the nelson crew

week in phone pics..

2012-02-03T11:17:00.001-06:00

i have never wanted a iphone, but i will say, i am very jealous of the camera on them! the camera on my phone is no bueno. takes like 3 seconds after you press the button! literally. but i still take lots of pictures on it, because it's so easy to just whip it out, rather than go get the big camera.

so here's some random shots from the week..

we went on a family date to lowes and "chick a ay" for an ice cream cone, and jillie to play on the play ground. me and little brother hanging out while j and daddy play.

i was sitting in the living room and j was in the kitchen, and i hear her say "mommy, i see you!" and looked over and saw this peeking over the half-wall.

a common sight in our house. jillie doing crazy things to entertain kade. although he looks a little scared here!

the weather was so nice, we got to go on a walk and play outside! j is a little high maintenance and needed like 5 toys before we could go.

kade's first time in the swings outside. papa built us a swing set, but the weather has been yucky so we haven't been able to use them, but now they will be getting a lot of quality time!

jillie loves to swing/spin on her belly, but she usually hits the pole then says "ohh, my pace!" (face)

jillie has two shopping carts, so we took one outside - she thinks it's the greatest thing ever to have one outside.

i don't even mess around when i'm shopping!

she never looks comfortable to me sleeping, but whatever works! i should have taken a pic of her whole bed, to show how many blankets and animals she sleeps with. whatever gets her to sleep! and when she wakes up, she has lots of friends to play with while i get some extra sleep!

we have started trying time out with jillian. i think discipline is a lot of trial and error to see what works for each child. this particular incident was for putting toys in the toilet. yes. so she had to sit there till i mopped up all the water and washed the toys off. having to sit still is super hard for her, so this may be an effective tool! when she got up we talked about what she had done:
me: ok, jillie, now why did you have to go to time out?
j: i pooped. (she did before the toy incident)
me: no, you didn't have to go to time out because you pooped, you had to because you played in the potty. do we play in the potty?
j: no!!!
me: that's right. now what do you say for playing the potty?
j: sorry kade!!! (and runs over to give kade a hug).
i guess it worked???

the kids were just being sweet laying next to each other on the couch. love both of their expressions here!

right now we are really working with jillie on cleaning up. oh my, it's not the easiest task. it would be so much easier and faster to just do it myself, but i want her to learn. this is the bookshelf after she worked on it for a solid 15 minutes. the funny thing is, there were only like 3-4 books on the floor and she picked them up in 10 seconds, but then she kept moving and rearranging the bookshelf to get it just perfect!

so convicting..

2012-01-21T23:41:00.000-06:00

ok, so i rarely post anything on here that isn't a cute picture/story about the kids, but, i've been totally consumed by a blog i found this past week.

this sweet 2 year old boy, tripp roth, passed away last week, after battling a rare skin disease from birth (epidermolysis bullosa). the disease causes his skin to be soo thin and sensitive, that the tiniest bit of friction or even temperature causes terrible blisters and sores. his mom kept a blog all about the day to day life, caring for him, because the disease is so rare, very few people know anything about it.

tripp's mom, courtney is a believer, and her faith and trust in God is unreal. she truly believed tripp was given to her for a reason, and even though their life was so impossibly hard, if his purpose was to bring more people to God, that's what they had to fight for!

i just read and cried sad, happy, thankful, guilty and every other emotion tears.

it has seriously changed my point of view and attitude of motherhood. i love love love being a mom. since i can remember, all i wanted to do was be a mom. and i still know that is exactly what God wants for me, but i think everyone still has days, when you're just tired and discouraged at the same time. both jillian and kade have been battling terrible colds that they just cannot kick, and it has just been exhausting.

then i read about this sweet boy and his mom, and all they go through, and i realize i do not have a clue what a true "hard day" is.

so now on days when jillian is just being crazy, i have to stop and be thankful that she can walk, run, talk and laugh, even when she can test your patience like the best of them! and when kade is super fussy, i have to be thankful that he can even cry, smile, and giggle.

so yeah, if you want to read her blog, take a huge box of tissues! and just so you know, as tripp reached the end of his journey, his poor little body was so consumed with EB. it's so heartbreaking!

Kade Man

2012-01-12T00:26:00.001-06:00

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 =)

2012-01-12T00:02:00.000-06:00

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

2011-11-29T13:51:00.001-06:00

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

2011-11-28T11:27:00.000-06:00

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!

pj playtime

2011-11-15T22:22:00.000-06:00

kade is starting to be so much more alert, and responsive to us. really staring intently and smiling at us. And jillian is loving it! she thinks she has a whole new friend!

i just love to watch them interact now! jillian will bring him a ton of toys, and pile them on him (somewhat safely with supervision) and then just talk to him, play patty-cake, and dance for him. it's so great.

most of this happens in the mornings, because that's when they're both the happiest (their mom needs to catch on to this!)

so that's where the name "pj playtime" comes from. (but to be honest, we're usually all in our pj's until we leave the house most days, which is when kyle comes home!)

{here jillian is taking a picture of kade with her cell phone, saying "cheese kade!" think she's seen this before?}

{sweet kisses! and kade's face! love it!}

i'm finally able to catch some of kade's sweet smiles on camera!

and we'll end on this! love love love them staring at each other with those facial expressions. i see these two in a lot of mischief before too long!

so yeah, even though i'm so not a morning person, watching these two play is making them much more bearable! (that, and a nice cup of coffee)

october festivites

2011-11-10T22:43:00.000-06:00

october was a very family fun filled month.

we covered all the october have-to's, which included, but not limited to:

*visiting the pumpkin patch - we don't go all out for this. it's in the parking lot at a church here in town, which they have fixed up really cute. we were there about 15 minutes. all i wanted was a cute picture of the kids.

this is what we got:

jillian (who normally begs to hold/touch kade), did not want him anywhere near her. makes for a really sweet fall picture!

she did finally sit next to some pumpkins for a picture alone, but that was it! so the pumpkin patch was kind of a fall family picture fail! but it was still fun for jillian to pick out a few pumpkins to bring home.

*we carved pumpkins - J liked the gooey stuff inside.

*we had some orange cupcakes

*a very cute cowgirl, and her very cute baby cow came to visit!

*we spent halloween night at heidi and brent's.

we took jillian down the street to trick or treat. it didn't take her long to figure out that she could walk up to someone and say "please" (she couldn't get trick or treat down) and they would put candy in her bag. she walked probably 5-6 blocks, but then we carried her back, because she started to get slower and slower.

when we got back to heidi and brent's, we helped pass out candy to the hundreds (literally) of kids still trick or treating. this may have included jillian putting a chewed up starburst in a kid's bag. oops!

our sweet family - love our little farmer and her livestock.

whenever she saw someone in an odd/scary costume, she would just stare forever, and then look at us like "umm..did anyone else just see that?"

we finally did get some semi-cute pics of the kiddos with some pumpkins in the back yard! as far as pictures go, i've learned to roll with the punches and take whatever we can get!

and that sweet sibling love pretty much wraps up the month of october!

i just really love fall. it makes me happy.