Snapshots

Here are a few (actually, kind of a lot of) snapshots of life at our house from the past month or so:

Talmage turns just about everything into a train, including these mandarin orange segments.

I absolutely love these bibs from Ikea. Talmage calls them his "jacket bibs." :) They clean up in a snap, and Talmage has been a much cleaner little boy ever since we got them! A 2-pack is only $4.99, too!

Worried?

Our boys are very...intense. Wesley is intensely mellow, though--he is such a good, content baby! Here he was sucking ferociously on his hand while cocking his head at me.

Talmage still loves Church. He approaches me with an image like this almost daily and declares, "Ready to go to Church!" On this day he was set on going to Church with his new Bob the Builder DVD and a couple of his trains. Too bad it wasn't Sunday...it's always hard to break that news to him.

My 2-year-old looks like he is at least 10 in this picture--right?!

Ah, that's better. This is what he did when I asked him to give me a good smile. Typical!

He can't sit for long, but he can hold himself upright for a little bit!

He loves standing most of all. When I try to sit him down he often stiffens his legs so I can't bend him and he ends up standing. Don't you love his little stripe of hair right along the bottom? I may just have to trim it and make his near-hairlessness more evenly applied.

Talmage loves Candy Land--thanks, Mays! He also thought tug-of-war with the camera case was thrilling.

He also loves coloring. He has recently started being a lot better at trying to stay in the lines and coloring in full shapes.

Not his best attempt (sometimes he is actually really good at staying in the lines), but he loves these Dot-to-Dot pictures from Grandma Sue!

We've still been having so much fun with his train table!

Wesley doesn't like the bright orange focus light on the camera, so if the room is dim when I take his picture he looks away and stops smiling. It's too bad that usually happens, because he is quite the smiler, and his smiles melt my heart!

Sweet anyway, though, right?

It's always fun to find foods Talmage can make almost all by himself, like toast. 

We have made a major breakthrough with Talmage's eating! I usually pull out a book and tell him if he eats a bite I'll read a page. He will choke down almost anything to get another page read! This boy loves books! On this day he gobbled up his potato soup and toast for lunch while we read. He has become so much better at trying things without complaint and will now eat several bites to earn a page. He has even asked for more of many vegetables like peppers, broccoli, and sundried tomatoes! Hopefully he will bulk up a little more now.

After the Christmas tree was undecorated and waiting to be taken out, Talmage thought it would be fun to load up the front of his bulldozer with pine needles. He meticulously picked them off the tree and put them in his tractor for half an hour or more!

Wesley is still our super sleeper. I often find him sleeping with his extremities suspended in the air. I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but both of his hands were completely unsupported while he slept deeply. It always amazes me.

So there's life lately in a nutshell. We still have lots more to come. Hopefully I can get caught up in another week or so!

Christmas!

We had a wonderful, quiet Christmas spent together as a family. I wanted to take a few pictures of the boys again in their Christmas sweaters under the tree on Christmas Eve. I asked Talmage to come sit with Wesley, and you can see how thrilled they were about the pictures.

Boring...

More boring...

Still boring...

Things got a bit more exciting and expressive when I asked Talmage to give Wesley a kiss. This picture makes me laugh so much!

Then Talmage slyly decided to grab Wesley's head and squeeze it. I love Talmage's tight, nonchalant grin and Wesley's tolerant expression.

Then he played innocent and looked in the other direction while Wesley gave me this melodramatic look. "Mom, did you see what he did to me???"

Christmas was spent relaxing and spending the whole day together--that was a wonderful gift in and of itself! Santa visited our house and we opened presents on the morning of the 26th. 

Talmage got this amazing train set! Sometimes Santa uses Craigslist and finds amazing deals. :) Talmage absolutely loves his train set and plays with it all the time. He sleeps with all the trains every night and every naptime, and we seldom make it out to the car without his 3 favorites in tow.

In addition to my lovely morning appearance, I was sporting a large red mark on the bridge of my nose. I hit myself in the face with my blow dryer while I was blow drying my hair the day before. It was bruised and red for days!

Wesley got this mat to lay under with toys dangling down. He loves it! And just yesterday he started figuring out hand control with it. I love watching babies learn how to control their bodies.

After playing for a while with their new toys and getting {mostly} ready, we got to open presents with our families on Skype. Since we were on Skype I didn't get any pictures of that round of present-opening, but it was wonderful! After that, we opened presents from each other.

 Talmage loves his Bob the Builder DVD from his Uncle Bronson and his tool/play dough/etc. apron from Aunt Avalon!

I love Amazon. I got this book for Sam for about $1! (It's a fantastic book, by the way)

Talmage got some books as well...The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and an I Spy book. Sam's sister got us these beautiful scarves from Syria!

When Sam forgets things I tell him he's my absent-minded professor (since he's going to be a professor). He had never seen the movie The Absent-Minded Professor, though, so I thought it would be an appropriate gift. Again, another cheap Amazon find. Almost all of our gifts were second-hand or gift card purchases I had been collecting throughout the year--but we had some amazing finds!

Wesley slept while we opened his presents for him, but upon awakening he was thrilled with his new Bumbo chair!

My family should appreciate this toy I found for Wesley at a garage sale. :)

Lincoln Logs! I kind of have a thing with wooden toys. Love them!

Talmage loves his fishing puzzle game.

We were totally spoiled by our families and are so appreciative of everyone's support. Thank you all!

Pre-Christmas Fun

Our ward Christmas party was on December 3. We had a nice potluck breakfast at the Church and then, since the weather was warm (I insisted on putting the boys in Christmas sweaters anyway) I took the boys to the park while Sam went to his lab. Talmage loved playing with his trucks in the wood chips, once he got past the initial shock of them being dirty. As soon as he filled up the digging portion he started asking me to wash it. :)

We played on the swings for a long time. A man was there with his son and started talking to me about the boys' sweaters and I told him we had just come from a Christmas party. He asked about it so the Church came up and we had a good conversation about it. Come to find out, he used to play basketball with a bunch of LDS guys every week in the Church cultural hall! He actually knew quite a bit about the Church and was incredibly positive. It's always nice to have those experiences.

Wesley slept pretty much the whole time...

And you have to love his sleepy smiles!

The slides are always a huge hit.

That night, I braved the crowds and took the boys to the Christmas parade. It was essentially a loooong parade of pickup trucks decorated with Christmas lights holding scout troops, sport teams, 4H groups, etc. but Talmage loved it--especially the Christmas music!

It sort of looks like he is mocking me..."point and laugh!"

It was a fun way to begin December!

Wesley's Blessing

We have been meaning to bless Wesley for quite some time. We wanted to do it when Sam's mom and brother were here so his brother could stand in the circle, but it happened to be Stake Conference when they were here. So we made plans to do it the first Sunday in December. We neglected to remember to call a couple of friends in the ward to participate though, until the night before. So we decided to do it the following Sunday. That happened to be the day we took Wesley to the ER and spent a couple days in the hospital, so we finally got to bless him on Sunday, December 18.

Since we don't have any family close by, we weren't having a dinner or anything like that, so my one request was that we get a family picture with Wesley in his blessing outfit. Perhaps you can find some humor with me in how the day went:

-Our car broke down the day before so we had only one car and Sam had his meetings before Church started at 8:30. So he hurriedly came home in between his meetings and Church to pick us up.

-We got to Church, Sam took his place on the stand, I got a little girl to sit with the boys, and I went to play prelude music on the organ and help accompany.

-Sam, who was conducting, announced Wesley's blessing and I hurried down from the organ, got Wesley, handed him to Sam, and stayed with Talmage while Wesley was blessed.

-Sam then handed Wesley to me, I turned around and handed him to the woman sitting behind me, and then hurried back up to help play the Sacrament Hymn.

-After the Sacrament was passed, I took Talmage and went to feed Wesley.

-I got back into the chapel just before the intermediate hymn was to be sung and hurried back up to accompany that.

-After playing the closing hymn, I quickly gathered up our things and Sam took Talmage to nursery while I stopped at the library to get a few supplies for Sharing Time in Primary.

-The library (which isn't open before Church, so I had to go between Sacrament Meeting and Primary) was very busy and there was difficulty in finding my supplies.

-Sam helped me bring the large TV, movie, and pictures down to the Primary room.

-Primary had already pretty much started and I was supposed to conduct since the president was out of town.

-Because of a series of events I had only 5 minutes for Sharing Time so I quickly shared an abbreviated lesson.

-After Church we needed to hand out new manuals to the teachers and set up more chairs for the next ward.

-Wesley was still trying to get back on track with his eating and weight after his hospital stay and weight loss, so screamed the whole time we set up chairs.

-Sam returned the things to the library

-I hauled Talmage, Wesley, Wesley's carseat, Talmage's nursery handouts, my church bag, my purse, a large wooden block the Relief Society gave out for Christmas, and 2 coats to the Mother's Room to feed Wesley again.

-Sam helped process tithing and then we had tithing settlement, after which I hurried to a baptism since I needed to do the Primary welcome (again, since the President was out of town).

-Sam dropped off tithing at the lockbox at the bank and came back for the very end of the baptism.

-The pianist had to leave after the opening song so I filled in for her. Again, Talmage and Wesley were left with friends while I played the piano.

-We finally got home from Church way past Talmage's naptime, Wesley's front was completely yellowed with copious amounts of spit-up, he had blown out of his diaper all over his blessing outfit and I gave up on the family picture I had hoped for.

-Talmage napped and Sam left to take the missionaries to a fireside in Sugarland, returning around 9:00 pm.

-And that was that.

On days like that I just have to laugh and wonder how--when I can barely manage things at times with two kids--I will be able to manage many more. I guess we just take things one day at a time, huh?

Anyway, if you made it through all of that text, congrats! I dressed Wesley in his (freshly cleaned) blessing outfit a few days later and took some pictures of him so we could at least have those. Enjoy!

This is his typical camera face.