feeding the duckies

Holy Cow!

Tags: Nathan, photos
Filed under: Nathan on October 27th, 2010 | No Comments »

I know this post is a little late, but Nate had a great 1st birthday November 9th. To match his bedroom, Mommy made him a “big top” themed cupcake cake. Here he is enjoying his first taste of birthday cake. We celebrated on his birthday with the Harvey’s and the Krick’s. Everybody had a lot of fun watching Annalise and Sean “help” Nathan open his birthday presents. They would exclaim “Oh my Gawd!” with every gift. Nate seemed content with the boxes the gifts came in. We celebrated with Aunt Bethie, the Harvey’s and both Laubenstein families on the 22nd. Again, everyone was very generous and fun was had by all. Nate is a whopping 27 lbs at his one year appointment, and keeps up pretty well with chasing Annalise and Sean around the house. He is “talking” up a storm, and we can even understand some of it! We can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

Tags: birthday, Nathan
Filed under: Nathan on December 7th, 2009 | No Comments »

I’m walkin’, yes indeed, and talkin’…

Nathan took his first step on his own on his Daddy’s birthday (July 4th), just shy of his 8 month birthday. He’s really trying hard to walk on his own, and being more daring about taking steps alone. He walks pretty well just holding on to a finger or pant leg, and is now putting a couple steps together by himself before falling into our outstretched arms. What a champ! (Although he’s got the bumps and bruises that come along with learning how to walk!) He has been saying “Da Da” for a couple weeks now, and just in the past week he’s been saying “Ma Ma”. The other day we were in the kitchen and heard “Mama” clear as a bell from the playroom. We both looked at each other, and thought for sure it was Annalise or Sean, but they were right next to us and Nate was the only one in the playroom. He’s growing up so fast!

Tags: learning to walk, Nathan
Filed under: Nathan on July 21st, 2009 | No Comments »

Movin’ and groovin’…

We haven’t blogged in a while, mainly because we’re chasing three very active kids.

Nathan

Nathan is about 7 1/2 months old and is on the move. He went from barely being able to sit by himself to crawling and pulling himself up to standing in what seemed to be a blink of an eye. He just may be our earliest walker yet (and we thought Annalise was early when she took her first step on her 9 month birthday.). He wants to walk so badly! His favorite pastime nowadays is standing in front of one of us and letting go, seeing how long he can stay standing by himself.

Sean

Sean is 2 1/2 years old and is such a joy. He is quite the talker and sometimes we even understand him! He loves his baby brother and is always talking to and playing with him. He also loves his big sister Annalise and will do everything she does. He is just about as tall as her (less than an inch separates them) and we are constantly asked if they are twins. He’s a great snuggler too (that’s Mommy’s favorite part).

Annalise the Ballerina

Annalise is now 3 1/2 years old and is quite the princess — though if you actually call her “princess” she’ll deny it: “I’m not a princess, I’m Annalise”. She insists on picking out her own outfits, and if Mommy tries to help she will definitely point out if something doesn’t match. She also wants to wear all pink, all the time. Now, if only she’d let Mommy put pretty things in her hair! (Although she’s getting better with that too.) She can’t wait to start pre-school in the fall and already has picked out her “Disney Fairies” backpack (which is just about as big as she is!).

Annalise and Sean are taking a dance class over the summer (well, more of a “jump and play around while there is music in the background” class). Annalise loves her ballerina outfit and shoes! They both look so cute dancing around.

Fred and Ginger, eat your hearts out!

Tags: Annalise, dancing, learning to walk, Nathan, photo, Sean
Filed under: Annalise, Nathan, Sean on June 27th, 2009 | No Comments »

Nathan’s Got a Crib

I’ve finally finished Nathan’s crib and posted it to my woodworking blog and Lumberjocks.com.

Tags: crib, Nathan, Woodworking
Filed under: Nathan, Patrick on February 19th, 2009 | No Comments »

Smile!

Nathan's found his smile!

Tags: Nathan, photo, smile
Filed under: Nathan on January 10th, 2009 | No Comments »

‘Twas the Day After Christmas…

…and off to the Plane;
Flying with 2 toddlers and an infant??
We must be insane!

We had a wonderful trip to Buffalo to celebrate Christmas with Grandma and Grampa Jaromin and my sister’s families. Getting there, however, was another story.

Mad Dash

The children were nestled all snug in their bed,
Blissfully unaware of the drama ahead,

First there was the thrice-delayed flight. While the delay itself wasn’t all that long (~2.5hours), the timing was rather inconvenient. It meant that instead of heading out around 10:30am for a 1:25pm flight, we were left anxiously watching southwest.com for flight updates until around 1:30 — which was an hour into the kids naps. It suddenly became clear that there was going to be a flight afterall, sometime after 3:00pm. With this realization we immediately snatched groggy kids from their comfy beds, strapped them into their car seats and made a mad dash to Midway. With less than an hour to go, we arrived at the airport. Thanks to curbside check-in and family security gates, we made it to the gate with 15 minutes to spare…only to find that the flight had again been delayed by about an hour.

In this case the delay provided a bit of welcome “breathing room.”

Musical Chairs

With Annalise buckled in her seat and Sean in my lap,
Mama and I hoping that Nathan would nap!

There are 4 overhead air masks per seat section on your typical MD80. We acquired this tidbit many months ago when traveling with 2 “lap children.” On a very full flight, a helpful attendant informed us that we’d need to split up since the four of us plus the stranger in the third seat made 5. Now that we were five all on our own, we knew we couldn’t sit together. Through a difficult-to-reconstruct-and-even-harder-to-convey process, somehow each of us wound up sitting with the opposite of the kid(s) we began the flight with.

The Descent

When from the row behind mine, there arose such a wailin’
I knew the descent would not be smooth sailin’

Then, it was time to land. At this point, Annalise and Sean were sitting in the row behind me with their Mother, while I was content cradling a sleeping Nathan. This is when Annalise broke down. And by “broke down,” I mean that she began screaming “Daddy” so loudly that I’m not entirely uncertain the pilots couldn’t hear her. Being the perceptive person that I am, I knew that something must be done. I bravely pressed the “call” button. The response was swift and decisive — If you’ve accidentally pressed the call button, please turn it off now, thank you. I looked around to see nothing but other travelers, women mainly, looking at me with mostly empathetic eyes, at least one of them mouthing something about wanting to help.

In all fairness, the flight attendant did continue on over the intercom with something to the effect that you should press it again if it was a true emergency, but by that point, I had already propped up a now stirring Nathan in the seat next to mine, twisted around and pulled Annalise over the seat back and onto my lap. And that was how we landed, with Annalise, eyes closed and silent, on one knee and Nathan on the other.

Turns out we were lucky, for even as we were lining up for take off, the rapidly rising temperatures gave birth to fog and extremely poor visibility.

Midway was closed by 7:00pm that evening.

A Grand Visit

Then down the jet-way, our nerves raw and fried,
Well-met at the gate, Papa! Grandma! they cried;
So up to Grandma’s house- Nathan’s sleeping anew,
With the house full of new toys — and Papa!, Papa! too:

The weekend was great fun. It primarily consisted of ~3-year olds Annalise and cousin Samantha playing very enthusiastically together, while Sean tried to keep up with his much older cousins Shea and Josh. High winds off the lake resulted in an hours long power outage at G&G’s house, necessitating the move to my sister’s in Hamburg. In spite of this very minor inconvenience, a grand time was had by all!