Halloween is not really his thing...

Let's just say that Halloween and all that comes along with it, is not really Jonathan's thing yet. Well, let me rephrase that....everything but the candy and food that comes along with it is not really his thing. My boy can put away pumpkin bread like it's nobody's buisness...but as far as costumes, pumpkins, seeing other people dressed up....he is NOT into it. Case in point, his own costume.....





Thursday night we met Sue and David up at the hospital where she works for a fall festival. Jonathan basically stood around and stared at people who were dressed up. He wasn't really scared, but he didn't really like what he saw. What he did like was the chicken strips and fruit box he got for dinner that night :)




Saturday night, we had our first family attempt at carving a pumpkin. He seemed interested in it at first, but as soon as we tried to make him put his hand in the pumpkin and pull out the gooshy stuff.....he was like "peace out!" and he ran off to watch Chuggington. Zack on the other hand had a great time and even though our family pumpkin looks all kinds of ridiculous and we almost burned the house down at one point, I would say it was a success. Maybe next year the little boys will enjoy it as much as Dad!






I was cleaning out the closet in Jonathan's new bedroom and pulled out his infant car seat. He knew immedietly what needed to be done.....he had to lay claim to his stuff before his little brother had the chance to. He sat here for a long, long time. I'm not sure if it was because it was comfortable or if it was because he was scared he would lose it again if he ever got out of it. I LOVE the serious look on his face. I mean, this is a real deal seat check.




And finally, what weekend would be complete without a little late night drive....sans clothing.

A random update :)

While most of you are well aware of the happenings in the Ley home, I thought I would share just a little update as to what has been going on lately for those I don't get to talk to often!

For the past few weeks, Jonathan has had a cough that I attributed to his asthma and a cold. By Thursday I decided to take him in to see the doctor just to make sure everything was okay. Poor baby.....he had a double ear infection and inflammation in his lungs from all the coughing and asthma. It is times like these that I am so thankful for our pediatrican! She hooked Jonathan up with some good medicine (my boy LOVES himself some Amoxicillian!!) and by the next day, the cough was better and the pain he seemed to be in Thursday night was easing up. I seriously love her. If you need a good recommendation for a Pedi, please call me!

I haven't mentioned much about Baby Ley #2. I guess this is just the curse of the second baby. Jonathan takes up so much of my time and energy, that I often just forget to update about his little brother! Things are going pretty well and I am now 27 weeks pregnant. I go on Wednesday to have my gestational diabetes test and I am praying all goes smoothly! I am still having lots of contractions, but since I recognize them this time around, I am not as concerned. I just drink a butt-load of water and try to rest when possible. Unfortunately, that is super hard with a toddler and a husband still on crutches (part of the time!) But I am doing my best. Baby Ley moves a lot (mostly at night) and seems to enjoy kicking Jonathan when he is cuddling with me before bed. I sure hope this isn't a sign of things to come! I will admit that being pregnant the second time around is super different. I love that I am not nearly as nervous as I was with Jonathan. I can enjoy all those little kicks and punches without counting them all the time to make sure I have 10 within the given 2 hour period. I do not however, love the extra weight I have gained or the fact that I am so exhausted all the time I can barely stay awake past 8:30 each night. I just want to sleep for a LONG time and I know, believe me I know, it will be a long time before I get to sleep again.

Zack is doing really well with his recovery from knee surgery. He went to the doctor last week and was given the green light to drop the crutches when he is home and only use them for extended walking trips. This weekend we were able to go to Central Market and walk around, which is one of our favorite family errands! It took him a little while to make it through the store, but he did it :)

So that is about it. Other than being super busy and extremely tired, we are doing great! Oh and as an added bonus, I discovered last week that Freebirds is opening literally 5 minutes from my house in just a few weeks. Now I know there are plenty of Freebirds haters out there and a few crazies who say Chipotle is better (that is pure insanity to me) but I for one, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Freebirds and I can hardly contain my excitement. Let's all pray that my gestational diabities test comes back clean because if they try to tell me I can't eat it.....oh man.

More weekend fun!

Like I mentioned in the last post, we spent the weekend at Honey and Papa's house in Austin. We had a great time! Saturday morning we woke up and drove into Marble Falls to eat breakfast at the Bluebonnet Cafe. After a huge breakfast, we headed out to a really fun pumpkin patch to let Jonathan play. He loved it!

That afternoon, (after the nap incident) Papa and Jonathan went out to play some golf. My parents are lucky enough to live right on the tee box of their neighborhood country club and Jonathan LOVES to run out and pretend he is playing! If you look closely, you can see his little tongue sticking out.....he must be concentrating pretty hard on his swing :)

By the time we left Sunday, he was so sleepy he couldn't even stay awake long enough for us to get gas and get on the road. Literally, he was out in about 3 minutes and stayed asleep for the majority of the ride!

We have a climber!

It has been a long few weeks with Zack still on crutches, me working and being 6 months pregnant and Jonathan...well, being an almost two year old, so this weekend we packed up the car and headed to Austin to relax and have some fun! Probably the biggest surprise of the weekend happened Saturday afternoon....

We put Jonathan down for his nap in the little portable crib my parents keep at their house. It's a little smaller than a pack and play and he has always loved it! Well, when we put him down, the Aggies were playing and we were all hanging out in the living room eating good food and having a great time. Needless to say, Little Man did NOT want to miss the party. So after about 10 minutes of him fussing/yelling in his room, it gets pretty quiet. We all figured he had fallen asleep. It was right about then that Little Man strolls into the living room, walks right over to the veggies and dip and starts going to town.....as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He didn't even look at us as if he had done something wrong/new/exciting. He just sauntered in and helped himself to some food and football. He has learned to climb out of the crib.....and push open the door....

The whole thing made me a little sad to be honest. My baby isn't a baby anymore. I just sat there after he had fallen asleep (for real this time) and thought back on the past two years. First he refused to sleep in his bed. Then he had to sleep in his car seat, placed in his bed because of his terrible reflux, then he refused to sleep unswaddled, then he needed a little bag to sleep in since he refused to stay covered up with blankets, now he is bag/swaddle/blanket free but he can climb out. My sweet little baby is all grown up. It won't be long before we make the transition to his actual big boy bed.....what in the world will I do then?! I am going to be a hormonal, crying, blubbering mess.



This is Jonathan sleeping in the portable crib at Honey and Papa's when he was about 5 months old. He was still being half swaddled but he sure looks tiny and peaceful. Now imagine the same crib, but with him hiking his leg over and sliding down the side.....a little bit of a different picture huh?? :)

Uh oh.

We have an animal lover on our hands. And while this isn't really a bad thing, Zack and I are not really "animal people." I grew up with a sweet, clean, good smelling cat. He grew up with a dog, but has no desire to have another. Neither of us really want a pet. Maybe ever... Jonathan on the other hand, LOVES animals. His first word (other than "agua") was "dog." He had never even seen a dog, other than on TV or in a book, and yet he knew exactly what it was. Since then almost his entire vocabulary has been made up of animals and the noise they make (well, except "mine!")

This weekend we took Jonathan to Dewberry Farms to see the animals and play in the pumpkins. He had a blast!! As soon as we got there and he saw a huge clump of ducks and geese, he ran straight for them. He wasn't shy at all. Of course I was a little concerned about him running into a large herd of anything, but the animals behaved themselves and so did Jonathan. A match made in heaven. He then proceeded to stick his sweet little hands and fingers into the pens of every other animal they had....sheep, turkeys, goats, ponies....and thankfully, none of them fought back against the little invader. We made it home with all 10 of his pudgy little fingers :)

I am very glad that Jonathan is comfortable around animals and appreciates them for the blessing they are. However, I am not looking forward to the day (which I fear is coming sooner rather than later) when I start to hear "Mom, can we get a dog!?" over and over again.


Hanging out with the sheep. Luckily the sheep didn't care (or even move for that matter) that Jonathan was "talking" to him.

Checking out the goats! I tried to get a picture of him sticking his hand in the goats mouth, but I wasn't quite fast enough. That and I was trying to keep his fingers from being nibbled off....

I just love this picture :) He fell asleep on the way home and when we woke him up to bring him in the house, he was NOT happy. He stayed like this with Zack for a long time until I was able to pry him off and put him down for a nap. He then slept for 3 hours!! Zack still can't carry Jonathan or move around much with him, so these quiet, still moments are like gold for them :)

Things I'm loving this week!

It's already Thursday and I haven't gone all hormonal pregnant woman crazy on anybody, sent THAT many kids to detention or screamed at Zack for doing something "wrong." I consider this a win for me :).....and for Zack. And my students. And the strangers who could possibly be on the receiving end of my craziness.

Here are a few things that have contributed to my good mood this week:

1. I took my charm bracelet into James Avery the other day and they agreed to fix it, free of charge! Every time I have something of theirs break, it is hit or miss if they will cover it. This time they will! YAY!

2. Lately I have been really struggling with the whole "NOTHING sounds good for dinner" thing. Oh and the "Don't even THINK about asking me too cook something" thing. And Zack has been totally cool with it! We made homemade pizza two days in a row and I convinced him to let me have one of my favorites last night. I guess as long as he gets fed in the end, he doesn't care that much :)

3. Tonight is our small group meeting. That always makes me happy. And people usually have awesome dessert/snacks. Obviously that makes me happy too! Oh crap, speaking of, I need to read my chapters for tonight.....yikes!

4. Jonathan has been really good this week (if I ignore pooping in the bathtub, peeing on me for the first time in MONTHS, spilling my huge class of water all over the floor while trying desperately to steal my straw and pulling his plate of corn and meatloaf off the counter and all over the floor.....) But seriously, we have played outside a lot, read a lot of good books, learned some new words.....he is a pretty awesome kid!

5. My students have been much better this week! I had to write one up yesterday for being totally ridiculous, but other than that, all is calm in the classroom. It helps that they had a test for two days. Even the nutty ones know not to talk during a test because I WILL slap a big fat zero on their test for cheating before they even have time to stop their conversation! Next week is library week too....double win! Oh! And the librarian feels bad for me because all my school t-shirts are too small and I totally look like a stuffed sausage kolache in them, so she gave me 4 library shirts in a bigger size to wear on spirit days! Okay, granted the one I have on today is neon green and makes me look like a huge lima bean, but who cares? Beggars can't be choosers!

All in all, a good week. Friday better not disappoint!

Our Weekend!

I was recently inspired by a few of my more experienced blogger friends to create a post devoted to documenting our weekend/week in pictures. And while we didn't do anything very exciting, we had a wonderful time enjoying the beautiful weather!

First we spent a long time Friday afternoon at the park for the first time in months...it was only 90 degrees! Jonathan discovered that throwing rocks on the slide (yes, he is THAT kid) is probably the most exciting thing to do there!



Saturday we spent a lot of time cleaning up the yard and playing with Nana and Grandfather. We are truly blessed that Grandfather (David...and yes, we all realize how ridiculous it is to expect a 2 year old to say Grandfather....) has been willing to come and mow our yard every weekend since Zack's surgery.





We recently had our trees trimmed in the backyard which left a lot of twigs and branches all over the place. As you can imagine, Jonathan had a ball with them! He actually spent a long time trying to get Zack's attention (who was working inside) by drumming on the back door with his new drum sticks!





Saturday night, Zack, Jonathan and I went out for dinner. While we were waiting on Zack to get in the car, (you know, it takes him a while with the crutches....) Jonathan discovered the joy of being in the car and NOT being in his car seat. He crawled all over the place and was not very happy when it was time to get buckled in. Guess I should have anticipated that...



Sunday morning we had some time to just relax, eat breakfast and read some books. It was also finally cool enough to justify wearing the sweet little Dutch slippers cousin Shakinah brought him from Holland. He brings them to me almost every day and wants me to put them on him. Luckily, the time seems to have come when he can wear them every morning :)





Finally, Sunday afternoon Honey and Papa drove in from Austin and brought a new toy to play with! We spent all day yesterday playing with his new car, working on his big boy room and coming up with ways to change around the nursery for Baby Boy #2!




All in all, it was a wonderful weekend! I am praying next weekend is just as nice and we can hit up the Katy Rice Harvest Festival!