Amazing Grace

She's doing it!

Lorelai is officially sitting up. She's still wobbly, but she's no longer only sitting for a few seconds!

Some afterthoughts from yesterday's post

I realized this morning that I didn't really go into detail on the development of the kids. 

Asher is almost 27 months old and is still completely 100% in love with his "baby" sister, and for that we are incredibly thankful. He is learning new words daily. It's amazing how quickly they can pick things up even without us realizing it. He can count to 3, but after 3 he just expects us to do something amazing like throw him in the air rather than continuing to count. He says, "One, Two, THREE!!!" 

His obsession is "trucks." He has a box of Hot Wheels that he has to take everywhere. They even go to bed with him, and he plays with them until he's ready for sleep and then puts them in the box and goes to sleep. Thankfully it isn't a problem for us - he's never stayed up too late playing with them. He loves to watch monster truck videos. Jon wants to take him to a monster truck rally whenever it's in Atlanta next, but I'm not too keen on that idea. Asher is very much in the stage of being fearful of everything so I feel like that could be a disaster. It's one thing to watch the videos, but it's quite another to be right there in front of all those trucks in a weird place. 

Asher is just such a good boy. The nursery workers at church are always so excited to see him and hate when he isn't there. They're always commenting on how sweet he is. It's so nice to hear things like that as a parent and to know that he isn't causing trouble. He's a very passive toddler. He has some friends that he plays with, and he sometimes gets pushed because he has a toy one of them wants, but Asher has never been one to push or push back. He lets them take toys from him and never gets mad or even tells an adult. I'm hoping that he starts sticking up for himself soon because I don't want him getting walked all over, but I'm also so glad that he's not on his way to becoming a bully!

Lorelai is 7 months old now and is our cuddle bug. She loves to be held all the time and would rather be playing on the floor with toys than in a jumper/bouncer. She's become extremely mobile and scoots from room to room already. She isn't crawling, but she digs her toes into the floor and uses her arms to pull herself around. Asher "crawled" like this for the longest time until almost 11 months so we'll see if this is how she chooses to get herself around as well. Needless to say, though, we can't take our eyes off of her. She's really fast! 

She isn't sitting up on her own yet, but we're working on it. She can sometimes sit for a few seconds, but that's about it so far. As mentioned in the last post she just had squash for the first time on Monday, and last night she had some more. In a few days she'll try some carrots. I made a ton of different foods for her Monday and Tuesday including squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, peaches, pears, and apples so we're making our way through them to rule out the possibility of allergies. 

Lorelai still isn't sleeping through the night, but I don't mind too much. Since she's so small it's only going to help for her to get in a couple of extra feedings. She weighs 13.5 lb. now and is 26 1/2 inches or so. 

I'm going to keep this up even if I'm alone

OK. The fact is I'm horrible at committing to something like a blog. I said it in my first post, and I'm saying it again. But I want to change that. There are only a couple of you that are probably still with me (if that??), but that's good enough for me so here we go! And bear with me - since it's been so long since I've posted this will be long.

Since I've posted (Easter) we haven't had too much going on. Lorelai was dedicated on Mother's Day which was the biggest thing. Here are some pictures from it.

Asher started taking a sports class. Today was his 4th class so he has 2 more before this session is over. He does basketball for 2 weeks, football for 2 weeks, soccer for 1 week, and t-ball for 1 week. I'm planning on signing him up for the next session as well because he really enjoys it. I had the best compliment on him today after the class. The two coaches came up to me to tell me how wonderful he is. They went on and on about how good and well behaved he is. They told me how this class is the hardest one they've had so far, but Asher always listens and never follows the examples the other kids set and were just so thankful. I have to admit - their words brought tears to my eyes. For those of you that remember Asher was an extremely difficult baby. He cried more often than he didn't until he was about 5 months old when we finally saw some minor improvement. It makes me so incredibly happy to see how far he's come from that. He might have been a hard baby, but he is one of the best and most well-behaved toddlers I've ever seen! Here are some pictures of him in his class.

That's about all that's new with us. Of course I have tons more pictures of the kids so here are some more random shots along with a couple of funny videos.

Asher and his buddy, Davis:

Our Memorial Day shoot:

And here are the videos. This first video was yesterday afternoon. Lorelai just started solids/baby food about 2 weeks ago, and this was her first try of real baby food. She started with squash, and Asher stayed true to himself by not letting even her eat without him getting some.

Is anyone still with me?

Well, as I predicted I have abandoned my blog. I honestly don't think anyone keeps up with it so I figured it wasn't a big deal. However, if someone (even one measly person) does read this then I will be motivated to be more committed to it. So if you're out there and you want me to continue let me know!

Here are some recent pictures. The first ones are from today at church including the egg hunt we had at church after the service. Tomorrow or later on today I'll post the pictures of us dying our eggs. 

Happy Easter!

As you can tell Asher is very much in the stage of not wanting to have his picture taken.

This was Lorelai on October 21st - the day after she was born:

Here she is now in the same bouncey seat. She's HUGE!

Asher was apparently trying to drink his Playdoh.

Our kids must have heads that other kids love to hit. Here is Lorelai getting her head hit:

And this was Asher getting his head hit last year when he was 4 months old:

This is Asher's buddy Davis. Davis is a month older than Asher, and we have playdates with him, his baby sister, Keris, and their parents, Aja and Gabe once a week. Keris is the baby hitting Lorelai in head up above. She is 2 days older than Lorelai. They live in Alpharetta (about 20 minutes from us), but are probably going to be moving into our neighborhood this summer.

This is what happens when daddies get ahold of the kids and dress them:

Happy Valentine's Day/Photo Shoot

Happy Valentine's Day from the Hoovers!

Today we decided to do a Valentine's Day photo shoot. We had a lot of fun doing it and tried doing it all on our own with a white sheet even to serve as a background. Unfortunately the white sheet was a last minute decision so it was pretty wrinkled. Here are some pics for you to enjoy. Sorry there are so many! It was hard to choose which to post - we took over 200!

This is what Lorelai thought by the end of it: