Photo-a-day: day 1

Yay!  Photo-a-day is back!  I can't believe this is the third year I've done it.  And I just had my third baby boy!  Feel free to go down memory lane and scroll through the pictures from March of the last two years.  I did.  My, time flies.  I can't believe how cute my boys are, and how fast they grow up.  And I'm so glad I have all of these pictures to look back on.  Makes me so thankful.  I cherish all of these moments.

Here is day 1 for 2013 photo-a-day!

Center of attention.

What the boys are doing

Just wanted to jot down some things the boys have been doing and saying.

Last night Nathan fell and was crying.  Caleb said, "It's ok.  You just fell, but Jesus can make you all better.  He can make sick people all better.  Because he's nice.  It's ok."  So sweet!

Switching gears: somehow they started calling their butt their "baht."  It's funny how they pronounce it.  I usually just call it their bottom, but I think they picked it up from when they're naked after bath time and I called them a "nudie butt."  So Caleb and Nathan like to turn around to each other and say, "Hey!  Wanna see my baht??!! HAHAHAHA!"  The other day Caleb said to me, kind of thinking pensively, "Matthew's head is getting so big.  And his baht is getting bigger.  Sometimes bahts grow.  Like dupas grow?"  "Dupa" is my dad's word for butt.  Obviously they totally have boy humor.  They love to joke about stuff and try to say "yucky words" to each other like "poop" and "pee pee" if they think I'm not listening.  Caleb was singing a song in bed about pee pee in a teapot, and laughing to himself.  They make up completely nonsense things that only they understand and they think are hilarious.  On the way home from church one night, Nathan kept saying, "A car crash me, I get a dupa!!"  And they were laughing uncontrollably.

The boys love to learn.  They're so inquisitive, so they learn so much by asking me stuff all day long.  All. Day. Long.  While it's very exhausting sometimes, I love being the one to teach them things and explain stuff to them.  Caleb is wanting to learn how to tell time.  He knows a lot of the basic times; but, man! telling time is confusing!  He also likes to know his numbers.  My dad taught him to count by 5s and 10s.  And he's asking how to add numbers together.  Here's a video of him:

Caleb has been into super heroes lately.  He loves to act out good guys (he calls them nice guys) vs. bad guys.  David got him a story book with Spider-Man, Iron Man, and The Avengers.  He loves it.  Here he is making up a Spider-Man dance.  He crouches down and does the Spider-Man pose on the ground, then he flails his arms around and shoots the bad guys.  It's a long video, but it's funny.

Nathan cracks me up.  Seriously.  It's so hard to explain, but that kid is hilarious to me.  But it's hard to capture in words or even on video.  I love him to pieces.  I just want to squeeze him.  He's a little fireball sometimes.  His new saying recently when he wants something is, "I take it away.  I run away.  I put you in jail."  What??!!  That kid might be trouble when he's older.  It's cute now, but he loves to argue and have the power over somebody.  He only likes to do things once he thinks it's his own idea.  He loves Matthew so much and wants to hold him, kiss him, and hug him every time he comes into the room.  He gives Matthew no personal space.  He's in his face like waaaay close.  All the time.  Nathan has the funniest cartoon voice.  Here I got a little of his silliness and voice on video.  He was saying over and over again to Matthew, "Hey boo-boo!  You're da boo-boo!"  Whatever that means.

You know you have a new baby when..

...your older boys do this:

They started playing with my nursing pillow.  And the conversation went something like this:

"Ok.  Are you the baby?"
"yeah!"
"ok, I feed you.  I lift up my shirt.  Eat it!"
"hahaha!" Laughing like crazy.
"ok, my turn!"

Matthew James Domine

Well, I don't have time to post much, but I'll quickly announce on the blog that Matthew James was born on Monday, January 28, 2013, at 8:29 p.m.  He was 8 lbs, 20 inches long.

He's truly an angel. 

As we're adjusting to a family of 5, I hope to be able make frequent updates.  Let's just say right now, the boys love Matthew...I have no idea how I'm going to balance being a mom of three...but I'm super thankful for all the love we have in our family!

Christmas 2012

I better download all my Christmas pics and a few words before baby comes!  I'm running out of time, and I wouldn't want to skip over the fun we had during the holidays!

 
We had Christmas Eve and Christmas with David's family.  We switch off holidays for our families every year.  Normally, we'd go up to Dallas afterward for a belated Christmas, but since I was so pregnant, my family came down and spent time with us.  Christmas morning, we woke up and did Christmas at our house and then drove over to David's family.

 We did a fun little advent things this year I saw from Pinterest...or maybe a friend...I can't remember.

But we wrapped a bunch of Christmas books and opened one each night counting down until Christmas.  The boys loved it.

Oh, and one funny story: 
We haven't ever planned on "doing Santa" with our kids.  We just figured we'd read some Santa books, and they'd see him on TV, or hear about him, and kind of just think of him as a Christmas character like Charlie Brown.  But we weren't going to do the whole "naughty and nice" and "Santa's coming to deliver presents tonight!" thing.  Partly because we'd rather make the focus about Jesus's birthday, and partly because we could never really think the whole thing through as to how far we would go with it (I mean, some people really get into it) or how we would stop doing Santa.  So it just seemed easier this way.

But apparently we didn't communicate that to David's family.  So when we visited them on Christmas Eve, Aunt Sarah asked the boys if they had cookies to put out for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.  And Caleb runs up to me and says frantically, "Mom, we don't have cookies and carrots to put out for Santa!"  Doh!  So of course we're not going to be the horrible parents that crush a 3-year-old's heart and say, "Sorry, kid, that's just all made up."  Plus it'd be confusing and we'd have to explain how some people believe it in and some don't.  So we drove home that night with cookies and carrots, and figured we'd just do that this year and not make a big deal out of it, and then forget about it next year.  The boys were sleeping when we got home, so we put the cookies out and took a picture just in case they asked about them in the morning.  But, they didn't ask.  :)  So we just went on with our normal Christmas.

 Christmas morning at our house.

Could they be any cuter??!!

They did really well at opening up shared presents together.

Bugs in the stockings were a big hit.

Our sweet neighbors gave the boys some fold-out chairs.  Yay!  Looking forward to adding that to our camping gear.  :)

We found that little grocery store/cash register in our attic from the previous owners.  It was like new, so we decided to give it to them for Christmas.  We're weird.  But they love it.

Building Lincoln Logs with Dad.

The Domine Christmas

They got lots of games.

And a fun alphabet/spelling game from Aunt Sarah.  I'm surprised how much they've learned from it already.  Caleb can spell a lot of the words, and Nathan can find all of the letters.

They love their new basketball hoop.

We took naps together on Christmas.  I decided to nap with them because I knew if I wasn't there, they wouldn't sleep at all.  It took like 30 minutes or more of telling them to lay down and not play to get them to sleep.  I kept getting faces in my face telling me they loved me...or stuffed animals in my face saying hi...or kicks and giggles...or blankies on me to keep me warm. 

 Eventually they fell asleep...

 and I got squeezed out of my space.

They finally got to wear their Christmas jammies the next night after Christmas when it got colder.

I totally forgot to take pictures of the boys opening presents with my family when they came to visit.  They just tore into them, so there wasn't much time.  :)

But we got my dad a really fun gift - an afternoon at Top Golf with the family.  Top Golf is a new three-story golfing range near our house.  So we took everyone.  It was so fun!  None of us even know how to hardly swing except for my dad.  You get a bay all to yourself, and you can order food from the restaurant.  The boys got clubs their size too.  We were on the third deck.  Those circle are spots to aim for when playing games.  It kind of feels like you're bowling.

 

 Even preggo mama gave it a shot.  I have no skill.

While my family was here, Grandpa slept on the couch (because my grandmother was here too and we ran out of bed space), and the boys enjoyed jumping on him every morning to wake him up.

Every year my family makes Christmas cookies...buttery shortbread cookies and sugar sprinkles...yum.  We do a cookie press to make different shapes.  The boys LOVED decorating them with sprinkles, and taste-testing.

 

Grandpa reading new books to the boys.  They'll rope anyone they can into reading to them.  And once you start, you can't stop.  They'll keep bringing more.

They got an art board from Nana and Grandpa.  They've had fun with it so far...with Mommy's supervision.  I don't trust markers (even washable dry-erase ones) without me watching.  Nathan is the marker Nazi.  He holds them all and bestows them upon Caleb as he requests...taking great pleasure in his power...sometimes taking his time handing them over, or suggesting a different color, or pretending he doesn't know what color Caleb is asking for.

We had a wonderful Christmas!  Even baby Matthew got a few gifts!  We're so blessed with a wonderful family.  We love making memories with everyone.