Birthday Fun (and lots of posts...)

It hasn't been that long, but for some reason I have a lot of cute pictures I want to put up... Anyway. My birthday was pretty good. Reilly was getting sick with a cold, and maybe that was the reason he decided not to take his nap. Maybe he just wanted to spend ALL day with me on my birthday... ;-) Today he's trying his best to take a nap, but they're breaking up the concrete in our parking lot outside as I type, and I will consider it a very small miracle if both kids are actually able to go to sleep. :( For my birthday, I actually wanted a few "Little People" sets. Yes, I know, mostly for the kids, but they're fun for me to have. We got several on EBay. There's a picture of me with one below - it's a cool pre-school set that you can teach numbers and colors with. Also, the Noordas watched Reilly and Jaina for several hours in the evening so Jeremy and I could do something. He took me to Chuck E. Cheese's, and we had a whole lot of fun there for about an hour, followed by Monte Cristo sandwiches at Bennigan's. Extremely delicious. (If extremely bad for us...) It was mostly a really good day, though I can't believe I'm actually 26 now...

Day trips to Nauvoo

The kids seem to be a little better at traveling these days. I shouldn't even say that, because I'm always jinxing myself, but anyway... Saturday we took a day trip to Nauvoo. We thought we were going to play "tourists" for a few hours of our trip, but we only (barely) made it through one site. Reilly is NOT at the age where he's interested in looking but not touching, or in sitting in the stroller while people talk. He did enjoy the pioneer games they had set up for kids, and got to march around in a little parade. We have some fun video of that, but no pictures. Jeremy kept the kids while I did a session. We didn't really have time for two, and I've missed a lot more months than him, with all the pregnancies and such. :) Here are some pictures of Reilly hamming it up at the park there in Nauvoo.

And a few more pictures...

My little munchkins, doing what they do best. Looking cute, and in Reilly's case, causing trouble! Taken yesterday.

Somehow she's trying to get away in every one of these pictures. Reilly was very obedient (that's uncommon these days), and kept trying to give her loves and kisses for the pictures when I asked. :) You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Dinner Time

Things have been going well for us. We got a little booster seat (we thought for Reilly, but it works better for Jaina) and Jaina is now taking her meals with us. :) She loves to sit and eat Gerber puffs, Cheerios, or little pieces of bread. Reilly is still rather picky, but is getting better at using a fork and spoon a lot of the time.














As always, I take too many pictures of Jaina, so there's a few thrown in here. Sometimes I feel like I should either take a lot more of Reilly, or take fewer of her, but if I look back, I took more of him at that age too. It's just so much easier when you set them down and they can't move, and they're actually interested in you and in the camera!

7 Months and Counting

I can't believe Jaina is 7 months old. I guess it's because she's our second, but the time and the milestones seem to go so much faster than they did with Reilly. At this point with Reilly, we already knew we were going to have Jaina. So crazy... And at this point with Reilly, we had just done "cry-it-out." EXTREMELY hard, but with wonderful results. We haven't been sleeping well at ALL since Jaina wakes up 4-12 times a night mostly needing to be re-swaddled or her pacifier, and today we started trying to teach her to go to sleep on her own too. (She's been going to sleep by herself, but swaddled and with her pacifier, which she doesn't keep in if her hands are free...) She already took one nap this way, and it didn't seem to be as rough on her as on Reilly. I hope and pray she adjusts quickly. It would be so nice to get better sleep at night, and to move them into the same room together...

Reilly's doing well. He woke up with a low-grade fever today, but was feeling just fine pretty quickly. I'm not sure if it's from a little cold he's getting (he's been coughing the last few days) or if it's from teeth he's trying to cut. He still needs to get all of his little incisors through. Sigh.

Here are pictures of Jaina (and for comparisom) Reilly at 7 months. Oh, and Jaina's 6 month pictures as well, which we just got back from JC Penney's...

Aunt Sara and Uncle Jeremy

Our first niece, Chloe Olivia Ortiz, was born on July 8th, 2008, about the time we should have been flying into Chicago or Moline or something... She weighed 7 lbs and was 18 1/2 inches long; everything went really well, and Ashley is doing great. She is so tiny; I can hardly remember when Jaina was that small (and she was even smaller at first!) and can't remember Reilly being so tiny at all. Good thing we take lots of pictures and video...
We visited her Tuesday and Wednesday, and soon we're going to go up to Safford to take some pictures for her birth announcements. After that we're hoping to hang out with Phil and Sophie for a while and then put the kids to bed and pack. We have to leave by 5 am tomorrow morning to make our flight in Phoenix... not so much looking forward to the plane trips tomorrow with our little kidlets. It will be nice to be back in our own home, but hard to be away from family again, probably until Christmas!



The three cousins on the Kerrigan side: (with their great-Grans)

Happenings

It's been very busy around here! We ares still in Arizona (though we're headed back to Iowa tomorrow) and the kids have been using their time here wisely, exploring water. They both got to play in Grandma Kerrigan's little kiddie sandbox/pool, and then they both got to go swimming for the very first time in a real swimming pool. It was a really nice one that belonged to a friend of the Kerrigan's. Reilly was very unsure at first. He didn't really want to get in, and he was a little worried when I took Jaina down into the water. He soon got over his anxiety though, and joined us. After that, the only thing that worried him was how often Grandpa Larry kept going under water. He would look worried and say "oh... oh... oh..." until he came up. It was hilarious...

Some of you might think that we should have been back in Iowa already. That's technically true: we planned to fly home Tuesday the 8th. But then we found out that Jeremy's little sister, Ashley, was going to have a c-section on Tuesday, and we decided that it was worth changing our tickets to Friday so we could meet our little niece.

We spent the 4th and 5th of July on Mt. Graham at our cabin, but somehow I don't seem to have any pictures... sigh. It was a very long night. The kids started out sleeping well, but Reilly woke at 1:45 am wondering why there was absolutely NO light, and where he was, then again at 4 am. At that point he was completely done with the sleeping thing. I have the most amazing husband in the world. Jeremy offered to take the kids home late that afternoon and let me stay for the dinner Saturday night and for church the next morning ALL BY MYSELF. It was so wonderful to not be "on call" at all during that time!

Swimming at Grandma's:

My brother, David's, Eagle Court of Honor:

Swimming in a pool!:

A New Haircut

So I've been really bored with my hair for quite a while now, especially since I never have time to do it. Also, if I left it down it kust made me warm and Jaina would pull it... So I finally got it cut, much shorter, and I love it! It's so nice to be able to do something simple with it easily, and to have it out of the way.