Natalie's 3rd Birthday

Back in December, Natalie celebrated her 3rd birthday!  It's amazing that she's already 3.  We threw her a bubble party, and she had a great time.  Several of her friends came over to play, and I'm so thankful that they took time out of their busy days to help us celebrate!  They got to blow bubbles, play with colorful beach balls, and jump on bubble wrap.  It was a good time.  :)


Getting ready for the party to start:

I think this might be my favorite picture from the day of the party.

Party decorations:

The food spread.  I recycled the birthday banner from her first birthday, and Natalie picked out the balloon colors.

"Bubbles" hanging from the lights.

Celebrating:

Singing "Happy Birthday" to the birthday girl.

Blowing out her candles.

FINALLY getting to eat a cupcake.

During and after opening her presents (shout out to Cayce for these pictures!):

I have pictures of the kids playing, too, but don't want to post pictures of other people's kids online without talking to their parents first.

Our sweet "Natalie Princess" is excited to be 3!

Aidan's First Birthday

On January 7th, our sweet Aidan celebrated his first birthday!  It's hard to believe that he's already one.  We're having so much fun with him!  In the 10 days since his birthday, he has started walking more and more, and he is able to stand up on his own in the middle of the floor.  He can be very good at playing by himself at times, but he still loves to be held, so if you leave him to play alone for too long, he'll let you know that he's over it.  haha!  He often reaches both hands up to gently pat our cheeks, and we think that he's trying to give us kisses when he leans in to our faces with his mouth open wide.  Natalie still makes him laugh like no other.  He is becoming more independent in his food choices, and doesn't like to be spoon fed anymore.  Unfortunately, he is still a bit picky with his finger foods, so it's been interesting lately trying to feed him balanced meals.  He has started making the cutest noises when he yawns.  His smile melts my heart.  I love this little boy.

I'm sad to say that the lighting on Aidan's birthday was less than ideal...  He (miraculously) laid very still for the picture with the bear, but when we set him loose for the close up pictures, I just couldn't get one in focus. :(:(:( Even though the following pictures are blurry, he looks just too cute in them not to share with you.

I decided not to throw an actual party for Aidan this year.  We sang "Happy Birthday" to him and let him open presents on his birthday, and I baked him a cake and did a smash cake photo shoot with him a couple of days later.  Those pictures have yet to be edited, but I will hopefully be posting them soon.

Baby's First Christmas

I am a fan of the "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments that let you put a picture of the baby in it.  I'm a fan of pictures in general (obviously), so I love having some hanging on my tree.  I realized today that I never posted Natalie's first Christmas pictures on here for y'all to see!  I recently got some really great pictures for Aidan's ornament, so I figured I'd post them all together for you.

Even though Natalie and Aidan are only 25 months apart, their birthdays straddle Christmas, so Natalie's first Christmas was 3 years ago when she was 2 weeks old, and Aidan is celebrating his first Christmas this year (he'll be 11.5 months old on Christmas day).  Needless to say, their ornament pictures are quite different!  haha

I'm no newborn photographer, and this was my very first attempt at it, so I didn't get the perfect sleeping baby pose. Oh well!  Natalie was exactly 1 week old in these pictures.

{This is the picture in her ornament!}

I crocheted the Santa hat for her before she was born (free pattern here), and made the tulle skirt, too.  :)

I didn't make anything for Aidan's pictures because I just didn't have time (or red yarn), but I don't think he needed it anyway.  I'm still technically choosing which one to put in his ornament, but I have an idea which it'll be.  Which is your favorite??

   A                                                                           B

C                                                                            D

E                                                                        F

G                                                                             H

11 Months Old

Here I am posting this a week and a half after the fact, but Aidan turned 11 months old on the 7th!  He has experienced his first Thanksgiving and his first Christmas season is in full swing.  He's not officially walking yet, but he's trying!  He is a super fast crawler, and loves having freedom to go where he chooses (which doesn't happen too often because I don't have enough energy to chase him all day long - ha!).

I had a hard time getting him to cooperate for his pictures this month.  Travis was working, so I was alone in the attempt to keep him both happy and laying down.  Quite a feat.  I couldn't get any pictures of him smiling, but I'm just happy that I got an in-focus, semi-decent picture. ;-P

Here are a couple of outtakes:

  

But after a little while, I finally got something I could work with...

I just love his cheeks.  I mean, come on.  Look at them!  And those lips... and eyes...  Umm, I know I'm biased, but I think he's so stinkin' cute!  :-D

Double Digits

I'm a nearly 2 weeks late in posting this, but better late than never, right?  Aidan turned 10 months old on the 7th!  Our sweet baby boy is getting more and more personality, and I personally think that he grows cuter each day.  He's rocking 8 teeth now and is starting to stand alone.  Walking is around the corner!  He walks along the couches really well these days.

I couldn't for the life of me get a good close up picture of him this month.  It was hard enough to get a picture with the bear (whose name is Sam, in case you ever wondered), and when we turned him loose for the close ups, he just took off.  I have several pictures of his bottom as he crawled away from me...  Luckily, Travis took the following picture 6 days before Aidan turned 10 months while we were on a walk around our village.

Isn't it good?!  Hopefully I'll have better luck keeping Aidan still in a couple of weeks when I take his ELEVEN month pictures!  (Only 2 months left of this monthly project....  Don't mind me, I'll just be silently crying in the corner....)  hahaha

Seriously, though, we love this boy!  We get to celebrate his first Thanksgiving next week!  I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  :):):)

9 Months and Counting...

Y'all, we're already three quarters of the way through Aidan's first year!  How did that happen?  He turned 9 months old on the 7th.  I'm already feeling the need to start planning his first birthday party...  I don't think I'm ready for that!  Ha!

This baby will get into everything if we let him.  He goes back and forth between waking me up all night long and sleeping through most of the night.  Every night is a gamble.  haha  He's a pretty good eater.  He really doesn't like rice cereal, but eats most everything else.

A little blurry, but he's so stinkin' cute!

"Ok, Mommy...  Enough with the pictures!" 

I sure do love this baby boy!

Aidan is 8 Months Old!

Y'all.  I feel so behind this month.  Aidan turned 8 months old 2 weeks ago!  I took the pictures on time, but have just now edited them, so that's why this post is so late.  Lately I feel like my to-do list grows bigger every day, and I rarely accomplish anything.  That's not entirely true, but it feels that way.  Aidan has decided that it would be fun to wake up every 2 hours (or less) at night, so I'm just completely exhausted all the time.  But enough about me.....  haha

Aidan's 8th month of life was a little bit hard for me!  I felt like he was growing up entirely way too fast this month.  Within the span of 8 days, he got his top 2 teeth, started sitting on his own, and started crawling!  Slow down, baby boy!!  We have started blocking off an area in the living room for him to crawl around in (a circle of furniture around the rug...  it's kind of awesome), and Natalie has started the big sister job of complaining whenever he touches her things.  ha!

Our sweet boy has the best smile, and he thinks that Natalie hung the moon.  Nothing makes him laugh like she does.  He loves to babble, and I think his little voice is just so cute.

Until next month...  :)

7 Months Old

Another month has come and gone.  Aidan Baby is 7 months old (as of yesterday!).  This past month he rode his first long distance train, had his first cold, traveled outside of Germany for the first time, went swimming for the first time, and finally stopped screaming during bath time.  We started feeding him solid foods (so far, rice cereal, green beans, and apples), and he's not a big fan.  Of those 3, he enjoys apples the most.  He still loves to be held, especially if you're walking around.  (Our baby carrier gets lots of use!)  He's becoming more and more vocal, and gives us the best smiles and giggles!  I have a feeling he'll start crawling this month.  We need to start baby proofing the house...  haha!

Bavaria, Castles, Alps... Amazing

Believe it or not, I actually do try to use this blog for more than just updates on the baby.  It's hard to find the time to sort out and edit all of our pictures, though, so I rarely post about things right after they happen.  However, I will do what I can to post more often.  For our family and friends who want to stay updated on our every day life events that don't make it to the blog (and who want to see vacation pictures when they happen), I have an Instagram account that I post pictures on pretty regularly.  My username is chrissytx21 for those of you who want to follow me there.  (Make sure I know who you are when you request to follow me, because I'm pretty picky about who can see my pictures.  If I don't know who you are, I won't let you follow!)

Anyway, back at the beginning of April, we took a vacation to Bavaria!  It was beautiful!  We left on Easter Sunday and drove a couple of hours to the city of Stuttgart.  We spent the afternoon at the Wilhelma Zoo, and, believe it or not, it was Natalie's (and Aidan's) first time at the zoo!  We really enjoyed our day!  We got to see a lot of animals up close.  It was dinner time for the elephants and hippos, so we got to see them really up close and personal.  I have never seen a cheetah so close, and it was awesome!  (Trivia for you, cheetahs are my favorite wild animal.)  Wilhelma used to be a palace, so the grounds were very pretty, and even had a botanical garden in the zoo.  After the zoo, we checked into our hotel for the night.

The next day we drove a couple more hours to the city of Füssen.  Driving into the Alps was just beautiful!  There is no other word for it.  It was frigid and snowing that day.  We didn't have anything planned, except to check into our hotel apartment and buy some groceries, but even those plans were foiled.  Did you know that Easter Monday is a holiday in Germany?  We didn't.  Ha!  All the stores were closed...  oops.  So we checked into our hotel and went hunting for some dinner.

{Outside our apartment ... The hotel's front door ... The snowy streets of Füssen}

Luckily, the snow was on its way out.  The rest of our trip was cold, but sunny and clear!

{The view from our hotel apartment.}
{5 p.m. ... 7 p.m. ... 8 a.m.}

We spent our first full day walking around the town of Füssen (and buying groceries).  The view was amazing!  We saw more of the Alps, ate schneeballen (which means "snowballs" - delicious!), found the end of the Romantic Road, walked along the river, and enjoyed the city that we chose as a home base.

The next day was by far my most favorite day of our trip!  It was the day we got to see Schloss Neuschwanstein!  We had been wanting to see this particular castle for a very long time.  It's the castle that Walt Disney used as a model for Cinderella's castle at Walt Disney World.  Neuschwanstein is right next to Schloss Hohenschwangau, which I thought had a really cool and historic interior.  (Our guide for Hohenschwangau was awesome!)  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside either castle.

For our last full day, we drove about an hour away to see Schloss Linderhof.  It was set in a gorgeous location.  Thanks to the snow, though, we didn't get to see the grounds in all their glory.  They had boxes covering most of the statues and plants.  I would like to go back sometime in the summer, I think.  Still, it was a neat palace to visit, and nothing can beat that view!  Poor Natalie got car sick on our drive out there, so she had to wear my jacket and Travis' hat to keep warm.  On the drive back to Füssen, we stopped to see the Wieskirche.  It was (is?) a pilgrimage church, because supposedly the wooden statue of Jesus inside actually cried once... or something.  (I don't believe it, but the inside of the church was beautiful!)

{The 3 pictures in the bottom right corner are at the Wieskirche, the rest are from Schloss Linderhof.}

Our last day was just a day in the car.  We wanted to ride the summer luge, but it didn't open until 1 p.m., so we didn't have time to stay and ride it.  Instead, we spent a little bit of time playing at a playground, ate lunch, then hit the road.  The 4 hour trip took us 7 hours, thanks to traffic.  Our poor babies were hating the car, and the ride was just miserable... but we survived.

What fun we had!  Natalie now has a true love of castles, and gets very excited at the thought of seeing one.  We have learned to never attempt a 4 hour car ride with the kiddos again.  (At least not out here...)  Can I just say that I love the Alps?  Gorgeous.  God is so awesome.

Already 6 Months!

Nearly one week ago, our sweet baby Aidan turned 6 months old.  Can someone please tell me where the past 6 months have gone?!?!  I can't believe that we're already halfway through his first year.  This baby boy really is so sweet.  He loves to be held.  Natalie really makes him laugh!  He's not crawling yet, but he's oh so very close.  He's still a good sleeper, but he does wake me up 1-3 times each night.  I'm so grateful that he almost always goes right back to sleep for me, though.  (Natalie would wake up and stay awake!  So exhausting...)  We are about to start giving him baby food.  He is sitting up with support, and I have a feeling he'll be doing it on his own in no time.  His smile and laugh light up our days!

I love his chunky little legs.  His cheeks just beg to be kissed!  Natalie thinks it's hilarious when he tries to grab her hair, nose, etc.  He always has a big smile for his daddy when Travis comes home from work.

He doesn't like his swing very much anymore, but has gone back to wanting to be held.  I have a feeling that he'll be more content once he figures out how to crawl.  He likes being on the floor until he can't go where he wants to go!  Ha!

We sure do love our baby Aidan.  Time needs to slow down a bit, though.  :)