It's about time!

Oh man! I haven't updated this thing in MONTHS! Where do I start... Hmmm...

Alright... Oliver. Oliver is almost 5 months old (in a week)! Time flies by! I swear he was just a tiny little newborn, and now he's trying to crawl! He is THE sweetest little boy ever! He loves to snuggle, smile, laugh & babble. He just goes with the flow & barely ever cries. Even if he's starving, he'll be crying, but you smile at him & he'll stop to give you his big gummy grin! He scoots EVERYWHERE now, so I can barely leave him for a second! He will make his way all over the living room, searching out toys & whatever interesting treasures he can find. There's no way to explain him without using the words sweet, patient, loving, happy, laid back & determined. We love having him in our family!

Amelie & Oliver are seriously just the best of friends! It's so much fun to see them growing together. Amelie loves him so much & is such a wonderful sister. She brings him toys, tries to share her snacks with him, wipes his drool off his chin... If he starts to whine, she'll softly pat his bum & "shush" him... Or, one time, I said "Oh, Oliver, your little toes are so cold!!" and she ran to the sock drawer & brought a pair of (pink!) socks and put them on him! She's constantly taking care of him (free babysitter, woohoo! J/K, I swear), playing with him & letting him know she loves him! He loves her, too. His whole world lights up when she comes to talk to him. He thinks she is hilarious. We do too :)

(Okay, maybe he didn't think she was very hilarious at this moment...)

(I promise she has undies on here!)

(wiping his drool!)

Amelie is 20.5 months old. She is pretty much smarter than me & Aaron combined. We stopped keeping track of all her words that she'd say when she was around 17 months old... By then, it was impossible to track. She had HUNDREDS of words under her belt and was speaking to us in sentences like it was no big deal. She would literally copy every word we said! She knew all her animals & what they said. By 18 months, she could count to 10. By about 19.5 months, she knew her alphabet. She knows what every letter is, and can tell us a thing or two that each letter "stands for" (ie, C for Cat, T for Tree, D for Door)... She forced us to potty train her when she was 18 months old & was fully day trained in a day & a half! She just amazes us every day! She has the sweetest heart ever. She loves to help out around the house... From doing laundry & dishes, to picking up her toys, to scrubbing the floors & cleaning windows! She sincerely loves her friends and family & is so giving. She says please, thank you, excuse me, bless you & sorry all the time. She is definitely becoming very *ahem* opinionated, like most kids her age... But, along with that comes her fun, bubbly, talkative, playful personality that we adore, so it's a pretty good trade off! 

This seems to be a common predicament for both kids...

We've decided that she totally has OCD... She lines everything up just right, and likes things to be even. She is definitely a thinker. She loves puzzles, books & flash cards. She might be a nerd when she's older. We like nerds, though, so it's okay.

I've been babysitting Maya, and they have so much fun together! I was making lunch one day & looked down to find this... The funny thing is that neither of them are thumb suckers!!

(She was feeding her bear crackers with a spoon & getting him ready for the day! She's also been picking out her outfits... If you can't tell)

This was really funny... I was taking pictures of Oliver, cause he scooted himself backwards across the family room & almost down the steps... Amelie ended up flying down the stairs in the background! Crazy kid!

This is her new best friend. I asked Aaron to get some salt, cause we were out... We now own 25 lbs of salt. Amelie weighs under 24 lbs. We have less Amelie than salt. I should have known better than to ask a Costco worker to bring home some salt.

& even more pics!

Last night, I was hanging out at mom & dad's house, and Aaron got off work early... Mom said I could just leave Amelie & Oliver there while I ran to get Aaron real quick. Well, when we got back to their house, we were greeted by a couple little monkeys in the window... Trista caught Amelie's reaction to seeing us come home! Super cute!! 

This was before, when Zoe & Amelie were jumping on the couch... They were having so much fun together!!

This is Amelie following Grandpa EVERYWHERE!!! She just adores him! She wanders around the house pointing at our front door, saying "Gramma, Grampa"... The second she gets to their house, she'll run around searching for Grandpa!

Earlier that day, we went to Amelie's friend, Scarlett's birthday party. Scarlett's parents, Sheena & Cory, went to school with Aaron in Chewelah. The party was lots of fun! Amelie had a blast wandering around playing and eating all the yummy fruits & other food! Oliver had fun sleeping the whole time :)

While we were getting ready in the morning, we heard Amelie in her room saying "nigh nigh"... We went in there and found her dolly on a blanket next to her crib, and Amelie was reading her a book! So sweet! She's such a great little mama! We've also found her changing dolly's diaper, feeding dolly lunch, swaddling dolly, strapping her in to the car seat and, the best so far... 'Nursing' her teddy bear. Hmmm. She's a very observant child!

Sharing her sippy :)

I caught him smiling!! It's a bit off-centered, cause he was on my lap... Couldn't see what I was doing!

She carefully lined all her toys up on the fireplace, then sat next to them and admired her work! OCD, much?!?!

These are just some cute ones of her running around the house, eating fruit...

All Done!

She picked out this outfit & dressed herself!

Showing off her tongue!

K, the monkeys are hungry, so I don't have time to make this post pretty... Check out all my other posts too :) Bye!

More Pics...

Amelie got her first freckle!!!

Picture time!

Amelie... Did you give your brother kisses??

Nooo... Why??

Amelie loves stealing Oliver's bink! She never wanted one before, now she's obsessed!!

I just think this is a cute picture of Syler at Priest Lake

Cutest dad ever award??

Well, obviously I like Aaron quite a bit and think he's great. Now I have proof! I should have technically posted this on Father's day, but holiday's are overrated anyway, right?

While I was pregnant, every time I would go to do Amelie's hair, Aaron would be like "do you want me to do that?"... I didn't think anything of it, so I'd just say "no thanks, I've got it". Finally he said to me "Talia, I need to start doing her hair, so please let me do it"... Umm... Okay! I didn't realize you had this deep NEED to put little pigtails in our daughter's hair, but who am I to stop you from fulfilling this all important task? Anyway, so he went on to explain that he needed to practice, so that when I wasn't around, she could still have cute hair! To which I said "good thinking, if I die, Amelie still needs to be cute!"... Apparently, he just meant while I was in the hospital after my c-section, so he then got sad about the idea of me dying... BUT, I thought that was the cutest thing ever! 

I was wrong.

A couple weeks ago, Aaron had put Amelie down for bed at night after we had a BBQ at our house. The next morning, I went in to get her... When I walked in, there was a little make-shift bed on the floor next to her crib. One of her little teddy bears was tucked into it, nice & snuggly! I asked Aaron about it and he explained to me that Amelie REALLY wanted to sleep with the bear the night before... She sleeps with several stuffed animals, so normally we'd just toss it in the crib with her... However, that evening, she was carrying the bear around outside and kept dropping it in the dirt, so he didn't want her to sleep with it! He carefully made the bear a bed and let Amelie tuck it in, give it kisses, and say good night to it. 

He's such a good dad. Most guys wouldn't even think about the fact that the bear was dropped on the ground... If they did, they would have either let the kid sleep with the dirty bear or just said "nope, sorry, the bear is dirty". It would have been faster/easier to do either of those. He never takes the easy way. He is always going above and beyond to make sure that Amelie is safe, happy, learning, careful and all around well taken care of. Oliver & Amelie are lucky little duckies, and I'm a lucky wife!

My sweet babies

Today, Amelie turned 16 months old and our new addition, Oliver, turned 6 days old. It's been a fairly smooth transition so far... Amelie loves her new baby. She likes to give him kisses and poke at him. Whenever she hears him cry, she finds the nearest item of his (binky, blanket, hat, shirt... Anything!) and brings it over to him in an attempt to make him happy. She loves helping out, so she's been bringing us his diapers and wipes & helping pick out his outfits! The only thing she doesn't love is that she misses her mommy. I miss her, too, so I can understand her feelings. I had a repeat c-section, so I haven't been able to pick her up much. And I'm usually feeding Oliver, so Aaron has been taking care of Amelie a lot. After a teary breakdown today, I decided that I truly don't care if my incision rips open and my gizzards fall out... I just want to hold my 'baby' again. So, we've been splitting our time more evenly between Amelie & Oliver, and we're all happy campers! I guess we'll get this 2 kid thing sooner or later, right?

Oh, and for those of you that don't know the details... Oliver was born on May 19th (Happy Birthday, Trista!) @ 1:08 pm. He weighed 8lbs, 1oz & was 20". My surgery was scheduled 8 days before my due date, so the doc & a couple nurses all predicted he would have been at least 9 1/2lbs, possibly close to 10, if he came when he was due! Guess I have big babies :) It's funny, cause even though most people think an 8 lb-er is big, we are in awe at how 'tiny' he is! He was 7lbs, 10oz when we left the hospital (2 days old), and Amelie never went below the 9lb she was born at! Anyway, he's a wonderful little guy so far. We just feel like even more of a family. We can't wait to see Amelie & Oliver become little buddies.

(Amelie wants to put Aaron's socks on all the time... We think it's so funny, cause she looks like a little kangaroo or something, cause of the heels!)

Our last picture as a family of 3 (well... 3 living out in the real world!)

The morning of my c-section

One of Oliver's first pics... I just think this one is so cute! 

Amelie meeting Oliver... She was a bit confused at this point!

Then she was excited to find out that he has eyes :)

She's always been really into her baby doll, but she has been especially nurturing and motherly to her this past week. It's so sweet! She's also been swaddling her pink cow that Oliver 'gave her' the day he came home from the hospital! Anyway, here she is taking care of dolly with the boppy around her waist!

And here she is having a conversation with Aaron about parenting.

Leaving the hospital! Woohoo!!

Amelie watching Oliver get weighed on the shipping scale!

HEY! Boys are people too, you know.

So, as you all know, Aaron & I are having a boy this time... In 3 Days!  EEP! Anyway... When we found out it was a boy, we were ecstatic (okay, I was a bit more ecstatic than Aaron- he hoped to save money by re-using all of Amelie's stuff! But we were actually both hoping for a boy). Then came the comments. Nearly EVERY person that we've told that we're having a boy *okay, mostly strangers* follows it up with a sympathetic look and a comment about how 'it's okay' that it isn't a girl. Well, thank you for okaying it, but we actually WANTED a boy. We PREFERRED a boy over another girl. I know this is absolutely shocking to the minds of most crazy old ladies that I run into at the fabric store, or the snobby girls shopping at BabyGap... But it's true. Before I even found out what it was, I talked about wanting a boy. Anyway, Aaron & I have both just noticed such a huge contrast from when I was pregnant with Amelie... People would practically throw me a party every time I said we were having a girl. It's like, they ask you the gender, but they don't really want to hear what you're having... Unless it's a girl. Well, all I have to say is boys are people too. I'm sure this may be contrary to what the feminists of the world think, but we wouldn't be here without boys. He's our baby, and we're just as excited about him joining our family as we were about Amelie.

So, save your sympathy. A boy is exactly what we WANT.

Then again, perhaps everyone just assumes that we'd want another girl, considering how stinkin' cute & fun our first one is... Now THAT makes sense.

My computer is being weird, so I can't post any more pics, but you'll get an overload real soon. Promise.