I know I just posted a gazillion pics of Layton, but I just have to keep posting them :) Afterall, he is my third and historically, the 3rd child hardly has any photos taken of them, so I just need to prove that wrong! These pictures were taken one morning when it was just he and I at home. I just wanted to capture some of his fatness (aka, cuteness!) and of course I got lots more smiles and precious expressions :)

Christmas Jammies

Definitely not my favorite of the Christmas jammies tradition. Don't know if having 3 kids made it more difficult or if it's just that one of them is only 5 months old :) But, I did get a couple cute shots of Layton by himself and only a couple shots of all three. I should probably just try again another day but who's got time for "re-dos" this time of year?! Next year will hopefully be better and easier with their ages :)

Layton- 5 months old

Layton continues to be our chunkiest baby to date :) And I love all of those rolls and chubby cheeks! He is also super laid back and content and overall pretty happy most of the time! Such a blessing being that he is the third! He constantly has something in his mouth...either his fist, all four fingers, his thumb, a toy, a burpcloth, or anything else close by! He drools all the time and I'm pretty sure I can see a tiny bit of "white" under his gums at this point. He LOVES, and I mean loves, his brother and sister. He just laughs at them and almost always smiles when they talk to him! It's the cutest thing ever. He's still napping great...from 10-12 and 2-4:00 and will go without an evening nap if we are out and about or will lay down from an hour and then sleep from 8pm-8am. He has started waking up at random times and I'll hear him in his bed just playing around, talking, making sounds, and then sooner or later he's quiet again and fell back asleep! I've also found him on his back a few times and I've had to go in a turn him back over to his tummy :) He's really starting to play with things now and reaches for anything you put in front of him. He'll also make a choice between two toys if you hold them in front of him! Within the past week or so he's started reaching out and touching my face, which i LOVE! His little hands are just the most precious thing to me and I can't get enough of feeling them in my hands, on my arm while I'm holding him, or on my face. I'm eating him up, that's for sure!! Here's a bunch of random photos from the last month.

he DEFINITELY looks more like Shawn now! especially in this one:

look at that double/triple chin! holy moly!

love the serious face...and the vest is pretty cute too :)

The hunt for a perfect tree...2011

What a difference it was this year!! Our last trip to the Christmas tree farm, it was 25 degrees with winds of at least 20 mph and our visit lasted less than 20 minutes. It was miserable last year!! But this year...wow, it must have been in the mid 50's or even close to 60 degrees and absolutely gorgeous!! A few weeks before we headed up to the tree farm, Reilly found Shawn's walkie-talkies and insisted that we bring them with us to help us on our hunt for the perfect tree. The kids had so much fun playing with those things as we got lost in the trees. Ahhhh..the smell of fresh Christmas trees. Nothing like it! This is one of my favorite traditions :)

Reilly couldn't wait to get that star up on top!!

Random thougths.....

I need to blog a few random sayings and funny/cool things that the kids are doing right now so I don't forget!!

1. Braxton continues to be our little comedian. Last weekend, Reilly said something to him and without even skipping a beat, he looked right at her, repeated what she said, and then said, "you kidding me?!" She looked straight at me with the biggest eyes ever and we both just died laughing. It was so funny. So of course, Braxton uses every possible opportunity to say it again, hoping for the same eruption of laughter :)

2. Reilly has become such a good little pray-er. Almost every night at dinner for the past week or so, she has volunteered to pray. And that's not too out of the ordinary, but, the way she has been praying and what she has been praying has developed and changed and become so mature sounding! It's truly amazing. Shawn almost always says "amen" with tears in his eyes. There's just something so pure and so special about hearing your child talk to God with such an innocence and realness and such sincerity. It's also really fun to see how much she enjoys talking to God. I could listen to her pray all day.

3. After almost 12 full months of speech therapy, twice weekly, Braxton had his final session last week. I couldn't believe it. Thinking back to last year when I was 100% certain he was going to be diagnosed with Apraxia of Speech, which would mean years and years of therapy and lots and lots of work and still maybe never really having "normal" speech, and then seeing where he is now....I cry. Everytime I think about it. It's just amazing to me to see how God has brought us through this. From 12 weeks of Therapeutic Listening, twice daily for 30 minutes, to having to rearrange "my" schedule and plans so that we could be home twice a week for therapy sessions, we are blown away at his progress. And it's so funny to hear him talking like such a "big boy". He says the funniest things and some of the time, I still look at Shawn and say, "did you hear that?!" Tonight though, I had to laugh and thank to myself that this is what happens when you do speech therapy a little too long: Braxton was feeding the cat and accidentally dropped some food on the floor. He immediately looked down at the mess and said, "Dad-gum-it!!!" What?!!! Oops! Guess he's heard that too much...but thankful that's ALL he's heard :) And soooo thankful that he now has the ability to articulate himself so well :) Grateful!

Layton's Infant Dedication

We had such a special service to celebrate our littlest guy earlier this month! We had both Reilly and Braxton dedicated at church around 4 months and the service was very sweet, but very short and not much to it. Well, this year, Meck totally redid the Infant Dedication service and boy was it awesome! We were able to have all the grandparents present which was also really special. Meck has really made the service into something so meaningful and really really intimate. They are requiring that all parents having their babies dedicated attend a "First Steps" class, in which they have the chance to learn about and discuss how they will raise their child to walk with Christ, how they will support their marriage, recognizing it as one of the most significant relationships in their child's life, and how they will grow and strengthen their own walk with Christ as they raise this child. Since we are not first time parents, we didn't attend the class, but did complete some of the homework, which was really really good. The one thing we had to do to prepare for the Dedication service was to write our exactly "who" we wanted Layton to be when he is 18years old; what kind of character we hope to develop in him. And then during the service, we actually shared this very intimate piece with our parents. It was really special. They started out the service with a slideshow of all the babies being dedicated, made from pictures that parents sent in. It was so sweet!

We love how intentional parenting is supported and recognized by our church!

Each family had our own cake to enjoy, with our baby's name on it! How fun?!

Thankful.

Just one more post about Thanksgiving.....

Last year I found and purchased the coolest "Thankful Tree" from Pottery Barn. It's a tree that has 30 little pockets on it to fill with things we are thankful for. Starting on November 1st, we sit around the dinner table each night and go around and share what we are thankful for, either from that day specifically or just something in general. We write it on a card and then put the card in the correct pocket. And while it was fun hearing some of the things Reilly said she was thankful last year, it was way cool to hear the way her little mind and her heart has been shaped since then. Some of the things she said she was thankful for took Shawn and I by surprise. It's so fun to witness her develop this innocent faith. One of the things she mentioned one night was that she was thankful for "Daddy going to work every single day so that mommy can stay at home with us"...what? At 4 yrs. old, we were pretty blown away by that one! And to help B along, we would have him say, "Thank you, God, for....." Most of the time his thank-yous had to do with what one of us had already said or something concrete, which is to be expected at 2yrs. old! This is a fun tradition that we will definitely keep doing and the kids love it! We keep the cards in our yearly "box" so we can look back at them as the years go by.