Brian is 3 months old!

Truly, I can't believe that tomorrow is the last day of 2009! I can't believe that today is December 30! (I just checked the calendar to make sure!) After a lot of parties and traveling, I am happy to be home for a little while. Kayleigh, on the other hand, told me she wanted to go on another trip the day after we got home from St. Pete!
Brian is 3 months old, and I'm amazed at how much he has grown. He can pretty much hold his head up, although you can still tell his neck gets tired and it'll start to flop. He's close to sitting up by himself, but I think that'll still take a little while. He is getting to be really smiley, and has even laughed for us a couple of times. I love seeing him change and interact some more with us. He sleeps through the night most nights, so I think we'll be moving him up to his crib pretty soon. I wanted to wait until we were done traveling before we made the transition. I am still waiting for a furniture store to have a good deal on bedroom furniture, or no payments for awhile before we get him his set. If you hear of anything coming up, PLEASE let me know so I can go take a peek!

Christmas in St. Petersburg

I don't even know where to begin with my stories. Kayleigh had a BLAST with her cousins! She loves to run around and play with them. Robyn got Brian to laugh for the first time on Christmas Eve. That was awesome. It's a funny little laugh, but it was so neat to hear it. You know it just made my heart swell. I think Brian is turning into a ladies' man, smiling and cooing for them. I guess I'll break down the trip by days.
Thursday--I think I posted that we surprised Mom and Dad Wednesday night, so we were there first thing Thursday morning. Nick, Robyn and Taylor were staying there, so the girls were able to play together. That evening Jonathan and family along with Valerie and Matt came over for dinner. We had a Cuban dinner with roasted pork, black beans and rice, and fried plantains. Yum! Again, the girls were running around with each other and wore themselves out. You can see in one of the pictures that they got into Taylor's crib and tried to see how high they could jump. Mia was the definite winner in that contest! She's a good jumper!
Friday--Christmas morning. Jonathan, Chat and kids came over after they opened their family gifts. The morning wasn't as crazy as I had envisioned. It was chaotic, but fun. That afternoon, the extended family came over for dinner. I think with kids, there were 23 of us at Mom and Dad's house! Whew! Again, it was chaotic but fun.
Saturday--Erik took the kids to visit his Granny and Aunt Ola. I didn't know they were having a party over there, so I stayed home to have some sister time with Valerie while Matt was with his mom. Valerie and Matt, Nick, Robyn and Taylor all left that day. It was a quiet afternoon with naps and a walk. That evening, Jonathan, Chat and kids came over for leftovers and more play time. Chat and I snuck out of the house and did a little bit of post-Christmas shopping.
Sunday--back home for us. The traffic wasn't too bad, but we took our time getting home. We are all tired and happy to be back in our own beds.

Here is my longest slide show yet!

Poor Romeo

My 10 year old cockatiel died yesterday, and it was sadder than I thought it would be. She (yes she--surprise!) had been acting sick for at least a couple of weeks now, and yesterday was a bad day. I think my mom saw it first when Romeo lost her balance one day after Brian was born and took awhile to regain it. Then it started happening more lately. I would realize that she would fly to me and would breathe really hard, like she had flown a lot farther than she did. There were other times when she would land, but not on her feet. A couple of nights ago, I actually stayed in the living room with her on me, because I wasn't sure if she would make it through the night.
Yesterday was hard, because I just knew she wasn't going to live much longer. Kayleigh was excited to leave for our trip down to St Pete, and she was hard to deal with while I worried about the bird. I had put the bird down to take care of Brian, and when I went to check on her one time, she was no longer with us. :( That's hard to explain to a 2 year old, let me tell you! One of Kayleigh's fish died recently, and we flushed it down the toilet. I was using that as an example to talk about Romeo dying, and you should have seen the look she gave me as she asked, "We're going to flush the bird down the toilet??" Then I told her we would dig a hole. I think she thought it would be fun to bury the bird, because she couldn't wait to do it. I had to wait for Erik to get home from work to let him do that, though.
Sad times, but now we have some fun to look forward to with the fam!

More Eikeland Christmas

Yesterday afternoon, we went to Bristol to visit Erik's brother and his family. We gave gifts to the kids and had an ornament exchange with the adults. Kayleigh LOVED the gifts she got, and we had to open them and play with them while we were there. She was able to keep up with the boys, running all around John and Chaille's house. It's funny, because I forget about Kayleigh being the only girl on that side of the family. At least they aren't keeping her out of the fun!
It was fun to see Brian and Trig together again. Trig is 4 weeks older than Brian, but I think Brian is bigger. The two little guys got lots of adult love while the bigger kids played.
Kayleigh got a shopping cart from Curry and Amanda, and a bucket with NINETY pieces of food in it from Cayla and Zac. I only think that all of the food came home with us. I wanted to take Kayleigh to Target today to get her some shoes like her cousin Taylor. She wouldn't leave the house unless I said that she could take her new shopping cart. I said we would take it on a trial run, and I have to say, it worked like a charm. I think it's the most well behaved she's been in a store in a long time. After Target, we took it into Publix, and put some of our groceries in her cart. I think that might have to be a new shopping accessory!! Erik wonders about the looks that we get when we're out with stuff like that, but I don't care. I hear people saying things and see them pointing, but for the most part they think it's cute.

Cute cousins

Nick, Robyn and Taylor all drove to our house late last night. Kayleigh woke up this morning to see her cousin, aunt and uncle at our house. I know she thought it was so neat to have them here. The girls got to play all morning, and hopefully we wore Taylor out enough for her to sleep on their trip to St. Pete. Too bad Kayleigh is still awake. Ugh!!
I am going to run in the Jingle Bell 3K tonight. Erik will stay with the kids while I run, which shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. Erik and I did it last year, and since I am now training to do a 5K with Valerie in March, it's good for me to get out and run while I can. It's funny, because even though I made the conscious decision to stop running when I was pregnant with Brian, I still had dreams about running, so I knew I would get back into it after I had him.
Tomorrow we'll go to Bristol to celebrate Christmas with Erik's brother and family. It's another busy weekend, but it sure is fun!

Early Christmas

So, we decided to open Christmas gifts with Kayleigh and Brian this morning, mainly because we'll be gone on Christmas and we didn't want to haul everything down to St Pete and back again. We've done it in the past, but Kayleigh's presents are getting bigger now, and we're going to have a LOT more people at my parents' house Christmas morning, so I don't really think Kayleigh needs more stuff to open that day. This is also Erik's day off, so it's perfect, because the weekend will be busy with visitors and visiting other people.
The gift I was most excited to give Kayleigh was a electric Barbie Jeep. It was the last thing she got this morning, and I knew she would be excited about it since she loves her friend's electric car. I'm sure you can imagine my disappointment when it was raining this morning. We let Kayleigh ride in the Jeep for a few minutes before deciding that it would be terrible if the thing broke because it got too wet the first day!

Whoa!

I took Brian to the doctor's office today to have him weighed and measured. As you might remember, the doctor asked me to bring Brian in about a month from his last appointment so that they could make sure he's growing and healthy. Well, I would say that he's both! We had a third nurse measure him today, and Erik and I are convinced that they all need to go back to measuring school! When the nurse measured Brian, she got 23 inches. When we measured him again tonight, we got 24 1/2 inches, putting him in the 83rd percentile for length.
The nurse, Kayleigh and I took Brian back to the scale to get him weighed. Thankfully, the nurse let me keep his diaper on him until we got to the scale. One of the other nurses asked me to take his diaper off immediately, which is just crazy! Anyway, we know Brian's weight without any fluids in him. How?? Because after he got his diaper off, he made a pretty fountain! One nurse was close to the scale and whistled her appreciation. Anyway, after relieving himself, Brian weighed in at EIGHTEEN pounds and twelve ounces!!! Oh. My. Gosh!!!
P.S. That puts him in the 100th percentile for weight according to one website!!!

Kids' Christmas party

Last night, Erik's company had a kids' Christmas party at a local bouncy house place. We went there last year and had so much fun, so knew we had to bring Kayleigh again. On Thursday, Kayleigh and I had gone to the mall, and while there we saw Santa Claus taking pictures. Kayleigh wanted to go see him, but I told her she would have to wait until Sunday when Daddy could go with us. She talked about it until we got to the party last night. Of course, when she was finally up close, she didn't want to have anything to do with him. They took our picture, but I'll have to wait until it's emailed to Erik to post it on the blog. We didn't know anyone in line that could take a picture with our camera.
Each kid at the party got a gift from Santa, along with a small bucket that had some candy and a $10 gift card to Walmart. Wow! They got that last year, but this year I thought about how generous it was of the company to do that, especially since it only cost us $5 each to go to the party--and that cost covered the charge to get in to the place and pizza and drinks!
Nick and Robyn, if you all feel up to it, let's take the girls on Saturday morning! That should get Taylor good and wiped out for your trip to St Pete! :)

Breakfast in Bethlehem

We went to church this morning for a children's Christmas celebration. We ate pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon. Yum! The kids had a little craft they could do, and have their picture taken in a manger scene. One of Kayleigh's friends was there, and the two girls had fun playing dress up. I will say that it was the Children's Minister's idea to put Brian in the manger and take pictures. I think it's a lot for Brian to live up to.
Afterward, we went to see Jim and Shirley for a little while before coming home and eating lunch. Yes, we were hungry again!

First smile*

*Caught on camera

Two month pictures and Christmas

Yes, it's true. Brian is two months old. I'm not sure how to take his picture with Geoffrey. I think it'll be better once Brian can sit up. I want Geoffrey to face the camera, which means that Brian is still facing his backside. I chose the picture because Brian has his leg stretched all the way out.

We did our Christmas dinner and gift opening with Jim and Shirley last night. They were planning on going on a cruise for the next week, and then there is a lot going on before Christmas, so we decided to get together early. As always, dinner was delicious, and we made out like bandits! Kayleigh was excited about opening the presents, and helped Brian open all of his, plus helped us open a lot of ours.