Piper - 2 months

I started this post over a week ago…that's the last time I sat down at the computer!  It has been straight up CRAZY town…don't worry, I will fill you in on all the details sometime in the next 6 months ;).  We are in our happy new home in Kansas freezing our tails off and unpacking boxes/organizing every moment we can!

First of all-someone tell me how my sweet Piper Marie is 2 months old already!  So much has happened in her short 2 months of life!

-At her 2 month check up, she was 12 lbs, 8 oz (72nd %ile), 23.75 inches long (91st %ile) and her head circumference was 40cm (89th %ile).  A healthy baby :).

-Happy to report that she is a much happier and content baby than she was at 1 month.  I am extra thankful for Zantac and the relief it has given her reflux.  She still spits up all.the.time. (just like her brother did) but she's sleeping great and much happier!

-Speaking of sleep-we got her sleeping all night!  Well, pretty sure we had nothing to do with it but either way she's sleeping which means I am sleeping which means everyone is happier and well taken care of ;).  She's sleeping from 10 or 11ish to 7 or 8 ish.  Seriously dreamy.

-We swaddle her at night.  She can be wide awake after eating but once I get her all swaddled up and lay her down she puts herself to sleep quickly.  

-Besides the sleep, the best part about month 2 is SMILES!  She is smiling at all of us and we just can't get enough.

I couldn't narrow down her pictures to just a couple-they are all so cute!

Oh, those rolls and that hair!

Those sweet cheeks of hers are kissed on a million times a day by everyone in this house!

This is my fave!

Happy 2 months Piper Marie!!!  We love you!

Our Looney Laney

Laney Faith makes us laugh full time.  Her personality is just hilarious-never a dull moment with her.

 She likes to test me and climb up the outside of the railing.  She climbs up a step and says, "Mom, ha-ha-ha."

 She wants to watercolor everyday for about 11 seconds and then is done.

 She always makes sure Piper has a lovey next to her.  This time she tucked Minnie and a tiny Mickey under Piper's blanket.

 It's construction worker princess Laney.  Oh yeah and she had on Cooper's baseball jersey underneath it all.

 She is totally content being naked-even in the middle of the winter.

 She was texting her Aunt Tanya here.

 Almost loves being in costume as much as she likes being naked.

 This is often how I find Piper's carseat when I go to put her in it.  Yes, even her babies are naked.

Oh Laney-thanks for making life so funny-we love you!!!

Piper's Hair

It's the first thing people comment on about her and I have been stopped by strangers asking about it.  Everyone loves the hair!  To be honest, we haven't been out much with her.  Between the cold, cold weather and prepping for the move and let's be honest-getting out with 3 kids sometimes just isn't worth it ;).  And when we are out (preschool drop off and grocery store), she is usually in her carseat so she is hardly seen. 

We just know she is going to lose it all and that makes me sad!  Her hair is beautiful and is the best right after bath so I caught a few pics at 7 weeks.

Ha!  It looks fake here!!!

Zoe the Zebra

Cooper is in the Zebras class at preschool.  They have a class mascot, Zoe the Zebra.  Each student gets to take Zoe home for a weekend.  A few weeks ago, we were the lucky ones and Cooper was excited!

Zoe came home with us the day Cooper hit his 'no thumb sucking' goal so she made the trip to Target with us.

Zoe went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner and ice cream!

Grandpa had sent Cooper some Ninja Turtle bandaids and Cooper was just a bit anxious to use them.  We thought this was cute and harmless.  Well, have you ever tried to take bandaids off a stuffed animal??  It's impossible.  No really, those bandaids weren't budging.  So you know where I ended up…amazon.com buying a new Zebra class mascot ;).  Lesson learned the hard way….I blame Doc McStuffins ;).

Everyone records their adventures with Zoe in the class book.  Not my proudest scrapbooking moment but it worked and Cooper thought it was incredible ;).

A cold Texas winter

This winter has been unusually cold for Texas-as I guess is probably the case for most of the country.  I remember last year playing outside with the kids several times in the months of January and February, not this year.  When the weather has been nice, we have taken full advantage!

This was a recent Friday afternoon-Adam had just got back in town after being gone for the week.  Cooper rode his bike and Laney walked Lola.

 And this sweet blue eyed babe caught a ride in the Baby Bjorn.

 Oh that hair! 

And then just this week we got snow. Blah.  I hate winter, have I mentioned that ;)?  Cooper was over the moon ecstatic about the snow.  It came on a school day and the minute he got home, we bundled him up and out he went.  I snuck out for a few minutes to capture the moment then I was back in watching him from the window.

 He thought this inch of snow was incredible!   I can only imagine his reaction to the 12 inches in Kansas!

 He's rocking Dad's hat and gloves-we had to hold the gloves on using ponytail holders :).  You will find me scooping up some clearance snow gear for all my kids this Spring…pretty sure we are going to need more than this fleece coat next Winter in Kansas.

 Poor Laney was napping and missed all the snow fun.

 I had to get a picture of Piper in her first snow!  Adam was persuaded out of his office for just a bit by Cooper to come out and play so I bundled Piper up and we stepped out for a couple pics.

And as I type this, we are under a winter storm warning…awesome. 

Cooper's big accomplishment!

**warning- more details than you probably care to know in this post ;)**

In our crazy 48 hour house cleaning to prep it for showing, Adam found a poster board and was about to throw it away.   I put it to the side and decided it was a sign to start a No More Thumb Sucking campaign!  Cooper is the type of kid that will totally work for an incentive and loves a good chart…another reason he is like his mother ;).

Cooper has been sucking his right thumb since he was 4 months old.  We attribute his thumb sucking to his amazing sleep patterns throughout his short 4 years of life.  Seriously the kid is an incredible sleeper!  That thumb has always been there for him…to help soothe him to sleep, bring him comfort, a great tv watching companion, etc.  Before this we had talked to him about no longer sucking his thumb but hadn't truly worked on giving it up completely.  At this point, he was basically just sucking his thumb at nap/bedtime and whenever he had his blanket in his hand.  In fact, his teachers were unaware that he even sucked his thumb!  

 I knew the first step was to make it sound like lots of fun and get Cooper to be involved in all of it.  So I pulled out the fun, smelly markers…everything is better with smelly markers-you know that, right? ;) 

 He was all about it!  He name the chart, picked out all the colors, and wrote a bit.

We came up with the incentives together too!  He could earn 2 stickers a day.  One if he didn't suck his thumb from the time he woke up in the morning until nap.  Another sticker if didn't suck his thumb from the time he woke up from nap until bedtime.  Each day that he had earned 2 stickers, he could choose a piece of candy, hot chocolate or iPad time.  He almost always chose iPad.  At 5 days of no thumb sucking in a row, he got an ice cream date with mom or dad…we still haven't cashed this one in!  Then at 10 days in a row, he wanted to go to Target and get a Ninja Turtle jacket.  Done!

At this point we didn't even mention that he couldn't suck his thumb while he slept but he just assumed it.  I had bought this stuff and believe it was the key to Coop's quick success.  It is an awful, awful tasting liquid that you apply to the nail.  It's so awful that it lasts 2 days before you need to reapply!  I showed and explained it to Cooper.  I told hime that he didn't have to put it on his thumb but if he thought it would help, we could use it.  After smelling it he said, "no way!"  However, when we put him to bed the first night he said, "Mom, can you put that stuff on my thumb?"  Oh, sweet, sweet boy.  He knew he needed some back up ;).  About 10 minutes later he came out of his room needing a drink of water…yep, he had gave that thumb a try.  This happened a few other times over the course of a week, always at night or super early in the morning.  At times when he was asleep and it just happened by habit.  

 We could not be more proud of this boy!  He totally rocked this challenge!  Just like that he stopped his thumb sucking habit, no turning back!  10 straight days from day 1!  Seriously, it was easy!  I think we have told him 1 million times how proud we are of him and we truly are-it's not easy to break a habit you have been doing everyday for 4 years.   

His 10th day we went to Target for that Ninja Turtle jacket…well, they were sold out :(.  He was totally ok with it, he said, "That's alright Mom, we can go pick out a toy."  We were up and down and up and down those aisles, analyzing all the options.  He finally decided on this Octonaut toy, it's one of his fave shows right now.

He adores this new toy and I adore him!  His grandparents got him surprise toys as well so he is a pretty happy kid!  After the 10 days we stopped using the sticker chart and the Mavala as well.  Thankfully he hasn't reverted back at all.

We did have one side effect that I must note.   Well, we think it was a side effect.  About 2 weeks during/following the 'no more thumb sucking', we were having some major behavior issues with Cooper.  He was not listening (way more than normal ;), talking back, hitting me, did I mention not listening and talking back???  I was about to lose it, he was awful.  After a few days, we decided it must be 'thumb withdrawal!'  I mean, we took away his main source of comfort and something he had been doing for 4 years, everyday.  He did get better and is back to normal but it definitely took a while and an incredible amount of patience.  In fact, I decided during those couple weeks that I may not survive the teenage years. Yikes!

I have to admit a teeny tiny part of me was a teeny tiny bit sad about all of this.  This was one of the last little bits of his baby side that was left :(-he's growing up too fast!  Just another milestone in the books.

Cooper William, we are so proud of you! You are awesome and such an incredible boy!

Where am I supposed to put my groceries???

Thanks to Adam's extended holiday vacation, Piper was 1 month before I headed out alone with all 3 kids!  And yes, I bribe good behavior in Target with Lunchables.  This trip Laney got one and her big brother definitely did not.  This day he was the Mayor of Whine City ;).

Update on the big move

I first blogged about our move to Kansas here.  Well, a lot has happened since then!

Our house was set to go on the market Wednesday, January 15.  Our realtor called me the Friday before wondering if we would be willing to let him show it on Sunday.  Who's going to turn down a showing offer?!  Well, if you saw my house that Friday he called-you probably would have thought I would've turned him down.  Nope.  Adam had been out of town all week.  He got home Friday afternoon and we literally cleaned from then until Sunday at 2:00 when we had to leave for Coop's soccer game and the showing.  We have done this many times before with our other homes so we knew what had to be done, like shove things in any drawer you can find and dust things that haven't been dusted since we moved in (kidding…maybe ;)).  

The showing was Sunday afternoon and by Monday night we had an offer on the house that we accepted.  The icing on the cake...it was a full price offer!  Wow!  I can't begin to tell you how thankful I am for that offer.  I don't think I knew how hard it was going to be to get the house ready for showings with the 3 kids until we were in the middle of it, especially with Piper being so fussy at the time.  

 I wasn't worried about selling the house, but I thought it might take a month, not 1 day!  I also thought we would be in Texas thru March probably April…really in no hurry to get back to Kansas in the middle of winter.  Well, not only did the house sell in 1 day, we had to be out in 5 1/2 weeks!!!

 So 4 short days after getting the offer on our house, we were in the car headed up to Kansas to find a new home. 

A few times when looking at weather forecasts, Adam and I wonder…what are we thinking!?

This was the temperature when we left for Kansas, when we arrived it was 27.  Boo.

 After a day of looking, we found our new home!  Obviously it has a bit of work left to be done :).  It was at the point in construction that we got to pick out all the finishing touches -flooring, appliances, countertops, tile, plumbing, lighting - for it.  We did it all in a matter of a few hours and honestly just have our fingers crossed that it all comes together.

This is the view from the kitchen.

And this is where we were officially sold on the house.  A few houses we looked at were great but the yard, or lack there of, ruined it.  The mud is our yard the green/brown behind it is greenspace that won't be built on.  

Three days later we were back home and this was in the yard shortly after.

We have FaceTimed and received lots of pics from family on progress of the house.  Of course the foot of snow Overland Park just got is putting the exterior progress of the house on hold for a bit.

A week later my wonderful mom and sister came down to help me pack and stay while Adam was gone all week.  We were wrapping and packing up anything not nailed down ;).

This dining room was empty when they arrived and this was it after they left.  They were a humungous help!  We packed up everything that wasn't being used on a daily basis.

We are officially less than 2 weeks from move date!  More updates to come!