Nicolas and Emerson

I'm loving being at home with Nicolas and luckily I've got great family and friends to hang out with. My friend Caroline had her baby, Emerson, on Jan 29th, the day Nicolas should have been born, and as she lives closest to me, I see her the most. Emerson is adorable and so energetic.

We also went to the park last week with my sister-in-law Sam and her children. Caroline and Emerson came too.Then today Caroline and Emerson came round for the afternoon, and Nicolas decided that one 'girlfriend' wasn't enough....................
..........so baby Alexis came too!! She is the baby of Caroline's friend Jessica. Alexis was born 5 weeks after Emerson who was born 4 weeks after Nicolas. When I see a really little baby, I just can't wait to be pregnant again!!!

The Laser Show and Loving Leo

On Saturday night we took the kids and Jaden's friend Blake to see the laser show at Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain is apparently the largest outcrop of granite in the world and in true patriotic style some of the southern generals (I think that's who they are) have been carved on the face of the mountain. When it goes dark they have a lasers projected on the mountain and afirework show which is a lot of fun.


As usual Nicolas fell asleep and behaved like an angel. I'm so glad I got a pram and not just a stroller, because we can take him anywhere in it and he just falls asleep like he was in his bed.

Jaden, Blake and Kirsten (eating a pretzel)

Just a cute picture of what Leo has to put up with (and loves!!). When the kids are here and he's shut outside he sits at the deck doors and watches pitifully as the children play without him.

Fishing at the Park

One of the kid's favorite things is to go fishing with Daddy at the park down the road. You can fish off a little bridge and catch lots of fish, just with bread. The first time I took them they caught 4 fish in less than 10 minutes and I had to get the hooks out of them - yuk!! So now we only go fishing with Adam.

The bridge is too tall for Kirsten to see over.
The excitement was just too much for Nicolas!!
Adam has great success fishing with Kirsten's tiny pink Barbie fishing rod.
Success again with the Barbie fishing rod!
The two fish they caught have ended up in the swimming pool. They may survive as Adam used to put fish he caught in the pool when he was a child, and they lived. When the kids were using the pool strainer to try to find the fish the next day, there was great excitement as they pulled out what they thought was a lump of algae, but it was actually a dead squirrel that had turned green!!

Nicolas at 12 Weeks - Almost Seeing His Hands

Nicolas hasn't really done anything new this week, but he is starting to be aware of his hands. He looks suprised when they move past his face! He does smile all the time (unless he's tired), and loves Adam so much that he smiles for him all the time.



The weather has been gorgeous and so we've been outside alot. Nicolas loves just sitting in his chair and looking around.
We've had a couple of nights when Nicolas has been up every 30 minutes from about 3am onwards, normally when he hasn't fed well during the day. I had stopped his afternoon nap as it's hard to get him to settle, but then by 7pm he's so tired he won't feed, so he wakes up hungry in the night. Much as I love Gina Ford's routine, I have accepted that Nicolas needs an afternoon nap and he will wake up about 2-3am for a small feed and then go through to about 6am. How you get a 12 week old to sleep from 11pm to 7am is beyond me. I've tried all the things she suggests and none of them work, so I'll just let Nicolas do his thing.

The Side Deck - Before and After

We had to remortgage the house so we could afford for me to give up work, and so we decided to set aside some money to redo the deck. The old deck was original to the house, so it was about 30 years old. Since we put in the pool there was a large gap between the deck and the pool that a child could have fallen through, so we knew it needed to be replaced. It turned out much bigger than we had planned, but as I love being at home, and we always have people round, we know it will really be used.

At the side of the house there was nothing, except some holly bushes that poor Dad spent a day hacking out before the deck could go in!! This was planned as Adam's 'Man Section' of the deck for a ping pong table, but now it's built we've realise it will be a bit hard to retrieve lost balls that will land 10 feet below! It has make an unusable space usable, but we just have to decide what will use it for!

The side of the house before

The deck goes up

The back rail has bench seating on it which is a replica of the original deck's seating, which Adam loved. The side is a louvered privacy fence which looks really contemporary from the deck.

The side deck viewed from the back deck

Leo inspects the pool!

The Back Deck - Before and After

The Deck Before
The Deck Before, seen from the yard

The new deck

Nicolas Smiling and Laughing

Nothing makes me happier than seeing my baby smile. I really feel I have to make the most of his funny little smile because in a month it will be fixed and he won't look like the Nicolas we are used to. I do wonder what he will look like (probably even more like Adam), but most of the time I just don't think about it or I get scared about the operation. I'm just enjoying having a happy baby who smiles. Some of the pictures are a bit blurred because he's moving around giggling.