Lexi at 1 month

Weight: Approximately 11 lbs

Height: 22"

Diaper Size: 1

Number of Chins: 2

Eye Color: Dark grey/blue

I can't tell you how much we are enjoying this new little one. I had forgotten how much I LOVE newborns. Joseph and I fight over who gets to hold her at church or when we sit down to watch a movie. She is just pure sweetness. She is generally content to sit in her bouncer and watch the world in between naps. About twice a day, she demands to be held. Usually she likes to be held for about two hours in the morning and two hours at night. Of course we love to snuggle with her every chance we get, but sadly we usually need both our hands to manage Nicholas and the messes he makes. I think she somehow realizes that so she usually demands to be held when Nicholas isn't awake. She is pretty mild mannered. Even the pediatrician commented that she wasn't a fussy baby. She never cries when she is being held unless she is hungry.

Special Talents:

• Nicholas made coughing noises and grunts. Lexi makes squeaks and clicks.
• Making funny faces.
• She enjoys tummy time if you sit and pat her back while she does it.
• At 3 weeks, she started smiling at us on purpose and even started to laugh. Her laugh is just a little, "Ha."
• Going to the bathroom during diaper changes. It doesn't matter how prepared I am, she always manages to make some sort of mess at least once a day:)
• Making LOTS of messy diapers.
• She has a little tuft of long hair on the top of her head that likes to stick up like Alfalfa.

Things She Doesn't Like:

• Wardrobe changes are traumatic.
• She doesn't like her diaper changed, but she is coming to terms with that.
• She doesn't really like using a pacifier. She will suck on it for a minute or two when she is really hungry, but that is about it.

Sleeping:

• For the first 3 1/2 weeks of her life, she wouldn't go longer than 3 hours between feeding. Now she is going up to 4 hours between feedings at night.
• She likes to hang out and be held by Mama or Papa between 10 pm and 1 am.
• She sleeps better swaddled, but she also likes to sleep with her hands by her face.
• She sleeps either in her vibrating bouncer or in her crib.

Nov. 25-Lexi at the mall watching ice skating and the big tree lighting ceremony at the Galleria.

Nov. 25- Joseph admiring Lexi.

Lexi playing store with Nicholas. Nicholas gives her lots of play food to hold.

Nov. 13- Lexi all dressed up and ready to go to church.

Lexi spends a large part of her day looking like this.

Nov. 6- Lexi and Nicholas all dressed up after church.

Nov. 8- Lexi is all dressed up and ready to go to playgroup. This was our second big outing with just me and the kids. We went to the movie theater to see Lion King. It wasn't a very successful outing. Nicholas talked through the whole first part of the movie. He loudly named every animal he saw and announced when the animals were being "not nice." He then proceeded to wander the theater. He enjoyed touching all the lights that lined the aisle and flipping seats. Lexi then decided that she wanted to eat so we ended up leaving.

Who Do I Look Like?

I am the worst at figuring out who a child looks like. I think Lexi looks just like Nicholas when he was born, except with less dark hair. You be the judge.

Lexi at 2 weeks. She is dressed in the same outfit my parents took me home from the hospital in.)

Nicholas at 2 days old.

Me (Maren) at 3 days old.

Sadly, I don't have a baby picture of Joseph yet.

Nicholas at 25 months

*Photo from Nicholas' 2 year photo shoot. I don't know how to flip it so just turn your head.

Weight: 32.5 lbs

Height: Approximately 33.5 inches

Clothing Size: He is in 3T to 4T tops and 2T bottoms

Big Events in the Past Month:

• Nicholas is a BIG BROTHER: A lot of people have asked how Nicholas is liking being a big brother. For the most part, Lexi has been pretty easy for Nicholas to ignore. When he remembers he has a sister, he is very nice and soft. He will lay down by her and say, "Hi Lexi! Hi Lexi! Hi Lexi! Hi Lexi." We have tried to have him hold her for pictures, but before we can snap one he will start standing up and say, "All done." His favorite part about Lexi is that he finds it funny that Lexi will burp after she eats. Sharing Mom is the hard part of being a big brother. When I have to feed Lexi, Nicholas will say in a super sad voice, "Mama back. Mama back." He also hates it when I use the nursing cover. The first time I used the nursing cover he forgot Lexi was behind it and he ran over and jumped on Mom. We all gasped and Lexi let out a cry. We didn't yell at him, but our startled reaction let him know that he had done something bad. His little tender heart was broken and he melted into tears. It took awhile to calm him down.
• Nicholas now sleeps in a big boy bed: Grandmother Muhlestein let Nicholas go to the store and we picked up new sheets for his bed and a waterproof mattress protector for his birthday. We then dug up a Dalmatian comforter that use to be Uncle Morgan's and that Joseph had stolen from his house. Nicholas loves his new "puppy" bed and went to sleep happily in it. The first night he didn't fall out. The second night he fell out three times. Since then, he hasn't fallen out. The bed is up on risers so it is quite the drop. He sometimes has problems falling asleep and will come out. Grandmother Muhlestein was smart and told him that he would lose his binkie if he kept coming out of his bed. He has been better to stay in it since then. Our next battle will be about giving up the binkie.
• Nicholas had his Grandparents visit: Nicholas LOVED having all his grandparents come. (Almost as much as I enjoyed it.) He was very friendly and loved going with them. He is thankfully past his SUPER clingy stage. Now he is smart enough to know that he will have more fun if he goes with his grandparents.

Favorite Foods:

• Hot Dogs (Nicholas ate more hot dogs with ketchup then I can count while his grandparents were here.)
• Applesauce
• Chocolate Pudding
• Ice Cream

Favorite Activities:

• Fuzzy Balls (A colors game where he has to sort the fuzzy balls by color.)
• Visiting Ozzie (Ozzie is the next door neighbors dog. The dog has a doggy door and can go in and out as he pleases. Nicholas will yell VERY loud and Ozzie will come out to the fence and lick Nicholas' hands. Nicholas will have long conversations with Ozzie about all sorts of things from telling him about his new baby sister to discussing what Ozzie likes to eat.)
• Dumping out things.
• Playing with Grandmother's and Grandfather's ipads
• Running "SUPER FAST" with airplane arms
• Playing in his sandbox
• Swinging
• Playing hide-and-seek
• Building forts
• Building tall towers, stairs, and airplanes with his blocks
• Coloring and drawing letters.

Skills:

• Nicholas can count to 10; however, he often says, "1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10. Yeah!!"
• He knows his letters and most of their sounds.
• He is still working on learning his colors. He knows blue, yellow, and orange pretty well.
• He is quite the talker!! He is putting together surprising long sentences now.

Nicholas getting his hair cut by Papa. It requires A LOT of M&Ms to get him to sit still and cooperate.

Nicholas frosted his first cookie at playgroup. He loved it almost as much as finger painting. He enjoyed covering the turkey in red frosting and dumping on sprinkles. He kept on saying, "I make messes. I make messes." He was also one of the few kids that actually ate their cookie and not just the frosting.

We bought some glow sticks and put one in a balloon. After the balloon popped, we played hide-and-seek with the glow stick. Nicholas loved waving it around and took it on the swing. After playing outside, he took it in the bath and had a bath with the lights off. He finished off the day by taking the glow stick to bed with him. Oh to be a two year old again and be happy with the simple things in life.

This is Nicholas' fuzzy ball game that Grandma made for the him.

This is Nicholas talking to Ozzie, the next door neighbor's dog.

Nicholas in his puppy bed on the first night. You can see his stuffed puppies, three blankets, and two binkies that he insists on sleeping with every night.

Halloween

Nicholas had a lot of fun learning about Fall and Halloween. He went to his first pumpkin patch. He pushed and rode around in a wagon. He had a long talk with a horse. (I tried to record it, but it was too windy to hear what he was saying.) We also took a hay ride.

Due to Lexi's arrival, we didn't put much thought/time into our Halloween costumes this year. Joseph and I went as Woodstock performers. Nicholas went as a rain cloud since the first Woodstock had intermittent showers. He had a spray bottle for rain and a flashlight for sun. Lexi didn't dress up. She stayed home with Grandmother Muhlestein while we went to a friend's party.

I did decorate our front porch, but we didn't get out the fog machine this year. Nicholas LOVED putting all the spiders in the spider web.

We had some friends over and carved pumpkins. Nicholas loved cleaning out the pumpkin with the "pumpkin shovel." Joseph carved a haunted house into our pumpkin while I supervised Nicholas.

We carved the pumpkin about four day before Lexi was born. By the time I was feeling better, I discovered that our pumpkin was as furry as a black cat inside. Carved pumpkins have a short life down here in Texas.

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!!