the 180 project

Hey there. I thought I would update "all" my followers about mine and Ross' new project we are taking on. We started a blog to help hold us accountable and to update anyone who may be interested in what we are doing. Check out our introduction post here --> http://the180project.com/2010/12/15/welcome-to-the-180-project/ and leave a comment letting us know what you think. I will be updating this blog in the near future with some holiday posts once we get home and on our own computers. Until then, Happy New Year!

~Chey

Halloween.. A Few Weeks Later

So, even though its been a few weeks since Halloween and taking Remington Trick-or-treating, I feel like I need to blog about it just to show you all how cute he was as Thomas the Train! We went with my new sweet friend Beth and her family. Beth and Ryan have 2 very cute, very sweet girls Sage and Lenna, both born in February and both 2 yrs apart like Eden and Remington. So that means that Remington has a play-mate and Eden has a play-mate. Its quite fantastic actually since play dates equal a great break for Mommy and great conversation with a wonderful friend. Anyway, we all went trick-or-treating on Halloween night and Remington and Sage could not have been cuter. The two of them enjoyed their first experience of knocking on doors and pleading for candy very much to say the least... heck, Remington is still talking about it! Eden and Lenna were cute too, but I want the spotlight on Remington for this post, especially since I feel that he isn't getting as much blogging attention as Eden has recently. Here are a few shots of Remington and Sage at the fall festival we went to before trick-or-treating.









Mommy and Eden the clown.




Here is a shot that basically sums up the whole night. Remington hopped up on candy and Eden completely exhausted but still trying to stay up not to miss any action!



Of course I forgot my camera during trick-or-treating, so here are a few shots took by Ross' phone. Not great quality, but still captured the moment wonderfully!







Daddy and sleepy Eden... I love this one!



I hope the pics made you smile cause man, they are soo cute!

~Chey

Gotta Love This Halloween Tradition!

It's that time of the year again... time to carve pumpkins. This year will be the first of atleast partial understanding and enjoyment of all that comes with the holidays for Remington. I am so excited because Halloween is just the warm-up. Thanksgiving will be a great opportunity to stress and harp on the idea of being thankful to my inately selfish toddler. And of course, Christmas will obviously be the best with all of its wonderfulness, but I hope that Christmas will help Remington develop a deeper understanding of our Lord and Savior! None-the-less, we had a great time with out little man experiencing a first of many more to come!

We love you sweet boy!



This face says it all!



Daddy and Remington cleaned out all the pumpkin guts, then Mommy carved it!





The final product. We went out and gathered several pretty leaves, then after Daddy and Remington finished cleaning the pumpkin out, I taped them on, traced them, and carved out the leaves. Turned out pretty cute I think!




Eden watching impatiently!

Pumpkins!!!

Its fall and that means there are an overabundance of pumpkins, so we decided to take advantage of their beautiful colors by using them as props and backgrounds for snapshots of our children. Really, all pictures of our children are beautiful (coming from their partial mother), but these pumpkins sure did make them look extra cute! Remington had a good time running around checking them all out: from the tiny orange pumpkins, to the moley ones, the whites, and even the the greenish ones, he enjoyed them all, and we enjoyed his fascination! Even though the sun was right at eye level making it kind of hard to see at times, we were able to catch a few great shots. Hopefully we can get a few professionally done in the coming weeks since these turned out so cute. Enjoy!

Remington in all his handsomeness!





Our sweet baby girl not smiling for us because she was too interested in playing with her two new teeth with her tongue. :)







They are completely in love with each other! :)

Eden~ The Last Couple Months

My baby girl is 5 months already and as you all may know, things change A LOT in 2 short months in the first year of life, so, this is ME updating YOU on a few of her latests.

I'll start with her 4 mo. check up: Eden weighed 11 lbs 3 oz and was 25 1/2" long. That put her in the 5th percentile for her weight and 60-70% for her height. My dainty little girl is long and skinny like her mommy was growing up, but I'm pretty sure soon after that, she hit a growth spurt because all of the sudden, none of her clothes fit! Kind of a bummer since there is only about a month and a half left of summer. I went and got a few 3-6 mo. outfits to get us through the summer, and I will prob have to buy a bit more 3-6 mo. once fall officially gets here.

The next important milestone on the list is that we have FINALLY made the transition to sleeping on the belly instead of constantly needing to be swaddled. I sometimes still swaddle her for naps, and in the early morning, but for the most part, we are done with the swaddling! YAY!

This is how I found her one day after her nap... happy as can be!


BABY FOOD- man have we had trouble with baby food! A little before she was 4 months I tried to start adding rice cereal into a nightime bottle for her, but in the middle of the night and all throughout the next day, she would just throw it up. :/ My next attempt a couple wks later was rice cereal thickened up and given via a spoon. Of course that stuff is discusting so she def wasn't having any of that (I don't blame her)! So finally a little before she hit the 5 month mark, I thought I'd try her out on real baby food. First, I attempted sweet potatoes and gag, she screamed and would not take it! So ok, maybe she just doesn't like sweet potatoes, so I try bananas! Surely she will like bananas! Nope! Same thing. I tried the next day again, just to make sure it wasn't her mood, but the same thing happened. I gave it two weeks and today I tried the bananas again. She ATE them and she LOVED them! :) Finally... after close to a month and a half, she is eating something other than her mommies milk! (Maybe now she will start packing on the pounds!)

Banana faced! :)


And, finally, here she is just looking cute figuring out her bottom lip. I'm thinking maybe she is chewing on it since she now has two teeth on the bottom. (One came in at 4 mos and one just came in last week). She does this all the time now and it is just the cutest thing in the world! :)






Of course I snap so many pictures of her that I have to include some of those too! :)

Remington~ The Last Couple Months

Ok, I know its been a while (over 2 months to be exact) since my last blog post but since Ross has been working from home, and our USB internet device broke thanks to our crazy toddler, my time on the internet has been limited to my phone. Luckily tonight, since Ross is practicing, I am able to get a little time on the computer.

Since my last post, we have completely gotten rid of the paci! YAY! Honestly, I thought it was going to be extremely hard for him to give it up, but I must say, I was pleasantly surprised! A few weeks ago we decided that the only way to go would be to take it away and never look back. So earlier in the day, after he had his nap, we sat down and had a talk with him. Since "Being a Big Boy" is the latest thing, we proceeded to explain to him that he is a Big Boy now and that Big Boys don't need Paci's. And since Noah and Cana (his cousins) don't use paci's, then he certainly didn't need one either if he wanted to be a big kid like them. It seemed to somewhat work while talking to him except for him occasionally rebelliously saying "I not a big boy" just to be silly. So later that night we executed and refused to back down! HE WAS HYSTERICAL! And since he did not want to stay in his bed, Ross laid ON him for basically 2 hours. And our VERY strong willed boy kicked and yelled and tried everything in the book to get free for a good hour and a half, but finally he surrendered to Daddy for he knew he had lost the battle! He attempted to complain and fight going to sleep the next few times, but after a few minutes each time, he knew he was not getting anywhere with that and since then, bedtimes are back to normal. The only thing that I miss way more than him is the extra COUPLE of hours of sleep in the morning. He has always slept in until at least 8:30, and sometimes until 10:30, but since that Paci is gone, he is up sometime between 7 and 8. I know what you other mommies are thinking, but I am definitely not a morning person, so this is going to take some getting used to for me!

Also something worth blogging about, Last night before we took Remington to play at the park, we walked to the convenient store to grab drinks and while there Remington pointed out a cop car. Instead of saying "Cop Car" or "Police Car" however, he said "Look, a Fire Car." :) Laughing, we thought about it, and why wouldn't it be called a Fire Car. Fire Trucks are big trucks with lights on them, so it is only logical that cars with lights on them are Fire Cars! Thanks for reminding me to blog about this Ross! :)

His obsession with the movie Cars continues, and has probably become a full on addiction!

Our baby boy is growing into quite the animated little boy! :)

Remington has Conquered a Phobia!

Today Remington let me cut his hair. It has been a LONG time coming... 4 months to be exact. The good thing is that he doesn't look half bad with shaggy locks but it was definitely time for a change. I bribed him by giving him a sucker and letting him watch Cars for the 2nd time today and probably about 7th time this week. The champ sat there without a care in the world! Cars...You have let me get SOOOO many things done, and let me have so many restful afternoons, and for that, I Love You!

The before...



And, Drum roll please...... The After!



I am so happy that I don't have to take him somewhere and hold him down while some lady does it, or make Ross hold him down while I try not to cut him!

Not to toot my own horn, but I think I did a pretty good job!


Eden has also hit another milestone (if that's what you want to call it). She has found, grabbed, and started playing with her feet... and she is very mesmerised by them! My baby is growing up too fast!

This is the only pic that I got a chance to take of her doing it so far (look for more later on Facebook). She does it a lot while swinging and laying on her play mat.



Tomorrow we go pick up Daddy from College Station. We are so excited! We miss you Daddy! :)

~Chey

So... It's Been a While!

Hmmm... Where to start? Lets see, I finally have a working computer thanks to my wonderful, brilliant husband. Since my last post last Monday (man it seems so much longer than that), I have been without a computer. Lets just say that my very VERY useless (for lack of a better word) laptop finally called it quits on Tuesday of last week. The summer after my Freshman year in college I had saved up enough money to finally buy myself my own laptop, so I impulsively jumped on this "great" deal that I came across at Best Buy. No, I didn't consult with my husband (then boyfriend) so of course I have heard plenty of crap from him regarding my purchase of this "P.O.S" ever since. He has already basically rebuilt it once since it completely crashed on me already a couple months ago, but it was time for us to part ways! Luckily, my husband is a genius! :) Since he has had the "privilege" of working in the IT department at his dads work, he has really learned so much about these intelligent machines. So, since I was out of a computer, he was able to scrap together a bunch of parts that were going to be thrown out at the office, and parts from an old computer of his to put together, and basically build a computer for me from scratch. Brilliant, I know! So, lucky me (and now you too!), I can blog again! :)

Here is a shot of me patiently waiting for Ross to finish up.


Ok, So what have we been up to lately? So besides that fact that I have been picking my brother Ty up from strength and conditioning camp everyday Monday through Thursday since beginning of last week, I still have managed to stay pretty busy. One thing worth mentioning is we went to the Open House of the new Children's Museum in The Woodlands on Saturday. They were having free admission which is great, but always accompanying the word free is a lot of people. No big deal I guess, we just had to get over the fact there there were going to be tons of screaming kids running around everywhere. Remington seemed to have a great time learning, discovering, and playing with so many new things, and I must say, Ross was a trooper as well. He handled those crazy kids like a champ! The things we do for our kids...! So here are a few shots from the museum of our growin' boy.

Here he is playing in what looked like a pit of little bits of recycled tire.


He really (to my surprise) enjoyed working/spinning these gears.


Of course he enjoyed the train set.


He cooked us dinner too! :)


And of course Eden along for the ride, taking in everything along the way.


What else... well, Moma's been a lil sleepy the past few days. Eden for the past week or so has been waking up again every 2 to 3 hours to eat. She was doing so well for a while sleeping from about 8 or 9 in the evening until at least 3ish, sometimes 5, and even once until 7:30, but I guess that growth spurt is over, or she is teething, or who knows what. All I know is, Moma needs her sleep! A testament to my grogginess: tonight I cooked one of the easiest dinners. SOS, aka hamb meat with crm of mush soup atop some mashed potatoes. Very simple meal consisting of browning the hamburger meat, adding the soup, milk, salt, and pepper, as well as cutting up and boiling potatoes before adding the milk and butter and mashing. Well, I have made this many times, so I should have known that I needed to start the potatoes before browning the meat. Well, I browned all the meat before realizing I had not yet even washed or cut the potatoes. So, the meat was put on hold for a minute while I got the potatoes boiling. Well, then, I added the mush soup and milk before I drained all the grease out of the meat! YUK! O well, it was going to have to work. Then one minor thing that I never do: while stirring the mixture, I spilled a huge amount over the side of the pan. I never do that. I guess you could call it laziness, but I'm going to blame my lack of sleep. So overall, the mashed potatoes were FANTASTIC if I may say so myself, but they had to be to make up for the greasy meat mixture... :( We will live I guess. I must add that my rambling is probably due to that as well, so hopefully you (whoever you are, if there is a you at all) don't mind.

Now for a few pictures I have taken since my last post that I think you will enjoy! :)

My happy baby helping me clean up the kitchen.


And by helping I mean, not distracting me and letting me get it done while her brother was sleeping! :) She loves holding onto, and chewing on that little blanket thing!


But obviously she was distracting me since I stopped to take her picture! :) Can you blame me?

Her brother woke up as I was finishing. Crazy boy! :)



Did I mention I was tired?... I have been working on the post for over an hour and I would be finished already if blogger didn't take so dang long to upload a pic. Almost done!

Here are a couple randoms of me and my babies!






OK DONE! Sorry about the super long post. That's what happens when I'm away for a week. Thanks for reading! :)

-Chey