10 months old... jumping into fall!

It is fall and we are having a blast! Finn is now crawling and having the time of his life chasing around his sister and friends! We went to a Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island in Portland and had a phenomenal time. We picked pumpkins, rode a hayride, and ate delicious tiny doughnuts that are made to order piping hot!We have been keeping outdoors as much as possible before the meat of the Portland rain hits us. As you can see Lola loves to go to the park and throw the baseball around and she has a pretty good throw! I can't believe that her and Finn are almost 3 and 1! Time is flying by!
Work is going well for Daniel, we are still enjoying our 3 day weekend and trying to have as much quality family time as we can. We will be heading down to San Francisco to visit Daniel's cousin Jen, Gary and Miles who just turned one! We are excited to see the kids play together since last time they were too young to enjoy each others company. We plan to go to the Discovery Museum, Golden Gate park and we'll even get to go out without the kids because Jen and Gary have set up a babysitter!

Halloween is going to be fun for the kids, Finn is going to be a skeleton and Lola will be a skeleton princess of course. There will be pictures to follow! And of course we will be trick-or-treating with Lola's best friend Julien who is in the picture above.

We also have Daniel's birthday to celebrate the 1st of November so it is looking to be a fun and busy next couple of months. We love you all! Happy Halloween!

6 Months, Summer Fun!

Wow, Finn is 6 months already... how time is flying by.  We are having such a fun summer!  I think that with all of the fantastic parks in Portland we went to almost 9 different parks just last week.  Lola is having such a fun time with her friends... especially Julien who she has a nanny share with.  They are best friends and it is so fun to see them play and interact with each other, you would think they are teenagers already the way they run around the house!

Oma came to visit last week for the 4th of July, she got to experience some very hot days in Portland with no air conditioning in our house!  We all made it through, at lease it is only a couple days out of the year.  Our friend Danica had a big bar-b-que so Oma got to meet all of our closest friends!

Daniel and I went to the Coldplay concert a couple nights ago and had a great time.  Thanks to our wonderful baby sitters we have been able to get out more and with all of the concerts in Portland we have a few more to look forward to before the end of the summer!

Finn is so happy and energetic, he is such a different baby than Lola was so we are getting used to having a messy crazy boy!  He is so much fun and loves to jump and eat all day long.  He grabs anything in sight which has made us be more aware of our food since he will put anything in his mouth.  He is learning to sit on his own but is so active that he usually just dives for something or stands up as soon as you set him down to sit.  I can already tell that Lola and Finn are going to have so much fun playing together as he gets more mobile.

With everything else going on we are painting our house a different color.  Slowly we will get it done and we are already loving the new color so much.  I will post picks next time.

They are growing up too fast.  Love from all of us!

5 months and really busy!

Sorry that it has been soooo long.  Two children is proving to be much more time consuming every day that passes by!

Finn is now 5 months old and he started eating solid foods last week.  Unlike feeding Lola for the first few times, Finn jumped right into it.  He has only been eating real food for a week and already can't get enough.  We are trying to pace it but he just seems ready to go!  

Of course all of the same busy schedules and play groups going on as usual, but we have welcomed a new nanny for the summer!  She just graduated high school and was looking for extra work over the summer.  Lola loves her because she is younger and has so much energy for the kids.  Plus it is nice to have someone available on weekends so Daniel and I can sneak in a few extra date nights while the Portland weather is so nice.  

We are currently deciding on a new color to paint our house... we are going to do it ourselves in all of our free time :)  Wish us luck.  Our goal is to finish by the end of the summer.  Our neighbors will just have to deal with a half painted house for a while.

Lola is seeming so ready to start school we just have to get her potty trained which is proving to be harder than not.  We will work on it so when she turns three we can hopefully send her to a spanish immersion school in our area that we really like.  She is so talkative and smart that I can not believe it sometimes.  She just cracks us up with her witty humor and you can definitly tell she is my child with her stubbornness, but I wouldn't have it any other way!  

Love form all of us and I will try and be better with posting more frequently!

3 1/2 months, our busy life...

Well it has been a while since I posted last because things have just been really busy with 2 kids!  

Everything has been going well and Finn is growing and growing every day.  He rolled from his front to back twice now in just the past couple of days!  He has also been using his Bumbo seat to sit up and watch Lola while she is playing.  He is eager to get out there with her and loves her so much, he yells to get her attention then gives a big smile when she looks at him.

Work has been busy for Daniel so we have had some late nights with pagers going off all night long, but knock on wood Finn's fantastic sleeping habits so far have not been bothered by it.  He already only wakes up once a night to feed at about 3 in the morning sleeping form 7 to 7.  He has even had two full 12 hour nights of sleep without getting up. I hope it lasts because we have been lucky so far.

The weather has been getting more and more beautiful in Portland so we have been spending lots of time outside at the park and we have begun using the bar-b-que and our new patio set. We will be hosting bar-b-que's at least once a month to have our friends and all of their children over for Daniel's famous flank steak and fun in the yard!

I am doing well, definitely overwhelmed a lot of the time but we are getting our routine down and Lola is such a good big sister that she makes it all easier!

Love from all of us!

Back to Michigan...

Well we had a great visit last week back in Michigan.  It was so nice to see all of our family and friends and I think Lola had the best time of all.  SHe used to be shy when she met new people, but this trip she completely came out of her shell and had a great time playing with everyone.

Finn and Lola both got a little spoiled from the abundant attention they received during the trip, but it was all worth it since they got to spend so much time with family.  

The flight back ended up being just as good as the flight there!  They were both angels on the flight and Daniel and I couldn't believe how well they behaved (that won't happen again I'm sure)! The trip was also great since Daniel and I had our first date out since having Finn.  Becca, Steve, and Oma watched them when we went to dinner at Baston in Royal Oak... great burgers but the beer can't stand up to Portland's microbrews :)

As requested I will post some pictures of our house and neighborhood in Portland for friends and family that haven't been out to see it yet.  Look for that in my next blog.  

Thanks for the wonderful time in Michigan everyone... it was too long since last time we saw everyone so we hope we can see everyone again soon.

6 weeks old...

Things are going great with Finn.  He slept for 6 hours straight the other night which was a great relief to two sleep deprived parents.  I hope he keeps it up but we will see since things change so quickly with a newborn.  I don't know if it is because he is a boy or not but everything physical is coming so much quicker with him... he already stands when we hold him up, rolls from side to side, and loves his tummy time so much he would basically be crawling if he had the arm strength since he back end is already doing the motion!

Steve came to visit for a couple days which was so much fun!  Lola had a great time with her Uncle and woke up the day after he left with a frown on her face saying "I miss Uncle Teevie so much".  What can you say to that... she looks like and has the same personalty as her Godpa so I knew they would have a ball together.

Lola is still loving her baby brother and has been so helpful, she always lets me know when he is crying and goes up to him and says "it's ok Finn Finn, don't worry".  She is so cute at this age. Lola is getting bigger and bigger by the second, she is so tall (95 percentile) and is talking in complete sentences now.  Sometimes I think she is too smart for her own good :)

Work has been going well for Daniel, he has been given more responsibilities at work which is great but also means more pager time.  In June the technology he is bringing over to his fab will be ramping up so our nights will be full of pages once again but he will hopefully be going to a shift schedule which could mean a three day weekend.  

We are going back to Michigan in less than two weeks which is very exciting... we can not wait for Finn to meet all of our family and friends (and get a date night out... thanks to Uncle Steve and Aunt Becca).

Life is great as a family of four but also exhaustingly busy!  I will update again soon.

Love from all of us!

It's been four weeks...

Well, it has been almost four weeks now with our little Finn at home and things are going pretty well.  Lola has been an amazing older sister and shows so much love for her brother.  I think that she is going to love when he gets old enough to play with her and boss around!  

Lola is starting "school" next week.  School being one 2 hour class at the community center in our neighborhood that will give me a little time that I can spend one on one with Finn.  It is hard the second time around because I don't feel that I get to spend enough quality time with Finn or Lola, but we are finding our grove slowly.

We have been to many play group and play dates since Finn was born to try and keep Lola's schedule as similar as possible which has helped with the transition.  It is somewhat hard for me though since sleep is at a minimum these days.  Finn is not as good as a sleeper as Lola was and it is taking a little longer for Daniel and I to find out what things work best for Finn.  

Overall we are extremely... tiredly... happy to have our beautiful family of four and are looking forward to our trip back to Michigan in March.  It will be wonderful to spend time with all of our family and friends that we have minimally seen since we moved out to Portland almost three years ago.  

Love from all of us!  I will try to keep updates of Finn's quickly growing self every two weeks or so.

Welcome Finley Newton Burlingame!

He is here!!!!

Finley was born at 9:56 p.m., Monday, January 5th, 2009!  He weighed 6 lbs and 5 ounces and was 19 inches long.

This was definitely another exciting birth for our family.  I went in for my 38 week appointment and my doctor told me that i was between 5 and 6 centimeters dilated and that if I didn't go into labor that night she would break my water in the morning.  As we drove home each bump seemed a little more uncomfortable, so we thought it would be best to drop Lola off at a friends house and head to the hospital.

When we got to the hospital I was still dilated the same so they said I could go home, but we insisted that we weren't comfortable with that option and wanted to stay.  So they decided to admit us and my doctor told the doctor on call to break my water.  

I talked to the anesthesiologist about an epidural before they broke my water but decided to wait until my water was broken to make the decision if I wanted it or not.  We all assumed that because they were intentionally breaking my water at 6 cms that I would have time to get an epidural and have it take effect.

So they broke my water at about 9 p.m. and I immediately was feeling a lot of pain and asked for the epidural.  The epidural was put in but without enough time for any medication to take effect I had to naturally push Finn out in 20 minutes!  It was a painful but fast labor and then we quickly had a new beautiful baby boy in our lives.  

We are all at home and adjusting to our new family of four.  Lola loves her baby brother (who looks exactly like she did except it seems like he will have brown hair and brown eyes), and when she is in the mood to interact with him gives him kisses and tickles him.  It has been a wonderful first 6 days and we could not ask for anything more than the perfect little family that we have created.  

Love from all of us!