Sight Words

Two new firsts for Abby happened today. 

First, she was able to read her 50 sight words to her teacher twice, which puts her on a special list with the other kids who know those words. I'm so proud of her!!  Our practicing at home paid off. 

Next, while I was waiting for Abby at the bus stop, I received a phone call from an unknown number. It was a five year old boy, asking for Abby.  He told me he wanted her to come over today. I guess the kindergarten play dates are about to begin. :)

Wedding Shower

Last weekend, Jason and I helped host a wedding shower for my brother, David, and his soon to be wife, Crystal.  We dropped Abby off with her Aunt Becky and her cousins Aubrey and Julia to have a slumber party.  She was so excited.  She talked about it the whole week before. 

We brought Christian on his first long distance drive to Austin.  He did remarkably well.  He was only really restless the last 15 minutes of the trip.  Jason and I were restless way before that.  :)

My Mom and Dad got a suite at the Hilton downtown.  The room was great!  We were able to comfortably hang out in that room before the shower as well as afterwards (with multiple party guests).  Our shower gift was heavy, so we had David and Crystal open it before we left for the shower.  Here are some pictures from the suite after our drive to Austin.

 

After a few choices of venues for the wedding shower, we decided to have it at Serranos Tex-Mex Restuarnt downtown.  My mom rented a little patio room that was the perfect size for our party.  There was even a little private patio for the party guests.  We had a great time celebrating the new couple!

 

Back to work

With the end of my three months at home coming to an end, I realized how lucky I am to have such an easy baby.  My work needed me to work from home for a few hours each day for the last six weeks.  Instead of getting someone to help me with Christian, I decided that I could do both (take care of him and get my work done).  I was able to do it but it was really difficult at first.  Towards the end of this six week period, Christian had become super smily.  He is really content with almost anything we are doing.  Here are a few pictures of Christian chilling in my study while I'm working.

In addition to being happy while I'm working, he was also sleeping very well at night.  On Monday night he slept the whole night for the first time.  I put him down at 8 and he didn't wake up until 5:30... AWESOME!!!

 

On Tuesday, Abby had field day and I decided to bring Christian to his school for the first time for a couple hours instead of getting a babysitter for the few hours I was there.  He did really well.  He was hungry when he got there, so they fed him.  Then he took a three hour nap (never did that for me at home) and then they fed him again.  Then I was there to pick him up.

 

 

I didn't get very many field day pictures because my phone died almost as soon as I got there.  I was actually very stressed about this since this was the first time to have Christian in school.  I was sure that when I was finally able to charge it (I was volunteering at the finish line of field day.. so I couldn't charge it in my car), that Jason and the school would have a bunch of messages for me wondering where I was.  Luckily, no one was looking for me while I was away from my phone.  Here are the three pictures I did get before my phone died.  I'm sure that Abby's kindergarten blog will have many more (good ones) posted soon - link to the right.

 

On Wednesday, I took Christian to school for almost a full day.  That way I could get a good feel for how he would do and it would make my first day back (Today) that much easier.  Well, Christian was in his class from 9 - 3 and he decided he only wanted to eat once for them the whole day (at 10).  Even at 3 when I was sure he would be starving and I tried to feed him, he would only eat 2 ounces.  Needless to say he did not sleep well at all that night.  He woke up every 3 - 4 hours starving.  Abby also woke up twice that night with nightmares and ended up sleeping with me for a few hours.  Not fun.

 

This morning I was a mess.  I had to get myself, Abby, and Christian ready to leave at the same time (I'm supposed to be at work at 8:30 and I have at least 30 minutes of traffic to get through).  We missed Abby's bus on purpose because I hadn't finished making my lunch or packing my pumping stuff for work.  I was worried about Christian not eating again and not sleeping again at night.  Fortunately everything seemed to go as well as can be expected.  Except for being a little later than I had wanted to to work, and having to eat breakfast there, work was great.  In addition, Christian did wonderfully at school today.  He had another 3 hour nap... but this time he ate a lot.  Here's hoping he sleeps well for me tonight.

Come Back

I hadn't even thought about my blog in ages.  With Facebook these days, I have been spending a lot more time looking at what was happening with everyone else then keeping track of what the Allens have been up to.  Abby's Kindergarten teacher is very good at keeping up with two blogs (one for her family and one for Abby's class) and I have been following my friend Stacey's blog while she is overseas.  They both do such a great great job it made me go through this blog and all of the memories that we had with Abby made me so happy.  I'm planning to start blogging again.  I'm also going to update my blog links on the right to have links for the blogs I'm watching now and the ones I'm going to start watching again (for those friends who have kept up with their blogs for so many years).

It will take a little time to get this blog where I want it, but I thought I would start simple with a post from this weekend.

Christian just graduated into 3 - 6 month clothes.  It was sad putting away the newborn - 3 month clothes... but I will need to keep them in case Christian has a brother or a cousin some day.  The below picture was the first 3 - 6 month outfit I put him in. 

Abby participated in a fun run for her school to raise money for the PTA.  She got tired early, but still was able to run, walk, and skip 33 laps that day.  It was her first long distance run... I was very proud of her.

On Saturday morning Abby, Christian, and I went to the Rice Harvest Festival (Jason was in Key West for a wedding).  We went early and stayed for an hour and a half.  It was overcast while we were there, so we were lucky because we missed both the heat and the rain that came later in the day.

Jason was gone for a long weekend for his friend Clayton's wedding (Wed - Sunday), so the kids were missing him a lot on Sunday.  We sent this picture to him while we waited for him to get home.

Sunday night was a big night for Christian.  He slept for his longest stretch yet - 9 hours.  He went 10 hours between feeding times!!!!   When Jason put him down to sleep at 8pm, I was thinking to myself "Great!  I will be waking up in an hour to feed him and I just know how tired I will be at 9:30 or 10 after only a half hour of sleep".  When I woke up at 5am (without Christian crying mind you) I was shocked.  I'm crossing my fingers but not holding my breath that he will want to sleep like this from now on. This is him sleeping about 1 hour after he woke up from his long stretch of sleep.

Past Pictures

I've been super bad about posting pictures until recently. I have just added cruise, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fall Photoshoot, Rodeo, and Easter pictures on our Shutterfly link (right). Check them out.

Potty Trained

Abby is potty trained! About three weeks ago Abby's teachers asked me to start putting her in panties at school. Today she has been accident free for a week. I am so proud!

Happy Spring!