Home Sweet Home away from home!

We have now been living at the Staybridge Suites for a little more than 2 months. While living in a 2 bedroom suite with 2 adults, 3 kids (3 and under), 2 cats and 2 fish has lots of challenges, we have enjoyed the Staybridge Suites for lots of reasons!! They definitely treat us like family!

 

 

Perks of being kicked out of our house (due to flooding):

Friendly staff, who really aims to please!

Hot breakfast everyday! (If you get up in time:)

Dinner 3 nights a week (This is what I will miss most)

Maid-service once a week and trash removal DAILY!!

TV and cable (we don't have a TV at home)

The fun of riding an elevator everyday (for the kids)

A ride to and from the airport (we both travel a lot for work)

Location to church and work is closer

 

 

I will not list all the challenges, but I'll hit the highlights:

All the kids sleeping in the same room (which now works out great most of the time)

Trying to get 3 kids out the door, down the hall, in the elevator, out the door and in the car without loosing someone or getting hit by a car.

Not have an oven (or much kitchen space)

Having people above us and trying to make the kids understand we have someone below us!

 

 

ALL that to say the Staybridge Suites-Chantilly is an awesome place to stay (or live)!! We will definitely miss them when we go home! THANKS FOR HAVING US!!!

Stina 2 word sentence and Petra rolling over!

Stina said her first sentence a few weeks ago and her second yesterday! Her first sentence was "I sit"! She says this when she wants to sit somewhere, especially in your lap!
Her second sentence is "carry you"! She just started yesterday holding my leg and looking up at me saying, "carry you"! How can I resist!! She is so cute!
Funny and sad to me is that at her age Lars really wanted to be carried all the time too, but he was SO heavy (35+ pounds) I would always try to get him to walk. When Stina (24 pounds) asks to be picked up, I just pick her up!

Petra started rolling over from her back to her stomach a few weeks ago! Now if you lay her on her back she will be on her stomach in minutes! The bad thing is she can't roll from her stomach to her back. She gets really frustrated, when she is stuck on her stomach. It's only a matter of time now. I know she will be crawling now before we know it!

These kids really do grow too fast!!

Camping in Denial

We have had mild colds this week, runny nose, fussiness... you know how that goes. In an effort to not spread it and hopefully end it, we have stayed home. Lars and Stina are in denial that it's cold out and ask all day if we can go to the beach or go outside and swing! We have been building lots of tents and tunnels and pretending to be wild animals!!

They are really ferocious! Watch out!!

Bonus pics: Stina going to the beach and Lars showing how he really feels about his sisters!!

Petra is 6 months old and eating!!

These pics were taken the first time Petra had rice cereal. She is now eating pears and mangos too!! She has some good examples to follow!!

They must be Scandinavian...or Cajun! :)

The question of the century for this household is "What's for dinner?"!! No one ever wants to decide! The actual cooking is not ever really a problem, since both Karl and I like to cook, but WHAT to make!! Recently, we have been having lots of blackened fish, Mahi Mahi mostly.

We have offered the Lars fish in the past, but he was never a huge fan of it. Until last week! Now it's his favorite food!! I might also add that for the past 6 months or so Lars has decided to be picky and now all of a sudden he has returned to eating us out of house and home! This is a welcome adjustment (although, in his teen years you may have to remind me I said that)!

See above:
This week he has been requesting fish for dinner and a LARGE piece at that! I'd like to add that Stina is no slouch in the eating department! That girl can put away the food!! Her piece was almost as big as Lars' and she has already finished it! This week we also had steak one night for dinner. How would you divide a 20 oz steak between Karl, Lars and I? Karl, 6 oz., Jessi, 4oz. and Lars 10 oz!! Stina took some of Karl's too! These kids love their surf and turf!! They are only 1 and 2 years old!

This is just a bonus "eating" picture! Stina has been feeding herself more and more lately. She really does a good job with silverware, but sometimes things get a little messy!! I wish I looked this cute with food all over me!

A day in the life...

A month or so ago I decided that I really need to blog more and Facebook less. Mostly because Facebook is saved for like a second! and blogging can be saved forever! The dilemma is Facebook can be update in a few seconds, a couple words here and there, add some pictures and people get the idea of what we are up too. A blog on the other hand, I feel like I need time to sit down and think about what I'm going to say and be picky about what pictures to post.

That being said, I'm going to work on it! I was also checking our blog's stats today and turns out people actually come to it! I thought it was just our parents and close friends (who really only come to the blog with urging and reminding), but apparently others are interested in the musings of a crazy mom with 3 kids under 2.5!! I will try to accommodate those of you faithful readers, who have been left with nothing to read for the last 4 months or more!!

Before Christmas, we were SO busy we had at least one activity everyday of the week except Monday, which usually ended up being grocery store/Costco/Target day! SO I decided we needed to slow down and try to catch our breathe a little in 2011. This week we actually had 2 days that we (well the kids anyway) didn't even get in the car! THIS IS A HUGE FEAT!! We are all much happier for it too! We still went to Lars' Soccer Tots and his preschool co-op group, which I call Playskool. The other days we had lots of fun playing with our neighbors. One day "in the snow", even though there was only an inch. The kids really enjoyed "sledding", aka moms pulling them around in the driveways! :):) (My friend Katie took pictures and I'm hoping to steal some from her! I will add them to this if I get them) Stina even really like it! I was freezing because of the wind, but the kids didn't seem to notice. Today, we spent the whole day at our neighbor Sara's house. She is awesome! She even watched Lars while Stina was napping so I could run to Fedex, without dragging everyone along!

Well, hopefully I will actually be better at blogging in 2011! Although, I'm not making it a resolution, those always seem to backfire. Like the one I did make, going to bed before midnight, everynight! It's January 15th and I haven't gone to bed before midnight yet!

Been up to lately...

This is a little scattered, but I thought I'd try to catch up since our last post.


We have been so busy this Summer already! We finished off the Spring with a visit to the National Zoo with our friends, the Gates and Youngs. This has now become an annual event which is SO fun! Not to mention that still today (almost 3 months later) if you ask Lars what he did today he says, "Monkey, Elephant, Tiger". I think he likes the Zoo a little:) We have been to 2 other zoos since then, the Dallas Zoo and this week the Reston Zoo. Both of which we had a great time at too! If you live near Dallas you should go to the new exhibit there it's awesome! You can actually feed giraffes! Thanks Wallings for coming out in the heat with your new baby, Ace!


We kicked off the Summer, Memorial Day weekend with my sister Jenni's wedding to the wonderful Mr. Todd Singletary! We are very excited to have him in our family! (All the pics after this are from Jenni's wedding).

Staying Busy!

Lots has been going on around here lately!! I apologize that I have become such a slacker with this blog. It is so easy to just pictures on Facebook and call it a day, I haven't been posting on here much.
The biggest news is we are expecting Baby 3.0 September 25th!! We have decided this time that we will find out the sex AND tell people. The first time, Lars, we didn't find out at all; second time, Stina, Karl and I knew, but we didn't tell anyone; so this time figured it was only fair to find out and tell:):) I'm sure that most of you will be very happy with this choice!
For those of you who are thinking "Didn't they just have a baby?", YES! Our kids are all going to be really close together! Lars and Stina are 15.5 months apart and Stina and baby 3.0 will be 14 months apart!!

Lars is now a big 2 year old!! Not that anyone ever thought of him as small:)! His birthday was Easter Sunday, April 4th. We had a Veggie Tales birthday party for him on Saturday. While he was very excited to see "Bob", his cake, I think we probably should have had a CARS birthday! The mostly got cars and he has been playing with them constantly since he opened them!
He is a great big brother! He loves for Stina to sit in his lap and watch videos with him. If we go anywhere in the car, he always wants to make sure that she is in there too! He loves to play with Cars, trains, the water table and now Easter eggs:):) He is a joy and delight to be around!!

Stina is now 8 months old! I can't believe how the time flies!! She is so fun and happy!!! She has just started clapping and waving bye-bye! She also says, "Da-da" now! :) She seems like she really wants to crawl, but hasn't quite got the hang of it. She loves to put anything in her mouth! She has 2 teeth on the bottom and is working on more!! She just adores Lars. I hope they always care for each other like they do now!!:)

Returning from Atlanta!!

I apologize for not blogging in so long. Poor Stina is not getting the internet exposure her brother got! I still feel like I'm getting used to having 2 kids, but it's fun! Now on to the story at hand.

Saturday, we were returning from a week in Atlanta. I had to work a conference and Karl had to be in Florida for work, so my sister Jenni GRACIOUSLY volunteered to come with me and babysit, in a hotel no less! Not only did she come to Atlanta, she flew to D.C. and made the whole round trip with me! I don't know anyone that nice!!
Saturday I wrapped up the conference at the hotel, while Jenni took Lars and Stina to her future in-laws (Todd's parents) for the day. I arrived there to pick them up and needed to repack a few things. Lars was being unusually clingy cause I had been leaving him all week, I thought. Come to find out he was being clingy cause he didn't feel well. A few minutes into packing Lars was crying and then projected vomit ALL over me. I kinda panicked and called Jenni over, but her "father-in-law" came over. I just asked for Jenni and said Lars had thrown up all over me, he said, YES he did and went to get Jenni. We changed out of those clothes, while Todd's mom hand washed our clothes and put them in the dryer. We had to leave the house in 45 minutes so we wouldn't miss our flight. We sat down at the table to eat quickly when Lars insisted on sitting in my lap. A few minutes later I was covered in vomit again! Put clean clothes on and rushed everything into the car. We really needed to drop something off at FedEx and put gas in the car, but as we got closer to the airport we realized we didn't have time for either of these things! Plus, on the way Lars again threw up all over himself in the car! We got to the airport, I let Jenni out of the car with Stina in a baby carrier and all of our bags to be checked, 5 total, miraculously they let her check them all! I drove over to the Rental car return with Lars sleeping in the backseat. Knowing we would never make it to the plane on time if we took the normal transit system back, I asked to rental car lady if she would drive Lars and I back over there. Thankfully, she agreed! We got back over to the terminal. I got out carrying Lars (with throw up on him:), his carseat and my carry-on bag, unknowingly headed in the wrong direction. A VERY nice man who worked at the airport asked if I needed help, don't know what gave him that clue!:):) So he carried the carseat and bag while I had Lars. We ran through the airport and made it to the gate just as they would doing the final boarding call. Jenni actually was behind us with Stina cause she had gone to the wrong security line, which the airport man saved me from!

So, we actually made it on the plane, much to Karl and Todd's surprise. Todd was already making arrangements for his parents to come back and get us, cause there was "no way" we would make it!
On the plane we were surrounded by men who were thankfully all fathers and understood how difficult it is to travel with kids! After take-off with both kids screaming, Lars decided to throw up on me yet again! The rest of the flight was relatively uneventful. Stina cried a little cause she was hungry, but no biggy. We are finally on the ground and they tell us we have to wait for them to bring stairs so we can get off the plane. Everyone was already standing in the aisle and you guessed it, Lars threw up all over me again! It was quite dramatic since everyone was watching and wanted to help! It was 45 minutes before they came with the stairs, so even though I was sitting there soaking wet, others had it worse cause they missed international connections!
Karl, is there waiting for us. He takes all the bags, the sick child and then we realize Stina's carseat is not there. At this point we are laughing cause we are wondering what else can go wrong. After another 45 minutes of paperwork and locating the carseat (which is still in Atlanta) we get a loner and we are on our way! Lars of course had to throw up one more time, just to make it an exciting trip home!
We made it all in one piece and even received Stina's carseat back the next morning. The only thing missing is a small back cushion from Lars' carseat. AND of course we had LOTS of laundry!
Anybody want to volunteer to travel with us!!:)

Stina rolled over!!

Stina rolled over today for the first time! I wish that I had captured it on film, but she was all alone cozy in her crib! I laid her down for a nap on her stomach, as I always do. Then about 20 minutes later I heard her crying. I go up to find her on her back!!!! I think it scared her, especially since she didn't know how to roll back. I'm sure she was wondering why I was so excited, when she just wanted to be picked up!:):)

Who does Stina look like?

My uncles will say Stina doesn't have to look like anybody! We know, she is special and unique and her own person, but we can't figure out who she favors!

Who do you think Stina looks like? The black and white baby pictures are Karl and the color ones are me, Jessi.

Stina talking

Stina telling Lars not to squish her! I have a feeling she will be doing that a lot!

Life with 2 kids!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while! Having two kids keeps me quite busy! I'm not sure how people with more kids keep up on their blogs.

Stina continues to be a great baby. She's a great sleeper!! She has already had 2 nights that she slept 7 hours straight!!! She's a little colicky in the evenings, but James Taylor and a box fan are helping take care of that:)

Lars is doing great with her. He is definitely a little more jealous, but I don't mind having them both in my lap so it usually works out.

I'm sure it will be a while before I'm back to regular updating.

Here's a couple pictures to hold you over for a while!

Aug 1st, Stina Smiled!

Aug 14th, Lars climbed all the way down the stairs by himself, VERY carefully!!!

Adjusting

Lars is doing a great job adjusting to being a big brother. He wants to kiss Stina all the time, which is really cute!! He will (passive aggressively) try to sit in our lap while Stina is there.
Thanks for all your prayers and encouragement!!!

Stina is coming home today!!

Stina gets to come home today!! She is doing SO much better. I will fill in some of the gaps later, but she had to stay in the NICU because they were treating her for pneumonia and jaundice. It will be SO nice to have her home where we can hold her! and not have to go back and forth to the hospital anymore!!
Here are a few pictures from the week!

Stina Ellen Has Arrived

Stina Ellen was born today at 4:45 am. She was 6 lbs 4 oz and 19 3/4". Jessi is doing great. Luckly, after being induced for 2 1/2 days, she only had to push thru 4 contraction cycles and out she came, so the wait was well worth it. Stina is currently in the NICU being monitor and receiving some oxygen. Her breathing rate has been a little fast which is most likely caused by some residual fluid in the lungs. They will keep her there for the next 48 hours.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and encouragement. We really appreciate it.