I'm a punk.

Well there you have it. I am a punk. I took Dawson to his 4 month check up today. I brought my burp rags and diapers and wipes and extra clothes. I even brought a "fun" bag for Ollie (which works brilliantly by the way). But alas, I did not bring a camera. I always brought one from Ollie's appointments. Of course, my iPhone was my camera and now we have Boost. But that's a whole other post!

Here are his stats:

Weight 17 lbs- 84%

Head- 43.1 cm- 70%

Length- 25 in- 51%

Anyway, here's a couple pictures of my sweet little man anyway!

Dawson is 4 months old!

Dawson is 4 months old today! He has changed so much over these last few months. He smiles, laughs and uses his hands now. He coos and adores his brother. It is funny that at such a young age you can see differences in kids. I am realizing that Dawson likes home and mom and that is about it. His schedule is important to him. He gets up at 4 and 7. He takes a couple short naps in the morning and one 3 hour nap in the afternoon. He goes to bed around 8. He loves to nurse and cuddle and be included in everything we do. Ollie is getting so much better about Dawson being around. It is evident that he loves his brother. It is completely apparent that the Dawson thinks Ollie is the coolest.

I am so thankful he is a healthy, normal boy. The 16 days following Dawson's birth were hard. Very, very hard but God is faithful and he chose to heal. It is wonderful to have to deal with the normal adjustments of a new baby. I think I might be starting to get this.

Dawson and I the day he was born

17 days old- Day he left the hospital 4 Months old

Brothers

H is for Hooray!

Last week, we did many 3 dimensional art creations. We made a heart, an H and a helicopter. We also ate Mexican haystacks!

The first day, we made our H. I used masking tape to put together two paper towel rolls and one toilet tissue roll. Ollie held it while I taped. Unless you either have a very skillful two year old or an older child, they really can't help mush at this point. I did get out some paint and have him paint it. I found the most awesome paint holder in the world! I took an empty egg carton and cut it into 2 and 3 cup segments. These are perfect to hold paint for his projects!

The next project was a helicopter. I had gotten a helicopter book from the library and spent some time looking at it and reading it with Ollie. To make the helicopter, I used two styrofoam cups (you could use paper), 2 chenille stems (pipe cleaners) and one sheet of paper. Ollie was my big helper. He cut the chenille stems and held the cups as we taped them together. He also colored his creation. Here is a picture of it!

Next, we made a heart. I found this in this month's family fun magazine. I only had white yarn and I didn't have corn starch. Instead, I took flour and water and mixed it into a paste then added red food coloring to add some color! Ollie and I cut pieces of yarn into 4 to 8 inch pieces. I laid out a piece of wax paper and put a heart cookie cutter down. He dipped the yarn and put it inside the cutter. It turned out so cute.

Finally, I made mexican haystacks. Yum! Brings me back to the good old days at my middle school. The cooks made it all the time! Anyway, here is the recipe.

G is for Gray

G was a Great deal of fun! We started the week by making a picture collage with our family name in the center. Ollie is fascinated by pictures so he loved looking at them and talking about them.

We read the book Green Eggs & Ham. After reading the book, I made ollie green eggs. Now I would have made the ham but my dear sweet hubby thought he needed lunch that day. Geez. The whole time Ollie quoted the book, "I will east them in a box and with a fox..." It was absolutely darling. I wish I had gotten it on tape. He is so smart!

Much to my husband's dismay, we played golf...in the house. Now, I can hear you all gasping but really? Where else are we going to play golf? I live on a frozen tundra! Besides, you are only a kid once. Might as well enjoy it to the fullest!

Finally, G is for God. We glued other names for God onto a paper plate. The paper plate has no significance, it was just for something different. He put on Healer, creator, Holly Spirit, Savior and Redeemer, Father, Son. He got tired of gluing really fast but I liked that when he showed it to his Dad he knew who it was about and gladly shared it.

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So just how do black cupboards look?

FANTASTIC! Two weekends and one work week later we have completed our project. It was not easy but it was so worth the work. Our house was built in 1959 and doesn't seem to have had many updates since. One of the things that was really needing updating was our cabinets. They were 60's blonde with gold handles- yuck!

Our project began on Friday. I emptied all of the cabinets into tubs. The tubs were stuck in our dining room--thoroughly obnoxious. Then, I got the awesome (note the sarcasm here) job of peeling off contact paper that was applied in 1960. Now being there are about a bizillion cabinets and drawers, I spent over 4 hours peeling. Lucky for us, Ollie bear had gone to stay with my mother-in-law. My fingers hurt and I was wiped. We stopped working at 2 am. At 4 am, my other little love bug, Dawson, got up to nurse. (sigh) Bob was up for the day at 6. I slept till 7:30.

We spent a ton of time taping and covering surfaces with paper because his Dad brought the sprayer over. Oh and did I mention Bob removed 25 doors and 7 drawers to be painted. Yes. This is one time where lots of cabinets is not optimal.

None-the-less, it is finished! Things are put away and it looks fantastic! Now I just need to save up for my granite countertops and stainless steel appliances..oh and my maple hardwood floor...and my island.

Laugh Baby Laugh

So I write an awful lot about my super tot Ollie but I don't put up much about my super sweet new love- The Dawsonator. He is just so sweet I could eat him up. Recently, he began laughing, not just his usual giggles but all out hysterics. What or who is making him laugh? One word- OLLIE. Dawson thinks his big brother is just so funny.

Just today, I got him to laugh. What was I doing? Making poot noises. Yep. If you watch Dawson, you can see that he too is trying to make poot noises! HaHa

Christmas

Yes. I am finally putting up our Christmas video. Yes. I already know my picture on my blog is jacked up and hopefully someday my dear sweet hubby will fix it for me!

Anyway, Christmas is a wonderful time of year. It's wonderful in so many ways--time with family, baking, decorating, gifts, songs, smells but most importantly it is about the birth of our Savior. That is why Christmas is important to us. We give gifts because God sent us the best gift of all, his son, Jesus Christ. Because of our sin, we deserve punishment but because of God's great love for us, he sent a redeemer. Someone who took our punishment so that we could live. That baby born to Joseph and Mary is more than just an average baby. He is the light of the world. He grew up a perfect and sinless man and then took all of our (yours and mine) sin upon himself and died on the cross. Because of that sacrifice, we can live eternally. Without it, we would be damned. The Bible states that "If we confess with our mouths, 'Jesus is Lord' and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved." It's as simple as that people. Believe that you need a Savior and that Jesus is it. So if you haven't made Jesus your Lord and Savior, I beg you to today. It'll change your life forever.

F is for Falling Behind

I love the Christmas season but let's face it, all normalcy comes to a screeching halt and that part stinks! We have really enjoyed our craft time and I now realize that I used to be better about doing creative snacks and games too so I'll try a little harder to vary the activities if any of you are using the blog for ideas!

Anyway, I think f has been my favorite so far. We created frosty, put farm animals on an F, feather painted and created family footprints (really cool).

The week started with a big construction paper F. Ollie loves stickers and he loves animals so to decorate his F we used farm animal stickers. The best part about stickers is that small children need very little help. Sometimes they struggle to remove stickers from the sheet. Here's a hint, remove the sticker stuff around the actual stickers and it will be much easier.

Next, we feather painted. This was a bit messy. I bought some large feathers at our local craft store. Since this project they have become triceratops horns, drum sticks, a microphone and a magic wand. Love that boy! He used the feathers instead of a paint brush. I thought I got a picture of him doing it but I can't find it. Rats!

I then took batting and cut it into shapes- circles, squares, rectangle, ovals and triangles. I also cut out a snowman. Ollie and I discussed the shapes while he glues them. Sometimes I'd ask him to glue on a certain shape and other times I asked what he was gluing on. We used two small black construction paper circles for eyes, an orange pipe cleaner for the nose and a black pipe cleaner for the mouth which ollie chose to put as a sad face. I am not sure why!

Finally, we did the coolest thing yet. On January 1st, i got out a big sheet of paper. We painted our feet gray and made footprints. We plan to frame this! It is really neat.