Random Update

Advance warning - this is a very jumbled post with lots of random stuff - but I felt like sharing - so here goes.

First, I want to take a minute to brag on our big brother. Carter really has been fantastic. One morning this week, Adam was in the shower, I was drying my hair, Carter was reading books in his room, and Ben was chillin' in his bassinet in his room. I went to check on the boys, and Carter was standing at the bassinet and holding a paci in Ben's mouth. What a sweetheart. Whenever it is time to change Ben's diaper, Carter always brings me a diaper for Ben. And he is very particular about which diaper Ben wears - sometimes it must be Cookie Monster, other times only Elmo will do. Unfortunately he also decided to share his recent illness with his little brother.

Carter had a pretty bad head cold this past week, that I thought sounded croup like one night. But he was still taking nice deep breaths, so we avoided a trip to the doctor, as I was afraid they were going to put him on steriods again, which was not fun the first time. Now Ben is pretty congested. He didn't sleep in his bassinet at all Thursday or Friday night because he just had too much congestion. Poor guy. Thankfully, I think both boys are starting to turn the corner.

Here is a recent Ben picture, just because I am sure that is really why you decided to check our blog.



We enjoyed a great visit from Gram this weekend. It was a short visit, but we packed a lot in, and she helped tremendously. Friday night Adam had to work late, and I was at my breaking point. I had very little sleep Thursday night because of Ben's cold, and my throat was pretty scratchy by the end of Friday. With both boys not feeling well, and mama working on just a couple of hours of sleep, I was spent. Thankfully Gram stepped right in. She brought a roast for dinner, held a crying Ben while I bathed Carter, and then put Carter to bed while I tried to comfort Ben. Couldn't have done that night without her.

She brought Carter several new books - and read a certain Elmo book with Carter over 50 times without a doubt. Carter loves his Gram time! This morning, before she got on the road, she had a small Halloween goody bag for him with his favorite - STICKERS! He immediately started saying - "open stickers please" I told him we could open the sticker after Gram left, and he then said "bye Gram". He does love his Gram and his stickers. :)



In a moment of desperation on Friday, I broke down and purchased a swing for Ben. I was anti-swing with Carter. When we were pregnant with Carter we were living in less than 600 square feet, and all of the baby stuff just seemed so big (and expensive!), so we decided we could do without a swing. I finally caved. And I am so glad I did. We have it set up in the dining room and have actually had a few meals together as a family recently with both mommy and daddy eating at the same time while Ben swings away. I had a good coupon and some good store credit and it was worth every penny that I had to spend.



With another kiddo here to take adorable pictures of, I decided I wanted to improve my photography skills so I signed up for an online photo class called "Momtography". Isn't that a cute title? It is teaching me how to use the manual mode of our Nikon D40 camera. Our "homework" this week was to play around with aperture, which affects how much light the camera lets in on a particular picture which then affects how blurry or focused the background is. (or at least that is my very limited understanding of it for now) I like the blurry background look, especially when I am taking pictures of our little ones, so I was excited to figure out how to take these 2 pictures and achieve different results only by changing the aperture settings.



We took a walk through the neighborhood last weekend to enjoy the nice weather and to get landscaping ideas for our front yard for the spring. I decided that I want to change out the pictures in our dining room for the fall. Here are 3 of the pictures that will be hanging soon. Now, I need to find 5 more fallish things to shoot to change out the rest of the summery flowers.



OK, I guess that is all for now. Thanks for reading, those of you that made it to the end. :)