Who Who

I've Got a Feeling

Originally by The Black Eyed Peas now sung by Roman Franks

We better go ahead and sign this little guy up for the X Factor! He's our singing star! Ha ha! He knows the whole verse! I'm kind of worried that my boy is singing, "I've got my money, let's spend it up"! Just sayin!

Jesus loves me

Jesus loves me

by Roman Franks

It really doesn't get much cuter than this!

Carmen is three months old

Our little nugget turned three months old on September 22nd. I can't believe it! We've made it through the hardest part. She's weighing around 15-1/2 lbs! Carmen wears mostly 6 month clothes and a size 3 diaper. She nurses on average 6 times a day. Carmen is such a great baby now that we've got her on a schedule. She hardly cries because everything is predictable in her life. We eat, play, and then sleep every three hours. She loves to watch brother Roman and loves her mommy. It's amazing to see how she recognizes me now! Most nights Carmen will go to bed around 9:30-10 pm and wake up around 7:30-8 am. Once in a while she'll still wake up around 4:30am for a feeding. We're almost there! She smiles and laughs all the time. Carmen's favorite pastime is listening to mommy and daddy sing to her and laugh at them!

laughing video

family jogging

Matt was here all last week and the weather was a little (tiny) bit cooler, so we spent almost every morning at the park. We found a beautiful trail by our house that is wooded (shaded) and ends at a playground. It was so fun to run together with the dog and jogging stroller. The only problem came when it decided to start raining once we got to the playground! Matt had to run back with Carmen in tow and pick Roman and me up in the car. It was such a great morning!

"Momma, you're in my bed"

Roman thought it was so fun that mommy decided to climb in his bed the other day! We had a blast! It's so comfortable. Now I know why he still loves his crib so much!

First time in Joyland

I promise Carmen liked her first time at the church nursery. She was just hungry afterwards! We've been going to church since she was two weeks old, but once she turned two months old, we decided to put her in the nursery. The workers said that Carmen got best dressed award! Of course thanks to Pambo!

Our little cook

Roman loves kitchen supplies! Pretty much this is where you can find him if you come to our house. The kitchen! Btw, how cute are those skinny jeans?! Thanks to our friend Tiffany for Christian and Lincoln hand-me-downs!

2-1/2 months and 12 weeks

Having a 2-1/2 year old and 12 week old consists of:

2 cribs

2 car seats

2 sets of diapers (more poo poo's than you can imagine!)

plenty of sippy cups and bottles

2 monitors at night

lots of cartoons

nursing 7 times a day

a huge double stroller

a huge, full diaper bag (no purse!)

loves of love and kisses

This has gotta be the good life! Roman turned 2-1/2 on September 12th. He's growing so fast!

• Roman talks about the big bad wolf all the time. Apparently he saw it on his show 'Super Why' and the big bad wolf is always coming to get us!


• He always says 'otay' rather than 'okay'. Not going to lie, I'm going to be sad when that 't' is replaced with a 'k'!


• Roman is still sleeping in his crib! He hasn't tried to climb out yet and loves it, so we're still rocking the crib!


• Roman is a great eater! He usually eats almost everything that we eat. We aim to have family meals together every day around 6-6:30 pm. That's the schedule! We always try to introduce him to the food that we're eating so he will have a wide palette! Some of his favorites are: homemade sweet potato fries, fried eggs, pesto, homemade biscuits, pancakes, all fruit, smoothies, pizza, hamburgers, green beans, and of course homemade chocolate chip cookies!


• Roman loves to sing the Barney song, ABC song, Twinkle little star, and Jesus loves me. He got mommy's singing voice. Poor thing! It's still so cute, though!


• Roman weighs around 32 lbs and is around 3' tall


• He wears 24 month and 2T clothing, 3T pajamas, size 5 diaper, and size 7 shoe

• Speaking of diapers, we are not potty trained. I haven't really tried. If he tells me he wants to go on the potty, then I give him a M&M. We'll crack down on potty training after sister is sleeping through the night. One thing at a time.


• Roman doesn't particularly love baby Carmen, but he doesn't dislike her either. I can honestly say that he's never been jealous of her. He just doesn't care if she's around or not. I guess that's easier for all of us! Once in a while, he'll be so sweet to her. It's really cute to hear him sing to his sister and to randomly ask, 'where's baby carmen?"!


• Roman still loves to dance to 'who who' the Black Eyed Peas song 'Tonight's gonna be a good night'. We have dance parties all the time!




• Roman is a people person. He loves to have friends around him all the time. He is still learning to play by himself
  
  
• Roman knows the entire alphabet and can count to almost 20 with a few mistakes here and there. He knows all the colors and most shapes
  
  
• Roman loves playing with balls of all kind. He loves to jump and play non-stop! Doing somersaults and jumping jacks are favorites!




• Roman goes to bed around 8-8:30pm and wakes up around 8am every morning. He naps around 1-1:30pm to 3:30-4 pm.
  
  
• I've had to spank him twice. It was so sad because the next morning he said, "momma you hit me." It was horrible!!! I replied with, "No honey, I spanked you because you were bad." He now asks for sad spoon (the wooden spoon that we use). Trust me, I barely tapped him and felt bad!
  
  
• Roman is obsessed with kitchen gadgets. Just today he spent about 30 minutes sorting through all of our spatulas, measuring cups, etc.


• Roman is such a big, healthy growing boy! I love my big boy so much! Matt and I enjoy this stage so much because he definitely is growing his personality and learning so much every single day! We love you big boy!!

Carmen turned 12 weeks on Wednesday, September 14th. She's getting so big!

• Carmen has gone three nights now of 9 hours sleep. It's just not consistent. We're so almost there! I feed her around 9:30-10 and she has slept until 7 or 8am!
• Carmen is still eating every 2-1/2 hours during the day.
• Carmen hates the bottle still! It's so hard to leave her at places like the church nursery because she never takes her whole bottle and gets way off schedule. I just keep trying.
• Speaking of church nursery, she went for the first time last Sunday! We will be there a lot! She did great!
• Carmen is wearing some 3-6 month clothes, but mostly 6 month! She's still in a size 2 diaper.
• Carmen is a pretty easy baby, but I stick to baby wise, so I think it's partly training too. She's not too fussy because we are pretty scheduled. Her day is so predictable...eat, play, sleep. Never let her get too sleepy or too hungry and you have a happy baby!
• Carmen is an excellent nurser! Way to go big girl!
• I weighed her on my scale at home and it said 14-1/2 lbs!
• Carmen laughs all the time when I sing to her. It is simply precious!
• I love to go get her in the mornings because usually she is pretty content and when she sees my face, she lights up. It melts mommy's heart!
• Carmen's life consists of watching big brother and tagging along everywhere we go. She's good at it! Except unfortuately, her car seat is not her favorite place to be!
• Carmen sleeps one good nap in her crib in the woombie and the other naps on the go or in her swing. We're still working on naps.

We love you sweet girl!! You're such a blessing to our family!

Boys will be boys!

Roman LOVES Christian and Lincoln! I love it when Tiffany brings them over because they rough-house so much and get so much energy out! Such great friends!!

Chloe's birthday party

Last Saturday we all met at Gymboree for Chloe's 3rd birthday. It was a great time! This picture means so much to me. These girls have been such great best friends for the past 8 years that I've lived in Dallas. It's amazing how much we've grown! There are a total of 8 kids in our group now!

Roman had a blast at Chloe's party!

Baby Carmen was a trooper too!

Afterwards, we all headed over to Uncle Julio's for drinks and dinner. Good times with good friends!

Labor Day

Mike and Meg came in town for Labor Day weekend to go to a wedding reception for their best friends. We had a great time with them! We didn't get much pictures cause we were so busy! Bill and Pam came in town too. We had the best time Sunday night at Urban Crust. We all sat outside on the balcony and enjoyed pizza and live music. Carmen fussed a little, but Roman loved watching the band. Good times with the family!

projects

Staying at home with a 2-1/2 year old every day can get redundant. We decided to start some home projects. I found a homemade recipe online for play dough. Roman loves playing with it! We cut out shapes and numbers.

He also likes to play with colored water and stir them. He calls it 'mixing'. I know that I'm crazy, but the artsy side of me feels like he should know the primary colors and secondary colors. We learned that when you mix blue into red you get purple. Then we added blue to yellow and got green. Next we added red to yellow and got orange. It was really exciting and took up some afternoon time!

Love this boy!

Nothing sweeter than hearing Roman today in the car say, "Don't cry baby Carmen, it's otay." I just love this sweet boy so much!!

These pictures were taken before Carmen's two month photo shoot. We had to get pictures of our boy too! He's 29 months old!

Two months old already!

Carmen turned 2 months old on August 22nd. I can't believe how fast time is flying!

Carmen nurses every 2-1/2 hours during the day. She's kind of formed her own schedule. We usually all get up around 8am. She then eats again around 10:30am, 1pm, 3:30 pm, 6pm and then 9pm. She usually wakes around 4am for a feeding and then goes until 8am. I honestly didn't put her on this schedule it just kind of worked out. It works for the whole family right now!

Carmen doesn't like to drink from a bottle! We've battled for a few weeks now. I try have Matt give her a bottle every evening that he's home to help out the situation. I never could have imagined that being a problem!

She's wearing 3 month and 3-6 month clothes and size 2 diapers. Just like Roman at this age!

Carmen loves her swing! She still naps in it some.

She loves the woombie! Thank you to all my friends that introduced us to this little wonderful swaddle like zip up blanket. It has saved my life!

Carmen smiles a lot! She also giggles some too! So adorable!

She's becoming so alert! Big brother Roman is so fun to watch!

We love you sweet girl!!! You're a perfect fit in our family!

Springfield time

Thursday afternoon, I packed up the kids and headed to Missouri so Matt could have his fantasy football draft weekend at the lake with his guy friends. The 2-1/2 hour drive by myself went pretty good. I only had to stop once with a blowout diaper situation from Carmen.

Andy and Elizabeth brought the girls over to my mom's house Thursday night because they were dying to meet Carmen. It was so cute!

We all enjoyed dinner together that night. The kids love their kiddy table.

Friday night we ordered pizza and played at my mom's house

The kids love Meema!!

Roman loved playing with Caroline and Catherine so much! He got sad each night that they had to leave to go home.

Saturday afternoon we found out that Andy, Elizabeth, and Caroline were sick with a stomach bug. Sure enough, I got it too! It was horrible! I had to bathe Roman, nurse Carmen, and put them both to bed in between throwing up and feeling nauseous. My mom helped lots, but I just felt horrible! Luckily no one else got sick. I was so grateful that Roman and Carmen didn't get it!

To entertain Roman that evening while I was sick, we put him in my mom's whirlpool. He had a blast!!

Sunday afternoon came way too fast! It was time for us to leave. We will miss you Meema! Thanks for having us!!

Goodbye kisses from Roman!

I drove to Tulsa on Sunday evening and met Matt at his parent's house. We drove back to Dallas on Monday morning. It was a great, long week away from home. Roman was probably the most excited to be home. I never realized how much he loves his crib. He cried every single night before bed for home. It was good for him to get out of his routine. You always need to shake things up a bit! Now back to reality!