Mallory started Mother's Day Out for the first time last week. Yesterday was just the 3rd day of her entire school career.
Day 1- Went really well with just a little crying at drop off. Day 2- She fought her nap a little but had a pretty good day. Day 3- She was bitten by another child.
My poor baby wanted the same toy as an anonymous classmate and ended up with a bite to the cheek.
This is where being a second (or third) time Mom comes in handy. For a split second I wanted to be very upset that this happened to my poor baby but then I remembered being in the other parent's shoes, totally helpless to what your child had done. Peyton had a school biting incident of his own (after being a little bullied by a bigger kid)- but he was the biter not the victim. At 18 months old they don't know what they are doing and don't have the words to negotiate, so some will bite. It is just what happens. I just hope Mallory doesn't start biting back because knowing her she just might. She doesn't put up with much.
When the teacher said there had been a bite I panicked. I think I feared her being the biter more than the bitten.
Just a little dose of "Mommy Karma". If you have a biter you will probably also have a bitten. So try to be graceful in both situations. :)
Sweet Baby Girl, school will continue to be fun for you, I promise!
Nolan turned 2 months old on May 28th. Obviously some time has passed since then so the picture taken today is actually him at 11 weeks old. I am guessing there is about a pound difference between these weeks.
Here are his stats from his 2 month appointment on May 24th:
Weight: 14 Pounds, 90th percentile Height: 25 inches, Greater than 98th percentile (or off the charts) Head: 15 1/2 inches, 55th percentile
Still a VERY big boy.
He is wearing 6 month clothes and size 2 diapers.
What can I say about sweet Nolie? In the last few weeks he has started smiling a lot. He wakes up all smiles and smiles whenever anyone catches his eye. The past week he has really started "talking" and loves to hold conversations with you. He even started laughing a bit and it just melts my heart. He SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT for the first time ever last night and although I'm not going to get used to it too soon at least we are headed in the right direction. He sleeps the best swaddled, laughs at his mobile, likes his bouncy seat, and enjoys looking at fans. He looks a lot like Marshall but also looks like my brother.
Peyton still adores him and can't keep his hands off him. Peyton loves to push him in his stroller during pick up and drop off at his school. Mallory has learned a new word "Eyes", and , well- you can see where that is headed. I think we may need to buy Nolan some plastic goggles until she learns a new word.
After Orange Beach we set off for Thomasville, Georgia for the beautiful wedding of Marshall's cousin Laurel. It was wonderful to see so many family members and to see Laurel and Beau get married. Peyton was the ring bearer and although he did a great job at rehearsal decided he would NOT walk down the aisle at the wedding. Thankfully Bebe "pulled a Pippa" and walked him down as an impromptu flower girl. Remember how Pippa walked the kids down during the Royal Wedding? Well you can call Bebe Pippa from now on :)
Photography was discouraged during the ceremony so here is the best I could get of Peyton and "Pippa".
We met up with Peyton's boy cousins at the wedding and he had a great time running around with them all weekend and playing at Aunt Nicki and Uncle Chuck's amazing house out in the country. Laurel was a gorgeous bride and we had a great time in Georgia. I will try to get ahold of some pictures to post later.
Our next stop after Georgia was supposed to be a night in an Alabama hotel on our way to the lake house in Hot Springs, Arkansas. We were pretty tired of being in the car at this point and at one point I strongly questioned my decision to take such a small baby and a toddler on this trip. Here is just a snippet of what was happening in our car: You hear me say we are somewhere near Birmingham Alabama.
Shortly after arriving near Birmingham we were hit with a strong dose of PERSPECTIVE of how lucky we were to be together on this trip. We had unknowingly stumbled across the aftermath of a massive tornado. It literally stopped us in our tracks and we pulled over just to take it all in. Our drive had led us to the doorstep of the tragic and deadly tornado that went through Alabama the previous month. We had absolutely no idea that this was on our drive The devastation was indescribable. Below is a short clip of an entire neighborhood that was flattened directly off the highway.
What you are seeing is a nice neighborhood that is just no longer there. Trees were completely uprooted and split in half, houses destroyed, personal belongings strewn about. We've had our fair share of tornado sirens lately so it made me so thankful for my sweet family, the babies crying and all. I will never forget what I saw in Birmingham that day. Prayers for all of those that have been affected by these horrible tornadoes.
So if you are keeping track we had now driven through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and back through Alabama on our way through Tennessee and then to Arkansas. Rather than put our kids through another random hotel room we decided to push on through and skip a hotel in Alabama and go on to Hot Springs. TWELVE hours later we arrived in Hot Springs and this is where we spent a week on the lake and celebrated Peyton's 4th birthday. That post will come soon!
I have a lot of blogging to do to catch everyone up on our last couple of weeks. I will be hard at work! But starting off the slew of blog posts will be day 1 and day 2 of our Epic Road trip. Our sweet family of five just returned from a 12 day trip in which we drove through 7 states and spent a week at the lake house. The word "CRAZY" has been hurled at me multiple times in the last month when I described our trip to friends and other moms. It was daunting to take an 8 week old, 18 month old, and 3 year old on a drive that started in Texas and ended in Georgia and in Arkansas, but the alternative was to stay home and miss out on the fun, as well as be alone with the 2 youngest kids. I figured I'd take my chances in the car where everyone could share the fun:) Well, we survived it and although there were stressful times (flat tire, no hotel rooms available, crying children, etc.) we made some great memories along the way.
Kicking us off- here are the notes on Day 1 and Day 2 of our trip. Dallas to Mississippi and to Alabama
We left Dallas late afternoon and planned on driving to Monroe, Louisiana. The kids were doing so well in the car that we cancelled our hotel reservation in Monroe and decided to push it 2 hours further, to Jackson Mississippi. Around midnight we arrived in Jackson and had to stay at the only hotel that had rooms available. A very DATED, thin walled with hard beds, Comfort Inn. We mistakenly thought our kids would sleep through the transition from car to hotel bed. Wrong! It was party time once we got everything up into the hotel room. I knew we would laugh about it one day but we were exhausted, had a full day ahead of us, and Mallory didn't go to sleep until 3 AM. She fell off the bed head first and screamed so loud that I heard the people around us talking about it at 2 AM( thin walls) and this also sent Marshall all the way to the parking lot to get a pack n play since she obviously needed to be confined. (she was fine after the fall, don't worry!)The AC only had 2 settings. Off and muggy or what felt like only 32 degrees. After a freezing few hours of sleep we loaded back up and headed for Orange Beach, Alabama to spend one night on the beach. It was a rough night but I can laugh about it now. Also worth mentioning is that during our midnight check in Marshall tried to open the wrong hotel door and surprised an elderly couple that had just checked in. With that mistake (it was the hotel clerks fault), and the crying kids I'm sure they were glad to see us leaving first thing that morning! Now, off to the beach!
Orange Beach was adorable and a beautiful beach setting. Our hotel was smack dab on the beach. A beach vacation is anything but relaxing with 3 tiny ones but we had a great time. Peyton didn't remember the ocean from when he was a baby so he was seeing everything for the first time and fearless Mallory kept running head first in to the waves. Little Nolan was happy as can be in the baby bjorn with me listening to the waves. We stayed in a brand new hotel with a perfect oceanfront swimming pool for kids and really had a nice time. All Five of us to a small hotel room and we still had a great time :) We did get a flat tire on our way to dinner that night but quickly got it fixed. There were a few tantrums from exhaustion and Mallory pretty much climbed on everything in the hotel room but it really was an awesome way to break up the trip.
Here is a short 1 minute video footage of our kids in the ocean for the first time. Such amazing memories and this beach may be worth a 12 hour repeat drive in our future.
View from our Room:
Wish we could have stayed longer than one night at the beach but next it was off to Georgia for a family wedding and Peyton's ring bearer appearance! Stay tuned for the next chapter of our trip :)
