Kade Man

our sweet kade has not gotten enough face time on the old blog. 

so today is his day!

 

he is seriously the sweetest thing! 

the first month and a half were a little rough on all of us. poor guy had lots of tummy trouble, and was just not the happiest, but we have gotten past that and he is a totally different little guy!

he is (appears to be) much more laid back and content, than jillie was (and still is). at this age, she was starting to army crawl. kade loves to lay on his tummy, and can hold his head up great, but he is just content to just lay there watch whatever is going on. doesn't care to go any where. yet.

he just started sitting in them bumbo and likes it for about 10-15 minutes, but then he starts to get tired. (have you seen the size of his head!? can't imagine trying to hold that thing up!)

he weighs 16ish pounds. at 3 months. (how much jillie weighed at 9 months). he's large.

he also loves the bouncy seat if he's awake, and the swing to sleep in.

he is still sleeping in the bassinet in our room, because he is not yet sleeping through the night and i would rather just pick him up and feed him, rather than going to his room. jillie had just started sleeping through the night at this age. he was doing really well, but we went on vacation (more on that later). and that really messed up his sleeping. he usually eats about 9 pm, 2 am, then 7 am. so really only one night feeding (although 7 am is still night to me! haha).

he is now all formula (as of the last few days) and i'm having to really try not to be really sad. he was just so hungry all the time, and i couldn't keep up. plus he decided he only wanted bottles on vacation, and that made life difficult. so yeah, he's all formula now! it does make some parts of life easier, though.

he snores. that wasn't going to be part of my post, but he's asleep next to me right now, snoring up a storm, so i thought i would share.

he adores jillie, and she adores him even more. when i get her out of bed, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is about 10 questions about kade. "kade awake? kade night night? kade crying? kade couch? kade shoo-wee?" and this is all while we are still in her room! seeing this interact makes me more happy, that i expected. i always knew it would be fun, but i could just watch them "talk" and giggle all day!

he has started talking and cooing a ton. and giggling! he'll have to stop and catch his breath, it's so sweet!

i hear everyone has the thought, how can i love another baby as much the first? and i kind of did, but not literally. i knew i would love him, of course. but i never knew how much i would love him. not more, or less than i love jillie. just a whole new love! it's so hard to explain!

{oh that sweet face!}

i can't imagine how we did life before this guy!

Christmas =)

i took so many (as in a few hundred) pictures over the Christmas holidays, so putting together a post to cover it all was a bit daunting. so i decided to just cover our sweet little christmas at home, just the 4 of us.

i love, love, love spending the holidays with all of our families, we can't seem to get enough time with each of them, but my favorite was definitely the couple of hours we had on Christmas morning with just the 4 of us. it was so sweet,  and i just wanted to soak up each moment and detail.

 our sparkly tree! this is right out of the camera. i read on pinterest exactly what settings to put the camera on to get these results. i took tons, just playing with the settings!

santa came to see us! {we actually don't do "santa", but we also don't not do "santa". jillie doesn't get it, yet, so we're not sure exactly how we're going to tackle that. we definitely won't be like the 'oh my gosh don't even say santa!' but they'll know who the gifts are really from! =) }

jillie got a play kitchen, which she loved! she immediately walked straight to it and started "cooking". 

we bought a janky old kitchen that was falling apart at a thrift store and re-did it for j, and i love how it turned out! i like that it looks a little retro!

but she would have been just as happy with this juice box from her stocking and her new box of crayons!

she was so sweet when going through her stocking, loving each tiny thing.

the most amazing bed-head.

making cupcakes! (mema gave her lots of dishes the night before, so we brought them all out for her to cook with)

kade's Christmas breakfast.

jillie was so sweet, bringing kade his gifts, and wanting him to be excited for his new blocks and trucks.

kade man taking it all in.

she immediately filled her new backpack with all her new stocking stuffers and put it on.

kyle helping kade open his gifts.

sweet, sweet boy.

jillie was so excited for kade's gifts too.

when we were done opening gifts, she climbed up next to kade on his boppy and just laid there. i don't always love that she still has a paci too, but then i look at this picture and i love it to pieces. it's still her bit of baby-ness.

i love their sleepy morning faces.

we were so blessed this year! (we are every year!) 

i wish we could have just stayed there all day, soaking the kids up. they're both at such sweet ages, and we just can't get enough of them! i know i've used the word "sweet" so many times in this post, but that's just what Christmas morning was for us. sweet.

artist at work

jillian has enjoyed coloring, painting, crafting, etc. for awhile now, but it would usually only last like 10 minutes, then she would be on to something new.

here recently she has started loving to do anything artsy. i was playing with settings on my camera, so i needed a subject to take pictures of to practice shooting more manually (bleh), so i started taking pictures of her, she had no idea i was 2 feet from her!

 i love watching how she holds her mouth while she's concentrating!

then little man, was practicing tummy time while she colored!

 so i started taking pictures of him, and jillian wanted in on that action! (how she didn't notice me taking pictures of her, i don't know!)

we'll end on this one. kade takes a nose dive and who knows what jillie is doing!?

i kind of love the simple things that make up our every day.

give thanks

we had a wonderful thanksgiving this year! i was a little nervous about all the holiday craziness with two kiddos under two, but they did so great, and we had a great day!

we started the day at kyle's parents, with both sides of his family there.

we tried to get a few family pictures, and we were medium successful!

 

jillian always loves to give kade man a good head rub!

 and then follows it up with some kisses.

 this one might get printed up big! {poor kade though, just tossed to the side!}

 we got kade situated where he was facing the camera, then this look came from jillian and the shoot was over! it happens!

me and my sweet little chunky man.

jillian did some swinging of course!

kyle's family

all the shaver grandkids with the grandparents!

this is all the shaver side of the family!

then we went to dinner at my parent's house. (kyle's aunt had my camera at lunch, so she took a ton of great pictures, i didn't do so great at my parents!)

this is the scene you will get at my parents at any family gathering:

 {all the girls in the living room talking about super important stuff (i guess andrew was joining in)}

{and all the guys in the den watching whatever sporting event might be on}

{there is usually a "battle" where all the kids want to play in the ice. this was after everyone had left, so jillie was having a blast "breaking the rules!"}

 

then we end the night with some hank wrestling! (this picture actually makes hank look smaller than he is. he's giant!)

so that was our thanksgiving and it was great! we left the house at noon and returned at midnight, slightly exhausted. and we didn't even leave greenville!

i'm so grateful for both of our families! we love spending time with both of them, and always have so much fun when we do!