aBc went from one to three: {Last week's recap. Finally}

Yikes! I have not been very good about updating lately. I feel like by the time I get in bed to check my email, read other blog updates, and (possibly) catch up on some trashy reality TV, I am so tired that I cannot even bring myself to write anything. I also think that because life has gotten so much better as of late that I don't have too much to whine and complain about. I mean really, who wants to read about our blissfully happy lives. Ok, so maybe that is a stretch but seriously, we are in a really good spot right now. Everyone is healthy, everyone is happy, horomones are in check...Life is great! I guess I will just journal our everyday life so that I have something tangible to hold on to when I am old and crinkly and my kids are too busy to come over and hang out with me.

Last week's recap:

Saturday

I will start with last Saturday because I don't want to leave out that Adam and I went on a fantastic date. We have really made a concerted effort to keep a babysitter booked for at least two Saturdays a month. It has been amazing for our relationship for us to have that one-on-one time together on a regular basis. We absolutely love it and it has paid off big time. So back to last Saturday...We go to dinner and movies a lot and wanted to do something different so we decided to go to King's Island. Since we live so close to it we have season passes but we only ever go with the kids. We decided it would be fun to go just the two of us. When we take the kids we can't really go on any of the big roller coasters or any of the really fun stuff so that is exactly what we did. We lived it up old-school style. For you native Cincinnati-ans, we totally held hands, did the double-back pocket hold, chatted it up while sitting on the railing waiting in line for The Beast.
In addition the The Beast, we road The Vortex, Top Gun, Face Off, and The Zephyr (Adam was so sweet about going on this with me because I love it so much). I have so many memories of riding it with my Mom when I was a kid and every time I ride it, it takes me right back there. We chowed down on some piping hot Larosas and funnel cakes. We did think about the kids for the 2.5 seconds that it took us to buy Max a glow-in-the dark, light-up necklace. We had SO MUCH FUN! It was a great date from start to finish!!

Sunday

Today is 8/21/11 which means Happy 11-months babies!!
We started off the day by meeting with the priest at the church we were considering joining. We brought the whole family with us (we lovingly refer to our family as the travelling circus). As he pointed to his office down the hallway and told me to make myself at home, I start pushing the side-by-side Bumbleride stroller down this long hallway and the office is directly at the end so as I am pushing I am looking into the room and realizing that his office is absolutely filled to the brim with extremely BREAKABLE holy-ish type stuff. When I say filled to the brim, I am talking floor-to-ceiling. The kind of stuff that you would NEVER EVER want your child to touch because it is all crystal and extremely breakable and has probably been blessed by the Pope or something crazy like that. So there we are, the whole circus. I'm in one chair with the double-stroller parked directly to my right. Adam to my left in another chair, Max in another chair and then since Max took the priests chair (yeah, no kidding, our 4-year-old stoll the chair the priest was going to sit in and before we could say anything to him to get up. Normally I would have in a firm voice told him to please get out of that man's chair right now. But of course I wasn't about to yell at him in front of a priest. Well by this time, the priest had already left the room to go get another one for himself), he ended up sitting directly to Max's left...awesome. I can only imagine what kind of questions are running through my little blonde cutie-pie's head...."Should I ask this man if I can borrow his cape.", or "are we here for Aunt Capherine's wedding?", or the best one of all..."what is church, who is god?". Surprisingly Max was completely quiet, I firmly beleive because he was staring at him the whole time trying to figure out why he wears a cape. Of course, we converse with him and things are good for a moment. That can only last so long though for three kids. Jack got bored. He wanted to walk, He has just figured out the walking thing and was looking at the ground wanting to practice. Well, listen, the last thng I am about to do in Father Larry's office is set down my 11-month-old, WALKING, baby in his office that has a side table with open shelves, covered in crystal vases and vessels for what I can only assume are used for holy-ish stuff. Much to my horror, I look over to see Adam setting Jack down on the floor. Luckily we had neared the end of our meeting by this point so I scooped up my little Cracker Jack and said our goodbyes. Father Larry seemed to completely understand our circus of a family and be completely at ease with it. It appears as though circus life is just common-place for this church and he is used to being around people like us...and gasp, maybe actually enjoys it?! Being that he is the church representative and we really, really liked him, we decided to fill out our registration forms immediately afterwards. I feel very good about this church and think we are going to be spending a lot of time there as well as making some very good friends. As long as our kids don't break any of the holy stuff, we should be good. It feels like it is going to be such a good fit for us. We are really excited about it.

Now on to 11-month craziness. Holy cow! Our babies are 11-months old. I cannot believe how insane that is! Just a year ago, I posted this: http://abcwentfrom1to3.blogspot.com/2010/08/31-weeks.html

You have got to be kidding me!...Look at how big they are! It is truly unbelievable.

This is their favorite toy and they fight over the coins all.day.long

Here is Lila with all the coins to herself

Here is their second favorite toy: The Busy Ball Popper

The Busy Ball Popper only commes with five balls so we are constantly ball-hunting

It seems like they are both developing by leaps and bounds every day. For instance, I have been working on sign language with them on a daily basis and they are beginning to pick it up rather quickly. (Thank you Kim for the "Baby Signing Time" rec). Jack and Lila can both sign for 'more', 'eat', and just tonight Jack signed for 'please'.

Here they are signing for 'more' cheesy poofs in their stroller

They are both talking up a storm which is hilarious. But we can actually understand what Lila is saying when she is mocking our sounds. She says 'mama', 'dada', 'momo' (more), 'ada' (used for anyone she knows and likes including Brooks, Max, certain babysitters), 'baba' (bottle and also bye bye), 'hey' (hi).
When Jack speaks he uses his four go to's; 'mama', 'ada', 'baba', 'rar rar' and just babbles on and on and on to form these enourmous run-on sentences that sound like he is having a full conversation. Typically these convos are with Lila in their room at night or in the morning or when they are standing at the backdoor watching Brooks play outside or go to the bathroom. On occasion one of these conversations will be yelled at Brooks while he his laying on the kitchen floor trying to take a nap. Poor Brooks. :(

Here they are at the back door

Jack is now walking. We knew he would walk early but what we didn't know was that the very day he began to walk, he could do it with a golf club as show here

And while drinking a bottle as shown here

Monday

Monday is my sitter/nanny day so I spent the entire day doing laundry, picking up the house, meal-planning for the week, clipping all of my coupons, and changing all the sheets. I also stocked the baby food pantry. Side note: Man is it a ton of work to keep up with all the "household stock". Since we go through so much babyfood, I order it online to make it easier on me. It also is much cheaper through AmazonMom than at the grocery store.

This is what the utility closet looks like after being restocked with babyfood.

I also ran a bunch of errands. I had to renew my license and my registration, run to the bank, do my grocery shopping and I also went to Costco to stock up for the month.
By the time I got home it was almost 7pm and I found Max and Adam in the backyard cutting the grass together. We cannot stand our lawn service and have decided not to use them anymore. Since our mower is kind of small to cut and acre, Adam borrowed our neighbor's riding mower. He had a blast (yes, my husband actually LOVES to cut grass) and Max had even more fun helping him.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end so the mower had to go back to its home. But Adam was nice enough to let Max drive it there.

After it got dark out and everyone had their bottles and milk we all tried on our new Halloween PJs. Max has been begging to wear them since I brought them home from Carters.
Can we just pause for a moment to discuss how absolutely impossible it is to take pictures of kids. Especially when you have more than one kid. I mean really, is it that hard for all of them to sit still for 2.5 seconds so I could possibly get just one good shot? Oh well, obviously it hasn't discouraged me yet and I don't think it ever will. I wouldn't miss capturing my babies growing up for anything. I love them and they crack me up constantly.
Back to pj pics now

And the best part is that they glow in the dark...Max thinks they are AMAZING! Sorry the picture stinks but it was the best one I could get. If you tilt your screen or look really close you can actually see that they glow....If you even care. :)

Tuesday

Tuesday G-ma (Adam's mom) came to pick up Max for the day. She took him to a couple of different parks. Each one of them had a sprayground which Max totally digs and I think they also had a picnic, which is another things he thinks is so much fun.

While they were off having a grand time together. My Mama and I decided to take Jack and Lila to The Loveland Farmer's Market. I have to say, this market is one of the best things that has ever happened here. I have lived in the Cincinnati area my entire life but I grew up in the Loveland area as a kid and it was nothing then like it is now. It is so pretty and village-like. They have all kinds of activities in these little parks down by the river. There are tons of little cafe-style restaurants and shops...good ones to boot! I am loving it these days. I really feel like the farmer's market adds to all of the great things that are already there and makes it that much better.
So at the Farmer's Market we picked up some fresh, local produce. I needed some corn and my mom needed some zucchini.
There is also a lady at the market that owns a catering company and a homemade meal delivery service called "Bite". She comes to the market to sell these amazing fresh salads and soups for like $5 a piece. They are sooooo good. That is where we headed next and I bought some lemon, basil, orzo salad, and I also bought some black been, tomato, corn and jicama salad....Dies!...It was so good.
Then we bought some delicious rocky road cookies from another vendor.
Last but not least was the bakery where I purchased two turnover-type things that were the most delicious little pastry ever. They have a short-bread sort-of dough/crust and are filled with raspberry or apricot. They are insanely good. I mean...for realz!
So after our marketing we decided to walk across the street down the bike path to the little snow cone place and have an afternoon treat. Yummy! While my mom and I slurped down our Hawaiian Ices (Ummmm, does anyone know why I am not losing any weight lately?), the babies chowed down on organic (insert eye-roll here) cheese/carrot puffs, fruit puffs, and yogurt melts.

Wednesday

Wednesday was play day!

We played "So Big" in our booster seats.

We played hide-and-go-seek in our tubes

Some of us dressed up like superheros Just in case you were wondering what a superhero wears, just ask Max because on this day a superhero wears an old Power Ranger costume that is 4 sizes too big, a broken fire helmet, a pirate sword, and a glow-in-the-dark necklace, he also pushes the Stride-to-Ride Dino and loves to snuggle his little sister.

We had some short naked time before we tried on our new fall pajamas. Once again...not a very successful photo shoot.

Thursday

Thursday night we went to see the Bengals game! Who Dey! They actually won too...what a flippin miracle that was. Max's Uncle Dominic, owns a couple of seats down at Paul Brown Stadium and his buddy owns a couple more, and for the last couple of years, has given the tickets to him for a pre-season game...Awesome uncle, I know. This year was no different. Max was given 4 tickets. Adam, Max, Uncle Zac and I ended up going together. It was great. God, I love football season!

Here are some pics

This is Max walking in with his Uncle Zac...So cute!