Introducing...

Alexis Elaine Muhlestein ("Lexi")

Lexi was born Oct. 24, 2011 at 3:49 pm in Irving, TX. She weighed 7 lbs 10 oz and was 20" long. She has been a wonderful little girl who rarely fusses, is a good eater, and sleeps lots. After having had only Nicholas for so long, it is kind of surreal having a little newborn again, but we already love her bunches.

As a side note, her name Alexis means "defender", and her name "Elaine" (after Grandmother Muhlestein) means "light". So together, it means "Defender of the Light". We hope that that is exactly what she will be!

Ants Bite!

During the past two months, Nicholas has suffered through the following:

• A burnt hand
• A bad cold
• Hand, foot, and mouth disease
• A BAD stomach bug (which he was willing to share with Mama and Papa)
• Tons of mosquito bites
• An ant attack (pictured above)

Guess Who is 2?

Weight: 32 lbs
Height: 33 inches
Tooth Count: Unknown (He bit Joseph so we gave up. He loves us looking in his ears, but he hates us to look into his mouth. He doesn't usually bite.)
Belly Circumference: 22 inches

Favorite Foods: Applesauce, M&Ms, Pizza, Pasta, Meat, Cheese sticks, Juice, Milk, Chocolate Pudding, and Fruit

Favorite Shows/Clips: Toy Story 3, Sleeping Beauty, Leapfrog Letters Factory, Puss in Boots Old Spice Commercial (aka Kitty in Shower), Old Disney Cartoons, and Veggietales: David and the Giant Pickle

Favorite Phrases:
• "Saurs spit."-- There were two dinosaurs that spit water at the Hogle Zoo when we visited UT. Nicholas was kind of scared and simultaneously fascinated by them. Even a month afterwards though, he will say at random intervals, "Saurs spit."
• "Broke. I fix."--He is convinced that he can fix anything. When something is really broke, then he will say, "Mama fix." If I tell him Mama can't fix it, then he will say, "Papa fix."
• "No touch. I look."--He then will assume his looking position. However, looking almost always leads to touching.
• "Baby sister like binkie, like blankets, like puppy. No marbles, no markers, and no scissors."--We are preparing him to be a big brother.
• "Fire hot."/"Hot like mower."--Nicholas has a healthy respect for things that are hot.
• "Buzz and Jessie dancing."--He loves the part of Toy Story 3 when Spanish Buzz does a little dance.:
• "Self."--He likes doing things on his own. He hates riding in a shopping cart. He will keep repeating in the saddest voice, "Walk self! Walk self!"
• "Cars street. Mama helps. Look both ways."--You can tell we have had a lot of discussions about car safety.
• "Trunk."--Nicholas has decided that hanging out in the trunk of the Acura is even cooler than driving the Acura. If I don't watch him closely, he will find money and small objects and find various holes in the car to drop them down.
• "Carries."--He still LOVES to be carried.
• "Leaves fall."--He is fascinated by the changing season. He is going to have a lot of fun raking with Mom in a couple of weeks.
• "Mama back." "Mama seat." Mama's lap."--He likes me close.

Sleeping:
• He goes to bed around 8 or 8:30 and wakes up 11-12 hours later from when he went to sleep.
• Instead of telling Nicholas it is time to go to bed, we just ask him, "What do you want to go to sleep with?" He starts collecting his special items. Lately he has been insisting that he needs "two binkies" to go to bed. He has also been sleeping with his special monkey blanket, frog blanket, and choo-choo blanket. He will also sleep with his little puppy, big puppy, Ozzie (another puppy), and a couple of balls. It is a little party in there.
• When he wakes up, he has to go through and tell me about everything in his crib before he will agree to get out.
• He is still a great napper. We usually do our big outings in the morning, so that usually wears us both out. He usually will nap for an hour and a half around 1.


Favorite Book: He still isn't much of a book lover. He likes to look at his pop-up monster machines book and flipping through Harry Potter while he wears his Harry Potter hat.

Favorite Activities:
• Helping me cook. I think he just loves all the dumping and stirring involved.
• Animals. He loves feeding the ducks and playing with dogs.
• "Driving" our cars.
• Coloring, especially with markers.
• Looking at letters and numbers.
• Lining things up and making a choo-choo.
• Stacking things and making castles.
• Playing with various kitchen utensils and measuring cups.
• Playing in the bathtub with lots of bouncy balls.
• Dancing in his "dancing shoes." They are are some super girly tap shoes that I got at a yard sale. I'll have to get Joseph's permission before I post pictures of this activity.

Overall, I am LOVING two a lot more than 1. He is fun to have a conversation with and he has an actual attention span. All our work about using your words instead of just crying is really paying off. He will tell me what is wrong and we can usually make a deal that makes us both happy. (Unless he is tired.) He is a good little buddy. He loves living on the edge, but he hates be in actual trouble. He is still extremely destructive and messy, but he will now help me clean up one activity before we begin another one. He keeps me busy coming up with new ideas to keep him entertained. We have made marble race tracks, experimented with magnets, and used the fan to blow balloons up to the ceiling. It is surprising what will catch his interest. I love this sweet little man!!

I made Nicholas an M&M cake for his birthday. He liked the frosting and the M&Ms.

In our ward, there are five other kids born within weeks of Nicholas. One of the mothers suggested we do a joint birthday party for all the kids. Nicholas loved the party. He got to finger paint for the first time and there was all the juice he could drink. He also loved bowling. The destructive nature of bowling just appeals to him. They picked to do the party on Nicholas' actual birthday.

Nicholas wanted pizza for his birthday dinner, so we took him to CiCi's. He ate an impressive amount of pizza, ranch dressing, lemonade. We then took him to his favorite park. Surprisingly, his favorite park doesn't have a playground. He loves to go to Irving's War Memorial Park because it has lots of statues and fountains. He got a remote control car for his birthday and enjoyed driving it around the park super fast. After dark, we settled down and watched How to Train Your Dragon. We tried to keep our birthday plans really simple and just mainly spent time doing whatever Nicholas wanted to do. Nicholas LOVED his birthday.

State Fair

We originally planned on celebrating Joseph's birthday last Saturday, but Nicholas was under the weather and I had church stuff most of the day. I was then going to surprise Joseph with a camping trip, but sadly it became too expensive and impractical to do with a two year old and pregnant wife. Our back up plan was the Fair. We had free tickets and very few free weekends the rest of October, so we jumped at the chance to go on Friday because Joseph had only a short day. I can't believe this is our third time going to the Texas State Fair.

Our first stop was the petting zoo exhibit. It is one of our favorite parts of the Fair and we were excited that Nicholas is finally old enough to really get into it. They have tons of animals that you can feed and pet. Nicholas was willing to pet/feed anything that got near him. He made special friends with a baby camel.

Our next stop was the cute little play farm area that they have set up next to the petting zoo. Nicholas put on an apron, collected eggs, planted seeds, milked cows, and rode a tractor. His favorite part was using the shovel to plant seeds. He would have stayed there all day. At the end, they gave him fake money for his work and he was able to buy a bag of chips.

Nicholas also loved "driving" all the cars on display and watching the bird show. His favorite part of the bird show was Graucho, the singing parrot. We have watched him multiple times on youtube since then. Nicholas keeps on asking for the "singing bird."

The State Fair has a contest each year for the best deep fried food. We usually will buy the winner and try it ourselves. Deep fried buffalo chicken in a flapjack was the winner; however, we broke tradition and Joseph picked some fresh made lemonade instead for our Fair treat. Nicholas and Joseph both passionately love juice. Nicholas drank more than anyone. We ended up getting a refill.


The firework/light show at the end of the Fair was fabulous. We ended the night by watching and dancing along with an Elvis tribute concert. Nicholas was a wonderful sport the whole day, but we complete got him off his sleep schedule and haven't been able to get him back on schedule since. Nicholas just gets more and more fun as he get older!!