Getting over baby bronchitis!

So far, 2009 has been full of boogery babies for us (and we haven't felt all that great lately either). When we were in Colorado, the babies came down with some yucky chest congestion/cough/cold (bronchitis), but luckily was nothing serious like RSV or pneumonia. Actually we are all getting better, but Lilly hung on to a nasty cough that liked to rear its ugly head in the wee early hours of the morning. I called the doctor just to see if it was normal for her to still be coughing so much and they wanted to see her, so yesterday we saw the physician's assistant, who gave us some decongestant and an antibiotic (apparently she saw the beginning of an ear infection- glad we caught it before it got too bad). She slept better last night with just a few mild coughing spells, so hopefully we are on the upswing and now that their immune systems are nice and developed we won't need to have any more nasty colds this winter (fingers crossed)!

Trying to steam the mucus out in the bathroom..

Christmas in Colorado- a letter from Nate and Lilly

Dear Grandma Diane and Grandpa Dick:
We wanted to thank you for letting us stay at your house for a whole week. It was our first long road trip and our first overnight vacation away from home! We had a lot of fun even though we got sick and mommy had lots of melt downs. (She had a great time too, she just gets a little frazzled when her routine is altered in any way-it is a pain, but we are used to it by now)! Thank you for feeding us, and holding us, playing with us down on the floor, and cuddling with us. We were glad to meet everyone at Grandpa's work so they could see how adorable we are in person! Thank you for letting mommy junk up your kitchen counter with formula, bottle parts and peices, rice cereal, baby food, etc. Thank you for doing our laundry every day when we kept barfing all over our outfits! Mommy was glad to not have to do laundry when we got back home. Grandma, thank you for taking the whole week off of work! Sorry we couldn't stay at your birthday party very long. It was great to meet your friends, for the short time we were there. Mom and Dad were disappointed they had to leave because we wouldn't stop screaming!

Dear Aunt Kelly, Uncle Tom, and cousin Emily:
It was so great to meet you! Thank you for spending so much time with us. Emily kept us entertained and we had so much fun playing with her! She is very smart and we know we are going to learn a lot from her in the future. Thank you (and Julie) for letting us borrow the exersaucer, bouncy seat, and pack 'n' plays. Mommy and daddy were grateful to not have to worry about packing that stuff!

Dear Aunt Pam, Uncle Jeff, and cousins Anna and Joey:
Haven't we changed a lot since you last saw us in August!?? We were a little nervous we wouldn't get to see you all because Anna and Joey were sick when we first got there. Luckily, after a few days, the doctor gave them a clean bill of health and they were able to come play with us! Anna was so sweet and loving, always wanting to hold us. Joey had fun trying to figure us out! We were good practice for your new baby that will be coming in June! We won't be the runts anymore!! Pam- thanks for taking mom for a pedicure. She had a lot of fun and boy, did she need it!

Dear Aunt Steph:
We were so glad you were with us every second you could be. You could have been hanging out with all your friends on your Christmas vacation, but you made us a priority all week and never got tired of us and we enjoyed you loving on us more than you know. Sorry that we threw up in your hair and on your jeans and on your shoes. Thank you for being so sweet about it and not making us feel bad. Thank you for letting us borrow your space heater for the basement- it's cold down there!! Mommy and Daddy want you to know that the offer to pay you to live with us and babysit us while you are taking night classes still stands. We think you should consider it- we would love it!

Dear Uncle Danny:
Thank you for taking a break from your singing career to hang out with us. We wish we could have come to see you sing, but we were sleeping! Next time we will try our hardest to make sure we are there at least one time. Please don't forget us when you're rich and famous! Maybe you could write a song about us??

Thanks to everyone for all of our Christmas presents- we got a lot of cool new toys to play with! Even though we are far away and do not get to see you very often, mommy and daddy talk about you a lot and we know how much you think of us and love us. Thank you for adjusting your schedules so that you could spend as much time with us as possible. We are so grateful to have such caring grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We love you very much and can't wait to see you again! Until then, keep reading the blog to see what we are up to!!
Love,
Nate and Lilly

Look out, 2009! The resolving has begun.

HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody! Well there is no doubt about it, 2008 has been the best year of my life. It will be difficult to top, but I know 2009 will bring us many more blessings of joy. Here are some New Year's resolutions I have been thinking about- I may come back and add more later! Some are simple, and some a little more time consuming (which will be hard since I don't have much of that lately! But hey- sleep is overrated, right?). I am going to print the list out and put them up at work and at home. I will have a "follow-up" in three months to check my progress- like a job evaluation!

1. Have quiet time with God/read Bible every day . I need to come up with a plan for this. I may need to do it at work on my lunch break until the babies start sleeping a little later in the morning. Ideally, I like having quiet time in the morning to get my day started off right. I want to get a devotional and memorize different Bible versus every week.

2. Try new recipes. My menu pretty much consists of scrambled eggs, mac and cheese, baked chicken, spaghetti and grilled cheese sandwiches. I want to be able to cook good meals for my family. ANY GOOD (fairly simple) RECIPES SUGGESTIONS?

3. Lose remaining pregnancy weight. This is not about physical appearance, I just want to feel like me again and be healthy and able to fit into my clothes. Not sure how I will do it yet, but my best bet will probably be laying off the cheeseburgers and mixing in a few sit ups here and there.

4. Drink 8 glasses of water a day.

5. Get back to reading with my book club. Both the reading and the company of my friends brought so much to my life and I would love to be able to try and read a little at night after the babies are asleep and try to start going to the "meetings" again. Miss you, girls!!!

6. Get organized/simplify/clean out and throw or give away. This is a necessity for us right now. We do not have room for ANYTHING anymore and it drives me nuts to have clutter. If we do not use it, it is going!

7. No turning the TV on as soon as I plop down on the couch and having it on just for background noise. This is a habit for me that I want and need to break. We have enough noise in the house these days. I will only watch the few shows I really love to watch.

8. Find a good church for our family.. and GO!

9. Be helpful and thoughtful. I may not be able to save the world, but I can look for ways to help people every day. Opportunities are all over the place if we just look for them.

10. Keep my car and my house clean- pick up after myself as I go, don't let clutter build up. Do a little every day, so I don't have mountains of crud on the weekend.

11. No more potty mouth- including when I am driving in my car and a texting teenager cuts me off and slams on her breaks, and when I stump my toe so hard that I think I broke it. This one will be a challenge, I'm not proud to say, but I am up for it.

12. Find cool, fun, local, inexpensive things to do as a family. I want to get out with the kids more and do fun stuff, as they get a little older and kinda know what's going on.

Let me know what your resolutions are!

To each, his own.. crib.

I almost forgot to report a very important development in the Pierson household- both babies sleeping in their own cribs-in the SAME ROOM! Nate has been doing great in his crib in the nursery. He is always sleepy after his night time bottle, so a few minutes after he eats we just lay him in bed and he falls asleep pretty shortly. Lilly has also been doing pretty good, but in the pack 'n' play right beside me in our bedroom. We did this for a couple of reasons. 1-she had scary acid reflux spit up and sometimes during the night, so I wanted to keep a close watch on her. 2-We had not gotten the crib that matched the one we have from my sister yet, so we only had the one crib. 3 (and this is the main reason they were not in the same room)- they wake each other up!

We got the crib when we were in Waco for Christmas and decided to try it out Friday night. We put Nate in the crib as usual, and I rocked Lilly while Nate was falling asleep. Shortly after, Lilly was zonked out so I put her in the crib about 8:45pm...and... HALLELUJAH! We didn't hear a peep out of them until 5:30 the next morning! They did good Saturday night too, and they would have done good last night except for some diaper leakage issues.
As excited as I was, I do have to confess that I layed in bed the first night Lilly was in her crib and cried for a few minutes. I missed my baby girl who had been sleeping so close to me for the last six months. I missed hearing her gurgles and sighs, but I know it is the best thing for her and for us!! I am confident that we are going to be able to make it work- YAY!!! This is HUGE.

Sometimes Lilly still likes to hang out with Nate in his crib!!

PLEASE smile for mommy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last Saturday we took the babies back to Portrait Innovations for 6 month pictures. This is the same place we got their first professional pictures at 3 months and we got so many good poses that we ended up with TONS of pictures, and every shot on our very own CD! Boy, was this time different! All I wanted was one good pose with both of them (no individual pictures this time). Of course (in what definitely seemed like a team effort to irritate me) they were all smiles right before and right after we had them posing for the camera, but at the moment when the camera was in their faces.. nothing! Nate was just sitting there staring, which is fine, but Lilly got tired and VERY fussy, so the photographer guy was making all these crazy loud noises trying to get Lilly to snap out of it. Consequently, Lilly would refocus for a few seconds right about the same time Nate would decide he was scared of the photographer and start crying! So the guy tells us "You know, if you're not happy with these you can always come back and re-do the sitting". I let him know in a not-so-subtle way that this was the one and only beating we would be enduring for these photos! ha!! It is tough to time it just right; to have them both fed, diapered, dressed up and thoroughly rested in time to smile for pictures, not to mention trying to position them (when they can't quite sit up by themselves) and get them to stay long enough to get that money shot!
In the end, it was all worth it! We ended up with one that I don't think shows how adorable they REALLY are, but for a $10.99 package of photos, they will do!

Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra, ra-ra-ra-raaaa!!

'Tis the season to be jolly, and our first Christmas with the babies was just that! They are so little, they of course have no clue what is going on, but nonetheless it was fun for us to pretend they did ("Ohhh! Look what Santa brought you!!"). Nate was more interested in pulling the tissue paper out of the bags and trying to eat it. Brian made fun of me for setting the gifts up by the tree and taking pictures, but I thought- what if they ask me what Santa brought them for their first Christmas? I need a picture! I put the jumperoo in the picture even though "Santa" (A.k.a. Amazon.com) dropped it off a month ago- it was still a Christmas present!! Those things are expensive! I made them each a fleece blanket (mommy can't knit, sew, or crochet but she can sure as heck cut strips and tie a million knots together). They also each got a Christmas ornament, on which I put their name and the year. I think I will make this a tradition (thank you for the neat idea Allie!!).
After we fed, dressed, and forced the babies to sit by the tree and act like they knew it was Christmas for pictures, we loaded up half the house and headed down to Waco to hang out at Aunt Achie and Uncle Gary's with Gram and cousins Avery and Lane. The drive was about an hour and a half and the babies did great..on the way there. The ride back was a different story. Lilly got cranky and I ended up in the backseat holding her paci in place for the last 45 minutes!! It was worth it to not have to hear that piercing scream of hers! Anyway, back to Christmas.. we had a great time and Alison and Gary prepared a DELICIOUS Christmas dinner and a very yummy "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake. The babies got some great presents and we had a good time talking and being together.
We missed Aunt Hilary, Uncle Mark and cousins, and Grandpa Dick and Grandma Diane, and ALL aunts, uncles, and cousins in Colorado, but we will see them all soon and have MORE Christmas- YAY!

Peas and Thank You - Fun With Food X 2

Here is a picture of what I was talking about in an earlier post. Nate gets so upset when poor Lilly gets a bite! In his defense, he was also very sleepy.

It is so much easier when Brian is home and we can feed one-on-one! I have to turn Lilly around so they don't distract each other too much!

All smiles after they have full bellies!