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The Newest Baby

The newest batch of man candy has just entered the world. Handsome, little Cole Michael Gardner arrived Tuesday, June 18, a day before he was scheduled and we couldn't have been happier to meet him!  I am one proud auntie and Cruz has a built in bestie all in one day.

Alerted by a text at the wee hour of 5am on Tuesday morning from Morgan stating, "who wants a nephew today?? Well, ready or not! We may be delivering in the next hour!"  Regardless of the fact that I was uber impressed to be having a full blown convo with her while in labor, she then breaks in and states, "heading into delivery in 5." (aka 5 minutes) Girl...get off the phone and go give me another nephew!

Well, Cole made his way into our lives at 6:06am that morning, weighing 6lbs even and 19.5in long. And He.Is.Adorable.

Cruz & Rocky waiting patiently for their newest friend.

This definitely isn't going to help me hold off his interest in knocking me up

The hunks of the 90s...introducing the studs of the 21st century

 Congrats Ross & Morgan...we are so proud of you both and love our newest little man!

The Funniest Little Dude

I cannot express just how amazing this time in our lives has been for us.  I am extremely proud every single day at the little man Cruz has become and truly enjoy every single second I get with him. Not that I didn't before this, but as I've said (and you've read plenty) we had a tough go of it back in his daycare days with him being sick literally All.The.Time. And that time for us? It sucked. Big time. We were all tired and cranky and sad he was sick and just over it.

Now? He is awesome! I find myself trying to make any excuse to get home to him as soon as I can, just to spend more time with him.

And the boy is funny. His facial expressions are hilarious and it's amazing watching him take in everything we say, do and he sees to make sense of it.

Here are a couple of the new things he's been doing:

• I suppose since we can't really give C a baby doll (let me just say I would if Nick would let me) and let him show off his "motherly" skills, he has taken it upon himself to treat his stuffed animals as babies. At any given time you can find him kisisng them, feeding them from his treat cup and giving them drinks from his sippy. And, of course, has to shout out, "mama look!" each and every time.

• I'm not sure if J has taught him this, but he has been great at saying "thank you" whenever we give him anything. Food, treats, sippys, colors, medicine....you name it and he's thankful. I love the polite skills he's showing off these days. And if it was something really good....he says it and signs it!

• And sneezing? Whether it's him or us, he shouts "bess you" when we sneeze. I feel this makes up for all the Sundays we've missed at church.

• He's started calling his dada, "Nick" when he hears me say it. I tell you this really frustrates the hubs, but I think it's hilarious...and may encourage it.  He says, "Nick, look!" and I can see the steam rolling out of dada's ears as he corrects him.

Let's just say, we've entered what has by far been the BEST time in our little man's life. I love spending each and every moment with him, just taking in what comes out of his mouth next.

Bedtime

One of my favorite times of the day with little man is bedtime. We have finally gotten such a great routine down that even I love the consistency and calmness of this time of night. It seems that with summer has come even later bedtimes. The fact that the sun is out longer, the nights are gorgeous and I just can't get enough of spending time with our fun little guy definitely doesn't help any.

Our normal bedtime is around 8:30pm to 9pm, but lately it seems we're not settling him down until 9:30pm. I don't like putting him to bed so late, but by the time I get home from work, we have dinner - or better yet he eats while I watch him toss food from his highchair to the dog - and then we play, go for a walk, take a bath...it's already 9pm.  Nick made a comment to me the other day, that really made me think broke my heart and it was something along the lines of "when you think about it, you really only get a couple hours with Cruz a day on work days. 2 1/2 to 3 max. Wow, that's crazy."  That is crazy. And sad. But true.

Three hours out of twenty-four.

Generally, I'm long gone before our sweet boy has even thought about opening his gorgeous blue eyes for the day. Depending on the day, I don't get home until 6pm and that is the earliest. No wonder I soak up every minute we have together on our days off. I can't get enough of him.

I think that is the reason I adore our bedtime routine so much. It's the time in the day where it's just him and me. Mama and my babe.

Here is what it looks like:
I say, "let's go pick out books to read before night night." He yells, "boots, boots!" Then proceeds to walk around the living room to say good night to dada, Maya, his tractors and his baseballs before he will walk into his bedroom.

Once in his room, I shut the door and Cruz walks over to his Offi dog light to switch it on while I shut off the overhead light and sit in the rocking chair. Then he makes sure his Mobi nightlight is turned on across the room and hits the button to start his dehumidifier. (I never realized how much he picked up by watching us until one night he started doing this on his own.) Then he walks over to his bookshelf and starts browsing through the books, pulling some out, deciding he doesn't want those and pushing them back into their place.

He will bring a book over to me and then walk back to the bookshelf until I ask him to come back to read with me. He will look over his shoulder and say, "one moh?"  How can I not give into that? "Yes, one more," I tell him. He grabs another book, hands it to me, climbs up on my lap and snuggles in while I wrap his baseball blanket around him. We read through the books, while he adds his commentary and makes me laugh, then I lean over and turn off his Offi dog light and tell him it's time to 'rock-a-bye.' He shifts to wrap his arm around my waist and we cuddle while I sing - yes, I sing (sorry buddy, I know it's not pretty) - either Rock-A-Bye Baby or You Are My Sunshine. I ask him if he has his eyes closed and he will reach up and touch my eyes and say "mama eyes closed?"

After some more rocking, he will be close enough to sleep that I will put him into his crib, cover him up and then he gets a good night from each of his stuffed animals - Wally the Wolf (from our Great Wolf Lodge vacay), Owlie the Owl (been part of his nursery since before he was born) and then I will tuck a Mickey Mouse and Spike, his shark from the zoo, under his arms, blow him kisses and close his door.

If we are lucky, he will go right to sleep.

Well...this is a much, much more detailed description of our bedtime routine, but what can I say? Once I got started, I just wanted to write it all out, so I would remember exactly how amazing this time is. Lord knows, it will only go so quickly.

19 Months Old!

Happy 19 months, little superhero!

What's new with Cruz...

Words - this kiddo is talking up a storm! I can hardly remember all of the new words he is saying all the time...but I'm going to try. My absolute fave has been during our mornings together - tah-kee (or coffee for us laymen) - as soon as we pull up to the Keurig he is shouting it out! "Mama tah-kee?! Cruz meelt?"

A few others:  choco meelt (milk), Mai (Maya our puggle), boo boo, bat, heet (hit), choo choo, baby (to every kid passing by), side (slide), oh man, ou-sigh (spending a tons of time outdoors these days), poo poo/pee pee (generally in the correct context), swing, airplane, helicopter, ice cream, book. Seriously, he just picks up words we say and seems to easily learn how to use them correctly. He has also started catching onto Nick and I using our real names and tends to sneak them in when he wants our attention extra bad.

Sentences - or at least more advanced words/phrases. Nanny J has taught him "Ready! Set! Go!" and he also has his own take on it with "Here. We. Gooooo!" Then, the other day we were looking for his crayons and he digs them out of the toy box and says, "found it, mama!" I had never heard him say 'found it' before but then he was using it correctly. Dang smart, my boy. We will also get a "yet's go buh-bye, mama" or

No - now this is a word that can leave his vocabulary...immediately. Not sure where he learned it I guess I know where he picked it up, but I'm not happy about it. I miss the days when everything was 'yeah.' Not only the "no" but he also has gained a bit of a strong personality, err attitude, to go along with it. That can also leave.

Colors - not only does he love coloring, but he loves talking about colors. Some days he's on, others he's not. Lately he will always start with everything being "lellow" and then "boo."  After he thinks about it he can figure out if it's red or green.

Counting - I'm not exactly sure how much counting a 19 month old should know, but I think ten is a bit of a stretch. Seriously, the day I came home to hear that he had learned to count was one of my proudest as a mother. He needs some help, but when he shouted "tiin" I just melted. Smarty pants.

Food - overall he is still a rock star eater, but I notice he's getting more of an opinion about what he will put in his mouth. Fruit continues to be a fave, as well as cheese (uh, duh), yogurt, eggs, peas, cheeseburgers. He just gets picky when he doesn't have something to dip everything in...

Not really an eating pic BUT it involves food.
(He just loves pulling food off the shelves, lining it up on the floor...
and then leaving it there for me to pick up.)

Toys - I have to say that the barn and by far the tractors that he inherited (thank you!) from the Lynch's are his most fave toys ever to date. They go everywhere with him - J even has to take them to the park and if we even think about playing outside they are coming with us.He also loves baseballs, bats, and anything he can push and pull.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but this little dude is so amazingly fantastic. I can't wait to see what another month has in store for us.

 Hugs n' kisses, monkey!

Life Lately

Well, hello there!  It's been a long time.

Life has just completely gotten away from me lately with loads of things going on at work...which has resulted in no time to blog. And I just hate when that happens. It just stresses me out because I want to share so much of what is going on with little man because he has just been crazy fun these last few months and I just haven't had time to document it. Well that, my friends, is going to change.

So what have we been up to:

•Well for me work, work and more work. We finally opened the new casino - it's so great to see all of efforts from the past 8 months come to fruition and the finished product is amazing. And I'm just happy to not be working 12+ hour days six days a week for a while. Can I get an amen to that?

•As a result I've completely neglected anything that resembles my health and well-being. My eating habits have been crap, I've maybe ran 10 miles the past month, I've probably consumed a gallon of wine (hmm, is this really THAT bad of a thing?), my abs haven't seen a crunch since April and my sleep schedule has went to shit. Wow, just reading that I disgust myself! I'm getting back on track starting today. I mean, I have to. I have no energy, I'm back to drinking a daily pop in the afternoon and my body just hates me. Moving on....

•Little man is as awesome as ever. Seriously. I just want to spend every waking moment with him because he is just so dang funny..and learns something new every day. More to come on him...I also have to finish his 19 month update, which was on Thursday....super fail.

•We just had a rock star weekend in KC for the Kenny Chesney / Eric Church concert. This is our 6th time seeing Kenny and was as good as ever. There is nothing like country music to put me in the mood for drinking, dancing and summertime. Another epic weekend in the books.

Bad pic quality but fun times

•There is nothing that disappoints me more then coming home from a fun weekend, except for the fact that I know get to look forward to only working 3 days this week and then my sis and I head to LA for a long weekend of sister fun. I seriously  am looking forward to this trip more than anyone will ever know. Be sure to follow us on Insta for what is sure to be picture overload :)

Thanks for sticking around. I will make sure I get my act together and I'm back to oversharing about our little life soon!