Update!

Well, the sleep is going ok. I ended up putting the playpen in the craft room downstairs and when he wakes up in the night, instead of going to the bottle like I used to, I just put him down there. Most nights, he goes down fine with no crying. The first night he slept from 8-3:30 and then went downstairs and slept until 6:40. The second night, from 8-4:20, then again until 8. So I thought that we maybe were going to get a break and he'd start sleeping through the night. Well, nope! He's not up like he used to be, but he's been waking up around 12-1 and won't go back to sleep in his crib. He screams! So I bring him downstairs and he goes right to sleep. Great, yes! But I would like to sleep with my husband in our bed, instead of in the recliner or on the couch. The only thing I can think is, maybe the kids room isn't as dark as he likes. There is a night light and lately Kayla has been having bad dreams so we leave the closet light on with the doors shut. Whereas the craft room only has a little night light in the hall and the door is almost shut. Tonight I might try to leave him down there with the monitor but that makes me nervous since we are upstairs. I don't really like the idea of leaving him down there, but we'll see how it goes.

I've been researching cakes and things to make for Zachary's and the girls birthdays and I came across a recipe for Marshmallow Fondant. I've always wanted to try fondant but never did cause I thought it would be hard. So I made some of the MM Fondant and baked a cake and tried it! It was awesome! So easy to make, tint and it is pretty yummy too! It took me about 1 1/2 hours to do this cake, which is nothing compared to the buttercream cakes I usually make that take 5-6 hours. What do you think? (I made it white, red and black cause I wanted to try tinting red and black since I need those for Zach's firetruck cake)

The Marshmallow Fondant just made
The cake iced with buttercream (to help the fondant stick)
The fondant rolled out
Draped over the cake
Now trimmed off (with a pizza cutter! So handy!)
Finished product!

:o(

Well, I'm back from the doctor's with Zach. I'm bummed :o( He said he is completely healthy and doesn't have a thing wrong with him but -- he said he is overweight and that I shouldn't be feeding him during the night. He's not unhealthily overweight but he said that babies grow fat cells when they are young and the more food you give them, the more they grow which could cause problems with them when they are older, with weight. I'm so scared that I've put my son on the road to obesity. I know that he is only 10 months old and I'm sure it won't end up that way, but what if he does end up really overweight???? I'm so upset. I know that it's not like I've been force feeding him to make him get big, but the doctor said that I should not be giving him food during the night. So what I need to do is put him somewhere that he won't wake the kids up, and harden my heart and let him cry. It's a behavioral thing that I need to train him out of. The problem is is that when he wakes up, I don't want him to wake anyone up so I automatically go to him and either pick him up to comfort him or feed him. So he has learned "When I cry, mommy comes to me with food!" So he said that it may be a rough thing to go through but eventually, it will work and he will sleep through the night. I know with Juliana when she was around this age, I would take Kayla in our room with us, turn the fan on, shut the door and let her cry, checking on her every few minutes to make sure she was ok. And it worked, she eventually learned to soothe herself to sleep and slept through the night, other than when she was sick or something like that. So I need to do that. What I'm going to do is once I move him to his crib (we start him off in the playpen in our room so that he can go to sleep since Juliana stays awake for a while after they go to bed), I'm going to move the playpen downstairs in the craft room. Once he wakes up in the night, instead of giving him a bottle, I'll take him down, put him in there and I'll go down with him, and sleep in the recliner in the living room so I'll still be close, but he won't see us and won't wake anyone up. The doctor said that he should not be in our room with us, and that may be a big reason why he wakes up and gets upset. So, I'm a little nervous to try it since he'll be going from having 1-2 bottles in the night to nothing. I know that babies are made to not eat in the night - Juliana gave it up around 8 months or so - so I know that he's not going to be starving. I just know how I feel when I start trying to lose weight and cut out calories. I'm starving for the first few days! So until his body gets used to it and starts taking more calories during the day, it will be hard. Wish me luck! It's going to be a hard few days I'm sure :o( I'll keep you all posted.

An update and some pics

Zachary is now 10 months old! He's such a big boy! He weighs close to 28lbs (Juliana is 27) and is very tall too. He's almost as tall as Juliana was at 18 months! It's kinda funny, Juliana is very small, so she still can wear some 24month size stuff. They were both wearing a size 24 month shirt yesterday! LOL! He's being a butt head about sleep lately though. He usually wakes up several times a night and has at least 1 bottle in the night. I think he may be working on his molars though so that may be why. I'm taking him to the doctor's tomorrow just to make sure he's not sick or something and that may be causing his fussiness at night. He's taken 2 steps so far, but won't do anymore! He's kinda lazy, LOL! No, I think it's cause he's so much bigger that it's a lot harder for him.

We've started patching Juliana's one eye so it can get stronger. She's done pretty good about it, only takes it off once in a while, now that we patch her glasses and not the patch directly on her skin. She wouldn't keep it on for longer than 3 minutes that way. I took her to the opthamologist last week and there is improvement. So we have to keep it on for another 3 weeks. She's really starting to talk well. The cute one yesterday was she was trying to say pepperonni but it came out as "pope-li-own-wee"! It was pretty cute!

Kayla is still loving school. Although her teacher retired at the end of December so she did have to adjust to a new teacher when she went back in January, but she likes her so it's going good. She is really becoming crafty lately. She got a whole bunch of old Christmas cards from a friend of ours and she cut them all up and made a big picture out of them. It was pretty good!

Not too much else new, just wanted to update you all. I'm so sorry I never post, I just find being very active in the board, takes a lot of my time away. Plus I'm sure there aren't many readers left, so really, is there a point???? LOL! I'll try to post more often.

Here's some recent pics!

The 3 cuddling (you can see Juliana's patch here)
Kayla being sweet
Juliana being crazy!
Zach's sweet smile
How big is Zachary?
He seems to fall asleep with his arms up a lot lately, LOL!
Such a sweet girl!
Flirt!
Being cute
Hey!

Well, we finally put up our decorations! It was put off way too long for my liking (I like to start in mid-November) but at least it's done now. It would have been sooner except for we painted and plus with Zach all over the place, it makes it hard! Here's our tree!

Our family in ornaments
Our tree
The kids first Christmas ornaments

And I finally got to do our picture for the Christmas cards. I think it turned out pretty good! (Although I have to tell the truth, Zachary and Kayla are originals, I just cut and pasted Juliana out of another picture cause she had a goofy look on her face *blush*) It goes to show you that you can't trust any picture, LOL!


We also went to the Santa Claus parade here in town on Sunday. It was pretty fun, cold, but fun! Here's some pics of it.

The girls playing in the snow waiting for the parade to begin
Zachary trying to sit up in the snow (the snow suit wouldn't let him really bend)Laying back!Watching the parade go byJuliana covering her ears cause the fire trucks were too loud! LOL!
Me and my man!

Here's a cute picture of Zachary's new trick! He just sits there kneeling!

So tonight I put the kids to bed and didn't hear anything from Juliana for a while. I assumed she was asleep so I thought nothing of it. Well, Jeff just got home from a meeting and she comes walking out of her room, like this!

You can see it all caked on her forehead!The wall
Her bed

I now know not to leave any thing like diaper rash cream or vaseline in their room again!

Some pics!

Zachary is getting so big. He's got 8 teeth now (as of yesterday) and moving all over. He weighs 27.4lbs, and that's huge considering his 2 1/2 year old sister only weighs 27lbs! He's a tank! I have a feeling he'll be eating us out of house and home when he's a teenager. He's a sweet boy though, he gives awesome kisses! Here's a cute picture of a new outfit I bought for Christmas for him (except this is a size 18month, 26lbs and I had to exchange it for the 24month, 30lbs one since you can see the buttons are popping, LOL!)


We recently painted all of our upstairs. That was a big job. We painted for 4 days, and got it done. I didn't enjoy part of it though. 2 walls go downstairs so they are 2 stories high. Jeff held the ladder while I climbed to the top to cut in along the ceiling. I was glad when we were done.

Before

After (it doesn't look too much different but it's quite a bit darker)After

After
After

Kayla got her first report card, and it was very good! They don't do grades yet, it just says demonstrates all of the time, most of the time, starting to demonstrate or not yet. She got mostly all of the times and a few some of the times. We also met with her teacher and he had nothing but good things to say about her! He said that she's very smart, she doesn't hesitate to answer a question and even some of the SK's look at her like "how did she know that?". He said she's one of the first ones to grab the broom for clean up and go to the carpet for circle time. I was very proud of her! So when we were away we bought her a special toy! Here's her first school portrait!


We took the kids to see Santa the other day. It was pretty funny. They have a couch for all of them to sit on and Zach was on his lap. They all did well, except for Zachary kept grabbing Kayla's hair! Here's some pics!

Here's Zachary trying to get his sister
Trying to get all 3 looking is impossible!Trying again!Close up of ZacharyAnd here the elves told them to wave bye, Zach didn't care, and the girls were too shy!

We hope to put our Christmas stuff up this weekend. I would have loved to do it sooner but since we were painting I didn't want to do it until we were finished. And plus with Zachary all over the place I didn't want it all up too early. I'm planning on getting a picture of all 3 (if they cooperate, if not, Photshop!!) to send in my cards, so I'll post it here!

Wow, sorry it's been so long since I posted. I really don't mean to take this long, time just flies by for me. Here's some pics!

Zachary was a penguin for Halloween
Kayla was Belle
Juliana was a bee!
Zachary has really started to climb up on everything!! Even the wall!
Against the gate
Rosey cheeked after waking up from a nap!
Zachary on his 8 month-birthday! So big!The three amigos!
Having fun in the bath!
His teeth (you can see the new one on the left of the top 2 middle ones!)