Colette is 3 Months Old

Our sweet little Colette is 3 months old now! I'm late on posting, so let's pretend she isn't almost 4 months.

No stats this month because she doesn't go back to the doctor until 4 months, but I do know one thing. She is growing! Just look at her cheeks and rolls!

She is still a bobble head and is trying to gain better control over it.

Personality- She is all smiles and such an easy going baby. She rarely cries. Only when she is tired or hungry and it's not even bad. I have waited so long to say that!

She loves "talking" to you and cooing. She really reacts to your faces and voice. She follows you around the room with her eyes.

Who is the cutest baby ever? Oh, yes Colette you are right, it's you!

She has found her hands and just loves eating them and sucking on them. She found her thumb, but that might be the in between 3-4 month post as things I'm saying might be towards the latter since I'm posting late.

Just look at her face, I can't get enough. 

Eating- She is such a good eater, no question about that based on her figure. She is eating every 3 hours during the day. She has taken to a bottle nicely. We switched to the medium flow while I am at work and she gulps it down Gigi says. She is eating between 3-4 oz per feeding (depending on how much I can pump out). She eats around 6:30/7am, 9:30/10, 12:30, 3:30, 5:30/6, and 8:30pm.

Sleeping- She is going to bed around 8:30pm and on a great night is only up once around 2-3am. She did sleep until 5am a few times right around the 3 month mark. She is still napping in her swing, it's just easier. I know we have to migrate to crib napping, but with Max running all around it's easier to just have her down stairs. She is also busting out of her aden and anais swaddle blanket. I had to move to the miracle swaddle blanket where we basically pin down her arms. She loves it, but I know our swaddle days are almost over! She naps still about 4-5 times a day for about an hour each with longer ones twice a day.

Development- She has already learned to flip from back to tummy in between the 3-4 month mark! Such an over achiever she is. She is tolerating tummy time better, but she spits up a lot still if she just ate. She loves jingle toys and her play mat. She'll just kick her feet like crazy to the music/lights. She likes to just chill out and play.

She absolutely loves her bath. She gets one every night to keep with a routine and to lengthen her time awake before bed. She is just a happy camper in there. She likes to push her feet against the side of the tub and just froggy leg it like crazy. She makes all sorts of noises and is just adorable!

Other Randoms-
She is in honest company size 2 diapers
Size 3-6 month clothes
Her eye color is a mix between brown, green, hazel and gray at some points. Very interesting, def. not solid brown, but def. not blue (I mean where do our kids get these eye colors).

Month by month comparison. 

Max is 2.5 Years Old

Max started preschool 2's class September 3rd. Max also turned two and a half in August so this will be a combo post!

This is the photo I posted on facebook/IG that summarized how he was feeling about going back to school.

He was actually a little hesitant and excited about going back to school this year. He loves a good cheese face.

They make them use these bags instead of fun backpacks.

Max is in the 2-3 year old class with 9 other kids. He has 2 teachers and I am happy to report he is LOVING school. Last year he cried on drop off I would say for the first 2 months no joke. This year I think he cried on the first day for a minute but that is it! He talks very fondly of his friends and the things they do. They keep them very busy.

He looks so grown up with his haircut.

New developments- Max started stuttering about 2 months ago. I'm hoping it's just a temporary thing, but I'm not sure if it's related to new baby regression stuff or just a phase. He talks in complete sentences now. Max is all boy and now loves all things shoot guns (what he calls water guns). All summer he loved playing with them and shoots things. I swear we don't teach him these things and it's just ingrained into little boy's heads. Of course our 4 year old neighbor also might have helped him. He loves playing rocket launcher. He is also at times a defiant terrible 2'er. He tests us and doesn't listen and is just a wild man. Reading up on some more moms on call advice about simmer rooms and all that fun stuff.

Eating- He still loves most every kind of fruit imaginable and would only eat fruit if you let him. His favorites are grapes, oranges (clemintines), bananas, strawberries, blueberries. We still struggle at dinner to get him to eat most things. We still are letting him watch a tv show while eating dinner because he actually eats all his dinner (with a little coaxing and help). He still doesn't love most veggies, but will eat the peas, beans, carrots and cucumber.

Goals- In his 2 year update I had some lofty goals to accomplish before baby got here and I am very pleased to say that we have accomplished all of them. Some better than the rest, but I'll take it for now. Goal # 1 was to get Max into his big boy bed. This one is our biggest challenge still. He sleeps just fine in there, but over the past months he has started climbing out and makes up excuses to why he needs us to come back in (spread my blankets, Can't find monkey, have to go potty, tissue, water, etc...). I was reading the Moms on call toddler book and they say to put the lock on the door on the outside to keep them safe (from wandering the house and other things). We have to use a gate sometimes on his door so it isn't a far stretch, but I am still letting that sink in.

Sleep- He still naps (once you get him to stay in there) for about 2 solid hours in the afternoon and sleeps from about 8:30-6:30am. He used to sleep till 7:15, but it's very random now. He does sometimes bust in our room in the middle of the night and scare the crap out of me. He usually just says spread my blankets or hops in the bed and we can put him back in no problem. We have tried one of those clocks that turn green when it's ok to get up... not working.

Our goal #2 was to take away the pacci. And we did that very successfully. He had a hard time at first, but after about a week it was fine and he doesn't even try to use his baby sisters. He even picks hers up and gives it back to her. I'm super impressed!

Our goal # 3 was to potty train Max and over memorial weekend we tried the 3 day stay at home plan. This I thought was going to be the hardest was actually very easy for us. He wet the bed a few times at night when we tried just letting him wear undies to bed, but thanks to my friend Leah who suggested to do diapers at night until he had around 20-30 (depending how comfortable you are) days where he woke up dry. He would get fun stickers and ever since that he has been good to go. We do ask if he has to go a lot, but he's very stubborn and will tell you when he has to go. There really wasn't anything I did to make this easy, he was ready and just let me have this one :) This makes up for his 6 months of solid crying as a baby.

He is so good with Colette still I had to include a duo photo for ya. Lots of kisses and hugs for our baby girl from big brother.

Can't wait for them to really start playing together. Love these kiddos.

Basement Construction Has Started!

Before I get to regular blogging, I just wanted to put up this image as this is a day we will never forget. It's crazy to think I will have to teach Max when he is old enough about terrorism and what happened on this day 13 years ago. I will never forget where I was and the moments watching it unfold on the news. I can't even fathom what it was like for the people that were there or the first responders and family. I am so thankful for our country and the men and women who work day and night to make us safe in this country. Thank  you. 

I know I've been MIA from the blog for a while. I think I have some good reasons. We took a quick trip to the beach, started work on the basement, I went back to work, my computer decided it was too full to hold anymore photos/wouldn't turn on and we were just trying to survive these first weeks back in this new groove. I got my computer to turn on and put my photos in iphoto, but I am so full that I can not load them into blogger without it taking 8 years. We are in the process of transferring my photos to clear room so I hope to be back up and running in a few days.

Construction on the basement started on August 25th, 2014. Since David is studying most nights/weekends we are contracting most the work out except for plumbing and electrical which David, my cousin, his brother and brother in-law have been working a few weekends on already. I don't even know what all was going on with David and Bill, but it involved Jack Hammers and concrete. This week we had to put our contractor on hold so we could finish electrical work this weekend. The original timeline was around 4 weeks, and they always say to double it and I definitely think that'll be more accurate since we are having to slow it down.

Here is the floor plan drawing David did for us. Rooms #2 and #3 will go unfinished. #2 is our storage of decorations and boxes. Room #3 is David's workshop.

You can see the color coded areas that indicate existing wall and new walls. The steps are going to be the first major change. We are turning them instead of having them go straight down into what will newly be Mom's bathroom. We are turning them to give her more room.

Room #1 is going to be our craft room/office area/extra bedroom with a full closet and new window we had installed.

Room #4 is mom's bathroom with a walk in shower, vanity and toilet.
Room #5 is moms spacious bedroom with walk-in closet. She will have a stackable washer/dryer to the right in that nook in the closet. We added 4 feet to her room space by turning the steps and adding a beam (that pink line you see so her room bumps out to the new wall.

Room #6 is the main big open area as you can tell. There are fantastic bay windows (which eventually David will be making built in toy storage/seating along the window), a door to the lower level deck and more windows. One of the main reasons we loved this house so much was because of the huge potential of our day light/walk out basement with windows along the whole back. It truly doesn't feel like a basement especially with 10ft ceilings. We are using this space as the playroom, living room/tv area and kitchen will be on the right side wall. We were going to do kitchen as a phase 2 plan due to costs, but we came across an amazing deal for kitchen cabinets, granite counters, oven, stove top, dishwasher all for $350! This couple from his parents neighborhood posted on their classifieds that they were getting a new kitchen and didn't want their old one to go to waste. Well, we acted fast and looks like we will get our kitchen after all! The island/bar will probably come later as we needed a bigger piece of granite than they had so we will be doing something else for that area. The cabinets are our exact cabinets we have in our main kitchen, very well built. We might have our guy paint them just so we don't have the exact same kitchen down. This is going to be so nice for mom and for parties!

Room #7 isn't really a room, we just had the AC/water heater area moved to give room for our kitchen.

Room #8 is the half bath that we are adding underneath the steps/in between the play room and David's work room. I wanted to add this so we didn't all have to use mom's bathroom when we had people over or when the kids are playing.

We have flooring, the wainscoting plan, paint colors, tile and most of the fun decorative side of things picked out. I'll share at a later date with before and during pictures. We are about 30% complete so far I'd say. Let's talk numbers. We don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to finish our basement with so I wanted to budget around $20,000 (the frugal side of me), but that was not possible due to subbing out.  Heck, our new AC unit work is $7k of this right out the get go. The rest is supplies and our main contractor for framing, insulation, dry wall, floor install, paint and trim work (well worth it). I think we will be much happier with the faster timeline of subbing most the work out. Our new budget is $26k not including any kitchen work and we are going to go over that already. We will slowly be adding in decorative touches like doors an area rug, toy storage, lighting/fans etc as we are already over budget until we save more. We are adding a little over 1,000 sf of finished space downstairs so it's well worth the cost, but still hard to pay up. There are so many things to think about from where exactly to put each recessed light and outlet switch that I wasn't expecting. I'll be glad when it's done, but I'm nervous I forgot something!