The cropped "SFW" version of a super-adorable pic

Late as always. We got Alexander’s first professional portraits in early June. (He was almost 4 months by then.) Michele and Dave have both been “meaning” to get around to posting them. At least getting physical prints distributed to the grandparents has already taken place. (Thanks to Michele.)

This photo shoot produced what may be one of Dave’s favorite photos of all. The cropped, clean, family-friendly version of the photo is posted here inline.

View the Album

Direct Link to the Album

View the Album as a slideshow

Sometime between 7:15pm and 9:00pm, we try to start the “bedtime routine”. (OK, so that wide variety is not good, but at least it is honest.)

Bathe Sophia. Generally, she gets a bath after Alexander because she likes to “help” with his bath. (“Help” in this context means, sit on stool by bath and poor water on him.)

Brush Sophia’s teeth. Right now, we use a soft finger tooth brush. She is getting better about actually using her toothbrush as more than a mechanism to get water and tasty Elmo toothpaste into her mouth.

Get lotion and PJs. Sophia has some mild excema that flares up if we don’t moisturize her skin. We’ve used Aveeno, Aquafor, and hydrocortizone. Probably more stuff, too, but that’s all I can think of.

Read some books. Lots of them, actually. This can last anywhere from 5 to 90 minutes, but is one of the most rewarding of all experiences. We let her select the “next book” so she will remain engaged, even as she fades. We can tell that she is absorbing all of the content. What amazes me is when she starts reciting entire passages (if not books!) back to us.
Here is a sampling of current favorite literally selections: (Alas, the Amazon Affiliates program is not available in NC, so I won’t get any credit if buy any of these. )

• Cuentos populares españoles – (Sophia alternately refers to this as the “special book” or the “spanish book”. Michele described it as “special” the first time Sophia asked her to read it. Sophia now only asks Daddy Dave to read it.
• Winnie the Pooh, Nature’s True Colors
• Curious George Collection (Thank you, Mimi)
• Goodnight Elmo
• Silent Night (Thank you, abuela)
• Curious George Good Night Book (Thank you, Mimi)
• Nursery Rhyme Collection. This one has been popular for a long time.
• Good Morning, Good Night. (Thanks, Turner Family!)
• How Do I Love You (Thank you, Marcela)
• All the Ways I Love You, a  book with a recording of Sophia and Alexander’s Mimi reading the book (Thank you, Mimi)
• Love you forever (Thank you, Marcela)
• The Going to Bed Book (Thank you, Layna)

This next part is what motivated me to write this post. Saying “good night” to the room. Not really sure how this started, but I *thinkit was an idea from another blog. Daddy picks up Sophia and walks her around the room to individually say “good night” to different things in her room. With very little variation, and in this order, here is what we say good night to:

1. “The Painting” or “Girl on the swing” – A friend gave us a lovely print that perfectly matches her room colors. As you guessed, it’s the silhouette of a young girl swinging on a tree swing. (Thank you, Maryjo for the gift!)
2. The Clock – Sophia used to be consumed with a desire to grab the hands of the clock. Problem is that the she would break the clock. A few weeks ago, I counted off the numbers on the face of the clock, to encourage her both to count and associate the numeral with the number. Now she wants to count them off. But I think it is pretty much a delaying tactic because she always gets to 5 and restarts. Clever girl.
3. The Door – The closet door to be precise. Ever since she learned “One, two buckle my shoe. Three, four knock at the door”, there has been a fair amount of knocking.
4. The Butterflies (part 1) – Sophia’s room has a bit of a butterfly theme. We got some butterflies from Pottery Barn. (See the original post to see these.
5. Los libros (“books”) – Sophia’s night time books are next to her silla. We bid them good night as we go by. Sometimes she will try to each down to read some more. A delaying tactic.
6. La silla (“chair”) – Sophia has her own “toddler-size” chair. This is where she sits most of the time that we read to her for bed time. She lovesthe chair.
7. The curtains -The only time she ever really wants to say good night to those now is to open then and look outside. A delaying tactic.
8. The Ladybug Piggy Bank – This lady bug has a pair of metal coil antennae with spongy balls glued to the tips. Sophia just loves to smack at the antennae and flick them. Amusingly, one of the sponge tips fell off after about 2 smacks. It took Daddy around 20 months to get some glue to re-attach. (Seriously.) The night I did, Sophia said, “Daddy fixed it.” Which was interesting because she did not see me do it, and I did not point it out. (Thank you, Turners for the gift.)
9. The lamp – Sophia has never really said good bye to the lamp. We usually skip it now.
10. The Butterflies (part 2) – Sophia has a butterfly mobile above her crib. We say good night to them. Actually, she just likes to smack them. See the original Casa Lennon post to see these. (Thank you, Cousin Flippins for the mobile!)
11. The Fan – The ceiling fan has, you guessed it, butterflies. What can we say, everything for girls rooms in 2008 had butterflies on it. Now that Sophia is old enough, she likes to pull the light chain to turn the light on. She invariably smiles when she does that. In the last couple of weeks, she has started turning on the light, looking at me, and saying, “it’s not dark.” Too cute.
12. The (whatever I feel like pointing out) mirror – Next we walk to the mirror in her room and say good night to whatever strikes our fancy. Popular choices: Daddy’s glasses, our teeth, the design on Sophia’s PJs, you get the idea.
13. One last “Good night Room” – We turn around and say good night to the whole room.
14. Sophia now wants to throw the switch that turns off the lamp light. Sometimes she’ll act surprised and exclaim, “It’s dark!”
15. Get Ellie and Paco – We store Ellie the elephant and Paco the pachyderm in the top drawer of her chest of drawers. This is where they go “nite-nite”. After we turn off the light, we knock on the drawer door and Sophia calls for her cherished friends. When I hand them over, she gives them a huge embrace. She really likes them.
16. Get in Crib – We put her in her crib and ask her if she wants her blankie. She always does. Amazing.
17. Sing Songs – Something that Mommy Michele started doing a little while ago was singing her songs when she put her in bed. The 3 songs that are musts, because she always requests them, are “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, “ABC”, and “Silent Night”. And normally in that order. Recently she has asked us to sing he such-and-such song. (Dog Song, Boy Song, etc) I told her I did not know how that song went and asked her if she would sing it to me. Invariably, any song she makes up is either to “Frère Jacques” or “Twinkle Twinkle”.

Generally, that routine does the trick. When we first started it, it worked like a charm. There really is something to be said for comforting your young children through routine. Of course, this entire philosophy and approach will end up being completely backwards for Alexander. We’ll need to figure out what works for him.

As you can also tell, we also have very thankful to have such generous friends and family.

Pix from the outing

Link to the Album of picutres

View the pictures as a slideshow

Some Videos from outing

Direct Link to the ladies enjoying some cooling water

Direct Link to Alexander fascinated by plant

Abuela appreciating her birthday collage

Casa Lennon’s abuela, sometimes know called Juana Antónia Lennon Gutierrez Magro Ibañez Alonso Palacios Barona Ruano García, delighted everyone by turning 70 years young. Much of the family converged on Las Tapas in Old Town Alexandria in what unexpectedly turned out to be a surprise party. More a function of the Lennon clan’s well communicated inability to communicate well.

That said, it was really fun. People came from Florida, North Carolina, New York, and even Maryland to take part. The primary “gift” abuela always wants is the time spent with her family – namely the grandkids. That is what she wants more than anything else. That said, Michael coordinated a gathering of lifetime photos and stories to put together for abuela. I highly recommend viewing the awesome collage that was the product of that effort.

ASIDE: We had the good fortune of being at the Spanish restaurant while Spain was beating Paraguay in the World Cup. (In case you hadn’t heard, SPAIN WON!!!! VIVA ESPANA!!! )

One last thing, we’d like to thank our niece Chloe for snapping so many candid photos.

Pictures from the Celebration

Here is the photo album gallery.

Here you can view it as a slideshow.

What happens when you take on Sophia's head

Mommy consoled her as much as we could. Sophia was already tired and pretty soon thereafter fell asleep on Mommy. We’ve been putting bags of frozen veggies on the back of her head to try to keep the huge bump on the back of her head from growing. Fingers crossed. Given Daddy’s history with head injuries, we’re obviously nervous.

She seems to be doing pretty well now that she is resting on Mommy in their mutually loved glider chair. I think Mommy and Daddy’s hearts are probably done racing now, too.

Oh, yeah, Alexander is out cold on the kitchen table.
Quick Update: Sophia just had her first ever “Children’s Ibuprofen” as opposed to the previous “Infant’s Ibuprofen”. I know we age, but it just seems like she shouldn’t be there yet. :/

As may very well become our custom, we hosted an open house for Sophia’s birthday. The event serves the dual purposes of getting to see many of our friends that we haven’t seen in a while and celebrating Sophia’s birthday. Aside from the fact that the sun decided to be an active participant in this year’s festivities, we all had a really good time. Most importantly, Sophia had an absolute blast. We also were able to get several of our friends together that we have been trying to introduce to one another.

Of course, this format may not work as well for Alexander’s birthday, since he is in mid-winter. Oh well, I am sure his celebration will be great, too.

Note to all other parents of young children: We got a lot of feedback that the “format” worked very well. We opened our doors in the early afternoon and invited folks to drop by whenever they wanted for as long as they wanted. This definitely helped with toddler/infant nap schedules. Some stayed for 30 minutes as they squeezed us in between competing weekend events. (Thank you!) Some stayed for hours. It was great to be able to see people for any period of time.

We are so blessed with so many wonderful friends who would take time of their hectic lives to help us celebrate. We are genuinely grateful.

We are especially grateful that Dave’s parents (a.k.a. abuela and grandpa) made the trip down from DC. Especially since two days prior they had just arrived back in the country from a month in Spain. WOW! We love you.

Photos from Sophia’s 2nd Birthday

Here are the pictures from Sophia’s second birthday.

Videos of Sophia’s 2nd Birthday

Terrible recording of us singing happy birthday to Sophia. Direct Link to YouTube video

Sophia having fun, as usual, with the Mackes. Direct Link to YouTube Video
(Forgive Daddy’s awful singing)

Alexander poolside on his surfboard mat

The day our community pool opens should be a holiday in our house. We look forward to it for months, literally. This year the big day was May 8, a little bit earlier than the year before. Sweet! Makes us feel that our ever-increasing home owner’s dues may be moderately justified. Ironically, we failed to make Opening Day this year. Nevertheless, we finally made it and were accompanied by 3/4ths of Team Gresham.

Sophia had a blast in the water. It was a little surprising only because the water was a little chilly early in the season. (I know that “chilly” is relative, but when compared to her typical bathwater, it was chilly.) We’ve since made two trips and Sophia has actually had no interest getting in the water. It might be a water temp thing, but we doubt it. She’s really just wanted to run all around the pool, stopping at each ladder to makes us just nervous enough. Michele finally got her to go back in after many attempts. Within 5 minutes, Michele and Sophia were having a great time, as usual. Mommy Michele always seems to know exactly what to do.

Alexander actually didn’t make it into the water on his first visit. He was napping some, and Daddy rewarded him with some tummy time. That’s love. We did dip his 3 month old feet in the water. He was not amused. As an aside, Alexander loves getting baths. It took Sophia a while to actually come around to liking them. Alexander pretty much loved them as soon as we were able to submerge him. Makes the experience better for everyone.

Quick aside – After we bathe Sophia at night, she climbs out and starts saying, “Ale’ander’s turn.” It’s so cute (to us.) The way I wrote it is my attempt to capture her phonetic pronunciation. Basically, his name without the “kz” sound of the “x” in Alexander.

More Pool Pix

Here are more random pictures from the first day at the pool.

Alexander Smiling for Mommy

We have taken a few pictures this week. I figured we would share them. Not a great deal of writing today, just links to some pictures and some videos from the past week.  Sorry we have not posted as frequently as when we only had Sophia, but apparently, a second child in the home consumes more time.

One quick note, Alexander had his 2 month check in this week and all went very well. Above average height and weight (14 pounds) and small noggin. Looking at the melon, I’m surprised he’s only in the 30-something percentile. Makes me wonder what kind of onion head monsters are running around out there.

LINKS TO PICTURES

A collection of assorted pictures from this week in the “Random Pictures” album.

You’ll be able to view more albums in the Casa Lennon photo gallery.

VIDEOS

Alexander amusing Mommy

A video of Sophia playing peekabo with her Mimi over Skype. (Direct Link to YouTube.)

Sophia laughing at Daddy running back and forth. (Reminiscent of this original.)

Sophia not looking forward to her haircut

We’ve been meaning to get around to it for around 2 months. She really needed one. Yesterday, we finally got Sophia her first haircut. (We’ve been a little short on free time the last couple of months, for some reason. ) Must admit that it went better than I feared it might. (I had visions of Sophia sounding like the kid you can hear in the background in the first video below.)

Sophia was very hesitant at first. (Crying even.) I think that had more to do with the other kid crying than Sophia’s fear. Once we got into, it was game on. Of course, it helps that we had the amazingly calming power of animal crackers and gummies on our side.

Have a cracker and a smile

Gimme snacks, I'm cool

The irony is that the lady who cut her hair suggested that we leave one part of it untouched since it was very thin underneath. I say it is ironic since the part of Sophia’s hair that has grown the fastest/fullest was the part that we expected would be bald longest.  Why? This Video.

The hair cutter said Sophia would look like she had a mullet. I know we are in the South and all, but no thanks. Some of you may note the slight hypocrisy since Daddy once innocently sported the “Business in the front, party in the back!” look.

Amusingly – and somewhat related – we’ve noticed that Alexander is losing his darker hair. It appears that it is starting to lighten a bit. Looks like even though Alexander may have favored Daddy early, his hair may lighten like Mommy’s.

Oh well, and now for the two videos. Not extremely exciting, but it does capture Sophia’s first haircut. (Note Mommy’s unhappiness at the beginning of the first video since Sophia is unhappy.) Yeah, parents really do feel their kids’ pain. You can view all the videos on the casalennon YouTube Channel.

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

Alexander sleeping at home first week

So far everyone, including Sophia, is doing very well. As most parents of more than one kid told us, coming home with the second was much easier. Not sure why, it just was. So far he has slept a fair amount, mostly during the day. He has had a pretty consistent habit of being awake from 10pm -1am.(I am drafting this at 1:00 am on a Sunday morning as he sits wide-eyed in a boppy next to me.) All things considered, not bad at all.

One thing that has been similar to Sophia’s arrival has been his post birth weight drop and slow rebound. At one week he weighed in at 8 pounds and 5 ounces. Still below his birth weight, but on the way up. It’s common and amazingly less stressful this time around. Maybe a it’s a “seasoned parent” thing.

One piece of advice I have for any expecting, or someday to be expecting parents: Stock up on supplies at the hospital. You’re already paying for them, may as well take them. Take those extra diapers, wipes, formula, etc. In fact, ask for more. It will save you a lot of money when you leave the hospital.

One thing I may not have communicated very clearly previously. Alexander’s announcement post may have implied that Michele did not have her scheduled c-section since she went into labor that morning. She was in labor for about 6 hours but did have the c-section as scheduled.

Alexander’s first video – Hours after arrival
(Direct Video Link)

Alexander Moving around in Hospital Bassinet – Day 3
(Direct Video Link)