Mine, for now

Rob Lowe said something on Oprah today that struck a chord with me: 

"Your children are yours, and then they are the world's."

So I'm going to do my best to enjoy them now, while they still are mine, before the world takes over.

a busy april weekend

This weekend we: 

surprised Kyle's grandmother with a visit from us & almost all of his extended family on his dad's side

went to lunch with her

took Ezra for his 2 month check-up

participated in the Great Cloth Diaper Change 

met up with all his family down at the beach house where they were staying

made a trip down to the beach with two babies (not as bad as it sounds)

dyed some eggs

celebrated his grandmother's 80th birthday

went to Easter mass with my family

participated in an Easter egg hunt

ate Easter lunch with my family

and then visited with my parents and Kyle's mom for the rest of the evening. 

All of that in one weekend makes for a tired and (mostly) sleeping family right about now. 

I hope your weekend was wonderful and you were able to spend it doing something you love. 

Surprise!

The grandchildren, minus a few

Lots of diapies about to be changed

Sunscreen it up girlfran!

Aunt Katie! 

Turning a white egg green!!!!!! It was pretty exciting... :)

Finnegan boys

MY easter bunny

pretty girl, in a pretty dress, finding her some eggs

how I feel about the Georgia heat

"gama" and "bopa"

sisters

my loves <3

Atlanta in pictures

We went to Atlanta this past weekend and had ourselves a good time. 

 

(From left to right then down)

Gas prices are high so getting gas kinda hurt...

  Ezra and Cammy lounging in the car. 

Kisses from Aunt Ashley at Ikea. 

Cambria playing in the children's section at Ikea. 

Little cutie making a silly face....again, at Ikea.

This Ikea trip was not very successful and was accompanied with crying from both the kiddos.  We had to venture back on Sunday to get everything we needed, again there was more crying...

 On Saturday, we went to the Dogwood Festival in Piedmont Park for the third year in a row.  Two years ago I was pregnant, last year Cambria was 8 months, and this year we came with 2 kids!  Crazy how things change.  

Me with Clark Howard.  My sister took this so I was excited to show Kyle the picture, but he wasn't too impressed...

 

Cam playing hard at the park--->

<--- I love nursing pictures, but I especially like this one because you can see Ezra's feetsies :) 

This may be one of my favorite photos of Ezra yet.  Everyone is looking away except for him and he looks so handsome in his plaid shirt and jeans! 

<------------- Amber and Mateus = lovebirds ;)

 
2 of my pretty sisters -------------------->

Getting some shopping in at Trader Joes.

Visiting the Watsons.

Elodie + Ezra = lovebirds too :)

Being silly after her bath.  Because we got in late both nights, Cambria hadn't had a bath in two days, she was reeeeeealy dirty.

The current baby of the Dashevsky household, little Noah.

My man, lookin' cute, driving us all back home to Sa-van-van.

We had fun and look forward to our next visit in July for the Peachtree Road Race!

Video of E

Here's a video of Ezra I took yesterday during his diaper change.  I got a few little smiles and just some overall cuteness.  His almost cry face in the beginning is adorable. Cambria was hanging out with Grandma so we were able to have some fun alone time together. Enjoy! 

And I just found this video of Cambria that we took when she was almost the exact same age.  Oh how things have changed since then!!! She had so much hair which I LOVED from the second she was born, but I think Mr. Baldy is pretty darn adorable too :)

A bit about our trash

Since we started house hunting way back in the fall Kyle and I have been talking about our trash.  Well, more specifically how we couldn't wait to start recycling again and to try composting.  At almost the same time we moved into our house, Gulfstream (the company Kyle works for), began offering single-stream recycling!! This means we can throw all of our recycles into one bag with no sorting and Kyle can just drop it off in the parking lot at his work!  Our town STILL doesn't have curbside recycling which I think is sad.  My parents live out of city limits and have just this week received their new recycling trash cans and we are sooo jealous.  But really, our way is easy and convenient and it feels like a luxury compared to driving 15 minutes to a recycling dump spot like we had to do when we lived in Atlanta. 

After lots of searching, and trying out a weird futuristic trashcan for a few days and realizing it was too much, we finally found trash cans we liked.  We decided the easiest thing would be to have two cans, one for trash and the other for recycles.   So it's worked out well and we end up taking out our recycling waaaay more often than the trash.

This is not a glamorous picture, but I wanted to give a visual.. and I DO plan to make some cute labels...even if it takes a few more months :)

Shortly after moving into our house, Kyle started researching how to compost.  We wanted to start composting for two reasons- 1) to use our organic waste instead of just throwing it into a landfill and 2) to (hopefully) make some great stuff we could use for our garden (post about the garden soon).  I can't really take any credit for this compost initiative because Kyle has done all the researching, ordering of supplies, and all the dirty "dirt" work.  He used a composting method found on the blog young house love (this is an awesome blog for anyone interested in "home" anything).  Instead of buying an expensive compost barrel Kyle just bought a large plastic storage bin and drilled holes in the top and the bottom.  I'm going to show you the process in the next few pictures. 

This little compost trashcan sits underneath our sink.  We fill it with all our organic waste.  Here's a list of things you can and cannot compost, in case you're wondering.  The list surprised me!! 

Simple and easy, with a lid that neutralizes the odor.

Bags that we can compost.

Compost in the making.

Kyle moving everything around before he pours the new stuff in.

Adding all that....goodness!

Kyle then turns everything around again.  It's hard and stinky work.

He then levels it out and makes sure everything is covered.  He usually adds more soil and leaves. 

This finished product.

It's resting spot underneath our deck.

Hopefully our bin will produce some rich compost that we will be able to use in our yard and garden!  It's amazing how little trash we produce after recycling and composting.  We only need to put our trash can out every 3 or 4 weeks. 

Look how empty our can was after 2 weeks! I love it.

I love recycling and am really beginning to love composting too..It makes me feel good doing a little something nice for our precious Mother Earth. 

Update on my little guy

Jeans on a baby = the silliest thing ever and the cutest thing ever!

Our son is already 2 months old.  I've loved these last two months with him.  He really is such a sweet little guy and I feel so thankful that I was given a baby boy.  This weekend I was talking about the day Ezra was born and how on that day I felt like it was Christmas or that I had won the lottery.  I felt so lucky the I had given birth to a boy. A BOY!  Who in this world has ever been so lucky?!?! :D I know it may seem silly, but that's how I felt.  I think it may be because all I've ever known is girls, me being #2 of 4 in my family.

Ezra is a good sleeper, but he is not the sleeper that Cambria was.  At this point Cambria was just about sleeping through the night (probably an 8 hour stretch then eating then sleeping another few hours).  Up until a week ago Ezra was still waking every 3 hours to eat.  I decided to try feeding him (by breast) shortly before bedtime and then as he was falling asleep have Kyle feed him a few more ounces from the bottle.  That did the trick and he has started sleeping for a 5 to 6 hour stretch before waking up to eat again.  This weekend while in Atlanta we didn't have bottles so I wasn't able to pump and Ezra woke up every 2-3 hours.  I'm glad I've discovered the bottle solution so that doesn't happen every night.. 

This weekend was the first time Ezra hadn't slept in our bed at night.  We have a huuuuge king size bed with plenty of extra space for little E snuggled up between Kyle and me.  I loooove having him next to me all night, it's such a wonderful bonding time.  When Cambria would sleep in our bed I would sometimes worry that she would get covered with pillows or blankets or by us, but I don't have those worries with Ezra.  Our Tempur-Pedic mattress really helps to keep us (and him) in place during the night while we sleep.   This weekend he slept in a pack n' play right next to the bed and he actually did pretty well with it.  Of course he did find his way in the bed by morning time... He seemed to wake and make noises a bit more during the night but he didn't cry at all.  This makes me think he will transition out of our bed easily.  Let's hope! 

About 2 weeks ago (around 6 or 7 weeks) Ezra really started smiling and interacting more with us.  He smiles the most when he just wakes up in the morning and during diaper changes.  These first interactions and smiles are so, so, so precious to me.  I love when he locks eyes with me and we just stare at each other making noises back and forth.  It's the best! I say the same "ahhhhh goooooooooh" noise to him that I did for Cam and he seems to love it.  My mom has always said it to babies so I've always said it to mine.  I'll try and get a video of it soon. 

He farts a lot in the morning when he wakes up and pees (and poops!) all over the place.  He seems to have some sensitive skin so whenever he has his diaper-free time that boy always pees.  Always.  And even if I see that he is peeing it's really hard to direct it anywhere.  If you have a little boy you know what I'm talking about....that pee line just seems to have a mind of it's own :)

Since getting the double jogging stroller I've been taking lots of walks/runs during the day.  Well really only in the morning because it gets too freakin' hot during the afternoons on most days.  We always seem to end up at the park, but I don't mind letting Cambria play if she lets me get in a little exercise.  Ezra likes being in the stroller and looking up at the sky and the trees.  He can only hang for a few minutes before falling asleep though :) 

This post was just a little update about what's been happening with little Ezra these past few weeks.  We have his 2 month appointment on Friday and we'll get to see how much the cutie weighs.  I've finally got around to making his birth announcements and will send them out tomorrow and Wednesday.  I kept telling myself that if I didn't make them for him I would regret it so I'm glad I did.  I'll post about them once I send them all out in the mail.  Here's a picture of little Ezra taken the morning after he was born.