Two Months Today!

Lincoln hit the two month mark today. We decided to take a few pictures in hopes of posting a cute one to commemorate the day. I was really hopeful - they were both in such great moods. Unfortunately, they really didn't turn out at all.

Either Stephen looked liked this:

or Lincoln was going cross-eyed.

Depressing, huh? At least they were color coordinated - gotta look for the bright spot :)

I did snatch a couple that were OK:

Smiler

Our little Lincoln is such a smiler! It cracks me up to look down at some random moment and see him smiling back at me. He's been smiling since he was really little. Course for a while there I never had the camera out so we never caught it. Lately he's far more consistent with his smiling. He smiles for sure when he has a full belly. I know he's nearing the end of a meal when in the middle of sucking he looks up and gives me a huge smile (letting the milk drip out of his mouth). He also smiles when Stephen talks to him. He really loves his big brother.

Speaking of smiling, he's laying on my lap smiling as I'm typing. Achh, where's the camera?! :)

(I made the pics rather small but if you click on them they'll pop up much larger)

My Little Man

Sitting at church on Sunday, I looked over at Stephen and was amazed at how much older he looked. My baby will be two years old in just a few weeks. But his church clothes make him look even older than that. Anyway, it just made me want to take more pictures to try to capture a few memories because time is flying by too fast.

I thought this was pretty funny - I told Stephen to hold Lincoln's head up because he was falling and instead Stephen decided to fall over with him.

Haircuts all around

So it seems that my babies (well at least the male ones) always end up with male pattern balding a few weeks after birth. They lose all the hair in front and on top except for a small tuft in the back and sides which keeps on growing so they end up with a nasty looking mullet. That is Stephen's mullet on the right just before we buzzed his head. Lincoln's was not as bad but it was bad enough to warrant a trim with the clippers last week.

Since daddy was getting ready to trim his own hair he figured he'd "even up" Lincoln's while he had the clippers out.

I was a little sad but I agree it looks much better. Below we have the before and after shots.



Stephen didn't want to be left out on all the fun. He saw what we were doing with Lincoln and said, "Stephen haircut!" I was shocked. He never really wants a haircut. It's always a bit of a struggle to give him one. He definitely needed a haircut so I'm glad he asked for it. Although he didn't stand perfectly still (dan says it's like trying to shave a cat), he did much better this time.

Christmas Newsletter

Even though we are now deep into January, we thought we'd throw the link to our Christmas Newsletter on here just in case you missed it :)

Christmas Photo Shoot

There's always a little trepidation when it comes to family photo shoots - especially with a near two-year-old. But we're always happy when it's over and we have a decent shot out of 100 taken :) I bought the boys matching outfits. And wouldn't ya know it, when it came time to dress the little guys Stephen's outfit was too small and Lincoln's was too big. Oh well, it still turned out good enough for the newsletter and the header of our blog :) Here's a few shots that either turned out nicely but didn't make the #1 spot or they just cracked me up.

This little montage cracks me up. Four shots is all Stephen could handle of the two of them together. Which is strange because he has gotten to where he wants to hold Lincoln all the time even when he's crying and it's mom or dad that has to call it quits.

Toes

Cameron was playing with my dad's camera and began taking pictures of Stephen. Stephen was enjoying all the attention he was getting from both Cameron as well as Grandma and Grandpa who were trying to get him to smile. Out of nowhere he decided he was finished and plopped down and began picking between his toes. This is a new little habit he's adopted. It's usually part of the nighttime ritual but occasionally it pops out at rather inconvenient moments such as an impromptu photo shoot much to the horror of his mother. Cameron thought it was pretty hilarious and actually talked Stephen into putting his big toe in his mouth which thankfully is not part of his regular routine but now we have a lovely shot of it.

Christmas

Merry Christmas!

It was fun having Christmas at our house this year. Except for my mission, I've pretty much spent Christmas at my parents home. Having it at my house made me feel all grown up :) We had G&G Earl here as well as my brother Cameron. We had planned on having my mother's parents come for Christmas day but with the snow storm that morning we all felt it was better if they stayed put. We had the day all planned out but for some reason when Grandma and Grandpa Hansen ended up not coming all the plans went out the window and we had a very, very lazy Christmas day. We opened presents at around 11AM and then took naps until late afternoon. At some point we decided we better get Christmas dinner ready or we wouldn't be eating until midnight. It was the most relaxed Christmas day I've ever spent.


We tried to be conservative when it came to presents for Stephen. It's so easy to go overboard at this age. The first thing he opened was a slinky given to him by his cousins and we might as well have called it good right there. He played and played and played with that slinky. We had to try pretty hard to coax him into looking at anything else. In fact, we actually had to partially open his other gifts so he could see that they too might be fun and then he would come over long enough to open them and then it was right back to the slinky.



Before we got to the gifts, Stephen entertained us with his antics. His new thing lately is to bend over and look back through his legs. The whole time he's doing it he repeats "I upside down." He helped us pass the time while we waited for Daniel (who was putting the finishing touches on my present) and he even made Lincoln smile.

Lincoln loves to be held

Since the day he was born, Lincoln has always slept better if he was held. The closer he can be to someone's face and hot breath the better. If left to himself he stirs and struggles and wakes himself up. Luckily we've had Grandma and Grandpa Earl here so he's got lots of people wanting to hold him all day long.

Nighttime was more of a challenge. His bassinet is right next to our bed but it wasn't close enough. After a night or two with no one getting very much sleep we decided he would have to sleep with us at night, and since he had the apnea monitor on, we felt a little better about it. During the day you could find Lincoln nestled in someone's arms (usually mama or Grandpa Earl) or being worn in a sling or Bjorn carrier.

Well now that mom and dad Earl have gone back to AZ, we felt it was a good time to start getting Lincoln used to sleeping alone. The beginning was pretty rough but he's gotten to the point where most of his naps are taken alone in his bed and he's become an independent night sleeper as well - huzzah! Late in the afternoon and evening he has problems with reflux so he still gets held quite a bit but it's much, much better.