Aly turned 5 months old on April 17th.  It has been a busy last few weeks for us.  We spent Easter at the cabin in Duluth with Jon & Beth.  We visited Great Grandma Luikart on Good Friday.  It was fun to see her as well as Great Aunt Lola and Great Uncle Dutch.  Noah enjoyed doing an Eater Egg hunt at Virginia’s Place.  We went to church early on Easter morning and enjoyed at nice pancake breakfast at the church.  Beth made an excellent Easter Lunch.  Noah had fun playing with the Lisi kids and doing another Easter Egg Hunt.

We started feeding Aly rice cereal at dinner time when she turned 5 months old.  She is much more enjoyable in the evenings now.  The cereal helps fill her up until bedtime.  She has started sleeping much better now.  I put her on a 3 hour feeding schedule during the day.  She eats around 10:30pm when Jay and I go to bed and then is able to go until 6am when she wakes up.  She usually only wakes up a couple of times at night and falls back to sleep if you go in and check on her.  She started sitting on her own at 5 months and started rolling around.

The rest of April flew by.  Jay finished up his 1st year of school on May 4th.  We are both excited to be spending the summer together.  The kids and I came with Jay for his last day of school.  We stayed with Great Uncle Tim and Great Aunt Laura.  Jay and I were able to go on a pedal pub in Minneapolis for his friends birthday on that Saturday.  Tim, Laura, and Marta graciously watched the kids for us.  We are pretty sure Tim, Laura, and Marta had fun watching the kids.

Noah has been doing well.  He loves playing with his cars and being outside.  He is talking more and more every day.  He usually wakes up at 6am and helps Jay get ready for work while I feed Aly.

Wow, 2 years has gone by way too quick.  Noah celebrated his 2nd birthday on March 28th.

We actually celebrated Noah’s birthday a day early because he had swimming lessons on his birthday.  Jay and I made and decorated a train cake the night before for Noah.  While Noah was napping I decorated with streamers and a Sesame Street Banner.  Jay brought home some balloons (most of which are still inflated).  We made homemade pizza for dinner.  This is one of Noah’s favorite meals.  Noah enjoyed opening presents. Noah’s highlight of the evening was eating his train cake.

On Noah’s actual birthday he had a fun day playing with his new toys.  When dad got home from work Noah and him went to swim lessons and came home exhausted.

It is fun thinking back to 2 years ago when Noah was born.  He isn’t the little baby he was then.  He is talking and running around like the energizer bunny now.  He loves to imitate dad working outside and fixing things and likes to help mom cook.  Hopefully this next year is as exciting and fun as the last 2.

We’ve had another busy month here in the Luikart house.  We celebrated my birthday in early March, potty trained Noah, and had Aly’s baptism.

We celebrated my 30th birthday by going out for a good old Wisconsin fish fry.  They we enjoyed a cake Noah picked out at the grocery store for me.  It was a fun day.

That same weekend we decided to give potty training a go since Jay was home all weekend.  Noah did well and had picked up what to do by the 2nd day.  We made it through church that weekend with no accidents.  Noah and I are both happy he is out of diapers.  He still has accidents here and there.  But, we are very proud of him!

Last weekend we celebrated Aly’s baptism.  My mom and sister were able to fly in from Columbus, Ohio.  Paul, Kristen, Natalie, Jon, and Beth also traveled up to celebrate with us.  It was a fun weekend and Aly did great at her baptism.  Noah was sad to see everyone go.

Last week Jay was in Arkansas for a work trip.  The kids and I missed him tons.  Luckily the weather was nice.  So, we were able to get outside every day.  It was a long week without Jay and we were happy to see him on Saturday night.

Aly had her 4 month check-up today.  She is 63% for height and weight.  She was 24.6″ and 14 lbs 6 oz.  The doctor was impressed with her strength and head control.

Well, yet another month has flown by.  Aly has moved into Noah’s room.  They are getting use to being roommates.  Noah usually sleeps through Aly crying.  But, Aly,  sometimes wakes up when Noah cries.  Aly is becoming more and more alert every day.  She is getting pretty close to rolling from her back to her stomach.  She has made it to her side several times.  Noah has been a handful lately.  I think he is anxious for spring.  We try to get outside and play when Aly is napping.  However, he still doesn’t understand that he needs to let Aly sleep if he wants mom to play with him one-on-one.

Jay and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary this month.  One of Jay’s co-workers watched the kids and we were able to have dinner in town.  It was nice to sit, relax, and talk to one another.

Jay has been busy with school, homework, and work.  He is anxious for his summer break.  He is counting down the days until he is finished with school.  Every few weeks he updates me with how much he has left.  The kids have been missing him more and more lately.  Indy gets antsy before Jay gets home and barks at every little sound.  This in turn get Noah excited.  He keeps asking, “Daddy Home?”  Aly also misses Jay.  She tends to smile and cuddle more with him in the evenings.

I have been staying busy with sewing, cleaning, and exercising.  Recently I made Noah some pajama pants and made Aly’s baptism gown.  Next week I will start running again because I will be running Grandma’s Half Marathon in June.

Another month has flown by.  Aly is now 2 months old.  At her 2 month check-up she was 11 lbs 12 0z (77%) and 23″ (77%).  She has very good head/neck control.  The doctor commented that if she didn’t know it, she would guess Aly is a 4 month old baby.

We are getting into more of a routine at home.  We usually go to a couple playgroups during the week now.  Noah is always happy to get out and he usually naps better if he gets to run around.  He has been a chatter box lately (some of which I can’t understand).  He is taking more of an interest in singing and listening to dad playing guitar.

Aly loves to watch her brother play.  She usually eats, sleeps, then wakes up and plays for a bit before its time to eat again.  She eats about every 3 hours still.  She wakes up a couple of times a night to eat.

Indy has been escaping to play with the neighbor kids lately.  Its alright unless you need to go somewhere and you have to walk across the lake to bring her home.  I guess we aren’t giving her enough attention.

Jay has been busy with school and work.  Most nights he gets in home in time for dinner.  Which, is quickly followed by bath time and then bed.  Unfortunately he sees the kids at their crabbiest time of day.

I have been catching up on housework, pictures, and of course sleep.  Most nights I fall asleep on the couch while Jay is working on homework.

Next month should be busy.  I keep reminding Noah that Aly will be moving in with him in a few weeks.

I want to share an image I recently shot – it’s been a while since I’ve shot something I’m really happy with.  I’ve been busy with school, work, and kids so time has been at a premium to shoot anything except something related to kids.  I did however get a chance to shoot sunrise on New Years Eve day while we were up in Duluth visiting my parents.  The morning didn’t look like it’d be great, but turned out to be pretty good light right around sunrise, which then quickly went away and turned into a grey boring day.  Here’s the shot.

Aly is getting bigger fast – time is really flying by.  They say the first 6 weeks is the hardest, then they say the first 3 months, then 6 months, then blah blah blah.  Being this is our second kid we had a bit better idea what to expect.  Aly is different than Noah in a lot of ways.  She seems to be eating and sleeping a lot better, more content in general.  Noah was really skinny, Aly is more like other babies we’ve seen.  She is seeming to get skinner already than she had been at her 1 month checkup, but we’ll see in a few weeks how she’s tracking.  Already she looks a lot different than she did before.

She’s really started to make faces, smile, and stuff like that lately.  She’s also started wanting to stand up on her legs (supported at least).  She really enjoys it and you can feel her pushing herself to do it.  She even ended up rolling over from her belly to her back during tummy time a couple times yesterday.  It’s pretty neat to see her do that, I’m excited for every advancement because we know how much fun it’ll be once she’s moving around more and stuff.

Noah is a good big brother to her.  He’s really gentle at times, giving her kisses & hugs.  Other times he doesn’t like not getting the attention and acts out a bit.  I think it’s the worst when it’s just Kris watching the kids and she’s feeding Aly.  Noah doesn’t like not having the attention. Overall though, he’s a great big brother to her.  It’ll be fun watching them grow up together.

She really likes her baths, it’s pretty often a hectic time of night when it’s bath time, but usually I take Noah and do his bath, during that time Kris is giving Aly her bath.  Noah usually likes to help with Aly, so he’ll take a cotton ball and help wash her head or something like that.  I’m not sure how she’d get clean without him.

After her bath, she looks cute.

Here’s Mom & Noah from today, Kris wants me to tell you guys she was very tired.

She’s a little young to have this really work, but already Indy likes her quite a bit.

Tummy time again!

This Christmas we headed home to Columbus. It was a great trip, really great to get to see everybody. It was a long drive, so we ended up taking one day, driving to IL, then the second day driving the rest of the way. We did pretty well in the car when we drove early in the day – later in the day ends up being a crying competition between the 4 of us.

Before we left, we let Noah open a few of his presents from us so we didn’t have to take all of them. He had a great time with them, and for the first time was really into ripping the paper off.  It is fun enough watching him that I want to just give him a bunch of little boxes next time with paper on them to unwrap.

Once we were in Columbus, we had a great meal with the family – some of Kris’ brothers and sisters had to work on the holiday, so the schedule worked best to have the big meal on Friday.  It was fun.  Noah discovered the tree at Grandpa’s house, and had fun with all the toys that they have.  He had a blast with his cousins Owen and Adyln.  Owen and Noah end up running around playing with each other a lot, they seem to like the same sorts of things.  Noah liked the dogs – Mike has a Springer Spaniel named Bob and they’ve got a little mini mini collie named Polly.  She’s the same type of dog we had growing up (and Kris too), just seems like she stopped growing.  She’s really little, but Noah loved chasing her around.  Aly did really well with everybody, she’s been pretty content so far with things.

Here’s Owen (Lacey is holding him), you can see Ady and Michelle in the back.

Here’s Noah enjoying some presents from Grandma Mehling:

It was a really fun trip – we headed back after I cooked breakfast for Sam.  He’d worked all night on Christmas Day into his birthday (12/26), so we got up early and made chocolate chip pancakes.  They were really good, I cooked them with the largest cast iron pan I’ve ever seen.

Aly is officially 1 month old. The month has gone by very quick. She has been a very good baby. She seems to mostly eat and sleep. She usually gets fussy in the evening before bed. But, that is pretty much it. She is growing like a weed. Her height is 22″ (80%), her weight is 10 lbs 6 oz (79%), and her head is 37.2″ (50%).

We gave Aly her 1st bath after Thanksgiving. Noah is great at helping with the bath. He uses cotton balls to help clean Aly off.

Noah is getting use to having Aly around. He still gets jealous when I am trying to feed her. Hopefully that will subside over time. I have been trying to play outside with him in the afternoons while Aly is napping. He really likes the snow (just like his dad). He went sledding for the 1st time a couple of weeks ago.

Jay has been excellent at helping out. I went out by myself for the 1st time since Aly was born last week. I had my hair cut and went shopping for Aly. It was nice to spend some time by myself. Jay is learning his way around the kitchen more. He helped cook dinner the other night and did the dishes. He had to wear Noah in the backpack to keep him occupied.

Noah is getting excited for Santa. We went to the library to see Santa this year. Noah and Aly both did excellent. It helped that Santa handed out candy. This year we will be heading to Columbus for Christmas. We will be stopping in Bourbonnais on the way down and the way back to break up the trip.

We were able to take some newborn pictures of Alyssa while we were at the cabin. She is doing well. She was up to 8 lbs 4 oz at here 1 week old appointment. She is sleeping a lot and getting use to having a noisy brother around. She doesn’t seem to mind tummy time yet and is able to hold her head up for short periods of time.