Happy 2nd Birthday, Patrick!

My baby boy is 2 today!

Here he is this morning with his birthday pancakes. He likes to eat.

We originally planned his party for December 12th to not interfere with everyone's busy holiday preparations, but a stomach virus hit the Burns household that weeekend. We moved his party to the following Wednesday night. We had a great turnout-thanks to everyone that came!

I originally made the Lightning McQueen cake that he requested, but since I made it Friday night and got sick Saturday, we decided not to eat all those germs. Yuck! We saved it for looks and I made fresh cupcakes the day of the party.

The party was awesome! It was 1.5 hours of sheer, uninterrupted madness.

We got lots of new cars, trucks and things that go vrooom. Good times.

Penny's 2 month update

Penelope turned 2 months old last week. Time is flying by, as usual! She is such a happy, content baby and is such a joy to us. She has observant and has started smiling and cooing so much. She likes to hold her head up and look around, especially at lights and ceiling fans.

Here's a snapshot of her last week while sitting on my belly and looking around. Please ignore my freakish long monkey finger if you can.

Here are the stats from her 2 month checkup:

Weight-11 lbs. 3.5 oz. (75th percentile)

Height-22 1/4 inches (50th percentile)

Head-38cm (25th percentile)

I'm finally almost finished with her room. I'll post pictures of it soon!

We were those people

You know, those people. The ones who have very sporadically been to church over the past year and somehow had the energy and will to bring all three of their small children to mass this past Sunday.

Jackson was excellent as well as Penny. Patrick on the other hand...

Actually, he was pretty well behaved (thank you snacks) and only got restless towards the end, but he managed to do some very funny and embarrassing things that definitely drew attention to the fact that he hasn't been to church enough.

He's a big fan of music and danced and swayed through every song. After the first song, he loudly clapped and screamed "YAY!" Hey, a little enthusiasm in church never hurt anyone.

When it was time for offertory, the basket came our way. Those wicker baskets apparently look a lot like the baskets that hold tortilla chips at the mexican restaurant. Patrick likes tortilla chips. He adamantly started yelling "chips!" and trying to grab and spill the money and envelopes everywhere.

And then it was time for communion. I still cringe thinking of this one. Juggling 3 kids for communion is not easy. Jackson walked, Alex held Patrick and I carried Penny. As they approached the eucharistic minister Patrick recognized yet another opportunity to do his favorite thing, eat. Those communion wafers looked mighty tasty to him and he quickly threw that little arm out and grabbed a large handful. Not good.

Yet another time that my mother-in-law's quote is very fitting. "Children are humbling."

This church trip definitely holds up to the last one where Patrick looked at his truck book and yelled "TRUCK" throughout the whole mass. Wouldn't be so bad if his "tr" didn't sound exactly like an "f"...

Pumpkin Patch

Things are settling down around here and we're finally getting used to having a little girl around the house. I've been going overboard lately shopping for girly things. I've discovered that I have a weakness, or some might call it a strange obsession, with tights and girl shoes. I just love them!

We finally made it to the pumpkin patch last week. The boys had a blast playing on all the tractors, petting the goats, bunnies and pigs and riding on the corn train. Patrick is still talking about the pigs and oinking all the time. Jackson screamed "whoooohoooo" the whole time he rode the train. His country boy side is really coming out.

Another big hit of the day was the corn crib. This is kind of like a ball pit, but with corn kernels instead of balls. We couldn't figure out why Patrick was so grumpy on the way home, but we understood once we got home and changed his diaper that was full of hard corn kernels.

Penny did this the whole time. She's a good baby.

Penelope's Story

Most of you already know this, but we welcomed baby number 3 a couple of weeks ago and it's a girl! Penelope Kate was born on October 6th. She weighed 6 lbs. 10 oz and was 19.5 inches long. The labor was quick and easy. It went even faster than the other two-only about 3.5 hours. I hardly even had time to realize what was happening and she was already in my arms!

She is doing great. She's such a sweet baby and is very petite with delicate, small features. She went to the doctor yesterday for her 2 week checkup and is up to 7 lbs. 14 oz and 21 inches, so she is definitely nursing well.

I think we are finally adjusting to having a girl in the house. It felt a little strange at first to be able to dress her in pink and refer to her as "she." I've been doing lots of shopping for cute girly things and I am working on her nursery. Fun!

The boys love their little sister. We haven't had to deal with any jealousy issues so far. Jackson wants to hold her and "pet" her all the time and Patrick likes to bring her trains to play with. They have done great with the adjustment.

We are going to try to finally get to Tate Farms (a local pumpkin patch) today, so hopefully we'll get some good pictures that I can post. Thanks everyone for all the well wishes and gifts!

Blueberries

The boys and I went blueberry picking in the rain this week. I've been wanting to go for a while and this week was pretty skimpy on activities and appointments so I decided Tuesday would be a good day. We ended up going to Gin House Branch Farm in Decatur. It was excellent. They had a ton of ripe, plump berries and they work on the honor system, so you can just show up whenever you like and put your money in their lockbox and start picking.

We got very wet and dirty, but at least we weren't hot. The boys had a blast! We filled up a gallon bucket in no time and Patrick filled up his belly. I think he ate as many as we put in our bucket. He was just shoving them in his mouth by the handful.

I made this blueberry muffin recipe this morning and it is excellent! This has become my new favorite baking blog. She has a very interesting looking vegan chocolate cake that I'm dying to make for my sister-in-law, Lizzie.

Anyone have any good blueberry recipes?

Picture Update

Hello friends, it's been a while! The boys have been taking deliciously long naps lately, so I'm going to attempt a long overdue update with lots of pictures. This should definitely make up for my absence because I have serious issues with adding pictures in blogger and this will probably take me a week to get finish and get everything lined up correctly.

We took our annual family beach trip to Sea Grove in June. We all had a blast and I'm still sad that we're not there. I'm having beach withdrawal and I'm trying to figure out some way for us to squeeze in another beach trip before the new baby arrives. This is our family picture-it had to include our 2 dump trucks because they are a big part of the family lately.

I was about 6 months along in this picture. This pregnancy has been a doozy compared to my other two. I have just felt completely run-down the entire time. I'm ready to have this baby! We are still waiting for the big day to know the gender. It's been killing me having to pass on all the bargain baby clothes I've seen while shopping lately. I don't have any instinctual feelings either way on the gender so I will be as surprised as anyone when we find out. This baby is very active and so far very healthy and we are thankful for that.

Jackson took swim lessons for the first time. He did great. The first day was a bit traumatic, but I think that was due to the fact that we were late and I pretty much had to walk into this new, hot, humid place and throw him in the water with his scary looking man teacher. After that day, he warmed up quickly and enjoyed doing his "scoop hands" and floating and even jumping in from the side of the pool.

Alex had shoulder surgery the first week in July. This was surgery to repair an injury he got while playing in the ocean last September. I was scared to death about the surgery and the recovery, but he has done remarkably well. His shoulder is doing great and he has hardly whined at all! It's amazing what they can do with arthroscopic surgery-he just has 3 tiny incision marks and hopefully he'll be able to throw a baseball again soon.

Patrick has had quite a learning explosion over the last couple of months. He is talking up a storm and putting words together. He'll repeat pretty much anything we say and is learning his colors and he loves to hum. He loves trains, trucks and race cars just as much as his big brother and has really started to enjoy reading time. He has also started to show a lot of interest in the potty. We spend a lot of time hanging out in the bathroom, but haven't had any success yet.

Alex finished our newest home improvement project, the mudroom, the week before his surgery. It is awesome! This space is the walk through from our garage and actually used to be our laundry area before we moved that upstairs. It's great to make use of that wasted space and have lots of storage for sports stuff, purses and backpacks.

Hope you're all having a great summer!