We have a puller-uper

Cayden has been slow to many of his milestones. He wasn't one of those infants who ever liked to push his feet against your lap when you held him. He never wanted to stand. He would fold his little legs up to a sitting position if you tried to hold him up to stand. He was really laid back and was just happy sitting and watching his surroundings.

He couldn't go from laying to sitting until the week that he started crawling and he didn't crawl until 11 months. Now he's a crawling pro and all over the house. As of the 26th (the day he turned 14 months) he started pulling up. And he is now a pulling up pro! He is into everything! It's like an entire new world has opened up to him and now he can reach all of sissy's toys that she used to put out of his reach on the ottoman.

I have a feeling that he will go from pulling up to walking really quickly. Just this morning he was walking with me holding his hands. I'm sure his walking toys will be more fun for him now! (He used to push his walking toys on his knees.)

I grabbed a few pictures of the kids yesterday after work while they were sharing a snack of goldfish. He pulled up so fast to get to those goldfish!

 Eye on the prize:)

 That's better...

 Poor Coda now has to find a new retreat spot to get away from Cayden.

 Adalyn swims the fishies through the air into Cayden's mouth. He loves it!

Superhero 5K

This past weekend our family ran in the CASA Superhero 5k. Of course it was raining on our drive to the race but thankfully the rain let up for the race itself. It picked back up as we were waiting after the race for the results and awards which was a bummer because they had a whole festival for kids afterwards with blow ups and face painting. (We didn't power through the rain to do either activity.)

We've never run in this race before but we saw the pictures from last year and it looked so fun. I would say 90% of the adults and kids at this race are dressed up in some way or another. Some are in full costumes! So it's especially fun for the kids to see all the fun costumes:) Jonathan had a vision of our family dressing up together and decided we should all dress up with a batman theme. He wanted to do that theme so that he could be pushing the "bat mobile". So he went out to Hobby Lobby (by himself!) and bought fabric and flannel and worked on matching capes. He ended up not decking out the stroller as the bat mobile but I think our outfits were still awesome anyway!

Before the race, we were walking up and the Run the Bluegrass coordinator saw us and took this picture.

Finishing the race. This photo was from the finish line photographer. I know I'm biased but I think my hubby looks pretty buff and pretty hot in this picture pushing my babies!

Here I am headed to the finish line. (You don't want to see my finish line photo! Not pretty!)

 I finished in 32 minutes which I was very happy with since my toe isn't normal yet and my ipod ran out of batteries. (Running without music stinks!!)

After the race!

 Adalyn's shirt had the cape attached with velcro. Jonathan did an awesome job matching our capes to hers!

Adalyn was thrilled to see the Chick-fil-a cow. She had to give him some kisses!

 I was so grateful that one of my friends let us borrow her rain cover. I'm glad we didn't need to use it during the race but it was nice to have it after the race to ward of the wind and rain. (See Batman and Joker in the background? They had awesome costumes!)

Throughout the race course there were action figures and stuffed animals and each runner was allowed to pick up one item and carry it to the finish line. After the race we could turn our item in for a prize. (Each item was numbered.) Jonathan's action figure won him a free Smashburger coupon. Mine won a free Raising Cane's dinner and a free bag of coffee from Starbucks! Score! Jonathan also brought us home an award! Even with pushing the stroller he came in 3rd in his age group and brought home a new Tervis tumbler! He's a rock star! 

We had a fun time running this race and will do it again next year! Hopefully we'll get some sunshine next year:)

Friday Weigh-In

I weighed in this morning. And I earned a new Lose It badge:

 This was the screen that popped up when I entered my 3.2 lb loss into the app this morning. Yes I went past my goal by .2 lbs!

Yes, I do feel like that guy on top of that mountain! I'm doing a happy dance with lots of arm pumping and screaming! And I want to scream to the world that if I can do it, anyone can do it!

I went into my app to log my breakfast and saw that the app automatically switched me out of the "lose 2 lbs a week" plan to the "maintain" plan because I went from 1,060 calories allotted each day to 2,042. That's crazy to see my calories almost double. But you all know what's coming right? I can't even leave it a day. I'll be making a new goal and switching back to the lose 2 lbs a week and working to lose another 4.8 lbs! This will take me to the weight that I have healthily maintained for most of my adult life.

I feel so healthy and feel so good mentally and emotionally. These 36.8 lbs have been a huge change in my life! I feel like I'm back to "me" instead of "invisible-mom-me".

And because I love a good before/after comparison. Let's take a look at where I was in April before I started this weight loss journey:

 And this is not a true "after" since this was a week ago plus I now have a new goal. We'll call it an "in progress" pic. But I kind of can't believe the difference!

I'm so thankful for Jonathan and all of my friends and family who have been so supportive of me through this! You all means so much and your words of encouragement have been priceless!  Thanks!

Sunday Pictures

We were actually ready for church early on Sunday so we took a few pictures! Of course we can never get both kids to smile at the same time. Oh well.

 Somehow Nana and Papa were color coordinated with the kids! Pretty cute!

After church Adalyn was cracking me up. She wanted to wear her new batman shirt (that has a detachable cape) so she put that on over her dress. (The shirt is part of our family costume for our 5K this coming Saturday...you know pictures will be coming soon!) Jonathan and I went to a consignment sale last week and found Adalyn a pair of princess heals, a crown and a wand for $3. So she had to wear her new heals and carry her wand with her superhero shirt. The entire ensemble made me laugh.

I love my girl. She is so rough and tough and so very girly at the same time. This picture is just perfect. (She plays with mostly boys at daycare so she knows all about superheros since that's what 3 and 4 year old boys are into.)  She left this shirt on until nap time when I had to bribe her to take it off. I don't blame her. The cape is pretty cool. Why don't they make girl clothes this cool? :)

Saturday Fun Day

This past Saturday we had a jam-packed fun day planned. First up was the Run for the Refuge which is a 5K that I have run for the past 3 years. It's for a non-profit organization that we like to support. My MUMS group (like a mops group) supports the Refuge for Women also so each year we try to get as many MUMS girls out to the race as possible. Of course I had already registered for the race before I hurt my toe. I was able to give my race bib to a friend so she could use it in my place.  The race is a small race but it's fun because I enjoy the route and even though it's not sponsored by our church there are tons of our church friends that are there.

I was so bummed that I didn't get to run this year but I still went to cheer for Jonathan and my friends. After I got over feeling sorry for myself as everyone left running and I had to stay behind, I realized that it was kinda cool that I got to be waiting at the finish line. Usually Jonathan is so far ahead of me in races that I never get to see him running. I was able to get some awesome pictures of him running and was able to cheer for him!

Before the race with the kids. The weather was actually cool (hence the jackets/hat) and it was a perfect day for a race. Poor Cayden. His hat was too big for his tiny little head. But he still looked adorable:)

 Coming around the parking lot. He was right behind the pace car scooter.

 In the lead!! (His competition for the entire race was the guy in the blue shirt and yellow shoes.)

 Running down the home stretch!

 Running across the finish line! He came in second! Look at that clock! 19:00 (but his official time was 18:57) Before this race his personal record for 5k was a sub-20 and now he has a sub-19! I am so proud of him. He also brought me home a prize! He got a gift card for one of the local restaurants in town! Date night here we come!

 Obligatory after picture - still panting.

 My boys. Twinkies.

My boy looked so cute in his little man fall outfit. He's getting so old!

After going home so Jonathan could get cleaned up, we got back in the car and headed to our favorite apple orchard. They were having an Apple Festival and we thought it would be fun to spend a few hours out there. They had vendors set up and I found a vendor selling awesome jewelry! Jonathan let me get one of the necklaces and I honestly almost stopped back at her booth on my way back out to the car. Ha! I have since started following her facebook and etsy sites. Ha!

But there was more to do than shop the vendors. Adalyn thoroughly enjoyed the ENORMOUS play area. It feels like they doubled the size of it this year!

 She was all about the pink tractor. 

 She loved this black slide. It was fun because the bottom of the slide rested on the ground and then the white part on the ground was slick so she'd keep sliding.

 This was the big slide on the other side. We weren't going to see if Adalyn wanted to go on it but at one point she decided she wanted to go with her daddy.

 They got to the top of the slide and she decided she wanted to go down by herself without her daddy. Of course I couldn't hear so I thought J was just sending her down by herself to so I started freaking out a bit. Nope. Just Miss Independent wanting to be a big kid. I figured after she went one time with Jonathan she'd go by herself. I had no clue she'd do it the first time on her own.

We got a few pictures with papa and nana.

 Naptime! Headed home and Adalyn was not thrilled. (She wouldn't take her bracelet off from the play area for two days. I think she was hoping we'd take her back!) :)

That evening Jonathan and I left the kids with my parents and went out to dinner and a movie - a very rare treat! I honestly can't remember the last time we went to see a movie. I wore my new necklace that I bought at the festival and I was super excited to wear one of my pre-Adalyn shirts that I used to wear on date nights! And how cute does my man look in that cute plaid shirt!!?

 We had to get this picture to show how cute Adalyn was. She seriously thought she was in the picture my dad was taking of us so she was standing there smiling. So cute! She told me she would miss me while we were on our date but that she would have fun with papa and nana.