Last Month of Baby & Pumpkin Patch

Its hard to believe that Carson is already 11 Months old and Gus almost 3 years old.  When we hit the big 11 month mark last week, I started hugging my baby girl a little tighter, kissing her a little more, and rocking her for a few more minutes at night.  Its been a long but rewarding year and one full of lots of changes - mainly outfits and diapers!

Carson is a funny and spirited baby and keeps us moving these days.  Here are some pictures of our little busy bee and her big brother over the last week:

  Her favorite pastime - unraveling toilet paper

 Busted 

LOVE this picture - captures her beauty and personality all in one

 On the move

 Random picture from the Alliance Air Show last weekend - sounded like they were going to land in our backyard all weekend long - but the kids (and BJ) loved it!

 No more pictures please...

 The most adorable Halloween outfit ever - thanks Gramma

 Her second obsession other than her Mama is her Baba - going to be tough to break her in a few weeks!

 First Hayride

 With best buddy Caleb

 Gus with his best buddy Jackson (they are 10 days apart)

 Of the 500 wooden characters they had at the pumpkin patch this is the rat Gus selected to have his picture made with

So done with pictures - but you can see he's no shrimp

9 Months of Joy

So I'm weeks behind in posting about Carson being 9 months old (Note: We're a mere 8 days away from 10 months), but she's become such a joyful baby in the past few weeks I just needed to share.  She's no longer a clingy projectile vomiting baby much to her satisfaction and mine!  

She's so different from Gus, you can already see such vast differences in their personalities.  She's busy, funny, determined and sneaky - she'll figure out how to put the tiniest piece of lint, hair, or whatever else she finds into her mouth in 30 seconds flat.  In the past three weeks she has gone from scooting, to crawling, to pulling up halfway, to pulling up all the way, to cruising.  At this rate she'll be walking well before first birthday and watch out - baby latches will be installed for this little princess immediately!

Here a few pictures of her over the last few weeks - she's so happy now that she's mobile - she's squeals with delight with every new thing she discovers - its too  cute.

And this is what happens when you let big brother administer snack (on clean floors too!)

 She laughs at the dogs and bangs on the glass - they don't think its so funny in the summer TX heat

Carrot Face

 Hmmm, what can I get into next...

 Playing "Pirate" in the bathtub

 They love each other so much

 Aargh matey

 Yay for Carson

 Pattycake

 Watch out Mommy, I'm coming for you next 

 And this is the "stoic princess" face that she wears most of the time - LOVE :)

 Happy 9 Months Baby Girl - We love you!

Can we say busy spring, busy start to summer, blogging was gone but not forgotten.  We wrapped up preschool in late May, and spent Memorial Day week in San Antonio (piggybacking on a work trip for BJ), came back to illness for the two weeks before we hopped on a jet plane and headed back to SC for 2 weeks at the beach.  Now that we're back and settled in for the rest of the long hot TX summer, I have lots of time on my hands (haha) to blog.

Gus is keeping us busy, he is smart (too smart for his own good at times), and has a great sense of humor and a vivid imagination.  We finally gave our pacifiers a big send off this week.  Gus loves the garbage man and he waits for him on Mondays, so before we went to the beach we started talking about how we were going to give them to the garbage man when we got home, and two weeks later we bagged them up and did it!  We went on a walk on Monday morning and caught up with the garbage man, Gus got out of the stroller, walked over and handed him the bag of pacies and the garbage man gave him a big hi five and told him great job - it was perfect.  He moped for a minute or two, but was fine to the let go, he was long overdue to give them up - he handled it very well.

Carson turned 8 months on July 9th, she is so much busier than Gus was at this age.  She is on the verge of crawling, has found her voice and shrieks and screams with delight all the time.  She worships her big brother and wants to keep up with him.  She started sitting up on her own, which makes life a lot easier for all of us because she is very mommy focused and wants to keep her eyes on me, so now that I can plop her down wherever, she is much happier.  We're in the process of finding a new pediatrician to better address her neverending projectile issues, we think they are related to any kind of ear ache, infection, or drainage, but we'd like a second opinion.  She was a slow starter to solids, but has become quite the little eater since we got back from SC.

SeaWorld 2012

 The dolphins lept up towards Carson - it was sweet and scary!

 Gus gave BJ this "helmet" for our baseball game

 Matching Salty Dog shirts for my kiddos 

 Marking Gus's height in Papa B's shed - surpassing BJ at this age by many inches 

 Driving Papa Odell's truck

 Yeehaw - ready to get back to TX!

 Cousins

Love their Gramma

Day Out with Thomas

Last year we wanted to go to Day Out with Thomas with our good friends the Garners before we moved to TX, but too little time and too much packing didn't let us go to the one in Bryson City last July - luckily its an annual event all over the country so we were able to hop over to Grapevine, TX for Day Out with Thomas 2012.  I'm glad we waited to go until this year - Gus was the perfect age to enjoy this fun family event.  He loved every minute of it, and the weather couldn't have been more perfect, he was waving goodbye and saying "Goodbye Thomas Day - thank you" as we left - it was priceless.

 Woo Woo - All Aboard!

 Sporting a James tattoo on his hand - Percy on the other hand (of course!)

 Too focused on the "big choo choo" to take a decent picture 

 He immediately hugged Sir Topham Hatt - so sweet 

Riding the small choo choo - to which he protests "No, I want to go on the big choo choo" - I think he thought this was all a sham and that he wasn't going to get to ride on Thomas

 Carson loved the train ride too - much better than the North Pole Express at Christmas (2 weeks old vs. 5 months - makes a huge difference, on and no annoying screaming elf this time!)

 She's official - go her Day Out with Thomas certificate and all 

 Punching his ticket - just like the Polar Express - he was amazed

Little Engineer 

Bye Thomas - thanks for a great day!