Halloween in December

So, I’ve wanted to put up the pictures of Jack’s Halloween costume for a while now – have I mentioned that I’ve been behind on a lot of things besides making sure my children are fed.

Pete let Jack choose his costume and he was very excited! He looks so cute in his Toy Story soldier costume, huh?

At ease, soldier!

I might be getting coal in my stocking…

Why? Probably because I have really shirked my responsibility as a mommy-photographer.  Poor Tommy has less than half of the photos that Jack had at two months old.  For instance: we have several videos of Jack… but I’ve only been able to save a couple of Tommy.

Pathetic, right? And this is pretty much the only proof that mom and dad came to help us for two weeks. 

I really love this video, although it doesn’t do Tommy justice.  He loves to smile and talk to you.  His AGOO’s are just adorable.

 

And these are some more of my favorite pictures of little Tommy.

We love, love, love this little darling of ours!

He's Here!!

I'll put down the details sometime soon... but for now I'll just share some pictures of our sweet, cuddly, little Tommy. He was born on Saturday, the 2nd, at 3:12p. Weighing in at 8lbs 13oz and measuring 22 inches long, he is definitely a healthy baby.

We went back and forth on his name - and back and forth - finally settling on Thomas Owen.

His head was already too big for their little hats! It's sliding off as we are gazing at him...

They rounded his weight up to make it a whopping 8lbs 13 oz.

Happy daddy. And, if you notice: I'm sleeping. :-)

Tommy is feeling like sleep is a good idea, too.

Audrey was my AWESOME nurse who helped me through 12 of my 15 hours of labor. My hero. I would be very ungrateful if I didn't mention my other heros: Pete, my mom, Sarah and Sue.

Jack was so stinkin' cute with Tommy. He was very excited to see me and his "baby bruder".

Jack took advantage of the nice T.V. view from the bed.

Then Jack asked to hold Tommy. He loved to get up close and look at his face. I wonder if he thought he was looking in a mirror, cuz they look so much alike!

I love this cheesy snicker face!

My attempt at fancy photography.

And this picture pretty much sums up the weekend: exhausted but satisfied.

We LOVE you so much, Tommy!

The Baby is Coming... Hopefully Sooner Than Later!!

Tomorrow I'm officially 36 weeks along! I was measuring big so I got to go in for another ultrasound. I love ultrasounds... seeing the baby... getting him checked out and hearing that everything is looking great. He was practicing his breathing and it was amazing to watch. He also was puckering his tiny lips and playing with his adorable little hands.

The not so great news for me: he is nearly 7 pounds already. And at this point, he is gaining a 1/2 pound every week. If I go 41 weeks, I'm guaranteed to have a 10 pound baby to birth. Oh ya, and his head is measuring in the 98th percentile. Fun!

So, I'm hoping he comes early, or as close to on time as possible. I DEFINITELY do not want to go to 41 weeks. I'm planning on going for long walks for sure and I've heard about acupuncture being a good way to induce labor. I'll be looking into that some more - for sure!

And we are talking about names every day. It seems harder the second time around for some reason. My favorite at the moment is Owen. Something like Owen Henry Crossley. I think it is a good strong name and has a nice ring to it.

We are still taking suggestions, too - hint, hint. :)

One Proud Papa!

I don't remember the last time I've seen Pete's face light up the way it did when Jack brought his lego creation over to show off. I think it had to do something with the fact that it looked like a space ship from Star Wars. :-)

Good job, little buddy!

Pete's 30th Birthday

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of Pete at 30... we were a bit distracted by our car this year.

The story: we had a great dinner with Pete's parents, and afterward we headed over to the game store so Pete could pick out a gift.

That sounds like he had just turned 6 years old, but Pete was happy! :-)

Anyway, on the way back, I noticed some flashing lights near our car and sure enough! Security was at our car! Some loser decided to punch out our window and tried to snatch my work laptop, but something must have scared him off before he could get a good grip on it.

He did succeed in making quite of a mess of our car, though!

A cop came to take a report and within a couple of minutes we heard a call over his radio about another break-in just down the street.

The guy was still around breaking into cars!

Another cop came by to check things out and our cop told them to take off to see if they could catch him. It was like the beginning of a COPS episode!

But our COPS episode pretty much ended there. We don't really know what happened after that. At first we thought that we heard over the radio that they caught the guy, but... they didn't. We heard wrong.

Oh, well.

But our cop dusted my laptop for prints and that was pretty cool to watch.

Through the whole thing we felt pretty taken-care-of. The cop even helped clean out my laptop bag full of broken glass. And the mall security called someone over and he brushed most of the glass out of the car and helped Pete get rid of the rest of broken window so we could get home.

We made it home within an hour and before 10p that night we had gotten an appointment to get our car fixed the next day.

At 11a that next day, a repair man showed up at our house and replaced our window right there in our garage. That was very cool. It was so convenient and non-stressful.

All in all, things could have gone a lot worse than they did and we are VERY grateful for that!

Hopefully we can have give Pete a better birthday next year... we'll keep our fingers crossed.

It's a BOY!!

Introducing Crossley Baby Boy 2010!

Trust me... this little guy was not at all shy about showing us who he was: a boy!! Pete and I couldn't be more excited - for another little gus to love and for a little buddy for our Jack-Jack.

So far we like:

Thomas - nickname Tom or Tommy
William - nickname Will
Henry - nickname Hank
Charles - nickname Charlie

Those are our top four. We are definitely open to suggestions, though. :0)

Our New Favorite Place!

I'm always, always... always... looking for new things to do with Jack. So, if anyone has ideas, I'm all ears!

The newest thing we've done is visit Redmond's Farrel-McWhirter Park and the farm animals there. It is sooo much fun for us because it's small, it's great seeing baby animals, and it's FREE! Jack especially loves the farm cat that greets us when we arrive and chases pine cones that he throws for her.

Most of my pictures didn't turn out, but here are two that I was able to salvage. On this day, we met Jennifer Schmalle, her son and her nephew at the park.

Left to right: Elliott, Jack and Logan. There were a couple of goats and a baby calf hanging out behind this fence. Too bad I didn't get them in the picture, but oh well.

This sheep is my favorite because it's usually in this position, and in the same spot, every time we go. I think she is peaceful and sweet.

Hopefully, I'll get more pictures - good pictures! - soon.

Jack's ABCs

The camera was only able to catch the last half of his song - but it is still so cute!

Bye, bye Lucy

Well, Lucy has found a new home. It's been a week since she left so I think it's official - she's not coming back. I needed to go back to work (to pay off bills and pay for all the new things I want to buy the new baby) and with this new baby on the way, we felt it best to find a better family for her. And boy, did we! They are inlove with her as far as we can tell and I couldn't be happier. The family has another Weimaraner in the neighborhood and apparently they get to play outside together all the time. It's like a Weim club and they sort of disconnect from the other dogs... what snobs. Anyway, it's been weird not having her around - but also a relief in some ways. Dogs come with responsibility, and I have been rather enjoying not having that responsibility right now. :)

Maybe someday in the future we'll get a dog again, but as I figure it: I'm in my prime baby-makin' years. We're gonna have my hands full with #2 on his or her way - 3 more weeks til we find out which - and then a few years later, maybe #3. We haven't decided how many kids we are having yet, but I think we have decided that dogs can wait for a while.

But fish... now, there's a pet or two with much less responsibility. And the fish tank can act as ambient noise for Jack's sleeping pleasure. It's more pricey than I thought to start it up, but a lot less expensive to maintain. And we don't have to make sure they get proper exercise and affection. I also found out there ARE fish that can live peacefully with Betta fish, so I'm excited! We have started with just some Zebra Danios (tiny, but very active little things) and then we'll get the Betta after the first nitrate cycle. Look at me! I'm using fish lingo already.

Wish us luck!

Sumo-Jack!

While I was trying on some maternity clothes, Pete and Jack came up with a way to entertain themselves.

Our Daily Craziness

Jack is still roaring, still wrestling, still tickling (he loves to tickle our faces and, trust us, it hurts!) and still running a muck. Huh... wonder where he gets all that from?

Here's what the last few days have been like:

Wearing Keri's 3-D glasses from "Alice In Wonderland" movie we just saw. Good show!

One of Pete's daily lessons to Jack on how to be crazy!

Then on to wrestling!

I'm Pregnant!

I feel like I knew I was pregnant from week 4... nauseated... fatigued.... yuck. Dr. Graham is guessing that I'm around 8 weeks along now, so in other words, this pregnancy is going to
be a l o n g one.

I love this kind of info, so I'm sharing:

Our baby's elbows are beginning to form within it's arms and it's fingers are starting to develop. The leg buds are beginning to show feet with tiny notches for toes. Our baby's face is continuing to change as the ears, eyes and the tip of the nose appear. Intestines are starting to form in the umbilical cord. Teeth (yikes!) are developing under the gums.

I feel like I'm already showing, too. My pants are getting tight, not to mention my shirts are more snug around the middle. Graham has put me on a eating schedule to see if we can get the bloating under control sooner with this pregnancy. Last time, I blew up like a balloon. So this time, I'm to follow the pregnancy diet to the "T" and I should stay away from things coming out of a can or box.

The schedule for eating is:

Big Breakfast, small snack before lunch.
Medium lunch, small snack before dinner.
Small dinner, hopefully before 6p.

But on the bright side, I started working part-time and it seems to be helping take my mind off of all the pregnancy stuff. I feel very blessed that our friends, the Werry's, have taken Jack in so I can work in the afternoons. I love that I can go to work without worrying about him. You guys are the BEST!!

Jack's New Slide

I've uploaded a bunch of new videos, but I wanted to make sure that you all got a chance to see Jack's new slide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOU2zGV1zq4

420 New Pictures!

You know it's bad when your last blog entry was two months ago, but you know it's really bad when your camera has 420 pictures you still need to organize!

I don't even know where to begin. You can check out the new pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/thecrossleyclan. I hope to have stories attached soon.  Right now, they are grouped by month.

And don't miss out on the new videos you can check out here: http://www.youtube.com/thecrossleyclan

But I wanted to highlight just a few of my favorite pictures from the last few months.

Our friendly neighbors came over to carve pumpkins – Jack thought the mess was just great!

 

This is the wind down after pumpkin carving: A Jack Sandwich.

 

Jack discovered how much fun laundry can be.  This is his “Cheeeese” face.

 

I was sick one week and in desperate need of some entertainment for Jack… the answer was a bouncy thing with 100 balls in it.  It was heaven-sent!

 

This is a great representation of how Mom, Katelan and I all felt after a very, very long Black Friday.  We literally shopped ‘til we dropped!

 

Jack LOVES to blow out candles.  He was so excited that Pop Pop invited him to help blow out his birthday candles.

 

Jack took his first picture… didn’t it come out so cute?

 

Merry Christmas! This was taken standing outside of Santa’s Cabin, but we never did go in.  Jack was not amused.  Maybe next year.

 

This was our Christmas morning! You may be able to tell, but Jack is doing another “Cheeeese” face.

 

Squirting silly string at each other.  What a face! That’s my husband. :)

 

Jack drawing with his very cool new paint system.  It’s just clear goo that changes colors based on what color you point the paint brush at: technology!  Thanks, Poppy and Nanny!

 

“Cars?! Cars?!” Jack loves, cars, and they always come in multiples.  He absolutely loves this “cars” from Pop Pop and Grandmom.  Thank you!!

 

His hand was moving so fast the camera couldn’t focus.  “Blocks are built to be knocked down.” Jack’s motto.

 

Our Christmas family picture. Does Jack look like he feels squished to you, too? Too funny.

 

Gotta have good friends! This is Pete’s best friend, Matt and his wonderful family: Jennifer and Aiden.  I hope we get a pick like this every year.