August - First Half

So, can you tell which one is Cedar and which one is Carter??? They look so much alike it is crazy. Soon they will be mistaken for twins!

08-14-10

08-14-10 This is what happens if I turn my head for a split second. And yes he is trying to pull her back out of the way. Oh my!

08-14-10 Cedar love those feet!

08-14-10 They are still trying to wake up from a nap. I have to take advantage of the rare times that they are side by side and not picking on each other to get a photo!

08-13-10 Carter loves the big boy slide. Calla would not go near it. We had a great day at the park with maw-maw.

08-13-10 On our way to the park with cousin Cade. They really love him and want to do everything that he does.

08-13-10 Cedar

08-13-10 Carter

08-13-10 Calla

08-11-10 So with the permission of the speech therapist Cedar gets to eat his stage ones. This was his first sweet potato experience. He loves to eat (hence the fat rolls). He is on stage twos now and doing just fine. I know he could advance but I am going a little slower due to his aspiration risk. I am actually terrified to feed him anything but pureed food. So when he is 10 years old please don't make fun of him when he has to have his food pureed by his mommy! :-)

08-09-10 Carter does love the water. He has an obsession with the water hose. He has to be the one holding it or know where it is at all times. It certainly can not be in the hands of his sister. That is not allowed. He is the king of the tree watering. This of course means that he also waters himself and his sister who doesn't have the same appreciation.

08-05-10 Cedar does love to play. The twins keep him entertained most of the time! They are always bringing him toys. It is impossible for me to keep the germs away, I guess I have to give up. They are forever taking his paci and sticking it in their mouths and then back in his when they see me coming for it. Gross!

08-05-10 Love this little face!

08-02-10 I think my cabinets must be the equivalent of older children's tree houses.

End of July

Sweet Baby Cedar


Cedar eating his rice cereal, what a big boy!

Calla loves to dress up! She LOVES shoes and hats. Here she is wearing some sun glasses that she promptly popped the lenses out of and a hat she put on by herself.

These kids live under my cabinets. The cabinets only stayed child proof for about a week it seems like. They know how to open them from the outside and inside. Of course my laundry room is still filled with all of their old contents. I'm glad I have a lot of cabinets!

New Stats

So we took the twins to the Dr today for a well visit. Carter still has an ear infection, which I already knew since I had to take him to the walk in clinic this past Saturday. His left foot still turns in slightly when he walks, but Dr. Schaeffer did not seem to worried about it. Calla is great but he is worried about her weight gain. She actually eats more than Carter so I think that she just has the metabolism that we all would pay lots of money for. He said we could wait until the 2 year appt and see what she does, but if not weight gain by then we would start doing some testing. So in the mean time I will continue to give her extra butter, pasta, potatoes, cheeses, and anything else that might put some pork on her. Cedar went to the Dr two weeks ago for his six month appt. He is doing great. His only issue is the aspiration. He still has thickened liquids but he graduated from speech therapy today. He will go back to see them again when we start real solids or have another swallow study, which ever the Dr wants. He got four shots, poor baby! The twins finally realize what the Dr is and why they are there, so today was not easy. A lot of crying and screaming. Oh my, my head.

Here are their stats

Calla

Weight 20lb 2oz (0.94%)

Only up 2 oz in four months!

Height 31 inches (10.56%)

Head 48 cm (77%)

Carter

Weight 28lb 5.5 oz (68%)

Height 33 inches (42.2%)

Head 50 cm (90.28%)

Cedar

Weight 19lb 30z (68.48%)

Height 26 inches (20.6%)

Head 45.8cm (90%)

Wow, those are Bowling heads! We are blessed to have healthy children!

The Coast 2010

We go to the coast in Texas, Port Aransas, every year with the entire Bowling family. We went last year so we knew a little of what we were getting into with taking the babies, but of course this year we added a baby, so the car was a little more packed this time. All of the work was worth it. We had a great time and it was so good to all be together. It is too rare that the whole family it together! Now if we could just get Jamey's oldest sister, Secret, and her boys to join us then we would be complete! Here are some of my favorite pictures. Thanks so much to grandmommy and granddaddy for letting us borrow your camera and to Bo and Amanda for sending us copies of their, since we left our camera on the dining room table at home, along with all the baby food and snacks. Thank goodness for walmart!

07/17/10 Calla and her only girl cousin, Lilly. Aunt Amanda made these dresses for the girls. They are so adorable. She also made the same dresses for their dollies. Too cute!

7/17
Cedar, Mommy, Daddy, and Calla in the swimming pool at the condos where we stay. The pool is heated, not that they need it in Texas in July, so the kids enjoy it like the bath.

7/17
Carter and Calla had so much fun playing with their uncles, and daddy in the pool. Last year they were still very quite and timid in the pool. This year they really got into playing in the water.

7/17
Cedar swims, or drives his car around the pool.

07*17-10 Calla, daddy, Granddaddy and Carter on the beach preparing for the "Cousins" picture.

07-17-10

And here is the Cousins picture, or my favorite out of the MANY that were taken. Now of course getting all 6 of them to look our way and to look happy was going to be an impossible mission and we knew that going into it. I really like this one and many of them turned out better than I expected. This will be the one framed in our house if I ever get around to printing pictures (may be 2015 :-) ). So we have Carter, Tommy holding Cedar, Joey holding Lilly, and Calla. They are Jamey's brother Bo's children. It was really fun to see them all together.

07-17-10

I actually really like this one too but Cedar is not looking.

07-17-10
I just think this one is funny! Carter is crying, Cedar and Lilly are more interested in each other, Joey is playing with the sand, and Calla looks mad that Lilly's foot is too close to her. But hey, Tommy was smiling!

07*16*10
Carter and daddy in the ocean. He was hesitant at first, but warmed up to it OK.

07*16*10
Uncle Mitch got Calla to go out into the water and she really liked it once she got there. She even got to the point that she would walk out into it herself.

07*16*10
Cedars first dip in the ocean.

07*16*10

07*16*10
Playing at the biggest sand box they have ever seen. She was really concentrating on trying to get the sand where she wanted it, she the tongue sticking out.

07*16*10

07*16*10

Grandmommy and Cedar.

Carter and his beloved blanket, playing with the baby monitor. He love electronics!

Thank you Grandmommy and Granddaddy for the amazing trip! We all had a blast! Thanks to the Aunts and Uncles that helped us out with the fact that we really needed more hands to get around with three babies! Everyone was so helpful!

July Fun

07/08/10 Calla has mastered climbing up the ladder and sliding by herself. She loves to slide. The big slides at the park are still a little too intimidating for her, but this one in our back yard is just her size. (Thank you grandmommy and granddaddy!)

07/04/10
July Fourth we had a cookout and had my family over. My granddad and his friend Esther were in town to visit. We had so much fun and it was great to get to visit with them.

07*08*10 So this is what our kitchen looks like most of the time. The twins live in out cabinets like half the day. Our laundry room, is now full of all of the things that used to have a home in our bottom cabinets. I am glad its a big laundry room! They of course figured out the child proof locks and now use them as handles from the inside. You can see Carter grabbing for it.

07*04*10
Uncle Aaron, Cousin Cade, and Cedar all sporting their American spirit for the fourth.

07*04*10 The twins did not like the sounds of the fireworks, so they were in bed. Cedar started out with us but it was really past his bedtime as well. I was afraid it would be too loud for his little ears anyway.

07*04*10
Our friends the LeClerc's also came over on the fourth. This is their daughter Hannah. She kept hugging Carter. It was soooo cute. He looked a little afraid most of the time and of course this is not a great picture of it but it was too funny.

07*02*10 Granddad and some of his great grandchildren, Cade, Cedar, and Carter. We had so much fun with him. We wished he lived closer!

07*02*10
Cedar and his great granddad.

07*02*10

Calla has to try to figure out how everything works. Here she is trying to tie or hook the highchair straps. She still sticks her tongue out when she is really concentrating on something, its so cute.

7*01*10
We went to fun city with my family and our friend Michelle and her daughter Hannah. Calla had a lot of fun climbing up these stairs.

7*1*10
I love this picture. Hannah must drive like her mother, see her face. This is their first date picture. Too cute!

And they both fall down!

6*28*10 We went to Walker park in Fayetteville. It is my favorite park to go to because of all the wide open space that they can run. I love this video. They fall down and back up again. You can see why we need the wide open spaces. Of course they don't like to run in the same direction. I love the way that Calla ran when she first started. Her arms swing behind her like they are broken. She has gotten a little better at her running now and they don't swing so much, but I think it was cute!

Life is Busy!!!

Things are so crazy around here! I am back in school. I must have had a slight moment of insanity when I decided that grad school sounded like a good idea. :-) My very little free time just went out the door. I am also back at work at the UofA, teaching five sections! That was another moment of insanity. Oh well, it will all work out somehow. That I do know. Jamey is still at work at Honda and working so hard to help me in any way that he can. He has been awesome, cooking and cleaning! We knew we kept him around for something! :-) Kidding, of course. He is an amazing daddy and husband! Here is an update on the baby doodles and I will get pictures up as soon as I find another few minutes.



Carter - He went to the Dr this week for an ear re-check. Still has a double ear infection AFTER two antibiotics already! I hate it when one of them is sick, I feel helpless. He weighs 28 lb 1 ounce. WOW! I cant believe my 5lb premie weighs that much! He is growing up so fast. He talks all the time, I can understand a few words here and there. He will have entire conversations with Calla in his own language of course. He is so sweet to his little brother! The first thing he does in the morning, every day, is run into the living room and say HI and kiss him. Yesterday, Cedar was still in his bed and Carter ran in his room and stood on the bottom rail of his crib and reached up his little hand and waved over the top of the crib and said HI. SOOOOO cute! He kisses him all the time and gives him toys to play with. Now of course that does not mean that he doesn't steal some toys as well, he does that a fair share. He is still a little pushy with Calla. He knows he is stronger than her and uses it. He is sweet to her as well. He will make sure she has her sippy with her milk (sometimes it is the empty one he just finished so that he can steel what is left of hers) but he does show that he wants her taken care of. He used to be really mean to her, the majority of the time. Since Cedar is more responsive to them now, Carter has really sweetened up. He loves water play. Obsessed with the water hose. I am pretty sure that he feels it is his and his only.



Calla - Calla used to be the one that it was hard to make happy. She started our fussy from the start. She has changed so much. She smiles all the time and giggles the funniest laugh. She likes to play by herself but has fun with her brothers as well. She loves to sit in my lap while I feed cedar and she always takes him random toys. She has a shoe thing and carries random shoes all of the house. I often find shoes piled on top of cedar. She does know which ones are his though its cute. She will always match the shoe to the person. She likes to wear shoes around the house. I have been meaning to find her some tap shoes so she can tap her way across the kitchen. Her and Carter have many words but still do not group them or use them consistently. They do associate words with actions. I can ask them to do something or ask them where something is and they go and get it. (awesome) They can point to all of their body parts and know many words in sign language. She loves her daddy. She talks about him all the time. Every time the phone rings or I get a text she thinks its him and says "daddy". So cute.



Cedar - Cedar started sitting up by himself (not getting himself there, but stays if you put him there) this week at 6 months 1 week old. I can not believe how fast the time goes. He will also roll across the living room floor in a minute. Loves toys, really anything that he can grab. He has also been fighting double ear infections. After two rounds of antibiotics he is now clear. He weighs 18lb 9oz, seriously! He looks just like a mini Carter and Jamey for that matter. A fat version of Jamey anyway. He is super sweet. The happiest of all our babies. He is happy about 98 % of the time if that is possible. He really only gets upset if he poops or is fighting sleep. He aspirates on liquids which is really scary to think that every time you feed your little guy it could go into his lungs! He coughs a lot. I hate it. Please add him to your prayers that it stops soon! He has to have all of his liquid thickened. Obviously it has not affected his weight gain! :-) He take speech therapy once a week an we do stretching and strengthening exercises everyday 3 to 5 times per day. He is really tired of it all. Who could blame him. He loves carter and calla. He just giggles at them all the time. They play peek a boo with him. The other day he was laughing so hard and so loud I was crying because it made me laugh so hard too. It was also so heartwarming to be reminded of how all of our previous heartache on our journey to be parents was so worth it. I never knew how much better the sound of their laughter would make my life. I walked in to the kitchen the other day to check on the too quiet carter and calla to hear the little laughter coming from inside my kitchen cabinets. And to see their tiny faces pop out when they open the obviously non childproof latches from the inside, amazing is all I can say. They have made our lives complete in so many ways. We will continue to thank god for them everyday!

Well that of course is the brief update and I am sure that I am forgetting major things but my time is short. I will post pictures soon I hope! I am still taking lots!