Milk Cheese

 I know what you're thinking, and yes, this post is about that lovely stuff that all babies get under their chins (some babies more than others!)...milk cheese :)  As I have mentioned, Cora is a barf queen, a geyser if you will, and is constantly covered in spit up and therefore harboring milk cheese.  I had given Mike all of Wesley's blue burp cloths to use for car washing, but I took them back.  I'm grateful for the piles and piles of baby clothes I have which save me from doing Cora's laundry every day, sometimes twice.  And she definitely needs a bath every day, sometimes twice.  Running two baths takes too much time, so Wes has been kindly sharing his bath time with his sister.    He likes helping get her clean, he doesn't like it so much when she barfs in the water...sometimes running two baths just can't be avoided.  

Squeaky clean...for the moment!

A Long Time Ago

Since today is Cora's three month birthday and I've been taking her picture every month (those pics to follow) I got to thinking about Wesley's monthly pictures.  I've been wanting to make a collage like this for a while and since I already had them all organized in a file, it was super quick!  I love it when things are easy (though it rarely happens these days).

My little guy is so big now, these seem like ages ago.  What a fun and challenging time first year parenting is, we are so blessed to have this guy and his little sister.  Thank you Jesus!

Valentine's Day

Here's everything we were up to for Valentine's Day:

I painted some wood plaque's and picture frames that I bought at Michael's with chalkboard paint in order to make a few decorations and gifts.  

I had my dad drill some holes in the plaque so I could hang it with ribbon on our wall.  I plan on switching the ribbon to match each holdiay.

This was Cora's Valentine to Grammy...

...because Grammy had just given me this little red dress that she had saved for oh so many years!  Do you think Cora looks like me?  

Wes and I did a little handprint Valentine to send to his grandparents in the mail.

We love you THIS MUCH!

And here's the real reason I wanted to do the chalk board plaques.  This was our Valentine to Daddy.  I saw the idea here and, besides making the chalkboard, it was super easy with the downloadable template and Picasa collages.

  

Since Michael had to work on Valentines day, we celebrated on Monday with a nice dinner (Restaurant salad...we call it that because it's better than any expensive salad you can buy in a restaurant!) and after the kids went to bed we made Banana's Foster for dessert.  It's one of our favorite desserts that always reminds us of our awesome vacation to the Bahamas and good friends.

While Michael was putting Wes to bed, Cora and I went out in the cold and wind to give Daddy's truck a "heart attack!"  I wrote all the reasons we loved him on the hearts and he was really surprised when he went out to his truck to go to work the next morning!

Daddy also surprised us when we got up in the morning!  Flowers and cards for Cora and Mommy and a card, a new stamp set and a set of Thomas the Train underwear for Wes (we're getting really close to getting rid of the diapers!)

I also cut out enough hearts to tape them up all over the house for Wes to find.  He notices if anything is different in the house and had lots of fun spotting all the hearts. 

The other part of Daddy's surprise was cinnamon rolls just waiting for us to bake them!  I saw this idea on Pinterest of putting cinnamon rolls in the waffle maker and had to give it a shot!       

They were awesome!  Waffles are my favorite breakfast food and I think this is right up at the top of my list now!

Cora slept in, so Wes and I had breakfast together.

Here's my sunshine with her flowers from Daddy.

I made a few of these Valentine's to give to Wes' friends.  This wasn't my original plan, but we made a trip to Pretend City a few days before Valentine's Day and they had the huge PVC pipes so I snapped a quick pick of Wes on my phone so we could make these.  (I used the Photo Wizard app on my phone to do the wording and then printed them out, so easy!  Thanks Auntie MoMo for the tip!)

After our delicious Valentine's breakfast we headed over to Auntie Jessica's house to deliver Wes' Valentines.  Auntie Jessica, Gia and Cash just happened to be making cookies so we joined the fun!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Valentines Day 2011

Cookie Time!

These are from a while ago, like January 17th, a while ago, but I'm always behind anyway :)  

Since most of December was a blur of new baby adjustment and Christmas preparations, Wes and I never got around to decorating cookies together.  So I finally made some sugar cookie dough and we busted out my huge box of sprinkles for some cookie decorating fun.

Wes loved the sprinkle job, especially since most of them went in his mouth!  Cora was there too, she slept in the carrier the whole time :)

Daddy was running errands, but came home in time to decorate a few cookies too.

The majority of sprinkles were on the pans, on the floor and consumed by Wes, but the cookies sure tasted good in the end!

Sorry Grammy

**I think there were some problems with this video.  Hopefully it will work this time!

You might remember this post from Christmas time and the matching shirts Grammy made Mike and Wes out of the leftover material from Wes' bedding set.  Here's a little video of Wes' reaction to being put in his shirt.

This is actually the second time I tried to get him to wear it.  The first time his reaction was similar, but I assumed it was a fluke; he's usually completely enamored with anything Grammy makes him.  Plus he doesn't generally have an opinion about fashion.  I'll definitely try again, but I almost feel like I'm torturing the poor kid!

Cora's First Visit to the Fire Station

I've posted many times about how blessed we've been with hand-me-downs.  I'm excited to say we've been blessed once more by our fire friend's the Bento's and the double BOB jogging stroller they have lent us!  I've been wanting a double jogging stroller for a while, but they are just so expensive.  After we went to Disneyland with the Rausch's and saw how nice theirs was, I was ready to bite the bullet and get one.  But literally two days later, Mike came home from work and said the Bento's were done with theirs and were happy to let us borrow it!  Awesome!

Since Daddy has been riding his bike back and forth to work recently (he's really glad to be back on his bike after all the time off after Cora's birth!) we drove to the fire station for a little visit and to pick up the stroller.  This was Cora's first trip and Wes was excited to show her around.

Future Tillerman.

And here we are on our first outing a few days later.  It really is the best stroller!  Thanks again Bento Family!

Cora's First Laugh

On February 7th, I was able to catch Cora's fist laugh on camera!  This was actually the first time I heard her giggle more than once.  Baby laugh are the cutest thing ever!