Time-out

This is how we do time-out at our house.  Arms folded and sitting on the couch.

 Although, it's hard to be serious when Patrick's so dang cute about it.

Being crafty and Santa!

 So, while I have openly admitted that I'm not an expert at sewing, once in awhile I get in the mood to be all "crafty."  That, mixed with the fact that I want to feel like each baby has new things but yet have a limited budget...these pictures are the result.  While making this, I realized I greatly overestimated how much fabric I would need.  So now I can make Patrick and the new baby a blanket with the material left over.  So, $30 later(although I was lucky to hit the expensive material on a great sale), I have a new interior, a car seat cover and two blankets.

I decided to cover the inside of the car seat with the minky material and then made a cover for the top.  Thank you to velcro, because without it, covering the inside of the car seat wouldn't have happened.  I won't even try to pretend like I know how to sew a car seat together.  Again, sorry for the bad picture quality.  All you people who have clean, crisp pictures on your blog...how do you do it?  I suppose getting around to taking pictures earlier than 8:00 at night would help.

And...tonight we saw Santa.  It would be an understatement to say that Patrick was not fond of him.  I knew that Patrick takes time to warm up to people before letting them hold him so I figured he might cry a little with Santa but I didn't realize how terrified he'd really be.  The kind lady elf finally took a picture for me so that I could sit by Patrick and try to comfort him long enough to get a shot.  As you can see, Patrick just grasped onto me for dear life.  Maybe next year he'll realize that Santa is actually a fun guy who gives presents.  Although...I can't remember a year growing up when I didn't freak out every time my parents mentioned the phrase "let's go see Santa!" so maybe he just gets the odd fear from me.  We'll see.

Who knew vacuuming was so great?

Yesterday, I was able to babysit my niece, Afton, and my nephew, Clayt while my sister-in-law had her hair/nails done.  I realized in my last post that I haven't taken many pictures lately so I thought I should start again.  This is Patrick and Afton playing outside-it looks like Patrick smacked her and ran away smiling but I'm pretty sure I just caught this picture at an awkward moment.  Who knew getting a 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 year old to look at the camera at the same time would be so hard? ;)

 I do have to say that taking care of 3 kids was harder, physically, then when it's just me and Patrick.  I was exhausted last night!  But, mentally, I felt like my morning/afternoon went by a lot faster.

Also, this has become a great past time in the Blackburn home.  Vacuuming.  I don't know why, but Patrick loves it.  We have an old, ghetto vacuum that is pretty easy to push around(as you can see in the pictures) but Patrick has vacuumed at grandma's house with the big vacuums and he does just as well.  I'm pretty sure his super-baby strength didn't come from my side.  On the good side, my floors have never looked better. :)  I'm taking advantage of this stage Patrick's in where he loves to "help."  Laundry, vacuuming, and doing dishes are a regular morning routine.

hello.

So, I'm starting to get kind of bad at this blogging thing.  Probably because my life isn't incredibly interesting at the moment and by the time I get Patrick in bed, I'm just really tired.  Dang pregnancy.  We don't get along.  Thank goodness I only have 3 1/2 months(hopefully at most) before I meet this new little guy.  If I thought being pregnant with no kids was hard...yeah, it was a walk in the park, physically, compared to now when I'm chasing an active toddler around.  But, I'm not complaining.  Kids are totally worth it...at least that's my opinion most of the time.  Really, Patrick is the greatest thing to happen to Jon and I and we couldn't have asked for a better child to practice all our parenting skills on.

This month Patrick has changed a lot.  Not physically, but verbally he's understanding and saying a lot more.  Oh, it's soo nice and I can't wait till he can say and understand even more.  Words Patrick says on a regular basis: mama, dada, ruff ruff, nana(banana), shoes and socks(too cute.  he loves that part of getting dressed, although those words sound like soos and sos), push(he pokes us and says push, also too cute), yes, up(talking to the puppies when he wants them to come sit by him).  Certain words he's just copied from us once or twice, like: dog, no, my bottle(that phrase really surprised me and hasn't come out since), bye, hi, etc.  Besides talking constantly now, Patrick is just full of energy.  I could probably say that's an understatement.  Ideas on keeping a 16 month old entertained would be much appreciated.  Our house is pretty small and if we don't have an outing for the day, Patrick goes a little(a lot) stir crazy.  He plays hard, but luckily he also sleeps hard which makes naptime/bedtime easy.  Does anyone else struggle through three hours of church?  We're there but we walk the halls for 2 1/2 hrs. of it.  Nursery cannot come soon enough.  I took him up there a few weeks ago to see how he would do(I stayed in there with him) and he loved it.  Now, whenever we go by the room, Patrick tries to go in because he knows that's where all the toys are.

I'm trying to enjoy these last few months with just Jon, Patrick and I because I know our lives will change again once this new baby comes.  I'm sure when I have a lot of kids running around, someday, I'll look back at these times when it was just the three of us and think that I had life so easy.  Not in every aspect of life because we've had life changing trials this year, but as far as parenting goes, Patrick has our full focus and love.  In some ways, I'm sad to see that come to an end but then I remember that Patrick will have another buddy to help keep him company and I get really excited.  

Soo...here's another pregnancy picture.  I should just do away with them because I seriously don't know how to get those cute, flattering pregnancy pictures that everyone seems to post but maybe someday I'll be glad I did these.  And maybe someday my kids will find it exciting to see what their mom looked like when she was pregnant with them...?  Anyway, 6 months down!

                                             

And just because it's a shame to end with a picture that unflattering on here, I decided to add one of Patrick as well. :)                    
                                       

Side note: Jon has 6 months of college left and then we're done!  Maybe then our lives will get a little less chaotic as far as not having time to do much.  Maybe.

First haircut

If you know me very well, you know that there are a few things I can't handle in life.  One of those things happens to be a family with hairstyles that look like a mullet.  Call me vain, but if Jon had had a haircut that even slightly resembled a mullet, I wouldn't have given him a second glance.  So, when people started mentioning how Patrick's hair looked like it was turning into a mullet, it had to go.  Nothing feels better than living in a trailer park and being told your son has a mullet. ;)    So even though you might not be able to see a huge difference in Patrick's before and after pictures; believe me, there is.

This is Patrick's before picture.  Really, he's decided the camera is not as cool as he originally thought so pictures are really difficult nowadays but if you look closely, you can kind of see how long his hair goes in the back.  It's even longer towards the middle of the neck.

And these are his after pictures.  Mainly we just cleaned it up in the back, along the front and around his ears.

Goodbye nasty mullet.

I thought it would be appropriate to add these next pictures because while the above pictures look like Patrick was perfectly happy with us cutting his hair, he wasn't.

And he made sure to vocalize his displeasure throughout the whole process.

But all that torture was totally worth it.  He'll thank me someday. :)

                    


On a totally unrelated topic, I forgot to add some Halloween pictures.  I know we've been done with Halloween for a couple weeks now but it was Patrick's first time with his own pumpkin so I thought I should add them on here.

 Patrick is obsessed with spatulas, forks and dogs so I tried carving those into his pumpkin(yeah, I'm really creative like that).  However, it kind of looks like I carved a pig with a pitch fork and a shovel, or glass of wine or something.  How adorable right....?

After carving Patrick's pumpkin, I was lazy(I don't like cleaning out pumpkins) and decided to paint mine.  The top just says Happy Halloween.

My mom was making yummy cookies while Karolyn and I were being artistic...or at least trying to be. Jon was pretty much sitting at the kitchen table working on homework.

And, baby #2 is a...........

BOY!!!!

Well, it looks like all who guessed(which was one-thank you Jessie for guessing, I would have felt dumb if no one had commented. haha) a boy were right!  Patrick is going to have a baby brother and we are really excited about it.  Not gonna lie....I felt like this one was a girl and I started hoping for a girl.  But honestly, when you see that sweet face in an ultrasound and put a gender to the baby, pregnancy seems more real, the baby becomes a little human being(at least for me that's when reality really sets in) and I love this little boy already.  100 times more than I did yesterday.  Hopefully they grow up to be those brothers that are best friends and not the brothers that constantly fight(like it's even possible to keep siblings from fighting each other) and hate each other. ;)

      
I mean, how could I not be excited to have another sweet little face smiling at me that looks like this?  The ultrasound already showed that this baby has a round face with chubby cheeks and a tall forehead, just like Patrick.  Yay for lots of boys!

The cutest little tiger

You know you're a little too excited for the festivities to begin when you're willing to wake your child up from a deep sleep like this, just so you can put a tiger costume on him and take him to a trunk-or treat party.  Patrick didn't forgive me for the next hour.

  

This was Patrick before his nap time.  We decided to start off the Halloween day by showing him off at Karolyn's work.  FYI: the people at Zion's Bank give out the good candy on Halloween.  You can kind of see the candy bars in Patrick's hands-he was not willing to give that chocolaty goodness up. 

This is right before we went to Fat Cats for the trunk-or-treat.

 After our little trunk-or-treat thing, we stopped to trick-or-treat at the Blackburn home.  Don't little kids look soo cute dressed up as furry animals?  Jon wanted to put Patrick in something cool, like a super hero, but I held my ground and made Patrick wear something cute and cuddly.  Next year Jon will probably win in the costume department with Patrick because then I'll have another little baby to dress up in a cuddly costume...weird.

By this time, Patrick had it figured out that today was the only day of the year that we would so freely give him candy.  He was in sugar heaven but we also paid for that a little later at Grandma Clifford's house when he was in desperate need for real food.

Then we headed over to trick-or-treat and eat yummy food at Grandma Clifford's house.  I think I ate a few too many donuts last night.

 I know the picture color/quality is super crappy(yeah, I don't know how to take pictures) but I had to get a picture with Patrick.  I tried to get more pictures of Patrick at my mom's house but, like I said earlier, he was having little meltdowns and wanted to cuddle or eat.  I think in this picture he's watching my mom dish up his soup.  After dinner time, I was exhausted(dang pregnancy) and lost all motivation for picture taking.  Maybe next year...

I hope everyone else had a good Halloween.  Maybe next year I'll get the motivation to dress up our whole family.  Growing up, my parents were always good about getting us in the Halloween spirit.  My dad had this Igor costume that he would scare his Jr. High kids with, and my mom would make chili and donuts and it was always a party.  I was a little slow getting on the, Halloween is fun, band-wagon but I really am starting to get excited to make Halloween special for my kids, just as my parents always did for us.  

And, to end this post, I had to add another pregnancy picture because...I'm halfway done!  Morning sickness is still there but getting better and better so now I'm just getting anxious to find out the gender.  We find out tomorrow sooo, does anyone have any guesses!?  I love getting comments on here so feel free to guess away. ;)

Snow time!

Normally I'm not a huge snow fan(really it's more the cold that I'm not a fan of, more than the actual snow), as I've mentioned before, but I Patrick seemed so fascinated by it that I couldn't help but take him outside for some fun.  I swear, he spends at least 20 min. every morning just staring outside, like playing in the snow is his biggest dream in life.  Luckily, he had a snow suit that kind of fit him from last year so we bundled him up and went outside.

Our dogs decided to join in the fun as well.

And our little, pathetic snowman.  But, Patrick had fun taking it apart so I guess that's all that really matters.

15 months

I know 15 months is kind of a random time to update about Patrick's milestones but it's been awhile and I wanted to include this cute picture in the blog(Aubree took this up at the cabin during the family reunion).

Some little things about Patrick right now:

-He loves blowing kisses and giving kisses.  Our dogs are a little frightened by this but the rest of us love it
-He's getting better at giving real hugs.  Again, our dogs are not thrilled about this
-He waves hi and bye.  For some reason when people used to say bye to him, he would just blow a kiss but he's finally gotten down the waving thing.
-He understands simple commands like, "Let's put those toys away," or "let's close the door," or "bring me your shoes."
-He loves trying to help clean up around the house.  If there's a mop or broom around, he is more than happy to push it around "helping"
-Something he started doing a couple months ago is that he would get a diaper and wipe out of his diaper bag, bring it to us and then poop in his diaper.  Sometimes he would poop first and then bring us all the stuff but either way, we know poop is on the way when he starts going through his diaper bag.
-Cupboards and drawers are still a constant fascination to him.
-Favorite "toys" include: cooking utensils, pots and pans, pens and pencils, and electronics with buttons.  He'll play with actual toys but for some reason he's really drawn to anything in the kitchen
-He moved down to one nap a day about a month ago.  Patrick adjusted really well but it took me a little longer to get used to.  I really loved that shower time in the morning...
-He doesn't seem overly interested in mastering more words than nana(banana, although recently he's using that word for anything he wants at the time), mama, dada.  He talks a lot and gets quite animated sometimes, but it's still mostly just babbling.  He does try to copy our words more and more so he's imitated words like; bye, hi, and ok, but they're not really constant enough for me to say that he really knows what they mean.

I don't know what we'd do without this little guy.  I feel like he's just so sweet and innocent still and has a way of helping us forget, for a moment, how hard life is.  His cute laugh never ceases to lighten the mood...except for when it's a mischievous one from him knowing he's getting into something he shouldn't.  Which happens quite often now.  I'll admit I get exhausted chasing him with his endless amount of energy, but I still love him more than I can put into words.  Happy 15 month birthday, Patrick!

Blackburn Family Reunion

I have to say, Kami and Aubree outdid themselves with planning the family reunion.  Here's how planning events usually goes with me: I look up a million idea, have something amazing planned, realize it's all too expensive and takes a lot of time, so I go the other extreme and don't do much of anything.  Sooo...good thing I haven't been in charge of one of these yet.  If I am, I'll have to plan like a year in advance.

We went up to Mike's family cabin(Aubree's husband) and did a lot of this:

                                                  

 And some cute crafts.  Patrick pretty much loved the stuff we made with the kids.  Even after we got home, he still played with these glow sticks and his lantern and the Frankenstein noise maker(I should have added a picture of it)

 And some late night minute to win it games.  Notice Jon's dad in the background?  I think this was at 11ish and we were all pretty surprised he was still up since he goes to bed around 9.  Actually, I'm surprised I was still up.  Not gonna lie, I'm horrible at late night.  After mono, getting pregnant, having Patrick and now being pregnant again, I feel like my body just gets worn down faster and faster.  I don't mean this as a complaint, but if someone has some energy boosting ideas feel free to spread the knowledge(besides exercising becomes while it makes me feel better in lots of ways, and I love it, it doesn't necessarily give me more energy).  I'm tired of being the party pooper. ;)

And then we spent some time enjoying how beautiful it is out in nature

...I won't mention the part about how tiring it is having LOTS of little babies around trying to sleep in close range of each other.  There might have been some late nights and early mornings.  Thanks again Aubree and Kami for putting so much effort into everything!

Catch-Up

It's been awhile so really this is just a catch-up of what we've been doing lately.  I know, since my life is so interesting, that you all have been checking your computers every single day to see when I would update it again. ;)

So, firstly, my dad's headstone got installed and it's perfect.  To be honest, I think it will take awhile before I get used to seeing my parent's name on a headstone.  Going to the cemetery always has a way of bringing on the tears and feelings of complete loss, mixed with a sense of peace. 

This last Saturday, in between sessions, Mike blessed their baby boy, Marcus.  We found out this last week that Mike is going to Afghanistan for the next year.  I'm pretty sure I'm not strong enough to handle having a husband in the military.  This is his 4th time going overseas.

Mike, Jen, Marcus, Cannon, Ada

Family on the Blackburn side

Also, I have to keep up the tradition from last time of posting bad lighting and not so attractive pregnant pictures.  Just over 4 months down and just over 5 months left to go.  Next doctor's appointment, we find out the gender. :)  I already knew what Patrick was by this time so I'm practicing my patience this time around.  Although, overall, I'm not as impatient to have the baby come as I was the first time.  The only reason for my impatience now is so that I can stop feeling this crappy morning sickness.  It's still my constant companion, 24/7, but like I mentioned in the last post, I'm grateful it eased off a little bit from the first trimester.

It's a good thing these cute little people are worth anything we have to go through to get them here. ;)

Side note: Patrick loves laundry baskets. Who knew they were so cool to hang out in? 

   A few days ago, I was mentioning to my mom that it's hard to really think that anything happening now is of much significance because of everything that's happened this summer.  I know it is, and since this is our family journal, I need to keep this updated but it's been harder than usual.  Conference came at the perfect time for a little pick me up.  Not that it makes life perfect, but it's always great to be reminded why we're here and what we're capable of doing.

Guess What?

Baby #2 is on the way, due March 22nd.  Today was my first appointment and everything looks great.  I waited longer this time to go to the doctor because I wanted to avoid some of the awkward first visit stuff.  Yeah right.  There's just no dodging that bullet.  But the good thing is, we got to see our baby squirm around and hear the heart beat.

During this picture I was excited to be pregnant.  About a week later, morning sickness hit.  And, I have to admit I was far from excited and more than a little emotional about it.  To be honest(which I usually am on this blog), there was a good solid couple months where every single day I thought, "I can't do this again."  Trying to cope with the loss of my dad topped with 24/7 morning sickness that made me not want to get out of bed made for a rough couple of months.  I'm thankful to have an understanding husband and mother who fed Patrick every single meal because I couldn't stand the thought of even feeding myself.  And, I'm thankful I have such a sweet little boy who loves me, even when I'm sick and forget I love being a mother.

But really, now that I'm starting to feel better each week, we are excited and nervous to meet this next baby in 6 months. Right now I worry about how I'll love another child as much as I love Patrick, and I worry about him getting jealous, but I know we will gladly welcome and love every baby that is meant to come into our family.

A trip to the Zoo

Jon's sister, Kami, was visiting Rexburg for a few days so she mentioned going to the zoo in Idaho Falls.  Patrick loved it, as did we.  I've actually never been to the zoo before this and I was pleasantly surprised.  Even though it's small, there were some fun animals to look at.

  

Little family picture on a fake tiger

Ada and Afton

Jon, Patrick, Cannon, Kami and Afton

Another family picture in front of a real tiger...which you can't really see.

Other things we've done this summer...

 More park dates with me and Patrick.  He loves the rocks.

 And this picture is just here because I think Patrick is so cute. :)