Happy Birthday Levi!!!

And our family still doesn't know how to sing...

Happy Birthday Lucas!!!

Lucas turned 1 last week, and we celebrated his birthday this past weekend.  We got the timing right this time around having learned from Levi's disastrous first birthday.  And now we wait a couple of months before Levi's 3rd birthday.  Time is certainly flying.  Enjoy the pictures!

 Lucas has a shovel in his hand about 99% of the time.

We take about 1 decent picture out of every 30.

The boys with Grandma and Papa Chapin.

Our sweet little guy taking a nap.

Levi showing Papa T how to drive the tractor.

This picture is sure to show up in graduation open house collages and wedding slideshows in the years to come.

Another fantastic birthday cake design by Courtney!

The cake didn't stand a chance.

 

Ray Charles, he isn't.

We're Back!

Did you miss us?

It's been a while.  The last couple of months have been pretty busy but I haven't been very intentional about updating the blog.  Sorry about that.  

I guess the biggest news out the Chapin house is that Lucas is now walking.  He started taking his first steps a couple of weeks ago.  Now he's able to take a number of steps in succession and it won't be long before he's done with crawling.  He's also sleeping a lot better at night so that's been nice for Courtney and I.

Levi continues to impress us with his ability to learn new things.  He has a very extensive vocabulary.  He's also become quite the negotiator with Mom and Dad already.  We often find ourselves saying something like "OK one more time and then its bedtime" and Levi will counter with "How about 2 more times?".  He's not making much progress with potty training though.  Still refuses to go poop in the potty (despite the bribe of going to get ice cream when he does) and he occasionally goes pee but usually only when we make him sit on the potty.  We're hoping that it will click and he'll "get it" soon.

That's all for now.  Enjoy the pictures from a fun-filled weekend!!

Must have got his sense of fashion from his mom.

Notice how Levi has hoarded all the trains and won't let Lucas play with any?

Levi is always very gentle with his cousin Baby Eryn.

Courtney lended her cake decorating skills for Maya's 2nd birthday.

Lucas really enjoyed being outside today.

Exploring the yard.

It's really hard to get a picture with both of them smiling.

All About Lucas

Most of our blog posts focus on Levi, so I thought I would write a little about our other son.  I do feel bad for him in a way.  Levi had our full attention for the first couple years of his life, but Lucas has to fight for it.  I feel like he has grown up so much faster than Levi.  A lot of people are telling us they are starting to look more alike, but I still don't see it.

  

 Both kids around 9 months old.  I can't tell they are brothers, can you?

Lucas is developing faster than Levi did.  Probably because he sees his older brother doing things and he wants to keep up with him.  Within the last few weeks, Lucas has started crawling, pulling himself up, "cruising" along the edge of tables/furniture, babbling ("mama" and "baba"), waving, and he's cut 4 teeth.  He's done all of those things before Levi did.  

One area where he is lagging behind Levi is the sleeping department.  Levi was a roller coaster with his sleep patterns.  He would go a couple months of sleeping good, have a rough couple months, sleep good a couple months, etc.  Around February of last year he started sleeping great and we haven't had any issues since.  Lucas, on the other hand, has had a lot more issues with sleeping.  He started off great, even sleeping through the night for a month or so.  Then around 4 months he started waking up, and from then on he has woken up every single night...until the other night.  And there was never really any pattern to his sleep issues...waking up at different times, sometimes just once a night, sometimes 20+ times a night.  We've tried tylenol, feeding him, changing his diaper, rocking, etc.  But my genius wife had the brilliant idea last week that since his diaper was always soaked, why not try a night diaper?  So we tried it, and the sleeping has been much better this past week, and he's even slept all the way through the night from start to finish a couple of times.  Its nice to sleep.

Think they'll want to wear matching outfits when they're older?

Lucas and daddy having some fun together.

Lucas having the spotlight all to himself, for once.

The blog will returned to your normally scheduled programming next week with potty training updates (spoiler alert, its not going well), more pictures, and more of my random thoughts and lists.  

Colonel Hathi Jr.

You thought we were joking about Levi marching all the time?

Adventures in Potty Training

We're back! 2011 is here, and with it new found hope that this blog will be updated more consistently. We'll see.

Did anyone know that having two kids in diapers at the same time is pretty expensive? It is. So for the last few months Courtney and I have been talking up the big boy potty to Levi. I've even gone so far as to bribe him with his favorite snack in the world, M&Ms. Nothing worked. He refused to sit on the potty and cried when we tried to put him there. I was on vacation the last week of December so we made a concerted effort to have him sit on the potty a couple times a day, and slowly but surely he is getting more accustomed to the potty. We're proud to say that Levi is going pee on the potty a few times every day, and today he had his first poop.

We are learning that being flexible is a very important quality to have when parenting. Levi's interests are always changing, so it can be hard to keep up him. He still loves Thomas the Train and loves to play with all the cool trains he got for Christmas. Over my vacation Levi watched his first movie, The Jungle Book. This was an intentional choice on my part because this was the first movie I watched when I was a kid. He loved it. Since then he's been pretending to be the characters from the movie, most notably Colonel Hathi the elephant. I guess the upside is that we're all in good shape with all the marching we've been doing.

Our family accounts for about a million of this clip's views.

Levi with his "elephant trunk".

Additionally, Levi loves to sing. His current favorites are "elephants marching" (the song from the clip above), "six eight" (theme song to Thomas), and Skinnamarinky Dinky Dink.

Who needs TV when you have this kid?

At about 4-1/2 months, Lucas stopped sleeping through the night. The last three months have been very frustrating with a lot of sleepless nights. Things have been better in the last week, so we're not sure if maybe he's coming out of the whole sleep issue, or if he's just messing with us. He did cut his first tooth yesterday, so maybe he'll be a great sleeper since that's out of the way. He is very good at crawling backwards, but he hasn't quite mastered the art of traveling forwards yet. He's generally a happy boy, especially when his brother is being a ham and making him laugh hysterically.

Lucas and mommy after a bath.

Oh so close to crawling.

Happy after eating another big meal.

That's all for now. The Chapin family wishes all our loyal readers nothing but the best in 2011!

Thanks for reading!