Reid turns 19 months!

We had a wet week!! Lots of rain and flooding in the Northwest. Our creek behind our house got a little flooded on Monday, but not anywhere near our yard. So needless to say, we did a lot of inside activities this week. But that makes for a lot of potential messes... the house has been a little bit out of control and hard to keep up with. But Andy has come to the rescue and even deep cleaned the kitchen and floor tonight. :)

Reid is talking so much! He has started putting words together, which is so fun. One of my favorite ones he says are "hep you" - and then he tries to get a chair and take it into the kitchen to help me cook. He learns new words every day. He has not been sleeping well though! The last few nights he has woken up every hour for part of the night. That has been rough for me. Hopefully he'll go back to waking up twice or so. That is doable. I'm going to work on night weaning him soon so we can all get more sleep. But he's not really interested in weaning yet. He loves to "us" (nurse).

Ruby has been loving to play imaginary things and to color. It is so fun to watch her think about things! She has been super excited for Christmas to come. We made a paper chain to help her know how many days are left, because she kept asking if it was tomorrow. I hid the Christmas presents somewhere and told her they are hidden. Today she said, "Mom, after you wrap the Christmas presents can you tell me where you hid them?" So funny. And today she was pretending that I was Santa Claus and she was Mrs. Claus, and she kept insisting I call her "honey."

WE LOVE OUR KIDS!!!

 Cutie pie Reid. He loves trying things on.

 We did a few morning baths for something to do! They have fun with all of their bath toys.

He was cold, and it was pretty cute. 

 Post-nap snuggles. He loves to cuddle!

Ruby was playing that Reid was sick and put him to bed here. Haha! 

 My deep-cleaning man! He's the best.

 Reid likes sitting in the stroller and playing with the cake set. The kids love to play "birthday."

The kids were too snotty still to go to church again this week. :( So we had another at-home day. Sunday night I was going stir-crazy, so Ruby and I ran some errands. Went to Home Depot and she loved this play kitchen. We had fun picking out light bulbs and having a girl date.

 And then we found out we had lice again. :( It's the worst! Hopefully it's gone now, and hopefully we won't get it again.

 Our beautiful Christmas tree!

 Ruby was playing that she was a bride, and Andy was walking her down the aisle. Her veil was made from a mattress cover. Haha!

 Our creek at its highest on Monday!

 These guys have both been LOVING to color. It's so fun.

 We headed to Omsi on Tuesday to get out of the house for a little while. It was fun, as usual!

 But Ruby had to go poopy but didn't want to... so we spent about half of our time in the bathroom. She finally went. :)

 Reid's 19 month photo!! Both of our kids have had a growth spurt in the last few months. I just measured them on our growth chart, and they are at least 1 1/2 - 2 inches taller than 4 months ago!

We've gotten a few boxes from Christmas gifts arriving, and the kids have been having so much fun with them! This one is a long skinny one, and it has been so fun. Most of the time it is a fence.

 

On Wednesday I did a lot of chores, and Reid got into a lot of things! It's so hard to keep up with this guy. Ruby was the same at his age... and apparently so was I!

 Doing some Isometrix together. The kids love to do workouts with us.

 Coloring time! Ruby is getting really good at coloring inside the lines. And Reid is getting good at not eating the crayons!

 They play together so well sometimes. Other times... not so well.

She was cleaning the bathroom yesterday. Such a helpful girl!

9 years!

We had our 9th anniversary on Tuesday! It has been a really great life so far, and I can't wait for the rest. It was fun looking back at our wedding photos with the kids. Ruby loved it.

Reid also had his 18 month appointment on Monday. He's in the 89th percentile for height (34 inches) and 64th percentile for weight (25 lbs 6.5 oz). So he's tall and regular. Haha. But he's doing really well and is right on track for development and growth. He eats really well and likes most vegetables, except for green beans and asparagus. He even likes broccoli! Ruby does too now that I've been roasting it. Last time I made it, she asked what we were having for dinner, and when I told her she said, "Oh yummy!" I'm so glad I didn't give up on the veggies!

 He loves wearing Ruby's tutu, and he loves climbing on the rocking chair to read his bible. He does it all of the time.

 We finished our thankful tree! It is so important to remember to be thankful.

 We had to go back down to the Honda dealership to take care of some paperwork on Friday (Andy took off from work). We had a little extra time, so we went to this Christmas tree farm/petting zoo down the street in Wilsonville. It was adorable, we all loved it. Except Ruby didn't like when one of the little donkeys brayed, it was super loud! There was a little chicken with a hurt foot running around where the people were, so I caught her and put her back in the pen. 

 Then on Friday after nap, we headed downtown for the Christmas tree lighting in Pioneer Square! Our sweet sister-in-law Courtney bought us dinner in the Nordstrom Cafe (she's the manager at the downtown Nordstrom), and then we got to watch the tree lighting from the 4th floor conference room! It was amazing. She also got these fun balloons for the kids.

Reid's was a bear riding a motorcycle. Haha! And this is his really funny angry face he likes to make for fun. He's not really angry. 

The square down there was packed! It was so fun to watch it from way up high. 

 The kids were fascinated and both loved it!

Then we headed down to the square to look at it from there. It was super crowded. We had parked in a parking garage around the corner, and it took forever to get out of there! So the kids had a late night, but it was fun. 

Reid loves the Christmas lights that the neighbors put up. He said, "Wook! Wook! Pwetty! See! See!" 

 Morning snuggles.

 More snuggles. Reid is such a cuddly guy. And then Ruby thinks she wants to snuggle too, but then she only lasts for a second or two.

 More reading! He really loves books.

 He likes to stick his feet up while he eats. Kind of like Mommy was as a kid...

 The kids were pretty snotty on Sunday morning, so we didn't want to put them in the nursery. So we went and got a Christmas tree instead. We found a great farm where we could cut our own tree for pretty inexpensive down the road a bit. It was cold though!

 We found our tree! We had to get a really skinny one to fit in our tiny living room. The kids were pretty squirrelly so we didn't get great pictures. And we were all pretty much knee deep in mud.

 Me and the kids with the tree! We all had a ton of fun putting it up and decorating it when we got home.

 Doing makeup in the morning. Courtney got me a huge bag of samples from Nordstrom. :)

 Ruby LOVES the Christmas tree and has been playing presents. She put a bunch of jars in a box last night for me and had me open it this morning. 

 Reid at his appointment on Monday! He did really well, except for when he fell off of this chair on his head. He has a hard head though, so he was fine.

 We've been doing Ann Voskamp's Unwrapping the Greatest Gift book. It's a little above the kids' heads, so we've been just summarizing. Ruby likes putting on the Jesse tree ornaments.

 These guys both LOVE tomato soup so much.

 On Tuesday night we went to the Zoo lights with our friends the Cline's. They came to our place for an impromptu dinner and then we rode the Max over there. It was rainy and freezing!

 Ruby and Aiden are best buddies.

 Everyone was so cold. We walked through the light path and then called it a night. Brrr!!!! It was really fun though.

Later that night my parents came by on their way driving through from New York. I didn't get any pictures! But it was so nice to have them stay the night.

 Reid wanted to put on Ruby's dress.

 These guys had so much fun coloring this box yesterday. Sometimes those are the best toys.

Ruby put a bunch of dots on it which were buttons, and it was her rocket.

Thanksgiving

We had a fun week. It was pretty busy, and we bought a car! We got a Honda Pilot, and we love it. I think it will last us a really long time. The kids really like it too. We also had a really good Thanksgiving. It was neat to write down things that we were thankful for all month. We had our Thanksgiving tree, and every day we wrote on a new leaf what we are thankful for. I also wrote down what I'm thankful to Andy for about him, and gave it to him on Thanksgiving. It's so important to focus our hearts on gratitude and being thankful to God for everything instead of focusing on ourselves and what we want.

I think Reid is finally starting to get his second set of molars. He has been chewing on his finger in the back, so we'll see. He has been waking up two to three times a night still, which is not great. But we're all surviving. I'm trying to start night weaning him so he sleeps longer. We really don't like to have our kids cry it out, especially when he shares a room with Ruby. That would just keep them both up. So gentle weaning is the way we're doing it. He has been sleeping all the way through his nap most days now. He used to (and still does sometimes) wake up in the middle of his nap and need to be rocked back to sleep. It's so sweet to rock him though, he's such a snuggly little guy. And he loves cuddling when he wakes up, not like Ruby when she was little (or now). She wakes up ready to go.

 Reid watched me water the plants, and then got the pitcher and tried to fill it with water to do it too. He loves to copy everything we do!

 Doing his work in the laundry basket.

 Daddy made the kids a castle out of this thing from our steam mop box.

 Our new car! It's a 2004 Honda Pilot with only 80,000 miles on it. It's in great condition! The color is Sage Brush Pearl (a dark green/blue), and it has grey leather and heated seats. So nice. :)

 Ruby was taking our picture and wanted us to make a silly face. And then she kept saying it wasn't silly enough. Haha!

 Our cutie boy!

 They like to build this cozy spot. It's so nice when they play well together.

 She was driving us to San Francisco to watch Go Giants.

 It's so nice when they play (or read) together nicely. It doesn't usually last too long though. I think after this photo Ruby stole Reid's book and he put up a big fuss. But it was a precious moment.

 Making some soup.

 We met our friends at the zoo on Wednesday. It was cold!! Ruby put her zoo key down on a rock, and then forgot to pick it back up. We didn't realize we were missing it until the polar bears. Then we went back and it wasn't there. So we went to the lost and found, and they didn't have her zoo key, but they had a bunch of other ones and gave us one with the elephant on it that they don't make any more! Ruby was pretty excited about that.

 Bundled boy. He got tired of the stroller after a while. But he does pretty good in it.

 She found this cute little kids door in the gift shop and played with it for a long time!

 Our friends gave us a new Giants shirt!

 Ruby and Quinn at the zoo.

 We made a fire in our fireplace and had a lovely evening. Reid was amazed at the fire and kept saying "fifow." 

 They put on their tutus and stood over the vent. Haha!

 I love my boy.

 I didn't take many pictures on Thanksgiving. We had dinner at Tony and Courtney's house with Andy's family. Patty is in Uganda so she wasn't there, but everyone else was. Ruby and I made this turkey for the kids to play pin the feather on the turkey. It was a big hit. And the food was pretty good too! I made food all morning, pumpkin pie, pecan tart, apple pie, cranberry sauce, and two-potato gratin. It was all delicious!

My two favorite kids when we got home on Thanksgiving. They are so special to us.