Beckett at 2 1/2 Years

Baseball season started in April and “baseball” about sums up Beckett in the months since.  He’s obsessed.  He’s really observant and loves to ask questions when he and Kolby watch the Rangers games together.  In turn, he’s really knowledgeable about the Rangers players and positions and baseball in general.  It’s pretty funny. 

His first love was pitching and the boy has an arm.  He can throw really well.  And he has a wind up that’s adorable.  Then he moved on to batting.  First on the tee, then he asked Kolby to toss it to him, then he moved on to asking for Kolby to pitch it overhand to him (“throw it like the pitcher does”) and it’s the craziest thing but Beckett can whack it.  I’d say he hits over half the balls pitched to him, and hard.  And now he’s moved on to catching.  He can’t catch worth a lick but he LOVES being the catcher.  He squats down, holds his glove up and wears one of his dress up hats (fireman hat, hard hat, etc.) as a helmet.  When he misses the ball (which is always, because he insists on holding his glove the right way and not the underhand kid-friendly way) the throws off his helmet to retrieve the ball then fires it back to the pitcher “like the catcher does.”  When I tell you that we play that game all.day.long.every.day know that I am not exaggerating.

[I'm going to be honest here and say that I wrote the above on time, but then never finished the post and now I can only think what Beckett is up to these days and I'll save that for his 2 3/4 years old post.  So I'll just move on to some pictures and maybe they'll jog my memory some more :)]

 Beckett came with me on a grocery run and I loved the one-on-one time.  Even though the checkout lady thought his name was "Bucket" and didn't even give me a hard time about naming him that.
 First dentist visit!  He actually has one more tooth than he should, what an overachiever. And for the record, he hated the appointment (don't we all) and the dentist accomplished nothing but counting his teeth.  Oh well!

 At an appointment about his milk and egg allergy we played some imaginary baseball while we waited for some test results.

 We went bowling with Kolby's family and he loved it.
Gymnastics all star. 

Shopping buddy. 
 Singing a duet with his buddy, Declan.


 Fishing with Pops.


Easter Sunday with his church buddies Haley and Evan.

Beckett LOVES cherry tomatoes.  He'd seriously eat a gallon at a time if we let him.  So he and Kolby made a raised bed and planted a garden this spring.  It wasn't too successful but maybe next year it'll go better.

 Most of you know this but I've had these three best friends since we were in middle school.  We all wound up living fairly close so we girls try to get together once a month or so, but we usually meet for dinner after the kids (we have 7 kids, going on 9 between us) are settled in for the evening so we can have a night out and catch up.  Our kids know each other but don't get to play together all that often since we mostly hang out without them.  So we had this bright idea to go spend the night at my parents' ranch and let the kids have a sleepover and play together.  But I think the kids knew they had us far outnumbered and it was a bit wild, but hey, we'll try it again in like 15 years :) 

 Beckett and Kolby go to the library almost daily, and they found this book, Trashy Town that is about a garbage man, Mr. Gilly.  Beckett got really interested in garbage men and garbage trucks as a result (and still is).  Here's him with a garbage truck toy he got as a gift.  I made a trash route for him, which was my one moment of creativity for the year.

 Getting the plants for his garden.
 Our city had a "trash bash" and Beckett got to pretend to be Mr. Gilly and loved it.
 Beckett is still a crazy good eater.  Even when he has friends over he'll sit and finish his meal long after they've gone back to playing (and he'll finish what's on their plates as well).  
 Kolby's grandparents live in a retirement community not too far away and we try to visit them as often as we can.

 Beckett and his friend William (our godson) were baptized together and we got together this year on the anniversary to celebrate and remember their baptisms.
 Working hard...
 My dad and brother took Beckett and Tucker (my nephew) to a monster truck rally at Baylor's new football stadium.
 Beckett is a daddy's boy all the way.  Here he is looking through his baseball cards with Kolby (and saying that catchers say 'you throw strikes!') and the next is them unwinding (all matchy matchy) after a long day. 
Last day of gymnastics! You can see he left it all on the court :)
My younger brother Russell lived with us this summer while he was in town for an internship (he's getting his MBA at Baylor).  He and Beckett became buddies.  Mainly because Beckett is ALWAYS looking for someone new to play baseball with him.
 I need to get my nice camera out and take some portraits of Beckett at this age, but here are a couple from when the Texas wildflowers were blooming.  Whew that hair...

Samuel: Six Months Old

*I always write these updates on time but then they sit idle while I try to find time to put pictures with them and post.  Samuel turns 10 months old in two days, but hey, better late than never ;)*

I don’t know of any better way to describe Samuel other than to say he’s our little sunshine boy.  He’s so stinkin’ happy and easy and never causes any trouble (except when he boycotts sleep!) and just fills us and anyone he’s near with delight.  How we ended up with not one but two endlessly happy and content babies is beyond me, but we are so grateful and their easy temperaments have allowed us to enjoy them all the more.

Samuel is in what I call the glory days of babyhood—where he sits up but can’t go anywhere, and all it takes to get a big smile is just a glance in his direction.  It’s hard to imagine life with him getting any better, but I now know from experience that it somehow does. 

I wrote this on Instagram but want to have it here as well: I’ve tried to get a picture or video that really captures his demeanor and I just can’t seem to.  But I want to remember how he’s the definition of content.  And so happy.  And sweet sweet sweet.  And I don’t know what we would do without him.  He hears that every day.  We’ll be going about our day at home and coming in and out of the living room and Sam’s just sitting quietly playing with whatever is nearby, happy as a clam, and we catch his eye and he lights up and flaps his arms and grins the most dapper grin.  “Sammy boy, what would we do without you?”

I could seriously gush about him all day long. 

A coworker of Kolby’s sent him home with a Mamaroo she insisted on us borrowing, and we kind of just stared at it in the corner of the living room for several weeks and had mixed feelings about the concept of a machine that “moves like you do” and rocks your baby to sleep.  I want to do that myself, thank you very much.  We called it Robo-mom and had a whole bit about it.  Anyway, then one day Beckett had a poopcident and I was in the middle of my 20 minute song-and-dance routine to get Samuel to take a nap (sway, pat, shoosh, must be standing up, don’t even think about multi-tasking HE CAN SENSE IT, etc.) and in a moment of desperation I put him wide awake in Robo-mom and set it in the rock-a-bye mode and went to tend to Beckett.  When I came back, lo and behold, DUDE WAS ASLEEP!  For about a month from then on we used it fairly often for naps and Kolby and I ate every word we’d spoken against it.  He napped great in it and there were several occasions where it was a godsend to use it to get him to fall asleep, when Beckett needed me or we had company and I didn’t want to disappear for 30 minutes.  AMAZING.

Over the past month we transitioned him from napping as often as he seemed tired (eat, play, sleep, repeat) to two main naps a day plus a short snooze in the early evening if he needs it.  I’m doing my best to time his afternoon nap with Beckett’s, and all the stars aligned one day a few weeks ago and they both napped simultaneously for over two hours and it was absolutely glorious.

He’s not sleeping through the night, and his sleep kind of fell apart the past few months. From 0-4 months he woke up once at night to eat and went back down easily, and that’s about as much as anyone can ask for and it was wonderful.  Then from 4-6 months he was waking up 3-4 times at night and I’m nursing him and he’s small (5th percentile) so I would always feed him when he’d wake up at night because I wanted to take every opportunity to help him gain some more weight.  For awhile I was all "I don't mind... I know it'll be over in the blink of an eye so I'm cherishing it and not wishing it away yada yada." but whew it eventually did get old.  It was time to try something new to help us all get more sleep so we started giving him a bottle of formula right before he went to bed.  To tank him up so that either he’d start sleeping better or at least we could know he wasn’t hungry the first couple wakings and could have Kolby take those shifts.  [Can I just take a minute to sing the praises of formula?  We never used it with Beckett so this was a first for us and I can’t tell you how freeing it was to be able to make a big ole bottle for him that didn’t involve pumping multiple times to get enough (side note: pumping is seriously the worst.).  And if he doesn’t finish it I don’t have to slowly pour it down the sink while weeping, ha!  I’m certainly a fan of breastfeeding but boy have I enjoyed having a can of formula on hand.]  Stay tuned I guess to see if he starts sleeping any better.  I know you will all be on the edge of your seats.

On the development front, Samuel is sitting up independently and playing with toys, bringing anything he grabs to his mouth, reaching for things with both hands together, rolling over from front to back and from back to side, “talking” a ton and loving to say da-da-da, and holding his feet.  And we turned a corner with car riding where he no longer screams bloody murder at any stop or deceleration or heaven forbid a red light.  He started solids a couple weeks after his six month birthday and has had avocado, peas, green beans and sweet potatoes.  He’s loved it and we are crossing our fingers he’ll be a great eater like Beckett was/is. 

The thing I want to remember about him at this age is how easygoing he is and how his face lights up and his little arms flap with happiness when we greet him. He has the most dapper smile.  And he flashes it often and guys it’s just the greatest sight in all the world.  And if you greet him up close he’ll beam and reach for your face with both hands and it’s so great I can hardly stand it.  I mean it, truly a sunshine boy.

And now, for pictures....
Cutest little mug in the world.
 Beautiful boy!
 He has little 'mustache dimples' as I call them and they're pretty spectacular.

 He totally knows he's got us at his beckoned call.
 Tiniest lunch date!
 Happy camper after a glorious snooze in his Robo-mom.

 He hardly ever sleeps on me anymore.  Gosh I'd forgotten just how fleeting those days are.

I forgot to mention he caught RSV in late spring.  But as you can see, he didn't let it get to him!
 

Big boy! 

Opening Day 2015

Kolby and Beckett continued their tradition this year by going to the Texas Rangers' first home game of the season, also known as Opening Day.  Here are a couple of pictures :)

Opening Day 2013, 2014 and 2015

Samuel's Baptism

Samuel was baptized on April 12. [My post about Beckett's baptism has a bit about why we baptize our children.]  It was one of my very favorite days of all time.  We had a lot of friends and family there to celebrate with us, and also Kolby preached that morning.  It was just a wonderful day. Here are a few pictures...
Samuel's godparents are our dear friends from church, Chip & Sherry. 
 Sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever. Amen!
We had a lunch reception after church and had more than 30 people at our house, and a LOT of young kids.  Thankfully the weather was absolutely beautiful so we ate outside.

I reused picture frames from Beckett's baptism reception, and as I was replacing the pictures I had to laugh--I think I could have just left in the other pictures and no one would have really noticed!
We catered Blue Mesa and it was divine.  And Kolby and I didn't have to do a thing, just enjoy the day.  I don't have many good pictures from the reception because I just enjoyed it instead, but here are a few snaps to at least help us remember what a crowd we have that love our children so well and help us point them to Christ.

Me and my boy.
Then Sadie moved in on him...
***
We are so thankful for our sweet Samuel.  And what a privilege to raise him alongside such a supportive family and church family.  We pray that as he grows and learns about the God who loves him far beyond even our love for him, that he will stand firm in his identity as Christ's own and put his trust in Christ Jesus.

"I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.  So now I give him to the Lord.  For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.”  1 Samuel 1:27
 
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