Good Morning

It's an early morning here in Hawaii, as it has been for the last several days. Garin has been having a string of mornings that start between 5 and 5:30. I've been counting myself lucky if he sleeps until six. Alas, this morning he started waking up at 455, and I went to get him at 5:30. So I figured it was as good a time as any to blog. Except Garin thinks that when mommy is sitting on the exercise ball that doubles as a desk chair is time to sit on her lap and bounce, while pounding on the keyboard. So after a few good bounces I distracted him with an old wallet filled with book club memberships and expired gift cards. Here's a video of why he thinks when mommy sits down it's enthusiastic bouncing time:



Meanwhile Brianna is sleeping peacefully on my bed. She usually wakes up to nurse around 4 or 5 and then sleeps for a couple more hours. I wish her brother would do the same! She's been getting much more alert, observing the world around her, and showing the beginnings of social smiles. Since she was a preemie, she's a little behind on her development, so she's more like a one month old than a two month old. But it's been fun watching her wake up to the world.

Garin gets a big kick out of his little sister. I have to watch to keep him from picking her up when she's laying down in the swing or sitting in front of me.



They're the sweetest babies. I've been lucky to have pretty easy babies so far (despite the early mornings). It makes me nervous to think about having more, wondering when I'll get a difficult one!

Yesterday was a rough day for my sister. Her husband has been home on his mid-tour leave for the last 18 days and left yesterday afternoon to go back to Iraq for five more months. It was really rough on the kids to see him leave again, so I anticipate some moody children the next few days! It was especially hard on Austin, who is twelve now, watching his dad leave again. It makes me so grateful that my husband is in the Air Force and we hopefully won't have to do this again. It's hard on us, but not so much on the kids.

Well it's Halloween, so I'm sure I'll be posting pictures of Garin in his dragon costume tomorrow. I think we're going to my sister's church's fall festival this afternoon for a little while to play games and have some fun. Then I'll bring Garin back for a little taste of trick-or-treating for 30 minutes or so. Should be fun!

I'll leave everyone with a few pictures of our growing family, Brianna's waking up, so I've got to go!

Garin Playing

I'm doing one-handed posting today, so I'll let the video speak for itself. One of the neighbor kids was playing with his remote controlled tank (army base), and Garin thought that was pretty cool.

Eight Weeks Old!

Brianna has grown so much in the last eight weeks! I can't say for sure how big she is (that will have to wait until the 2 month checkup next week), but I'm pretty confident she's between 6 & 7 lbs now, and she's definately longer. In fact, she's finally outgrown most of her preemie clothing and is now wearing mostly newborn sizes! At this rate, she might be wearing her 0-3 month clothing at three months!

Garin, however, is ahead of the game. He was 28lb 8oz and 33 1/2 inches at his 18 month appointment - solidly in the 70th percentile for height and weight. Solid is the word that best describes Garin! He's built like a brick! Wonder where he gets that from... Shoes are the items that are killing us. He's been wearing 18 month clothing since he was 12 months, and shouldn't need to size up for a few months, so that's nice, but man, the kid's feet are growing like crazy! I had to buy him size 6 shoes about 3 months ago and just had to buy him size seven shoes because his little toes were hanging over the end of his sandals!

We've been getting some pretty decent sleep at night. Every couple of nights Brianna seems to have about two hours of wakefulness/fussiness, but mostly we go to bed around 10, and she's up once or twice between then and six, when Garin typically wakes up. And she has at least a couple good long naps during the days, so that's nice. She's definately more aware of the world around her and loves to stare at everyone's faces and looks around. And she's growing into her nose, so that's a plus!! =)

Well, that's all for now, I'll post some pictures!