Happy Birthday, Lawson! {3 years}

On May 28, 2011, we celebrated Lawson's 3rd birthday!

I am way behind on this posting, but it is certainly worthy of posting no matter the date.

It is so hard to believe that it has been three years since we traveled to the hospital on that beautiful crisp morning in May, just the two of us, and then three days later returned as a family of three.

Where has the time gone?

=1 day old=

Lawson's 1st birthday!

-Lawson and daddy-

Lawson's 2nd Birthday!

-Enjoying his blue sucker from Friday Sucker Day at his school-

Blue suckers are his fave!

We miss you, Mandy! :(

Lawson's 3rd Birthday!

-Enjoyed lunch and birthday cake at Pizza Hut in Martin-

=Me and Lawson on the morning of his birthday=

On a side note, both boys and I received haircuts on Lawson's birthday.  This was Emmitt's first haircut and although Mrs. Amber tried her best, it didn't go so well.  Russ and I have since cut it three times.  He doesn't seem too bothered by it here at home.  But here's to documenting another "first".

Isn't my hair getting long?!  :)

The birthday boy ready for a haircut.

A small birthday party for lunch and cake at Pizza Hut.

Our guests were Nana, Daddy Bell and Ms. Anita, Aunt Julie, and then me and Emmitt.

Aunt Julie and Lawson

Her hair is growing, too!

Me, Emmitt, and Lawson

Later that afternoon we played outside at Grandmother and Granddad's.  Nana bought him some water guns and he experienced his first water gun fight.  He got with it very quickly.  :)

He will probably kill me over the underwear pics in the years to come.

Russ, Emmitt, and Lawson

{I PROMISE they have clothes... promise.}  :)

Another birthday cake at Grandmother and Granddad's

White cake with white icing, requested by Lawson... was actually very good... kind of like wedding cake. :)

I added a few of his bulldozers for the sake of being a boy. 

Imagine this... Emmitt devoured his birthday cake!!

And now for his birthday gift.

He is all about "surprises" these days.  He will tell you to close your eyes as he counts to like fifteen... (ugh) and then he screams, "SURPRISE!!

So, we gave him an eye-closing-counting-surprise!

The excitement in the following pictures is priceless!

SURPRISE!

A new John Deere bicycle!!!

It was the perfect gift!  We walk every night so that he can ride his bike.  He can go pretty fast and loves to use the brakes.  That is actually the first thing he tells people when they ask or comment about his bike... "it has brakes!"  :)

He will still randomly thank us for his bike.  He really does love it!

And lastly, the Thursday before his birthday he had a party at his school.

Once again, I allowed him to pick his cake and icing flavor.  He chose white cake with strawberry icing.  Sounds good, but of course the icing was PINK.  He then picked out the sports candy toppers... so totally cool according to him, and he was very excited about sharing them with his friends.  Oh, well.

At school with his friends...

Lawson, Jora, Ben, Hunter...

And then once again, Ben, Hunter, and then David, and Lyla

~Lyla, his sweet little girl friend~

And that concludes his 3rd birthday celebration!

I am so thankful for his little life... for on his special day, May 28, 2008, we became parents and God filled our lives with a new joy... a joy we could have never imagined.

Thank you, God, for Lawson.  Thank you for breathing life into his precious body and for giving him to us.

We love you, Lawson Bragg, and look forward to what lies ahead!

Check-Ups {1 year & 3 years}

With Lawson's and Emmitt's birthdays being so close together, their milestone check-ups were also close together.  Emmitt's the last of May, and Lawson's mid-June. 

I must admit that I have totally failed at keeping up with their growth... for some reason, we get home from the doctor's office and I'm lucky if I can find that card in my purse or the van until a week or two later and then I shove it in the drawer where all of the other memorabilia is kept. 

Our friend, Amanda, does a fantastic job at keeping up with her girls' growth and it is so neat to look at and watch her girls grow as her growth charts are on her blog.  Another friend Courtney, made a super cute growth chart to watch her little girl grow... I'm thinking that might be more my speed.  I need to get right on that!  And if you're interested, you can see her DIY growth chart here.  She is very talented in the DIY world.

So, here they are... the one year and three year check-up stats...

Emmitt at one year:
Length:  31 inches long; 90th percentile
Weight:  21 lbs, 6 oz; 40th percentile  (do you see why it's ok for him to eat?!)
Head Circumference: 47 cm; 75th percentile

Lawson at three years:
Height:  38 1/2 inches; 70th percentile
Weight:  32 lbs; 55th percentile

So, there we go... I suppose I will try to document their 2 year and 4 year measurements here... and until then, I'm going to attempt the cute growth chart!  :)  Will let you know once I check that off my list!

Enjoy your weekend!

Emmitt {14 months}

This little guy is growing up so quickly!

He is full of energy and has been named the Master of Disaster.  He makes us smile and laugh, and all in the same moment can cause us to want to pull our hair out!  He can clean out a cabinet or clear the table before you can get across the room, he drives his big brother crazy as he attempts to take anything and everything he can away from him.  I often tell him that it's a good thing he's soooo cute!

He wears the shoes of the child who is a "handful"... maybe two handfuls would be more fitting.  :)

Nonetheless, he is our favorite little brother in the whole wide world!  It is so strange how much you forget about each stage from your previous child(ren).  I suppose as they grow from stage to stage you become so engrossed in the current stage that it is easy to forget the ones proceeding. 

And all so often I've heard people say (typically those with grown adult children), "you better enjoy them, you're going to miss it when they grow up."  I must admit people... I will not miss Emmitt's current stage.  And unlike most, I can hardly wait for him to walk.  Things will be easier.  We will be able to play outside, go to the park, the library, the kitchen cabinets and dishwasher will no longer be directly in his line of sight... I really do hope he walks soon.

I love those pictures... they represent his personality so well.

A few details from this 14 month stage that I don't want to forget...

His eyes are a beautiful blue.

He isn't yet walking, but is almost there.

 

He walks very well when his hands are held, specifically for his daddy.

He has the appetite of a teenage boy.

Dr. Thomas told us that his metabolism is very high as he is only in the 45th percentile in weight and that we need to feed him until he is full. She indicated that this pattern will probably continue throughout his life.  For example, last week he ate 15 grapes, 2 slices of cheese, and half of a banana for SNACK. 

-Here is an example from another day that I decided to document with a picture-

Can you believe that?  We should probably go ahead and start saving for our grocery bills, planning for ten years from now. :)

Some of his favorite foods are grapes, bananas, apples, peaches, pears, green beans, corn, fish sticks, pulled pork, pizza, quesadilla, hamburgers, steak, sausage balls, cheese... (specifically, Mickey Mouse cheese), macaroni & cheese, ham, fruit snacks (I know... not so good for him), goldfish, pretzels, blueberry muffins, Nutrigrain bars, waffles/pancakes, powdered/glazed donuts, yogurt and applesause, ice cream, and every now and then he will eat chicken and hotdogs.

On the flip side, he is just now drinking whole milk.  This has been very stressful to me.  He is also still taking it in a bottle at bedtime.  At one, Lawson came off of both formula and his bottle without skipping a beat... not Emmitt.  I have been mixing his bottle with 1 oz. of formula to 5-6 ozs. of whole milk.  Crazy.  Just yesterday, I decided to give it to him straight milk and he took it!  So happy.  I have also been adding a splash of chocolate milk to his cup during the day and that's going well, too.  Whatever it takes to get those nutrients in him.  I am hopeful this is also a "stage".

Just like his brother, he prefers his daddy over me.

Out of his day, a bath, a walk around the block, (eating), and sitting high on the couch or bed makes him so happy!

He is very ticklish, and his laugh is infectious.

He loves his boppy and his went.  (pacifier and blanket)

He can open every door in this house... handful!!!

Using his hand at his ear, he will pretend to talk on the phone.

He is a good sleeper at night, and takes about a 2 hour nap in the afternoons.

He is much better in the vehicle now that he is facing forward.

He is quite the social butterfly, waving at everyone whom will pay him any attention.

He is unusually strong, according to Dr. Thomas.  It is all we can do to hold him down.  (eye drops and ear drops are quite the challenge)

He will mimick us when we laugh, cough, or sneeze. :)

He says, "da da", "hey dat", "ma ma ma", "bop" (pacifier), "ba" (like a sheep for his bath), "bah" for bite, and "up" when he wants out of his high chair or his car seat.  The "b" sound is the most prominent although I am almost certain he said "fish" the other day.  He loves Sport, by the way!

And as to baby signs, he signs "more" for anything and everything to do with eating. :)  He's got that down pat!!  If we are at the grocery, he signs "more" the entire time we are shopping, usually accompanied with tears, and I have eaten my words done what most good mothers would do and opened a snack on many occasions just to keep him quiet.  You do what you gotta do, right?!

When he is told, "no", he points his finger at you.

And lastly, he is often called Emmers, esp by his mama.  :)

I think that is all for now.

We love you Emmitt Bragg and are so happy God gave you to us! 

We can't wait to learn more about you as you grow up.

You are a blessing, indeed!

From House to Home : Landscaping

Hello!  I'm sure you've wondered whether or not I am still here... And yes, I am!  Just super busy and out of pocket over the past few weeks... lots to catch up on and hoping to do so this week.

Hope you had a nice 4th of July celebrating our great nation's independence. Our 4th of July was very enjoyable... pictures to come soon!

This posting begins our "From House to Home" series... since moving into our new house in November, we've slowly transformed our house into our home... thanks to my sweet husband.  He totally rocks in this area!

Today, I will be sharing the transformation of our front landscaping.

The weekend of the boys' birthday party in Martin, we returned to Columbia pulling a cattle trailer full of shrubs.  We quickly discovered that shrubs and trees here in Columbia will break your pocketbook, and seem to be very over-priced.  Zimm's nursery in Martin, our hometown, is very reasonably priced and Mr. Zimmerman is always more than happy to help us.  Of course, Russ' preplanning is extremely helpful.  {Did I mention that he often displays OCD behavior in the home improvement area?} :) 

Our neighborhood has covenants to ensure the aesthetic appearance of the neighborhood remains high and that pleases us.  With that said, the covenant for landscaping requires six shrubs and two trees.  There are, however, no specifications on what kind of shrubs/trees or quality, simply quantity.  Quantity doesn't always equal quality, if you get my point.  Our builder planted what was required plus four shrubs and considered it done. 

Russ didn't consider the ten shrubs and two trees "done".  The cattle trailer sat in our driveway for about two weeks.  I'm almost certain there is a covenant regarding livestock trailers, but fortunately we didn't receive a little note.  :)  It took 3 good days of work before it was completed and unfortunately, those three days were broken meaning things were a mess for about two weeks, but at last it all came together.  When we purchased our house, we planned to tackle this project in the spring and I am so proud of how it turned out.  Russ' planning and hard work are evident and it looks so nice.

Here are two BEFORE pictures...

The front right side of the house was the biggest part of the project. Due to the slope of the yard for the basement, the front right side was washing away.  The first thing to do was to expand and raise the end of the flowerbed both to keep it from washing away and to make it look nicer.

He removed the grass and leveled it in order to expand the flowerbed.

In order to build up the right end of the bed, he built a stone wall.  These first two steps took one day... much longer than we expected.  And for some reason, I can't find the pictures from the building of the wall.

Once it was complete, he removed the old shrubs.

Here is the stone wall.  We purchased it to match the stone on our house.  He expanded the bed out past the edge of the house allowing space for a new tree.

Lawson had so much fun helping his dad.  Due to raising the bed and expanding it, he back filled it with a small gravel, then covered with topsoil... LOTS of topsoil!!!  (4 pick-up truck loads)

-Spreading the topsoil-



He was so cute and had SO much fun!

And so did Mr. Emmitt... I'm afraid to know how much he ate during these three days... taking comfort in the fact that he's still going strong! :)

We also removed the shrubs from the front of the dining room window.  This bed required no major work other than adding topsoil as it laid lower than we preferred.

And finally, it was time to add the new shrubs and trees, followed by mulch and a few stones for coordination of the wall.

We used a variety of textures and colors within the plantings and are very pleased with how it turned out.

And here it is... the AFTER shots!

Thanks for reading... interior pictures plus more to come!