At Whitten's End

Casey officially started crawling last night. Just a few crawls at a time but it wasn't the typical positioning followed by shimmying to the floor. While we were putting Emma down for bed last night, Casey was sitting on my lap as I sat beside Emma's crib. He grabbed onto two of the siderails and pulled himself to standing. UGH! My baby boy is getting so big! He also had his 4th tooth break through on 11/8. He decided to push through his 2nd from the center teeth on the top first in honor of the New Moon movie coming out next Friday! Once that fourth one comes down a bit more, I'll try to get some pictures of him with his fangs :) In the last 2 weeks, his favorite thing has become going from laying down to sitting to laying down to rolling to sitting,.... when he's wound up, it's funny to watch him do this in rapid succession. Most of the time he's just content in one position chilling out, though!

Emma with her hair in pigtails in preparation for her role as Dorothy and Kayla with her black Wicked Witch nails! With this being our first year as a family with three kids, we really wanted to seize the opportunity to have a costume theme, especially when Kayla will only be dressing up another few years. :( Kayla has been chomping at the bit to be a witch for a couple of years, so we allowed her to go as the Wicked Witch of the West and we built the theme around her by having Emma be Dorothy and Casey the Cowardly Lion! We had really hoped to spend part of Halloween evening with Brad's colleague, Jennifer, but trying to get 3 kids ready with their costumes, hair, nails, and makeup while still having to carve our pumpkins, feed the fam, and get out Trick or Treating before it got too late was quite a challenge. Casey has been teething and it was quite warm for a lion costume (not to mention the fact that he HATED his tight mane, so that didn't help matters! Trying to get all...

We had made plans a couple of weeks before Halloween when Brad had the weekend off to go to a local corn maze that had a pumpkin patch, but the weather took a turn for the worse and naps didn't coincide, so we ended up going to a local church that was home to Boy Scout Troop 75's pumpkin patch a few days before Halloween. Pumpkin seeds are a special treat in our home come this time of year, and I learned that it pays to mention this to the person running the pumpkin patch because the troop leader let us have free access to pumpkins that were starting to go bad so we got to take home a few pumpkins free of charge. Emma dancing through the patch Casey patiently waiting for us to pick our pumpkins ????? Kayla thought this pumpkin would make a great pumpkin for Casey Emma wanted to be like Kayla, so she picked up a little pumpkin and held it up, too! Brad showing the girls the big pumpkin Our little family of pumpkins The back left one is actually a free pumpkin that I used for se...

Those of you closest to me know that sleep for me has been at a minimum the last 4 months or so since Casey decided sleeping through the night was for newborns only! Well, this week has been a time for change in our house... As Casey was cutting his third tooth (the left upper that is beside where the middle tooth should go... I've got a vampire in the making!), I decided that it was time to train Casey to put himself to sleep. The girls did this from the beginning of life, but with Casey it's been a game of endurance. For 7 months I've nursed him, rocked him, swayed him, and swinged him to sleep multiple times a day with only the occassional instance where he'd go to sleep on his own when he was very sleepy. This all changed at the end of last week... he FINALLY put himself to sleep when I laid him down following his cues that he was tired. He now goes down on his own 90% of the time and it's amazing how much time has been freed up from my day. Small miracle ...