Growing Kids

Well I thought I'd give a little update on the kids - what they've been doing for the past 4 months. And the answer is: LOTS. They keep me so busy, but I'm loving it. And they REALLY love each other, which is such a huge blessing. They both want to see each other as soon as they wake up, and they're getting to the stage where I can leave them in a room for a little while to play together without killing each other (not for long, don't worry). I mean, sure, there's the occasional scream from Micah (once when Sophie pushed him under the bed and told him he could never come out), but mostly they just play and giggle.

Micah is EVERYWHERE, although not completely confident with walking yet. He'll take a few steps at a time, but is much faster while crawling. And he is a really fast crawler. His hair is still pretty red, and very curly. Not sure if we'll ever get it cut. I just can't stand the thought of losing the curls. When he starts to look like Carrot Top, maybe. 

I took him for his 1 year exam in August, when he was technically 12.5 months, and he was 31" (79th percentile) and 21lb 3oz (22nd percentile, which cannot be accurate...he is not tiny by any means). So he's tall, but really built a little more solidly...not a beanpole like his daddy :).

He loves animals and is starting to repeat animal sounds. He has the cutest, highest pitched voice of all time. And he's a cuddler. He'll crawl up to us and just start nuzzling us with his head, like a little lion cub. He especially loves nuzzling his best friend Lily.

As for Sophie, she turns 4 this coming Friday. There are days when I look at her and just really can't believe she's the baby we brought home from the hospital 4 years ago. God is so gracious to give us this amazing gift. She's smart, silly, loving, and VERY talkative :). She loves pink and purple (and blue and green and yellow and orange and red...), pretending everything under the sun, Chipotle and Chick-fil-A, singing (and making up songs), playing with her brother, reading books with Mom and Dad, and eating Go-Gurt ("frozen and a little bit thawed").

She had her 4 year checkup today and she is now 41" tall (78th percentile) and weighs 37lb (67th percentile).

Hopefully I'll post some pics after her birthday, but here are a few of her from the best picture-posing day we've had in over a year :)

Videos

If anyone still reads this blog, here are a couple of videos. The ballet one is from February. Sophie did a couple of ballet classes just for fun. As you can see, she loved the running around parts - just not so much the dancing and ballet :).

This 2nd one is from today. Over the weekend Micah started crawling and life as we knew it is now over. 

Update of a Lifetime

Wow so it's been 2 months. Don't have a good excuse. Not even gonna try.

Instead, let me just post the biggest update ever w/ tons of pics (and not so much text...because let's be honest - nobody cares about the text...it's all about the babies).

Anyway, the past 2 months have been full of family visiting (and, incidentally, getting sick in the process...so don't visit us unless you want to follow in the footsteps of Aaron, Laura, Gigi & Gran, who all got sick, although their visits were spread out over almost a month).

So here's what's been happening...unfortunately I've also been a bit negligent in taking pics, so some visits are undocumented. Sorry!

While my parents were here we had a surprise visit from a couple of firefighters who were checking out hydrant. Sophie loved seeing the truck and we all enjoyed watching the water gush out of the hydrant.

 

Erik missed all that because he was with some friends at the Masters practice round:

Which is just as well because he would have been grossed out by seeing Sophie playing in mud w/ her Gran:

 

While Gran was recovering from illness, Papa and I took Sophie to the zoo:

 

But before all that, Bubby and Laura visited (and got sick):

Uncle JoJo, Aunt Wanda, Carrie & Emily stopped by for a few hours (and didn't get sick! yay!). It was just long enough for Sophie to get in a little JoJo wrestling. Incidentally, she fights the same way her Uncle Bubby used to. Rough and tumble until it gets too tough, then she just starts spitting.

 

And these are just pics of the kids. Because they're cute. 

 Look who's sitting!

 Just another day in our home. She's discovered dressing herself.

 I know I'm biased, but these are two precious kiddos.

 Celebrating Sophie's new record in the obstacle course Erik made for her.

I couldn't get this one turned around, but one night when Gigi was here and I was going thru Micah's clothes for her to take to Jenny, Sophie decided to try some of his newborn clothes on. Classy lady.

Okay, no promises for the future, but I will seriously try to do better! Love you all!

Sibling Photo Shoot

We have had some gorgeous weather here the past few days, so we took advantage of some natural light and got a few pics of the kiddos:

 Love this fun girl!

 We see this face a lot...soon it will be accompanied by rolling of the eyes, but for now I love it.

 We love this sweet boy!

 And they love each other!

 Also just had to throw these 2 in here - Sophie dressed herself and refused to turn her shirt around so it wouldn't be backwards...so she wore it like this all day. You can't see the full ensemble, the the shirt is complimented by some lovely plum-colored sweatpants.

Her pout is not to be messed with.

Zoo Day

A couple of weekends ago it was in the mid-to-upper 60's on a Saturday, so the four of us headed to the zoo for a couple of hours. It was so beautiful and we got to see some animals up close that we don't normally see.

A baby giraffe was born in the fall but she hasn't been outside much. It was great to see her moving around. I think Sophie was a little disappointed that a "baby" giraffe is still way bigger than she is.

The last several times we've been to the zoo we haven't been able to see any elephants. They're in a large exhibit and are very hard to find. But this day they were much closer and we had fun watching this one slinging mud on himself.

Sophie and Daddy riding a hippo

I love this picture of his arm around her. So sweet.

We love going to see the new flamingo exhibit. They are just fascinating animals and you can get so close to them. Last year when we were there Sophie got to ask the zookeeper lots of questions about them, so now she's our resident flamingo expert.

The Mook's view of the zoo was a bit limited, but he still had a great time and whenever we remembered to look at him between the animals he would give us a big grin. Poor kid...it takes a lot to get some attention these days.

Christmas Card Extras & Prayer Request

I thought I'd post a few of the good pictures we got during our Christmas card shoot. The two of Sophie are two of my favorite pictures, and the two of Micah are some of our ONLY pictures of him. Just kidding, but really - it's totally true that you don't take as many pics of your 2nd child. I now feel bad for giving my mom grief since I am the 2nd child. I can totally relate to what she was experiencing. I can only imagine w/ 4+ kids...

Anyway, I also wanted to ask for prayer for us as I'll be having a heart catheter ablation procedure done on Wednesday. It's a very non-invasive procedure where they go through the leg up through the veins into the heart to try to electrically burn the spot that is causing my heart to beat incorrectly. So hopefully (and prayerfully) this will fix things and we'll be good to go for the future. I've just had a pretty significant arrhythmia that is gradually weakening my heart muscle so the doctors think it's best to give this a whirl. Thank you for your prayers - that God will guide the doctor, but most importantly that He will use us in the lives of those on staff at the hospital to proclaim His name for His glory.