning before school/daycare. How stinkin' cute??!!!

It is finished...

Today marks the end of an era for Andy and I~we will no longer be able to have children. Andy had a vasectomy today. It was a 15 minute procedure, it was done in the office, and he has a 48 hour recovery period. He walked out of the office with minimal discomfort and came straight home and got in the bed, mainly because they had him take a Valium before the procedure and a Lortab after so he's a little sleepy. This is the way he wanted people to think he was feeling:

Here's how he was really feeling:

(notice the devilish grin:)

So for all those guys whose wives have had multiple babies and have decided the baby making is over, a vasectomy is the way to go...just ask Andy! :)
In some ways I am glad that that's all he has to go through but I am also resentful in some ways that I had to carry two children for a total of 18 months, recover for a total of 12+ weeks, and that my body will NEVER be the same. Small price to pay, I guess, when I look at my two beautiful babies. :) I also have this upset feeling in my tummy that we won't be having any more children...I know we made the right decision but it's still hard to accept the fact that the pregnancies and baby times are over. :( It makes me realize that I need to enjoy this time with Carson because I won't experience it again.

8 weeks but more like 4 months!!

Carson is 8 weeks old and HUGE!!! As previously posted, he eats 6.5 oz every 4 hours and is sleeping from 10 pm - 6 am. At 6 am he is STARVING!! He gets 5 bottles and over 32 oz a day but always acts as if he is still hungry! LOL!! We weighed him yesterday and he weighed 14 lbs! Seriously...at 8 weeks??? He is already getting too long and big for his bouncy seat, his swing, and the boppy lounger!! What to do with an infant who is too big for the only toys he can actually play in???!!!

He loves his big sister. Every time he hears her voice, he smiles. I think it is so sweet.

His first couple of days at daycare were great! His teachers are Ms. Monica (who was LG's teacher when she was an infant) and Ms. Valerie. They are both so sweet and so good to my baby. I pick LG up from her daycare first so she can go with me to "her Barn." She gets to see her old teachers and friends.

Carson is on a schedule finally!~He eats at 6 am, gets to daycare around 8 am, goes down for a nap somewhere between 8:30 - 9 am, eats at 10 am, naps again, eats at 2 pm, naps around 4 pm, gets picked up around 5 pm, eats again at 6 pm, naps around 8 pm, bath at 9:45 pm, eats and goes down for the night at 10 pm. It works out perfectly with LG because we start to bathe her and put her down at 7 pm, so Carson sits in his bouncy seat and watches me bathe LG (which she loves).

Thank God for headbands and best friends!

Lilley Grace's hair is getting so long but all that means is that she has a bigger afro! :) I thought the longer her hair got, the more it would weigh and therefore it would start to drop down her back. Not the case! It has just gotten to where her ringlets hang down into her face but not at all down her back and it's too heavy for a bow so...we have found the headband! I bought some headbands that are like rubberbands and they actually stay in her hair all day!!!! YAY!!!

LG loves her friend, Landon. He doesn't go to the school she goes to now. He still goes to the school she went to first (that Carson goes to now) but she always says he is her best friend when asked. She won't even name any friends at her new school~only Landon :). Notice he is on his tiptoes and is still shorter than LG!

Sad but true...

Despite the beliefs of my mom and some others who I will not name (Alisha!), babies do not die from crying. Having said this, I decided to "help" Carson learn how to sleep through the night by letting him "cry it out" when he woke up in the middle of the night last night. I made this decision based on the fact that he is 8 weeks old and eats 6.5 ounces every 4 hours and has NO BUSINESS eating in the middle of the night. By the 10 pm bottle he has consumed 32 oz. We added a scoop of rice cereal in his last bottle and that is plenty in a 24 hour period. So, here's how it went: he went down at 10:30 pm after his last bottle of the night, woke up around 3:15 am (because that's what his body is used to) and cried for about 30 minutes. He went back to sleep and cried on and off from 5 am til 6 am when I got up to feed him~mainly because he had pooped. His body will adjust to getting his calories during the day. I am sure we will have a couple more nights of crying (that's why I bought my mom some ear plugs:). But he lived through the night and so did everyone else!

Today was his first day of daycare~post to come.

7 weeks

Carson is 7 weeks old today. He slept the longest last night that he has ever slept-7 hours straight. Andy fed him at 8:30 pm and he woke up at 3:30 am to be fed again. He is eating 6 oz every 3.5 hours.

We have decided to send him to the daycare that LG went to for the first 3 years of her life ("The Barn"). He was going to attend the same school that LG is currently attending but I had some reservations about it. LG is doing fine because she is in a classroom with actual teachers. Carson would be in rooms over the next 3 years with glorified babysitters. I want to make sure they will love my baby and treat him like their own~I know that will be the case at "The Barn." They are excited to have him and we are excited because we think of them like family. Carson is going to be spoiled rotten and I love it!!! He'll start Monday when he is 8 weeks~I'll definitely post a pic of his first day! :)

Mimi loves me!!

Andy's mom came over yesterday on her day off to see how much Carson had grown since Christmas, which is actually quite a bit. She stayed for a couple of hours and held Carson the entire time :). He fell asleep in her arms.

Tiger in training

I graduated from the University of Memphis and Andy is a huge Memphis basketball fan so I guess LG is destined to be a tiger one way or the other. We thought we'd see how she would look in some Tiger paraphernalia. She looks pretty good, huh?