Happy Mother's Day

For your Mother's Day enjoyment, please read the following, which Amelia brought home for me from school.

"All About My Mom" (her answers are in bold and italics. Interesting how many of "mom's" favorite things are the same as Amelia's favorite things...)

Written by: Amelia Jobe

My mom's name is : Mommy
My mom is 7 years old
My mom loves: me and my baby Andrew
My mom's favorite job is: Dad
My mom's favorite book is: Thomas
My mom's favorite tv show is: Wonder Pets
My mom's favorite color is: gray
My mom's favorite food is: bread
My mom's favorite thing to do is: paint
My mom's best friend is: Gabriell
My mom's favorite present is: happy face toy
My mom loves me because: I play

Happy Mother's Day to all my mom friends and family!

My cute kids

I just couldn't resist posting this picture of my cute kids!

Outside

We have really enjoyed spending a lot of time outside in the last few weeks. Amelia helped me plant some flowers in the pots on our deck. She is a really good helper and loves using her own little shovel, rake and gloves!

My Aunt Andrea sent Amelia some egg-shaped sidewalk chalk at Easter, and Amelia has really been loving it. She decided to decorate the deck the other day:

The picture above is, as Amelia described it, "a smiling fish." I thought it was pretty good! We've also had some nice spring showers lately, and Amelia has relished them (although I think mostly she just likes being able to use her Thomas umbrella):

Andrew has joined us outside on most of our ventures, lounging in his carseat with the little umbrella part over him. He is such an easygoing baby! Here's the kids before one of our backyard ventures.

We are so thankful to be able to be playing outside! Thank you, God, for springtime!!

Spring...finally...I think

We've finally gotten some fantastic weather in the last couple weeks, and this week it's supposed to be in the 70's every day! Woo hoo! I've boycotted winter for the last couple weeks and have been wearing flip flops. No more socks for me until September! :-) Here are a few cute pictures: 1. Guess who did this?? 2. If you didn't guess, here's the answer. :-) 3. My sweet kids 4. Enjoying the spring weather 5. Two months old...hard to believe!!

Craziness

The last couple weeks around here have been crazy! Our good friends Matt and Jessica got married on the 29th of March, and Bryan, Amelia, and I were all in the wedding, so the week before that was very busy and full of activity. The wedding was beautiful and we all had a lot of fun! Here's a picture of all of us at the wedding, and one of Amelia in her flower girl dress with her new boyfriend Liam (one of the ring bearers and Jessica's nephew):

It took us several days to recover from the wedding busy-ness and being tired from it all. Then last Thursday night, Andrew and I flew to Oklahoma City for my sister's graduate recital (she is graduating with her master's degree in musical theater next month--go Abby!). We had a great time visiting Abby in OKC and got to see lots of family from both sides that I hadn't seen in a very long time. I also got to see some college friends and even a friend from high school (both were at her recital). It was one huge reunion! Here are some pictures from this weekend:

We got home on Sunday night and then woke up Monday morning to Andrew coughing and wheezing a lot. I took him to the doctor and just as a precaution, she sent us to the hospital for a chest x-ray and an RSV test. The x-ray came back normal but we're still waiting on the RSV test result. Andrew started doing better yesterday (not so sleepy and wheezy) and is better still today, but we still haven't found out for sure whether he just has a cold or RSV. Keep him in your prayers! Here is a picture of him in some cute overalls, and a piece of artwork from Amelia which I found very impressive. I'm hoping our craziness is winding down for a while!

One month

Andrew is one month (and one day) old! He's really changed a lot in the last four weeks. It's especially noticeable as far as his weight is concerned; he's up to 10 pounds 2 ounces! I can definitely tell by my sore arms and back! He's got a little cold but hopefully it'll pass soon. It's hard to stay healthy with a sister who coughs in your face every day!

I'm stealing a page from my friend Martha's book; every week of her daughter Nora's life, she's taken a picture of Nora with a sign that says "I am _weeks old today!" It's been really fun to see her progress each week (she posts the pictures on her blog). I don't know that I can be diligent enough to do one each week, but I thought it would be fun to do this for Andrew for each month. Here's the first picture!We've had meals brought to us every other night for the last 10 days from our church family, which has been awesome! Even though I love to cook, it's been nice to not have to think about what's for dinner. People (especially at church) have also given us lots of gifts for Andrew, and a lot of those people have given gifts to Amelia too, so she's not left out. She is eating this up, of course!

One of my friends from Ladies' class had a toy kitchen that belonged to her daughter (who's now in high school). Cindy had told me a while back that she'd love to pass this on to Amelia, so Amelia played with it at Cindy's house the other day and then it came home with us. It has been really funny watching Amelia play in her kitchen! She puts on her little apron and chef hat and looks so cute (see picture below)! The funniest part of all of it, however, is the cash register. It has a little scanner that makes noise when you touch it to something, so as you can imagine, we've "bought" everything in the house with Amelia's cash register. Here's the best part: after you "buy" something, she says, "Thank you for shopping with us!" Ha! One too many trips to Kroger, I guess!

Pictures and stories

Well, we're starting week three and everything is still going well! At Andrew's two-week checkup he weighed 8 pounds, 12 ounces, so he's back up past his birthweight and growing like a weed! He's had a couple of rough nights this week but last night was much better. Unfortunately, he has a stuffy nose, so that's no fun for any of us, but hopefully it'll pass quickly. Here are a couple pictures from this week. It's amazing to me how different he looks already!



In Amelia news: Amelia is really exercising her imagination these days. Tuesday when she came home from school, she decided she needed to have a birthday party for Humu (a stuffed fish she has). She then cleaned out her whole toy/book shelf and toy box to set up the party. Below is a picture of the guests at the party.

Amelia is quite the little mommy, both to her dolls and to Andrew, who she still calls "my baby." Here you can see her swinging her doll just like her little brother.

Even though it's March, we're still getting pounded with snow (welcome to the frozen north!). Yesterday Amelia went outside to help Bryan shovel the driveway (her idea, not ours...we promise); here is a picture of her getup.


One final bit of Amelia story: last week when I was about to nurse Andrew, Amelia was standing by and observing. She promptly sat down on the couch, pulled up her shirt, reached out her arms, and said "baby brother wants to drink milk from my tummy!" Needless to say, Mom and I got quite tickled! Have a great week!