I think I figured it out!

For the past few months, Avery has without fail been getting up about 1:30 each night. She would cry and cry until I would take her out of bed and let her sleep in her baby chair. She was even starting to wake up little brother (ughh!!). So this momma has tried EVERYTHING to figure out what is going on. I put white noise in their room, I made it warmer/cooler, I tried socks/no socks, I fed her more during the day, ect. ect. ect.!!!

As I was reading the other day yet another article, I came across the idea that kiddos need to feel very comfortable in their surroundings when they wake up during the night, so that they can put themselves back to sleep. I hadn't really thought about it, but I have always been letting the kids take their naps in their baby chairs. So the only time they go in their cribs is at night. Well, I spent one day of "crying" naps for Avery. I would let her cry for a few minutes, go and soothe, and then the whole thing would start over again.



WELL . . . it seems to have worked!!! Avery now puts herself to sleep in her crib! And she stays asleep!!! She will play and roll around in her crib for a little while and then eventually she goes to sleep on her own!! VOILA!!! We have had 3 peaceful nights of sleep so far. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it stays this way!

Baby #3 - 17 weeks

Here is my first belly pic! The past week or so I have just seemed to grow! I'm going to try to keep up with it as well as I did with Avery and Pete . . .but things are a little bit busier now!! With my last pregnancy, I had quit working and was just laying around watching TV and chilling out. My, my, how things can change . . .

October is here!

October is a very busy month for Pete's family. His brother Scott, his mom, Joan, and his dad, Pete, all have their birthday the first week! Pete's parents were turning 60 and his brother turned 30 - so all BIG birthdays.

The babies were as sweet as could be all weekend. Smiled their little hearts out and generally just had a great time. We got so many cute family pictures, these were some of my favorites!

In his own special way,Pete says, "Happy Birthday, Grandma!"


Ah Aunt Jamie . . .do you see a trend with Pete and girls???


Come here Grandpa, I have secret to tell you! (I promise we DO have clothes for Avery . . .she would just rather go without!!)

Waking up with Uncle Dave and Aunt Brandi!

Avery enjoying her new favorite "table food" . . . bananas. It looked like she had buck teeth!

Best friends

It warms my heart everytime I see the babies smile, laugh and play together. I would really characterize this month as realizing that they have a playmate at all times! They smile, talk, laugh and coo at each other all the time lately. They are also playing really well together with their toys.

Now, in saying that, they don't get along ALL the time! Avery is the paci-stealer and loves to pop it out of her brother's mouth. Most of the time he laughs, but sometimes . . . NOT! He is learing how to hold on to toys from Miss Swiper which is helping a little bit too. Pete likes to use his sister as "support" as he is trying to move in between places, which isn't always a good idea.

9 Months!

We just had our 9 month birthday!
Avery is 15 1/2 lbs. and is 26 1/2 inches long. We like to call her our little "Sweet Petite!" We also call her Miss PERSONALITY! Boy, does she have a lot of it. She has turned into a speed crawler and follows us around everywhere. She is pulling up on everything and we have to be so careful about what is around now! Her new favorite thing to do is this funny laugh. She opens her mouth and makes the most hilarious laughing sound ever. Eating out at restaurants is another favorite pastime, she tries to shout at other people so that they will look at her and give her some attention. Can you see a trend starting?? She stays up about an hour later than her brother at night and would probably stay up even later if we would let her. Sleeping has become quite a challenge with many late night crying sessions, but I'm trying everything I can to get her back to sleeping all night. I think she thinks her brother is her "toy" because she is always trying to play with him.


Avery using her baby chair as a surf board.



Bro bro, please wake up so we can play!

Pete is 20 1/2 lbs. and 30 inches long. He is so tall and muscle-y! I know babies can't have muscles but he is not chubby, he is just completely solid! Daddy just knows that he is going to be our little football player. Pete wants to stand up and walk everywhere, he just doesn't realize that he can't quite do that yet! He love, love, loves holding on to the couch (or someone) and walking along it. I think he wants to skip the whole crawling business and really get moving. The other thing that he loves is his food. We haven't found anything yet that he doesn't want to eat. We are doing alot more table food now and he is handling it like a pro. His pincher grasp has been awesome for months now, so he is really perfecting the art of eating! His smile and laughter is infectious and it warms my heart to see it everyday. As we were laying outside today looking at the clouds and the birds I realized that he has a new tooth . . . which makes 3! It's just starting to cut through at the top, and I'm wondering if that is why he was super fussy last week. Watching some cartoons with his tiger.


Pete's favorite toy - the remote control.

Hurricane Ike . . . continued

Calm before the storm . . . Lil' Pete loved sitting and watching the wind pick up.

And, the clean-up afterward. (This is NOT my parent's house, but another house in the neighborhood. Can you see how much damage it would have done, had the tree gone the other way. Sheezzz)


Well, Hurricane Ike has come and gone what a scary weekend! Watching the news on TV has been so eye opening as to all the destruction it has done to our home town.

We first want to thank all our Dallas friends that have called to check on us!! Your generousity and friendship always continues to amaze us. We definitely feel loved!

We decided to ride out the storm here at my parents. We weren't near any evacuation areas and my parents live about an hour from the coast. Most people in these areas ended up staying. About 2 o'clock on Friday/Saturday morning the winds started howling around here. We had 80 mph winds and you could tell when you watched the trees bend and contort in all different ways. We had all hunkered down in my parents bedroom because they have HUGE pine trees and we didn't want to be upstairs if those feel on the house or if there was a tornado. I think we all probably would have slept more if HURRICANE AVERY would have let us. She howled and cried all night. (They are both still trying to get over being sick). Luckily Lil' Pete slept throught he whole thing. But, just about the time I got Avery to sleep our little friend the "stomach bug" reared it's ugly head again. Daddy Pete got it and it come on with full force.

We have spent the last couple of days keeping him away from everyone and at the same time trying to take care of him and the kids. They are still super fussy from being sick themselves and we are hoping that will let up sometime soon.

When the morning came and we could finally go out and survey the damage, we realized how blessed and lucky we had been. My parents neighborhood faired really well and since they have underground electricity lines we never really lost power. The streets and yards were littered with branches and a few of the house around here lost WHOLE 30-40 ft pine trees. I never saw it but my parents said it was a sobering sight to see those whole trees, roots and all, ripped out of the ground. It made us say a prayer and realize how lucky we had been.

As for the rest of Houston. Whew. . . it is really a horrible thing for a lot of people. We are having a hard time reaching some of our friends because of cell phones and lines that are down. The flooding that is going on is really spectacular, but not in a good way. We are wondering about our "new" area that we are moving to in a few months. Some of those areas are not even letting people onto the streets yet. We will just have to wait and see what's happening there.

Below are some of the pictures that we took. Not too many pictures were taken once Mr. Stomach Bug hit Pete, because needless to say we were all busy. Also, Hurricane Ike ushered in the babies 9 month birthday! What a way to celebrate. I'll post their "birthday stats" in a later post!!


Pete loved sitting and tracking the hurricane with Grandpa.

These next few are from Grandpa and Nana's "Evacuation Shelter". You can see Pete sitting in front of the boarded up. And then both of them loved playing on the bed we brought down for us to sleep on.


Trying to catch a few "z's" before the storm hit.

Hurricane Ike

Well, this last week has been pretty horrible around our house. Little Pete seems to have gotten the stomach flu and then Avery and I soon followed suit. It has been a long time since I have been so sick and the first time the I have also had to take care of two kids at the same time. Whew! Thank God for my mom, who I just know is going to get sick, but I wouldn't have been able to make it without. All week little Pete has been crying unless he is with Mommy and that has been really tough. The night that I was SUPER sick the babies were up ALL night crying and generally in a bad mood. Thank goodness for my husband - I'm not sure what I would have done with out him either.

Now you would think stomach virus would be enough to deal with but unfortunately it seems that Houston is going to get the worst hurricane we've had since 1961. It is going to hit us directly and we are all a little scared. If we hadn't all been so sick we probably would have already gone to my grandparents house. We will decide sometime today what the plan of action will be. Pete and my dad boarded up some of their huge windows to help with the hurricane winds. The scary thought is that where our house is being built right now has already gotten evauated. Living along the coast brings on a lot of wonderful things, but at times like this you also realize the bad things that come along with it.

Please, everyone, keep all Houstonians in your thoughts and prayers right now. It looks like we might need it . . .

Our fun weekend!

We hope everyone had a fun Labor Day weekend! We "evacuated" to San Antonio (boy, did Houston dodge the Gustav bullet!) and spent the weekend with our good friends Brent and Stephanie! We got to see their beautiful new home which is high up on a hill in San Antonio . . . what a view! We also went to the Guadalupe River (we didn't float!) but we got to spend some time outdoors. Thank you Brent and Steph for such an awesome weekend!

In memory of the Olympics

Miss Avery Grace - future Olympic gymnast

Look Mom - No hands!


Avery loves to crawl around on her head. On Sat. she did something new . . .she sat up from a laying down position. All of the sudden I realized she was sitting up when she had been laying down on her belly. We laid her back on her belly and sure enough a few minutes later she had wiggled up to sitting.

8 months old!

Well, my beautiful babies are 8 months old and they are changing and have changed so much!



Miss Avery Grace is our cutie, smiley, comedian. She tries to look at people and then make funny sounds to make them laugh. Her brother can't stop smiling and looking at her!! She must be telling him some pretty funny jokes. Avery is also crawling on her head (it's really a sight) and rolling around everywhere! Just recently I think she has learned the correlation between crying and Mommy and Daddy, so nightime and naptime have become BIG problems. As soon as we walk in the room, she gives a cute little smile. If we don't pick her up, the crying sets in! Her favorite food is sweet potatoes and she is really wanting to feed herself. She tries to grab the spoon. We are trying more adult food, and she dislikes the taste and texture but she always gives it a try. She is developing quite a personality and is often hearing the word "NO" to which she laughs and has a great ol' time to. Her favorite 'bad' habit is pulling hair and giving slobbery kisses!


Mr. Pete is our sweetie who loves to observe and really "scout" the world around him. He is always looking out the window, and loves the trees and watching them blow in the wind. He likes to pet the dogs, but doesn't want to get too close. His favorite pastime is bouncing in his Johnny Jumper and laughing while he is doing it. He goes to sleep so easily! You put him in the crib and he is out!! His favorite food is EVERYTHING . . .and he seems to love to eat it all. Sitting on the couch like a big boy seems to be a new favorite pastime while. His sitting posture is fantastic, I wish I could sit that straight. He is also standing by the couch like a pro and trying to walk along side of it. Once he starts laughing, there is no stopping him! His favorite thing to do, that is driving Mommy crazy, is to never want to sit down! He wants to stand up constantly and try to "walk" around.