A Half-Dozen Healys

My week of vacation continues, and I've posted the pictures from September and October.

This batch includes:

Suffield Farm Fest

Apple picking, which turned into Seth's show and share at Tiger School

Family portrait from the start of the school year

Pumpkin picking with Geema

Oxen Hill Farm end-of-the-season party (including a surprise rainshower!)

As 2011 draws to a close, I'm frantically trying to finish the pictures from this year before 2012 gets here. I'm pleased to say that I've finished all the pictures from August 2011.

This batch includes:

Mini-golf with Grams

A private tour of the Suffield fire station

A visit from our college friends (and their children)

A crazed Seth playing hide-and-seek

I found a little time over the Thanksgiving break to catch up on some pictures, and so we've now posted pictures from the end of June (24th - 30th) and all of July.

This batch includes:

our visit to the Farm with the rest of the Healys (days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)

our family trip to Cape Cod (days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9)

a day at the library

The big news around the Healy household is that Evan just started crawling on Monday! He's been very close for a while now, rolling back and forth, pivoting and scooching, but he finally figured out how to get some forward motion! It's just an army crawl right now - he's not up on his hands and knees yet. But I just put him down on the floor and he used his little elbows to propel himself forward. He was very interested in some toy cars, and he figured out a way to get himself there! There's no stopping him now! Jason was at work and Seth was napping when Evan made this leap, and then we had to rush off to Seth's gymnastics class. By the time we got home, Seth was so excited to see Evan crawl, he just couldn't wait! Seth was very excited for his little brother, and got down on the floor to crawl around with him. I managed to get a little video of Evan's first crawling experience:

Continuing my slow battle against a mountain of pictures, I've uploaded everything from the first few weeks of June.

Well, we made it through the first week of classes here at the academy. This week was also my first week back at work. Of course, to start it all off, we had the first cold of school. It is somewhat inevitable with all the little kids being back at Tiger School/daycare. Luckily this cold seemed to last only about 48 hours, which is not bad as far as colds go. Seth came home last Friday with a fever and a runny nose, so we took it easy Friday night and Saturday, and he was feeling better in time for our gathering on Sunday to commemorate my grandmother's yahrzeit (anniversary of her death). We had a nice day remembering her with Geema, Michael, Aunt Michele, and Uncle Bill. Seth also got to harvest his "potatoes in a bag" that Aunt Michele helped him grow - success! Lots of potatoes! Then Sunday night, Jason got the cold, then Monday morning Evan had it, and by Monday afternoon I was down for the count, too. A big thank you to Grams and Geema for braving the sick house to help us with the boys! A visit to the doctor with Evan on Monday confirmed it was just a cold and not an ear infection, and me staying home from my first morning of work to sleep capped off that fun! Luckily, by Wednesday, we were all feeling better and back to work and daycare, so that wasn't too bad!

I know the photo gallery hasn't been updated in a long while. There's been a lot going on here at home, and as the pile of pictures keeps growing, so has my level of procrastination.

It's been three years today since my grandmother, Beverly, died.

In some ways, it seems like it's been a long time since I last saw her, but in other ways, it seems like we were together just yesterday.

Two weeks ago, Seth started pre-school. His pre-school is in the same building as our daycare; Suffield Academy's mascot is the tiger, so daycare is called Tiger Den, and pre-school is called Tiger School. Seth had seen the Tiger School classroom all last year, and was so excited when he would finally get to say he was a "Tiger School Boy". Tiger School meets Monday-Friday from 8:30am to noon. These first two weeks I was not working yet, so I could bring him and pick him up, which was a nice way to transition.

After writing a post on Evan's current milestones, I wanted to be sure to record Seth's funny actions and saying from the past few months. These boys keep us laughing!

Since I've dropped the ball on updating regularly, I wanted to be sure to do a post on all the exciting things Evan has learned to do recently.

At 3 months

He's just beginning to laugh.

He's smiling like crazy and interacting with us.

August was a fun month - we were all in the swing of our summer routine, and we enjoyed lots of fun time together. For the first two weeks of August, Evan and I took Seth every weekday morning to "big boy" swimming lessons. Two of Seth's best buddies were taking swimming lessons at the town country club, and even though we are not members there, we found out that non-members could take lessons if there was room. These were the first swimming lessons Seth had taken where he didn't need a parent in the water with him. There was one instructor, and the children sat on the wall of the pool (no floaties or anything) and took turns having one-on-one instruction from the teacher. Evan and I hung out on the pool deck and watched.

After getting back from the family gathering at Papa's house, we were ready to be in full summer mode. We got all the summer toys set up in the yard and porches, and enjoyed a lot of time outside. We celebrated the fourth of July with a fun barbeque at Uncle Bill, Aunt Michele, and Jason's. Geema, Michael, and Grams were also there. It was a beautiful day, and Bill and Michele provided delicious food as usual. Seth had a great time exploring the fish pond and gardens that Bill and Michele put together, and he also had fun looking at all of Bill's sculptures around the yard.

We started the month of June with Seth's last week of daycare - they are closed when school is not in session. It was great to have Seth go to daycare in the mornings in the spring to give me some bonding time with Evan and to get used to parenting two kids, but by now it seemed perfect for daycare to be ending and to get to have Seth and Evan home all day. Seth had his first field trip - a bus trip to a farm, which he loved! We also had his end of the year concert, which was fun. They had been working on the songs all spring, so it was fun to see them all singing together! He was excited to have Auntie Kara and Grams at the concert, as well!

Aside from Seth's birthday, and a couple fun visits from friends, May went by in a blur of germs! Before the germs settled, we had a fun visit from Chuck, Jenn, Katie, and Sam. We always have a blast when they come to visit! At the end of May, after all the germs had flown away, we welcomed Chris and Cathy for a visit with their daughter, Eleanor, who is two months younger than Evan. It was so much fun to see them and introduce them to Evan and meet Eleanor! We had only ever "met" over Skype before, so it was great to see each other in person!

Back on May 8, Seth turned 3 years old! Hard to believe that our first born little man is a big guy! Of course, he still likes to be called a little guy, not a big boy. When we started talking about Seth's birthday a couple months back, he decided that he wanted a "rainbow party." This came about because of an episode of the tv show "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That" - the kids learned about rainbows, and sing this cute song which Seth loves to sing. So he decided that a rainbow party was what he wanted!

Wow, it's been way too long since we've written an update! It's been busy times around here these last couple months! After our fun spring break in March, we had lots of fun visits, birthdays, and outings in April.

Time for a blog update to go with the big photo update Jason just did on our photo site. We had a great spring break in March, with Jason taking three days off each of the three weeks. It was really nice to have some extra time to just relax, catch up on sleep, and take a lot of day trips. We are doing pretty well going out the four of us now - we are definitely less hesitant to be out and about with Evan at his age than we were when Seth was this age. As a friend pointed out, having a second child is busier because you have two kids, but easier in some ways because you are not first-time parents and know what to expect a little more.

Poor Seth is getting over a cough and had a rough night with little sleep last night (which meant we all had a rough night with little sleep). However, we're hoping he's on the mend and will be feeling better tomorrow.

We have recently discovered that it is really true that toddlers generalize one experience and expect it to happen in other similar situations. When we go on car trips, we will often stop at Dunkin Donuts so I can get a coffee, and we will get some chocolate munchkins for Seth. We usually go through the drive-through, and Seth knows the drill. He always asks for a donut, and he has asked us for donuts at other restaurant drive-throughs as well, which, of course, makes sense. The other day we were driving to a medical complex for an appointment, and there was a guard station. We drove up and told the man why we were there. All of a sudden Seth pipes up from the back "Can I have a donut?" Jason was totally confused, but then I realized Seth thought anywhere with a "drive-through" would be able to serve him donuts. We laughed hysterically about this, and Seth realized that what he said was funny. We explained there were no donuts there because it wasn't a restaurant, and then he realized why it was funny. We all continued to laugh about this for quite some time!

We have been busy getting in the groove with Seth and Evan! Evan is now five weeks old, and Seth is 33 months old!! We were just talking about how quickly we progress from counting our little ones' ages in days to weeks and then months and then years. Well, we'd like to slow everything down a bit because we are having so much fun with our two little guys!

We have been home with Evan for just over a week, as we were released from the hospital last Saturday. Just like with Seth, the discharge time was much later than the advertised 10:00am, but this time we were prepared and spent most of the morning relaxing rather than hurrying to go nowhere. Eventually everything was set to go, and we drove back home to introduce Evan to our house. Evan braved the unusually cold weather and did well with his first time in the car seat.

We're approaching the end of our hospital stay (we go home tomorrow), so we just wanted to catch everyone up on the last two days with Evan. We've also posted the pictures from our stay so far in the hospital: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Today we got several early-morning visits from the doctors in the hospital. Amy is feeling better today, though she is still sore from the surgery. Evan is looking good, and the pediatrician gave him high marks for muscle tone and reflexes. Also, his mucus issues from yesterday seem to have subsided. He had been too sleepy to nurse since his first successful session immediately after birth, but the doctor's examination today woke him up enough so he wanted to feed again, and he had no trouble latching on and getting a good feeding. Since then, he's fed 5 times on a pretty regular schedule. Getting started with nursing seems easier this time around, as Amy knows what it feels like from when she nursed with Seth.

Well, tomorrow is the big day - our c-section for Tomato is scheduled for January 18 at 10:30am. We are very excited - we've prepared the house as much as we can, and we are overjoyed to think about meeting our next little man. Of course, I am a bit nervous, even though I've been through a c-section before. We can't wait to meet him, and to have Seth meet him, and to be a family of four.

Well, it is the day before Tomato is scheduled to arrive via C-section, and my best intentions to backfill the blog have fallen by the wayside. I am going to compile a bullet list of all the things I want to remember from the time when he turned two until now, when he is two years eight months old, and then focus on being better about updating the blog in the future!