Little Fishy

Brody's first trip to the pool.  He LOVES it!!

Award Time

I'm so far behind on all my updates so I'm trying to throw a bunch of things up that have happened since I last blogged.  


Colby was chosen to receive the Dragon Leader Award by his teachers.  I'm not sure if Mrs. Dailey or Ms. Yen nominated him.  We were invited to a breakfast before school where they handed out the awards.  It's always nice to see your kids get an award for the example they are setting.  Colby is a bright boy with so much potential, he's thriving in English and Chinese and I could not be more proud of him!  

Enjoying the delicious breakfast of donuts and orange juice.

Cam being the goofball he is. 

Sweet little Brody.

I'm still getting used to my camera so this isn't the best picture but this is the best one of him on the stage.

Cameron's Graduation

At the end of May Cameron graduated from Sunshine Square preschool.  It was a cute little program and Cam was adorable as ever.  Grandma Carpenter came with us because Chris wasn't able to get out of a meeting that happened to be scheduled to start exactly when the graduation did. I was able to video tape it though so at least Daddy can see how great of a job he did. Afterward Grandma, Cam, Brody, and I all went to Olive Garden for lunch-Cam's choice.  


I can't believe in a few short weeks he will be starting Kindergarten!  Time has just flown by and I am excited and sad all at the same time. 


Here are a few pictures from the day.

Here is Cameron with his lovely teacher Miss Deena!  

It's the graduate!  How cute is he?

It was so windy that day that his cap blew right off his head.

What a handsome little guy!

Each kid made a paper doll showing them as their chosen occupation when they grow up. Cameron wants to be a paleontologist and a "diamond worker". (See the cute little dinosaur by his foot?)  I especially love his green eyes and mohawked hair!

Eruption!

This sweet little guy got his first tooth! He was a little cranky for the last week and Sunday night I finally figured out why. A small little white tooth on the lower left side just broke through. This makes me so sad as my toothless baby boy is growing up!  Can I freeze him in time just like this, please?

Sneak Peak

Here's a sneak peak of Brody's 6 month pictures.  Many more to follow but I wanted to get this one up for my out of towners.

Half A Year Old

Last week little Brody celebrated his 6 month birthday.  I can't believe he's 6 months already!  Today we went to the doctor for his check up and here are his stats:


Length:  27.2" 60th percentile
Weight:  16.8#  40th percentile
Head:  17.4"  60th percentile


As Chris put it he's the runt of the liter as both the other boys were way up around the 80th percentile in everything.

Here are some of the things I want to remember about him at this age:

• Rolls in both directions.
• Sits by himself for a short time.
• Plays contently with his toys.
• Rolls to get where he wants to go.
• Loves to play in his bouncy toys and bounce, bounce, bounce.
• Still sticks everything in his mouth.
• Likes to drop things on the floor for us all to pick up-pick up, drop, repeat.
• He loves his brothers and loves to play with them.
• Very ticklish and giggles just at the sight of pretending to be tickled. 
• Enjoys time in the bumbo.
• Is eating baby food.
• Does not sleep through the night but we're working on this one because both of us need a good nights sleep.
• Likes to nap with his blanket by his cheek.
• Really likes his mommy (I kinda like this too).
• Changes his mood on a dime!  He's either smiling or screaming and can change from one extreme or the other with little or no warning.
• Looks like Colby and Chris as a baby, which is weird because Colby looks like me.
• Likes to squeal to make sure we all know he's here.

But the most noticeable thing about him is his huge ear to ear grin. Everyone who sees him comments on his grin.  It's one of my favorite things about him, that and his blue eyes.  I'm hoping they stay blue!

I love this little boy dearly and am so glad he decided to join our family to make it complete.  Here's just a sampling of his cuteness!  

The Pumpkin Patch

Every year since Colby's been born we've taken him to the pumpkin patch to pick the very best pumpkins they have to offer.  Usually we wait until the weekend right before Halloween but this year the weather was so nice that we decided to go a little earlier in the year.  We headed out on a very warm Saturday afternoon to Schmidt's where we always go.  We've tried other places and always end up at Schmidt's because the pumpkins there are just the best.  As I said it was very warm, I was holding the baby, Chris was pushing the wheelbarrow so we didn't really get any good pictures.  Makes me kind of sad because I absolutely love the pumpkin patch and the great scenery it makes.  Here are just a few and really they are not good but you get the idea.

So this picture is horrible of Brody, he looks like a 30 lb old man baby in this picture.  I promise he's much much cuter in person.

Cornbelly's

This year over UEA we decided to do some fun stuff around here instead of heading out of town.  On Thursday the boys and I went with Nancy and Kristen, Lizzie, and Aiden to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point.  It was a beautiful day and we a had a ton of fun.  I think we will try to make this a tradition because it wasn't too crowded and the kids loved it!  They got to do all kinds of fun things like:

Rope swing...

Ride in a barrel that looks like a cow... 

Pretend to be someone else...

 Roll around and play in corn, lots and lots of corn...

 Ride really cool go carty things...

 Pretend to be a cowboy...

 Take a wagon ride...

 And their favorite thing of all...build a log cabin out of gigantic lincoln logs!!!

What a fun day! 

Brody Is Two Months

Our little munchkin is growing so fast!  I can't believe he's two months old already.  While I love the fact that he loves to smile and talk to us it makes me sad that he's not that tiny little boy anymore.

Last Monday we went for his two month check up and of course dreaded shots and here are his stats:

Head: 15.8 - 35th%
Length:  22.8 - 25th%
Weight:  12.8 - 50th%
(Wow, I just noticed he really likes the .8)

I was actually quite surprised that he is so small in his head circumference and his height.  Both of the other boys have always been over the 50th% in all three stats.  To see that Brody is just the 50th% in weight was also quite shocking because he looks so, how do we say it, umm, FAT!  I guess he's not and is right on target for his age.  I'll contribute his FAT looks to his double and sometimes triple chins.  ;-)  According to his doctor he's a healthy baby!

As far as his temperment let's just say the last month has been somewhat of a challenge for us.  Apparently the poor little guy has really bad stomach and gas problems which causes him to scream uncontrollably at times.  No amount of soothing, cradling, rocking, burping, standing and walking will help him.  I try to go to the gym for one to two hours every night and I've gotten several calls from Chris that I need to get home!  Since we were concerned that something might have been missed in his check ups causing him to be in so much pain I finally took him to the doctor where we got the news that he has: COLIC!  Oh yay for us!  Neither of the boys had anything like this so this is a first for us.  On top of his colic he also has reflux so he's on Prevacid for that.  The doctor was very encouraging that he would proababy start getting over this in the next month or so.  Apparently colic peaks around 8 weeks of age.  So now that he's on the right reflux medicine and we know that this is colic and there is nothing we can really do about it it's been easier to deal with his fits of crying.  Lately it's been really good days mixed in with some not so great moments so I am hopeful he's getting over this.

Trying to keep Brody healthy has also been a struggle for the last month.  Colby had strep and thankfully babies this age do not get strep.  Then Cameron had croup two weeks after that.  Last week poor little Brody got croup as well.  I took him in because of his age and they were able to give him a steroid to help with the swelling around his vocal cords.  He rebounded from that pretty quickly thankfully.  The doctor joked with me that they need a punch card for all the times I've been there in the last month between all three boys.  If I counted right I was there 6 times in 4 weeks!  Not good considering it's not even cold and flu season yet.  I swear my house must be a petri dish of germs.

For the good stuff, he is a very smiley baby and loves to smile at all of us.  He also loves to talk about things.  Of course we can't understand him but he sure talks!  And I love baby talk, coo goo goo!  He's also loves to swing.  The boys are still doing good with him for the most part.  I'm still scared to leave Cameron unattended with him for even a minute because he is fascinated with Brody's eyes and likes to poke them and I have no idea why. But he also loves his baby brother to pieces.  Colby is so good with him, he wants to hold him every chance he gets and is very protective and also a great helper.  It's so good to see how much he's matured and really taken on the role of the big brother.

I have to admit going from two to three kids has been a hard adjustment for me.  Every day we are learning to handle life with 3 kids and every day it's something different.  Every now and then it just seems so surreal that we are now a family of 5!

I hope I don't jinx things by saying for the last three nights he's slept through the night being from around 10:30-11:00 until sometime in the 5:00 am hour.  I sure hope this is a pattern that continues because 6 uninterrupted hours of sleep is heavenly!  Of course the first night he did it and I realized that he'd slept so long I went jumping out of bed to make sure he was breathing.  I guess that's a fear we never get over!

Here are a few pictures I took on the morning of his two month birthday.  I'm not a good photographer but some of them turned out really cute.  Especially the one where Cameron is kissing him, the look on Brody's face in priceless!

Mickey's Halloween Treat

Last weekend we made our annual Mickey's Halloween Treat Party trip to Disneyland.  This year the whole Carpenter family was able to go and we decided that the whole family should dress up instead of just the kids.  It was fun trying to decide what costumes we should all get.  The boys knew right away what they wanted to be:  Cameron was Jack Sparrow and Colby was Black Beard.  They were absolutely adorable!  We just bought a cheap bodysuit for Brody at the Disney Store on a whim and decided to use that for his costume.  It ended up being super cute and we got tons of compliments on it.  Chris really wanted to be Sorcerer Mickey from Fantasia but we couldn't find a costume anywhere for that.  At the last minute he and his mom collaborated and she ended up making a robe for him.  It turned out soooo good, he too got lots of compliments on his costume.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to be a pirate to match the boys or Minnie Mouse to match Chris and Brody.  In the end I decided on Minnie Mouse dressed as a witch.  It was fun.  Jason and Jen dressed as Zombie Hunters, Adam and Erica as Dharma Initiative from Lost, and Nancy dressed as a Witch while Mike was Clint Eastwood.

This year we ended up with 22.2 lbs of candy!  Way more than enough to hand out to all the kiddies that come to our house for Halloween this year.

Since Brody was only 6 weeks old it was his first trip to Disneyland.  He did so good in the car.  Any time he would get upset Colby was there to calm him down and put his binky back in when he needed it.  We figured out that he's not a big fan of the stroller so I had to carry him a lot but that's ok, soon he's going to be too big for me to carry.  

Here we are at the hotel before the party.  Obviously Chris is missing from the picture and I don't have my Minnie ears on yet but you get the idea.

We had a really good time as we always do!  I'm so glad we've made this a family tradition and hope we can continue this for years to come!

Cameron's At It Again!

Cameron is in the bathroom taking care of business and he yells out to me:

"Mom, bring me a book."

Wow, isn't 4 a little too young to start that habit?  I guess it's just bred into the male species.

By the time I got a book and got in there he was already done and told me I was too slow.  Kids, gotta love em!

Just What a Mom Needed

The last few days and nights have been a little rough with Brody.  First, it was his reflux and now it's his stomach mixed with a stuffy nose.  Last night he was up about every hour and a half which made for a very tired mom.  Well, this morning after Chris got out of bed I put Brody in bed with me-on the other side of the bed of course.  Anyway, I woke up this morning and he was starring right at me and as soon as I looked at him he gave me the biggest smile there ever was.  It melted my heart and was just what this very tired mom needed right at that moment.  No matter how bad the nights seem sometimes having a smile like that makes it ALL worth it.  I need to remember to relax and enjoy him because the next thing I know he will be off to preschool and then school just like my other two boys.

Brody's One Month

Time is FLYING by!  Little Brody is already a month old as of yesterday.  We are finally in a routine and I think I've learned what he needs and likes so things are good.  We did have a rough patch about a week ago where he cried and cried but thankfully it only lasted a few days.  On his one month birthday he had a great day and cooed and played a ton and even slept 5 hours straight last night.  Thank you, Brody!  I'm not sure what he weighs but as of last Thursday he weighed 9 lbs 7 oz-almost to the 10 lb mark which makes me very sad!  It's so hard to get good pictures of baby's at this age so here are just a few of the decent ones.

I have to give props to my sister-in-law Erica for making this adorable quilt!

I know the lighting on this is funky but I love the look on his face.

As always, Cameron in his face.

He makes this face all the time!