Baby Cuddles, Aedan's First Baseball Game, and Toll Family Vacation!

Samantha: 36 Months, Week 5
Aedan: Week 7

Our week started with a trip to the library.  We are just so used to going on Tuesdays, even though there is no story time until July.  Plus, we wanted to check out some new books on CD for our upcoming vacation.  Aedan did pretty well at the library, nursing right when we got there and then hanging out and sleeping in the Ergo while Samantha and I picked out books, got the summer reading program reward chart, and played in the play space.  However, Aedan was not very happy in the car on the way there and back.  It's not too bad when Ben and I both are in the car together because whoever is not driving can be on pacifier duty, which requires you to reach your hand over and around the seat to hold the pacifier in Aedan's mouth.  Unless he's sleeping, this is the only way to have a happy baby in the car.  However, when I'm driving I can't really do that safely, but it's not a very pleasurable ride to hear him crying the whole time.

We got back home around noon, but ended up having a hectic lunch time with Aedan needing to nurse and Samantha being super hungry for lunch.  I had to nurse Aedan as soon as we got home because he was so unhappy and hungry, making us have a pretty late lunch.  Aedan fell asleep in the swing, and Samantha actually took a nap, even though she didn't go down until after 2:00.  She wanted me to stay in the room with her which I said I would as long as she stayed laying down, which she did.  She was asleep within 5 minutes and took a good hour long nap, which is really all she needs to make it through the rest of the evening.  She woke up saying, "Mommy, I took a nap, can I get out of my bed now?"  We hung out upstairs, playing with her trains, so that we could allow Aedan to keep napping downstairs in his swing.  

Once Daddy got home from campus that night, we decided to be brave and go out to dinner at Noodles and Company, all four of us together.  It went well, Aedan was happy as long as he was held, and Samantha did a wonderful job eating her food like a big girl without requiring any help.  (She also has been going potty all by herself lately.  She will just go in the bathroom whenever she needs to, doing it all by herself.  It's so nice that she has become more independent in these two areas.)  After dinner, Daddy took Samantha to her swim lesson and I took Aedan home since it was raining outside and wouldn't be any fun for us to sit and watch.

Here are some pictures of Aedan in his swing that evening while Daddy and Samantha were at swim lessons.  He sure loves his swing and will often hold his arms out in fists like that when he's sleeping.  In fact, his head usually tilts to the left like that as well.  He's a pretty handsome little fellow for a 6 week old little boy.

Samantha has really been into helping out lately, wanting to watch us and help us when we make meals or when we unload the dishwasher.  She even helped me get the couch covers clean in the laundry room at our apartment complex, helping transfer them to the dryers and put the quarters in the slot.  We had a wonderful night together, with lots of laughs and lots of good family time with our little girl who's in a good mood and our little man who is starting to smile more and more every day.

After we got Samantha in bed that night, we gave Aedan a bath.  We have several pictures of Samantha when she was little, all wrapped up in a towel after a bath, but don't have very many of Aedan, so I figured I'd take one that night.

And here he is, again, sleeping in his swing after getting all clean and comfy in his pajamas.  We have started using these little nightgowns most nights because it is so much easier to change his diaper in the middle of the night when we don't have to mess with a whole bunch of snaps on pajamas.

When Ben and I are ready for bed ourselves, we pick up our little boy and bring him upstairs.  He is usually out like a light and stays asleep, cuddled up in our arms.  Sleeping babies are just so adorable.  I can't get enough of his little pudgy cheeks and his little chin resting on his fist.

Wednesday was just a relaxing morning at home as it was a very rainy, dreary day.  We played around the house, went through a bag of clothes for Samantha, and just enjoyed interacting with one another with nothing to go and do.

Here is Samantha blowing on Aedan's face, trying to get him to smile.  Right before I started the video he was giving her a big ole smile, but I didn't capture it very well.  She loves to talk to him and sing to him while I'm changing his diaper.

Samantha also likes to read to her little brother.  He loves watching her.  You can tell he really recognizes her voice because he tries to turn his head to look at her, wherever she is in the room, whenever he hears her voice.  It's pretty awesome to already see this bond between sister and brother.

Daddy also ended up staying home on Wednesday because he had his consult appointment with a surgeon to discuss having surgery on his colon.  After a very detailed conversation, including a picture drawn out of where in his colon is most affected when he has diverticulitis attacks, the surgeon basically recommended that Ben not wait very long to get this taken care of.  Ben's surgery is scheduled for June 30, and the goal is to take out about 1 to 1.5 feet of his colon, the area that is most affected.  There will still be a small area left, but all the attacks have been in the area that they will remove.  They hope to do it laprosopically, which would require a 2-5 day hospital stay.  If for some reason they have to make a larger incision (pelvic bone to belly button), the hospital stay would be from 5-10 days.  However, the surgeon is pretty confident they will be able to get the entire area that has bothered him without having to cut him open, especially since Ben is so young.  After his surgery, he won't be able to lift anything more than 15 pounds for a least a month, which makes it interesting for taking care of Samantha and Aedan, as well as moving in the middle of August.  I am grateful that something can be done and that hopefully this surgery, although we would rather not be doing it at all, will resolve Ben's problem and help him to avoid any future pain and visits to the hospital.  He's had six confirmed diverticulitis attacks since September, and they don't like someone to even have three in one calendar year, so something certainly needed to be done to improve Ben's quality of life in this area.

Since Daddy was working from home for the day, he got to spend lunchtime with us and hang out with his little boy.

And take silly pictures with his little girl.  I love my little family so much. :)

Isn't she just beautiful?  I love those golden curls, big eyes, and soft, pink cheeks.

You know what another great thing about Wednesday was?  Since I had an appointment to go to as a follow-up for our doula, Daddy put Samantha down for her nap, and she actually took a nap again.  Yay!

For dinner that night, we had a Bird's Eye freezer meal that I bought for a night when we didn't feel like making dinner but wanted to make sure we ate at home instead of eating out.  I picked this one because it had lots of veggies, chicken, and pasta with a light garlic cream sauce.  You just stick it all in a pan with some water and cook it for about 15 minutes and dinner is ready.  Samantha LOVED it so much that she had 3 1/2 helpings of it.  This was in addition to the fresh garden salad she helped us make.  She was Mommy's little helper in the kitchen, helping me wash the lettuce, radishes, and carrots that we picked from our garden.  I enjoy that she is wanting to help in the kitchen more now, even if it makes the process take a little longer, it is well worth it to spend time with our little girl and to teach her a few things about cooking along the way.

What does Aedan do during dinner?  He usually hangs out in his swing which is conveniently located right by our dining room table.  Most of the time he ends up falling asleep in there, even though Samantha is right in front of him chatting away.

This is our new reality of life with a baby and a 3 year old. :)

On Thursday Samantha, Aedan, and I went to Touch a Truck which is an event where many different trucks, emergency vehicles, buses, and utility vehicles park in a parking lot and let all the kids climb up inside the driver's and passenger's seats, crawl in the back, honk the horn, and push buttons on the inside of the vehicle.  I took Samantha last year, and she had a really good time, so I figured as long as it wasn't really hot, we could try to go again this year with Aedan in the baby carrier.  It started at 10:00, and I made it a point to get there a few minutes before it started so that we could get a head start of the crowds and the heat.  Aedan was pretty grumpy on our way there because he was fast asleep in his swing and I had to wake him up to put him in his car seat so we could leave.  However, once we got there and I got him in the Ergo, he fell fast asleep for the entire time we were there.  Here are some pictures of Samantha from the day.

I think her favorite things were running up and down the ramp and into the back of a U-haul truck, climbing up in the huge semi-truck, and blasting the horn in the police car.  We stayed for about an hour, until Samantha had her fill and Aedan started to squirm in the baby carrier.

Once we got home and took Aedan out of his car seat, life was much better for all.  I changed his diaper and got this cute video and pictures of Samantha talking to Aedan.

Then, later that afternoon, I got the best present a Mommy could get, adorably sweet smiles from my little boy.

If our Thursday wasn't already busy enough, we had a busy night ahead of us as well.  Our friends from Florida were up visiting, so we had a get together at the park planned with all the members of our old small group.  It was great for everyone to get together again and for the kids to be able to play together.  It was particularly adorable to see Sadie and Samantha together again.  They were SO excited to see each other.  Sadie wanted to follow Samantha around and gave her a great big hug when she saw her.

We also tried out a bottle with Aedan for the first time, just to see how he would take it and to give me a break while we hung out with our friends.  Aedan did just fine taking the bottle from Daddy, so we'll definitely have to take advantage of that for a date night sometime in the future.

We ended up staying at the park talking and playing for quite awhile that evening, and we even got ice cream at Chocolate Moose to cap off the night along with more time for the kids to run around and play at the park.  We were out past 9:00 that night.  Aedan did so well and just slept in the baby carrier after I nursed him at the park.  Samantha had a great time running around with Elam, Jude, and Eve, playing with the fountain, and pushing Eve in the stroller.  It was a wonderful time with friends and certainly made me miss our old small group.

Since we were out so late on Thursday night, getting Samantha, Aedan, and ourselves to bed rather late, we had a pretty lazy morning on Friday.  Ben ended up working from home while I did laundry and started getting packed for our Toll family vacation.  Samantha got a package in the mail from Uncle Matt and Aunt Christy with the clothes they bought her for her birthday.  She had a good time putting on a fashion show for me as she tried on all the outfits and dresses.  Some of her poses really crack me up.  How old is she again?

That afternoon, Daddy came up with the spontaneous idea to go to an Indianapolis Indians game, and to invite Upland Grandpa and Grandma.  It was going to be beautiful weather, so it would be a great game to try and take Aedan to.  And since Samantha took a good nap that afternoon, we knew it would be okay to be out late.  Samantha loved sitting out on the grass, playing with Grandpa and Grandma, and going for walks around the ballpark.  Daddy even took Samantha and sat in some seats behind the dugout for part of the game, and she really enjoyed sitting that close to the field and being able to see everything better.  Aedan laid on the blanket, making faces at Grandpa for awhile, sitting on his lap, and then fell asleep comfortably in the Ergo for the last few innings of the game, once it reached his bedtime. :)

It was a really fun evening, but the game went into 10 innings, and the one of the main reasons we wanted to go to a Friday night game was to see the fireworks afterwards.  However, because of the extra inning, it was getting rather late and we needed to get back home since we were planning on leaving for vacation the next day.  I was going to stay with Aedan for the fireworks, but instead, I went back to the car early so that I could nurse him, making it so that we could leave the parking garage faster.  Daddy stayed with Samantha and watched the fireworks.  She still loves watching fireworks, covering up her ears, but smiling at Daddy.  She said, "The fireworks are loud, but really cool."  Then she would comment on all the different colors she saw.  I was a little worried about how our ride home would be since it was already midnight, and I didn't know know if our children would sleep in the car or not.  As I've said before, Aedan is not a big fan of his car seat, so after I nursed him and got him situated, Ben took the car seat and started walking around the parking garage, swinging his car seat back and forth.  We were stuck in traffic trying to get out of the parking garage, so that would not have made Aedan very happy.  Plus, Samantha was so tired that she fell asleep in her car seat before we even started driving out of the parking garage.  We wanted to try our best to not have Aedan wake her up.  Both children slept peacefully all the way back to Bloomington.  It probably was a little crazy to do all this tonight, especially with a 6 1/2 week old, but fun was had by all, and I'm glad Ben suggested it.  It's nice to do spontaneous things as a family.  Plus, we took Samantha to an Indianapolis Indians game when she was the same age as Aedan, so it's tradition, right?  (Here's a picture of Samantha at her first game.)

Ben and I didn't get to sleep until around 1:30 am.  Daddy carried Samantha to her room, put her in bed, and she went right back to sleep.  Aedan stayed asleep in his car seat, and we were tempted to leave him in there until he woke up, but we tried that once before during the day and he woke up with this terrifying cry like he was scared and thought he was by himself.  We didn't really want to wake up in the middle of the night to that frightening scream, so I decided to take him out, get him in his pajamas, and put him to bed in his bassinet.  I think that was a much better plan because then he did not wake up again until about 5:30 am.

Saturday morning was a bit busy, not to mention the fact that we were all tired from being out late the night before.  We had to finish getting everything packed up, get showered, take the recycling in, drop Roscoe off at the vet, and get all of our things in the car.  We planned to head out, drive for about an hour, and stop for lunch.  We stopped at a Chick-fil-a so that we could have a relaxing lunch and let Samantha play while I nursed Aedan.  It worked out really well.  We got back in the car for a later nap.  Samantha fell asleep pretty quickly and slept for about an hour and a half.  Aedan didn't even take any work to get to fall asleep that afternoon.  Maybe it was a good thing that we were out late at a ballgame the night before.  It made for two tired kids, a good nap for both, and a quiet car ride for the parents, at least for part of the drive. :)

We got to the vacation house in Michigan a little after 5:00, but those last fifteen minutes of the drive seemed to last forever.  Samantha said she had to go potty, but then said she could wait until we got to the house.  We knew if we stopped, Aedan would wake up, and then I would have to nurse him, making us get to the house that much later.

But we finally made it and the vacation house was incredible.  Here are some pictures off vrbo.com.

The family was nice enough to allow Ben, Aedan, and I to have the master bedroom because it had the most space for a pack and play and was further removed from the rest of the house so that way Aedan wouldn't wake anyone up at night.  It turned out to be a major blessing that we were in that room because it had a window unit air conditioner, making our nights much more pleasant since it got quite warm in the rest of the house that did not have air conditioning.  With Aedan being so little, it's hard to have him too warm, especially when it's nighttime and all we want is a good night's sleep.

After ordering in some pizza from a local restaurant for dinner that night, we decided to check out the local beach.  The girls rode in a little wagon over to their private access to the beach.  It was just a short walk from the house and the beach was lovely.

We told the girls we were just going to the beach to check it out and see what to expect for when we actually came to swim.  It was pretty much their bedtime, and we didn't even put their swimsuits on them.  We walked along the water, getting our feet wet, but Samantha didn't listen too well about not getting too far out into the water.  She lost her balance and fell in, getting wet from the waist down.  This, of course, brought on a slue of tears because she wanted to take off her wet clothes, but we had no towel and no dry clothes.  The water was just too hard to resist for our little fishy.

Our first night in the house was great.  It was nice and cool outside, so we enjoyed falling asleep listening to the crickets chirping away in the woods surrounding our house.

We decided to make Sunday a beach day and traveled a short distance to the Warren Dunes State Park.  This time we were prepared for water and sand fun.

I carried Aedan in the baby carrier again, and he did really well, sleeping away most of the morning.  It was a bit sad feeling left out of all the water fun, but I enjoyed taking some pictures of Ben, Samantha, Jeni, and Alaina enjoying the water.

The girls really enjoyed playing in the sand, building a sand castle, and getting buried in the sand by Aunt Jeni.

After playing in the water and in the sand for quite awhile, we decided it was time for lunch.  So we hiked up the sand hill to a shady spot under a tree to eat our picnic lunch that we packed.  I took Aedan out of the baby carrier, hoping to lay him out on the blanket and let him cool off in the shade for awhile.  Well, when I took him out I discovered his diaper leaked out the top a little bit, making it so that we had to change his entire outfit (which he is never a big fan of).  Ben offered to hold Aedan for me so I could eat my lunch before nursing him, but apparently there are biting flies on the beach in Michigan and they just started attacking us, particularly Ben and Grandpa.  I felt bad that the flies were biting Ben so much while he was holding Aedan, so I decided to just take Aedan back to our car to nurse him in the air conditioning.  The rest of the afternoon was just as much of a disaster.  I walked up and down the sand hill several times to see what was going on and to find more food to eat for lunch.  We tried laying Aedan on a towel with a little umbrella keeping him in the shade so that I could have a chance to play in the water with Samantha, but at this point Samantha was pretty much done playing and was getting tired and aimless.  Then, a big gust of wind came and blew sand all over Aedan, making him very upset.  (I think I would be pretty upset if I was a little baby and got sand in my eyes, too.)  After that happened, I decided it was just time for us to go, whether Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Jeni, and Alaina wanted to leave or not.  So we headed back to the house to get Aedan more comfortable and Samantha down for a nap.  The beach was fun, but probably a little bit much for an almost 7 week old.

That evening, after both girls took a nap, we had a good time playing outside in the large yard around our vacation house.  Grandma came up with the idea to play kickball with the girls, with just two bases plus home base.  They kind of got the hang of it but were a little confused about when to run and where.  It was fun for all!

We were trying to plan our days' activities around what the weather was going to be like, and the weather seemed to change every time we looked.  On Monday we decided to go up to St. Joseph for the day.  Ben, Samantha, and I had plans to meet my cousin and her kids for the afternoon, so we took the opportunity to enjoy the morning at Silver Beach.

When we first arrived, Aedan was ready to nurse again, so I stayed in the car and nursed him so that we would stay out of the sun while the girls played at a playground right on the beach.  Then, we went for a walk out onto a pier, but Samantha was a bit ornery, probably because she was hungry and tired, and Aedan was not enjoying riding in the stroller, so I decided to just put him in the baby carrier instead so that we could have a happier baby and a happier walk.

After a potty stop and a little snack, we made our way to the Silver Beach carousel.  Samantha and Alaina had fun riding in the pretend car, looking at the old amusement park artifacts, and of course, riding on the carousel.  Aedan was still sound asleep in the baby carrier, so Daddy went on the carousel with Samantha while I stood in the doorway of the carousel building so we could stay cool from the breeze coming in off the beach.  I don't mind getting chances to snuggle with my little guy while he's asleep in the baby carrier, but when we are outside in the heat I get worried about him overheating all wrapped up inside.

After riding the carousel and having popcorn for a snack, (Ah, the things you get to do on vacation!) the girls got their bathing suits so they could enjoy the splash park across the street.  Samantha ran right in and thoroughly enjoyed herself, running through the fountains and getting soaking wet.  What a wonderful afternoon activity on a warm day with clear blue sky up above!  I even remarked that the sky looked like a Texas sky: big, blue, and not a cloud to be seen.

After playing at the splash park for quite awhile, it was getting close to 1:00, which is when we were going to meet my cousin at her house.  Samantha probably could have stayed and played longer in the water, but was encouraged by the fact that she was going to be able to keep playing at someone's house instead of taking a nap that afternoon.

My cousin Melissa has three kids, the youngest whose name is Katherine is only a few months younger than Samantha, so they had a great time playing with one another that afternoon.  When we arrived at their house, Katherine was already wearing a princess dress, so she got one for Samantha to wear as well.  Samantha wore her little dress the rest of the afternoon.  We had sandwiches for lunch together, and then the kids played for the rest of the afternoon while Melissa, Ben, and I talked and caught up with one another.  They had a little side yard with a swing set that they shared with the neighbors, so the the kids just went out there to play and we could see them from inside the house.  It was really nice being able to let Samantha go out and play without supervision, knowing that the older kids were watching out for her.  I think Samantha would enjoy having older siblings around to play with, so that our little extrovert would never be alone.  Here are some cute pictures of Samantha and Katherine on the porch together.  They were taking turns pretending to be the queen, and the queen got to sit in the tall chair.

We had a wonderful afternoon together.  It's so good to get together with my cousin and for our kids to play together.  Back when we were growing up, I never would have imagined us having kids of similar age and watching them play together while we sit and chat.  I hope we get to see a lot more of them and that they can come visit us in Oxford sometime.

Well, that is all I have for this blog post and the first few days of our vacation.  More to come on the rest of our vacation in the next blog post!