Toddler Tresemme Model

Jackson had some bedhead when we were getting ready for school the other day, so I just fixed it with some of daddy's "tresemme" hair gel... he was excited about getting to use it "like daddy."  So this was the end  result!  Pretty handsome, I think!

  

Splish Splash!

The time has finally come... My sweet boys took their first bath together today!  It actually went so much better than I thought!  Jackson is totally not a "water baby" by any means, but Ethan really seems to like it... so he didn't mind all the splashing he took to the face!  Love my boys!

Little Rock Baby Visit!

Last Friday Ryan came home to watch the boys and I headed south to Little Rock to see my new favorite little newborns!  My friend-since-we-are-babies - Brandy - had a sweet little baby girl named Lily Kate!  I, however, have no pictures of this! WHAT!?  I know - I was in and out so fast... I wish I could've stayed longer but she lives in Conway and I was trying to get to Little Rock before the work traffic rush.  Anyway, she's beyond precious and beautiful just like her mommy!  If you want to see pictures of this sweet baby, click here.

Then, once in Little Rock, I arrived at Krupitsky manor and was elated to get to meet baby Rylee Clare!  She looks so much like her daddy, it's CRAAAAZY!  I was so glad they let me just love on her and cuddle and O-M-G she's so sweet! I got to witness her very first "real" bath! Anyway, I spent the night w/ them that night and didn't even hear the baby cry one time!  I woke up at 930am!  Much needed for THIS mommy too!  I already want to go back ASAP!!!

Grandma Time!

Last week when Ryan was skiing, my grandma betty came and stayed with me to help out.  One of those days, my mom came over too, and we decided to let jackson help out in the kitchen...

 My grandma will be 81 years old this July!  Isn't she SOOOO pretty!

 Ethan thinks Mimi is pretty funny!

TV Guide

So things have been busy since I had Jackson - life is busy, in general.. Some days I wonder where the day has gone.  Well, I didn't really change how much TV I watch when I had kids!  Since I can't seem to get to the shows fast enough, Ryan and I just got another DVR!  haha!  So I thought I'd just see how many shows I actually RECORD!  Wow - it was more than I thought. 

Ryan and I watch together:
1. Survivor *FAV
2. How I Met Your Mother
3. The Office
4. Chopped

Just me:
5. Biggest Loser
6. The Bachelor
7. The Bachelorette
8. The Bachelor Pad
9. Days of Our Lives
10. Amazing Race
11. American Idol
12. So You Think You Can Dance
13. Kardashians
14. Project Runway *FAV
15. Grey's Anatomy
16. Desperate Housewives
17. Parenthood *FAV
18. Brothers and Sisters
19. 19 and Counting
20. Master Chef
21. Last Comic Standing
22. Selling New York

Let's Talk Destin!

A few weeks ago, Jim and Emily invited Jeremy/Crystal and Ryan/ I over with the kiddos to talk about our upcoming trip to Destin!  We are all so excited!  Anna Kate and Jackson are rookies at the whole "beach" thing and so Ben is going to be showing them the ropes!  We had to so much fun with them and the kids had a blast playing together!  August cannot get here fast enough!!!!  Thanks for having us over Jim and Em!

Our preschool aged clan!  There will be 5 kiddos total - with Ethan and an "approx" 6 week old baby Noel.  I cannot wait!!!!!

 

 

Me and my favorite tiny man. 

Crystal holding Ethan.... 

Ben and Jackson - Like real brothers!!!

BEAUTIFUL ANNA KATE!!!!

Boys and Paci's and Ears, Oh My!

Ethan: This morning was Ethan's appointment with the Ear Nose and Throat doctor.  Ethan just finished his 3rd antibiotic on Saturday and he's still tugging on that ear!  So the doc checked him after putting him under this microscope thing and cleaning out some wax.... he said that his ears are no longer infected (yay!!!) but still significant amount of fluid behind both ears.  He said that the thing about that is they do not want a child to have fluid behind his ears longer than 3 mos.  He's going on about 6-8 wks now so we scheduled an appointment to re-look at the end of April and if there is still fluid there, we are probably going to put tubes in.  OR if he gets another infection between now and then, we'll probably do tubes.  He said right now, his professional opinion is that it's a little premature.  I'm ok with either, honestly - I just want my boy to feel better and have no permanent damage to his ears from all this.  On another note - his appetite seems to be back, if not just temporarily, so that's good!  He's still doing the "crawl scoot" otherwise known as "the worm" ALL OVER THE PLACE!! He is still sleeping great and just as happy as can be.... He hasn't had anymore breakouts so that's good.  As far as the cats go, I talked to my friend who is a pediatrician, and he said that until Ethan is at least 2 years old, he won't even have the antibodies he needs to get an accurate allergy testing.  He said that it's possible if we would get a positive that would probably be a positive, but if we got a negative, that would definitely not mean negative necessarily and we'd just have to re-test.  So he suggested using the Zyrtec a few more months - and then taking Ethan over to my mom's - who doesn't have cats - and let him crawl around on his belly shirtless and see if that causes the same reaction as it does here at our house....  So we'll try that and wait it out.  In the meantime, we are keeping the cats out of Ethan's room permanently and just try to keep some space between him and the cats... keep vacuuming, etc.  For now.

Jackson:  The sweet precious toddler-love of my life Jackson.  He is just amazing.  He truly truly is.  I am SO proud to brag that I honestly think he may be the most polite little nearly 3yr old boy that I've ever known.  He has recently started, on his own, saying Yes ma'm and No sir, etc.  He always says Thank You and Please and Bless You when you sneeze.... He is just beyond precious.  I love how much he's teaching me!  Sometimes he gets a little carried away w/ the "EXCUSE ME!" when he wants your attention.... Now, don't get me wrong.  We still throw fits and does things we tell him not to do - just like any kid his age - he's testing the waters.  He responds very well to Time Out and finally will walk to Time Out on his own when I tell him he's in "TimeOut!."  He plays GREAT w/ his brother and we are learning about sharing w/ him.  That's hard - especially with his trains, but I've found that if I say "Jackson, if you don't want Ethan to hold Thomas, how about Henry?" He's willing to do that...so that's a start.  The trains are serious business.   He is still so wrapped up in trains and everything about them.  He dreams about them!  He'll make up these amazing stories about the trains and how they talk to each other and he even uses different voices when he is "pretending" to be one or the other.  Love!  He and I started putting puzzles together and I've found he's so good at this too!  He can easily put together on his own a 24 pc puzzle after I've showed him how it goes a few times.... which may be normal, but I'm impressed.  He's doing a great job w/ going to the potty w/o accidents.  We had a few weeks where for some reason, he was peeing in the bed and his teacher gave me some helpful advice and we are now solely using positive reinforcement w/ him and that TOTALLY works.  He will wake up in the morning and go "mommy! mommy!!!  my bed clean and dry!!!!" to which Ryan and I in unison will call out "YAY JACKSON!!!!" and we do this almost every morning...  Since he doesnt have the paci to soothe him back to sleep anymore, he's been having trouble self soothing in the middle of the night.  Well, since we gave up the paci, he's been waking up a lot!  But the last 2 nights, he woke up several times and around the 2nd or 3rd time of crying out and told us he needed to go pee... so he did both nights - which is GREAT!  He has been replacing the paci w/ a train to hold each night.  We make a big deal of it saying "Jackson, you get to pick which train gets to sleep w/ you in your big boy bed tonight." And he'll take like 5 minutes to decide!  So hopefully, he'll stop waking up so much in the middle of the night.  I must admit that this paci thing has been the hardest adjustment on the whole family.... Jackson has always been such a great sleeper and listening to him cry at night for his paci was really hard... but every single day it gets better and easier and soon, he won't be waking up anymore.  Today, he took a nap at school - which is HUGE since he was having a rough time w/ naps at school before we got rid of the paci, so success everywhere!  :)

I told a friend at lunch today that I feel like I'm totally complete when I am with my boys.  I cannot imagine what my life would have ever been if I hadn't had them. They fill me up in the most incredible ways.  I absolutely love these 2 boys - I seriously think my heart might explode sometimes.  Thank goodness it hasn't!!! 

Spaworthy....

Can you say SPA NIGHT!?  Last Saturday, my friend Jenny invited 13 of us out for a spa night w/ just girls!  We had SO MUCH fun!  We paired up in groups of 2 and went through 4 mini sessions (mini massage, facial, hand/nail and scalp treatment).  We had wine and they catered PF Changs.  OMG, everything was so amazing!  We just had so much fun!!!  I hope we do this every single year!!  (This pic on the right is my AMAZING friends Kim, Emily, Heather and me)

How blessed am I that some of the greatest friends I have ever had in my life are also my neighbors?  Lisa, Heather, Em and I.  :)

 OUR very very FUN GROUP!

 

After 8 years, I finally made it back to the slopes...

Last weekend, I headed out to Colorado with a few of my friends from college for 3 days of fun on the slopes!! I was SUPER excited about this trip for two reasons: 1) I LOVE skiing. 2) I haven't been skiing since 2003 when Keisha and I moved from California.

My buddy Ken was gracious enough to cash in some of his Starwood points for this trip, and he was able to score us a room at the Westin right next to Beaver Creek. The hotel was awesome, and the location could not have been better!! We skied Beaver Creek with our full crew (Ken, Roberto, Rob, and myself) on Friday, then Ken, Roberto, and I skied Vail on Saturday and Beaver Creek again on Sunday.

I almost made it through the entire trip unscathed, too. I ended up taking a pretty good fall on literally my last trip down the mountain that actually knocked me out for a few minutes! Thankfully, my friend Roberto was skiing with me, so he was able to get me up and back to the hotel. I have absolutely no memory of the fall or the last part of the trip back to the hotel, despite the fact that, according to Roberto, I skied all the way back to where we were staying just fine! All in all, I have a 30-40 minute gap in my memory. I went to the doctor this week just to be safe, and everything checks out just fine. The only lingering pain I have as a result of the crash is in my left shoulder and my right thumb - I'm so mad at myself for crashing so close to the end of the trip!!

Along those same lines, I was pleased to see that basically everyone on the mountain these days is wearing a helmet (including everyone in our group). When I last skied in 2003, that was not the case whatsoever.

At Vail, we spent basically all of our time skiing the "Back Bowls" of the mountain. For those of you who haven't been - Vail is HUGE!! It took us almost 2 hours to get over to this part of the resort, but once we were there, we were glad we made the trek! Would you believe that Vail has received over 31 feet of snow so far this year???
Beaver Creek is much smaller than Vail, but that isn't saying that there's not a lot of room there. The skiing on Friday morning was UNBELIEVABLE! We were in fresh powder that was up to our knees in some places, which makes for a very fun trip down the mountain. We hit the top and left side of the mountain on Friday and basically stayed on the extreme right side of the map on Sunday.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera along on the trip, so the few pics that I have come to you courtesy of my BlackBerry.

Here's our crew (minus Rob):
from left: Roberto Gois, Ken Woodruff, Ryan Stearle

Here's a shot of Ken taken in a small lodge at the tip-top of Vail. I bought 2 bananas and a turkey and cheese sandwich in this lodge for the bargain price of $13.50. Seriously.

Roberto and I in the same lodge

This was a pic from the top of one of the peaks at Vail. Trust me when I tell you that the beauty of this environment doesn't fully translate in this image...

Lastly, here's a shot atop Beaver Creek

Ear News.

Yesterday was Ethan's follow up appointment for his ears.  Ryan went with me to the appt.  Ethan has been still randomly fussy at odd times and still tugging at his ears occasionally.  He just finished his 2nd round of antibiotics on Sunday and I was anxious to finally hear a bill of good health.  Didn't get that, however.  Doc said his left ear - the one that eardrum burst - is still very red and there is still a large amount of fluid behind it.  He said he's very concerned that it seems nothing will heal this infection.  He says that instead of considering this a 3rd ear infection, he'd consider it one big long infection that has not healed.... which, he says, is even worse.  He said that we do not want this to continue or Ethan's hearing could be greatly affected and his language too.  He said this is a crucial time for Ethan in his language development.  The worst part is that Ethan doesn't give us any REAL symptoms for ear infections... he doesn't have a fever, coughing etc... He wants us to see an ENT.  In the meantime, Ethan is on Zithromax - a 3rd antiobiotic, one he hasn't been on yet.  It's a 3 day treatment.  On Monday, we have our appt w/ the ENT.    On another note, there is a strong possibility Ethan is allergic to our cats.  They SAY we can't test him until he's 3 yrs old - but a little birdie told me that there is a possibility if we are willing to pay for it, we can get tested early if we pay for it... we're researching this because there is a CHANCE that ALL of his problems (reflux, allergic breakouts, lingering ear infection) could be stemmed from a bad cat allergy.  Obviously, we take this seriously because our cats are important to us and we've had them for 9 years.  We take that very seriously so we want to be 100% sure before we removed our cats.  More on this when we have updates.  Thanks for the prayers for baby ethan.  Poor little guy can't seem to catch a break, yet he's a sweet giggly happy baby.  If this is a hint of how tough he'll be when he's bigger, the world better watch out!!!

Fun Times!

 A friend is a brother who was once a bother.  ~Author Unknown

Baby Yogi

Ethan is a yoga prodigy! He's definitely a level 3 at least!  :-)

Downward facing dog

Sphinx

 Half Upright Seated Angle

 Child's Pose

 

Eight Limb Pose

 Locust

 Half Locust

 More downward facing dog

Cobra

 Threading The Needle

 Plank

 Joyful Baby

 Cat Tilt