Baby boom!

We spent some time this weekend celebrating baby Walsh, who is set to make his debut in March.  Baby boy Walsh will be the 9th baby in this group of friends.  It is crazy to think that less than three years ago we all went out to the ranch and there were only two kids amongst us.  Now, getting together for dinner is mass chaos with two three-year-old boys and six kids under two.  This group of friends consists of five couples, and we pretty much all married off one couple per year starting 7 years ago with Frank and I.  Actually, when Frank and I got married, only one of these couples had even met yet!      It is so hard for me to believe that we have almost been married for seven years.   It was great to see everyone and to meet new babies Quinn and Laynie.

I am afraid to jinx it, but...

Someone is FINALLY sleeping through the night!  Once Lily finished her medicine (on Monday), we decided it was finally time to go ahead and start sleep training.  We had been very bad about using the sleep suit and the swing as sleep crutches, but we decided to take her out of the sleep suit, put her down awake, and let her cry.  Monday night she woke up around 1:30 a.m. and cried a lot.  I would guess she cried for between 20 and 30 minutes, and finally Frank went upstairs, held her hand for a minute, and then came back down and she quickly fell asleep for the rest of the night.  Tuesday night she woke up once around 8:45 p.m., cried for about 10 minutes, and then fell asleep for the rest of the night.  Wednesday night she woke up a few times before 10:00 p.m., but each time she cried for maybe 30 seconds and then went back to sleep.  I am AMAZED that this has been so easy.  We put this off for months because we feared we were going to be up all night for days.  I am afraid to declare it a success, because we have thought she was sleeping through the night before and it never stuck.  But I am very hopeful that she is going to be sleeping through the night from here on out...fingers crossed!

I had a great weekend with the kids while Frank was at reserves.  We had unseasonably warm weather, and we went to the park/playground on Saturday and the zoo on Sunday.  Lily got to ride in the swing for the first time on Saturday, and Frankie had a blast pushing her.  I think he really likes that she is getting bigger and more active and more fun.  Frankie loved seeing all the animals at the zoo, and he was such a good boy and a big help all weekend.  I loved spending so much quality time with the kids. I have been so busy with work the last couple of months, it has felt like I have not gotten much good time with them, and I missed it!

Here are a couple of pictures from this weekend:

Silly, singing Frankie

Frank loves to sing, and he will often be singing or humming random songs around the house.  The other night, he kept saying "bad advice, bad advice," and then he would crack up.  I wondered what on earth he was talking about, and then one day he said "bad advice, bad advice, see how they run, see how they run," and I realized he was singing three blind mice!  Haha.  His latest song he has been singing is "skip to my lou," except his version goes "skip, skip, skip to a MOO, skip, skip, skip to a MOO, skip, skip, skip to a MOO, skip to a MOO my darling."  I love hearing his sweet voice, and I love hearing what he comes up with.

Liliana - 7 months

This beautiful little girl is already seven months old!  I remember that it was nearly impossible to take a picture of Frankie at this age, but Lily seems much calmer and more easygoing than Frankie was/is.  She is perfectly content just sitting up and playing with her toys.  She still hates tummy time, and as a result she has not even started trying to crawl yet.  She has mastered sitting up, but so far no crawling or pulling up yet.  Frankie moved very fast from crawling to walking, but I think this little girl may take her sweet time.

At seven months, Lily is...

-eating fruits and veggies three times a day and still drinking four 6-ounce bottles during the day.  She is a pretty good eater, but she makes the funniest faces when she does not like a new food.

-taking antibiotics, a new allergy medicine, and doing breathing treatments to help with her second double ear infection and terrible congestion.  She has basically been congested for two months straight, so we are hoping that some combination of the meds is going to clear her up!

-still not sleeping good.  We had one night this week where she slept through the night, and it was the first time in months.  Last night she woke up twice and we had to put her in the swing.  As soon as she is healthy, we really need to start sleep training.  It has been easy for us to use sleep crutches to help, but she is almost too big for the swing and for her sleep suit, so we need to bite the bullet and just let her cry it out.  But we can't do it when she is sick!

-growing out of her 3-6 month clothes, and is now wearing 9 month or 6-12 months.  She seems so much heavier to me lately, and I am starting to have trouble carrying her in the car seat.

-such a sweet baby.  She loves to give kisses, and when someone picks her up, she usually puts her hands on their face, like she is trying to feel their energy and determine whether she likes them or not.  It is the cutest thing.  She smiles for anyone and does not mind strangers one bit.

-she still covers her face when she is drinking her milk.  We have no idea why she does this, but drinking bottles is clearly very comforting for her, and sometimes feeding her is the only way we can get her to go back to sleep in the middle of the night.

-babbling "dadada" and sometimes "gagaga."

-she likes taking baths, taking walks, and reading books.  She loves being near her brother, and she loves hearing her Daddy's voice.

Happy seven months sweet girl!  Time to start planning your 1st birthday, which will be here before we know it!

Everybody's talking

Baby girl has started babbling, and, of course, her first "word" is da-da.  She will look at you and have a conversation, but no matter how many times I say "ma-ma-ma," she just repeats "da-da-da."  Frank LOVES it.

Frankie also has a few really funny sayings lately.  One of his new things is to call foods gross.  He does this all the time now, and often with foods he actually likes.  It is like he heard it somewhere and just decided to run with it.  He usually says, "Ewwwww, gross!"  He also says "actually" all the time.  I think he gets that one from me.  He also says oopsie-da-daisy when he drops something, which is the cutest thing ever.

Christmas 2013, my birthday, and hello to 2014!

I am FINALLY getting around to posting about Christmas!  I have been so busy the last few weeks, it feels like Christmas came and went in a whirlwind.  We hosted my family for Christmas Eve, and we really enjoyed spending some good quality time with them.  We cooked a big turkey dinner on Christmas Eve, complete with an enormous, five-tiered red velvet and cheesecake layer cake with white chocolate frosting that I made from scratch.  It was AWESOME!  Christmas morning was super fun this year because Frankie really understands Santa.  He got a ton of cool gifts and he got to help his little sister open hers too.  I was very excited to get a new Kitchenaid mixer, which, I just realized as I am typing this, I still have not used!  Later on Christmas day, Frank's Mom and Grandpa Andy came over and some of Frank's cousins happened to be stopping by DFW airport, so we hosted another big dinner for all of them on Christmas day.  It was really nice to have so much family time, but it was also quite exhausting.

Frank surprised me the weekend before my birthday with a couples' massage at the Four Seasons and a fancy italian dinner.   On my actual birthday we went out for a pizza dinner with Frank's Mom and Andy, and then they watched the kids so that we could go see a movie.  We had not been to a movie together in probably at least three years!  It was really nice.  I was feeling a little down in the dumps on my birthday this year, and Frank really went all out to make it special, which I truly appreciate.  I can't believe that I am 32 years old!

2013 was a really hard year for me.  It has been the hardest year for my career and one of the hardest years on our family.  Having two kids and two professional careers is no joke!  We are constantly exhausted (will Lily EVER sleep through the night???), stressed, and busy.  I still have some Christmas gifts I need to give!  My office looks like a tornado hit.  It has just been nuts, and we are still trying to figure out how to balance everything.  Of course, we were also blessed with our beautiful baby girl in 2013, so it was not all hard and stressful.  I have really high hopes for 2014.  I see this year bringing great things for our family, and I am excited to see what the next chapter of our story will be.

Here are a few Christmas pictures:

School Christmas program

The Friday before Christmas was the kids' school Christmas program!  Frankie had been practicing his songs for weeks, and he was so excited to sing for us.  He literally stole the show, and we were SO PROUD of him!  His class sang "I'm getting nothing for Christmas" and "Hello, Reindeer."  Most of the kids did not sing at all, but Frankie was standing at the front on both songs, singing at the top of his lungs.  He loves to be the center of attention, that is for sure.  Lily and the other babies in her class "danced" too.