We Love Halloween!

Halloween was a whirlwind this year! Mommy finished sewing the costumes just in time, and we spent the day traveling to Daddy's work, Gma and Gpa Ostlers, and then finished the night off with a chili dinner and trick-or-treating at Gma and Gpa Wilde's house. We had so much fun! Sophie dressed up as a Monarch butterfly and Max was a dragon. Max was quick to point out that, "I'm a nice dragon Mommy, not a scary one." He called his costume "My Halloween." All day long he kept asking," Mom, can I take off my Halloween yet?" I think the hat bugged him.

Visiting Daddy's Office

The highlight of the night for Max was answering the door at Grandma's house. He liked this better than actually trick-or-treating himself. Each time the doorbell rang he would exclaim, "Grandma! Hurry! There's some more peoples here!" What fun memories!

Max's Preschool Halloween Party & Parade

Pumpkin Patch

I planted pumpkins again this year, but for some reason not a single pumpkin grew. I suspect it was because Mommy didn't weed enough. A newborn does not allow much time for gardening. Oh well, Sophie's worth it!

This year we headed over to Rosewood Gardens pumpkin patch to let Max pick out some pumpkins for our front porch. We had a blast! There were hundreds of pumpkins everywhere and Max kept loading pumpkin after pumpkin into our cart. (Daddy and Mommy carefully unloaded while he wasn't looking.) We had so much fun that I think we'll make it a new family tradition.

5 months old

My little Sophie is 5 months old already. I know it's cliche, but how time flies! It feels like she was born just a few days ago. Sophie is the sweetest, happiest, most content baby I've ever known. She is 13 lbs, 10 oz and 24 " long already. She just started eating rice cereal and a few baby foods. Messy, messy, messy, but we love it. Sophie still only has about 5 hairs on top of her head ... but I think they're getting longer!

First Day of Preschool

Oh my goodness, how is it possible that my baby is going to preschool? Max just started preschool and LOVES it. He looked so cute all decked out in his new school clothes, new school haircut, and Thomas the Train backpack. I walked him to school and he didn't even get nervous to stay without me. He was too busy with the trains and blocks to even wave goodbye. Max is learning about colors and shapes and families right now. His favorite activities are playing in the sand table, painting, Play-Doh, and gymnastics on Thursdays. If you ask him what his favorite part of preschool is he says, "My friends." It's official, my baby boy is growing up!

Sophie's Blessing

We finally blessed Sophie at the end of August. She was already 3 months old, but I was hoping she'd grow a little more so she would fit into her dress. I didn't know I'd have such a petite little girl! Steve gave her a beautiful blessing and as usual I got a little weepy and sentimental. Something about baby blessings are special to me. I feel so incredibly blessed to have Sophie be a part of our family. She looked like an angel in her blessing dress. I made it as a part of my Sterling Scholar portfolio way back in High School when she was still but a dream. I know, Home Ec is terribly geeky but I still love that kind of stuff. Thank goodness I had a girl to wear my little masterpiece!

Sun Valley

We had a great time on our annual trip to Sun Valley. A potty training toddler made the drive especially interesting. Max quickly learned that if he said he needed to go potty, we stopped at a gas station, got out, and Daddy usually bought us a treat or a drink. Needless to say it took us almost 2 1/2 hours longer than normal to get there. But it was all worth it. We spent the week lounging around, cooking fun dinners, shopping, hanging out at the pool, and just enjoying being together as a family.

English Photos

We had pictures of Sophie and Max taken by English Photography a few weeks ago. Holy cow, having pictures taken is a lot of work! By the time you have everyone properly napped, bathed, hair combed, clothes ironed, fed, and happy, I'm exhausted. But all that hard work paid off, I think. The photographer posted a few sneak previews for us on her blog and I can't wait to see the rest.

Summer Fun Update

It's been a long time since I've done a blog, but life with a newborn and a 2 year old doesn't leave me with much spare time. But here are a few pics to let you know what we've been up to this Summer...

We visited the foutains at the Gateway and Max has never had so much fun in his entire life. After two hours Max still didn't want to leave. Mommy and Sophie, on the other hand, were so hot we could have died!

Another Saturday afternoon was spent exploring the Childrens Museum at the Gateway. Max especially loved playing with the car and pretending he was a cashier at the grocery store. He told one little boy that his groceries would be $1,000. Whoa! I hope Max gets a cut on that hefty profit.

We spent a fun day at Snowbird with our good friends the Barneys. The tram ride to the top of the mountain was a highlight for Max. When we got off at the summit it was only 45 degrees and very windy. Brr! Thank goodness Daddy let Mommy wear his jacket. Max ran around the rocky cliffs like a wild maniac and made Mommy so nervous. (I'm terribly afraid of heights!)

This is a picture of Max and his cousin Alesia at Nicole's wedding. Does it get any cuter than that? Oh, this one tugs at my heartstrings.

Blue Cupcakes

Max and I have been sequestered in the house while potty training for almost two weeks now. It's going really well, knock on wood, but we're both getting a bit antsy and bored. Today we decided to make cupcakes. There's a new gourmet cupcake store in town called So Cupcake and I've been craving one of their beautiful and tasty creations for quite some time. At $2.50 each (ouch!), I figured Max and I could make our own. It couldn't be that hard, right? Heck, I make cupcakes all the time.

Max and I quickly baked up the cupcakes. This was the easy part. Next we moved on to the frosting. I let Max pick the color and he really wanted to make the frosting blue. Blue cupcakes? Well okay, why not?! I'll tell you why not. It's really hard to make blue icing look right. As hard as I tried it just came out purply-gray and sickly looking. In a last ditch effort I added some green food coloring and that just turned it a very unappetizing teal. I figured I'd better quit before it got worse, so we were stuck with teal frosting. Besides, the sprinkles would hide the odd color of the frosting, right?

So on we went to the decorations. I loaded the frosting into a pastry bag so we could get big beautiful swirls like they have at So Cupcake. Let me just tell you, it is harder than you'd guess to make the icing look professional. My arm was actually shaking! I'm blaming my pathetic frosting job on the pastry tip. Clearly that was the problem.

Next I let Max decorate with all different kinds of sprinkles. Oh boy! We ended up with more sprinkles on the floor than on the cupcakes. I kept chasing those dreadful little balls all around the kitchen with my broom. They may never all come up. After all was said and done my gourmet cupcakes look anything but gourmet. But what do you expect with a two year old for a sous chef?

Max was so excited when I told him he could eat a cupcake. With a mouthful of cake he sighed and said, "how wonderful," and then gave me a high five. Then he promptly stuck his beloved plastic dinosaur on the top of a cupcake and declared, "Dinosaur is climbing a mountain!" See, that's SO much better than any store bought cupcake, even if they are much more beautiful than mine.

Potty Training is Hard Work!

Max woke up from his nap yesterday and announced that he wanted to sit on his potty and wear his "big boy pants." Hooray! We've tried several stabs at potty training, but have been fairly unsuccessful. I'd given up because Max was not interested at all. I guess it just needed to be his idea. So, after 2 hours of cartoons, 6 Otter Pops, and countless glasses of Diet Coke later ... da da da ... pee pee in the potty!!! Yes, I his mother, let Max eat as many Otter Pops, drink as much Diet Coke, and watch as many cartoons as he wanted all day long. So sue me. Any bribe to sit on the potty is okay with me at this point. (Hey, the Diet Coke was caffeine free, I swear!)

Later that day I went into the kitchen to start dinner, and when I came back Max was fast asleep on the floor with his little bare bum hanging out in the breeze. Apparently potty training is hard work! (Mommy thinks it is too. If I have to say, "Let's go try and sit on the potty!!" in my ridiculously happy and enthusiastic voice one more time today I just might croak!) Anyway, we had 5 successes and only a couple accidents, so I'd say we're well on our way!

So, it's been a month or so since Sophie was born, and we're slowly getting into the swing of things. I've stopped writing blog entries at 4:00 in the morning...but it hasn't stopped me from being awake at that hour. Poor Max really struggled for the first couple of weeks after Sophie came home. Whether it was a summer cold, or simply getting used to a new addition to the family, he really seemed to have trouble sleeping and would wake up every few hours in tears. Those first few days, between Sophie and Max, Mom and Dad didn't get much sleep at all. It's a wonder we got her birth announcements out on time! (I included some pictures of them below).


















As the month has progressed, however, everyone seems to be getting back to normal. By some sheer stroke of luck Sophie turns out to be a pretty good sleeper. (Hooray!) Aside from one or two feedings a night, she spends most of her time with eyes shut tight, deep in sleep. Max, too, is sleeping through the night again. He is such a cute kid. Every night we read him 3 or 4 stories (his current faves are "Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day", "Green Eggs and Ham", and "Nobody Notices Minerva") and then sing a song or two. Each night after we have finished reading and singing I give him a big hug and a kiss, and make sure he's tucked in. Then (invariably) he will look up at me and say, "Daddy check on me?" This is his way of making sure that Daddy will come back in 15 or 30 minutes and check on him to make sure he's doing okay. Gosh I love that kid.

In other tales of cute Max, the neighbor kids were at our house the other day playing on the swings. They had brought some toy cars over, and Max was fascinated. He kept saying, "I have one? I have one?" The kids didn't wan't to share, so he got an idea. He ran over to his toys and got a toy keychain (it makes noises like a car when you push the buttons) and toted it over to the kids and said, "Share my keys!" He figured if he shared his keys with them, they'd share the cars with him. What a sweetheart.

First blog post ever

Well~here goes! As a geek, I suppose it's time to join the world of blogging. It's currently 4:15 in the morning and I am trying to hunt-and-peck out keys, while my other hand gently rocks my baby girl to sleep. That probably means that that this post will be very short. In lieu of typing a big story, I think I'll let some pictures speak my thousand words. So without further ado, here is Sophie Margaret Ostler, born May 21, 2008 at 8:50 a.m.; coming in at 6 lbs 9 oz and nearly 21 inches long. (Click on the pictures for a larger view of them).