Mellow Soren

Soren is such a mellow baby.  He sleeps most nights for at least 6 hours straight, wakes up happy and smiling and generally just goes with the flow.  He does like looking around (maybe to ensure nothing/no one is coming at him??) so he prefers to sit in his swing in the upright position.

 Judy and Steve sent Soren an adorable puzzle step stool.  Can you tell he loves it?

 Emily is breaking it in for him

 and when the puzzle is no longer fun, you can just throw the whole thing over...

 and all the pieces fall out...and the fun starts again

 Asher's eye is getting more colorful.  The pictures on the left are from day 1 and the pictures on the right are last night (day 3).  Luckily, it doesn't seem to hurt him much so he's a good sport about the whole thing.

Videos April 2014

First, Reese and Asher (mostly Reese) singing along to Frozen's Let It Go in the car.  This was before Reese had all the lyrics memorized:

Let It Go Reese and Asher.4.5.14 from CK LaFond on Vimeo.

Then, Reese doing a performance of the same song a capella (complete with costume):

Reese Let it Go.April 2014 from CK LaFond on Vimeo.

Finally, Emily playing the family pet (sorry it's so dark):

Retriever Emily.April.2014 from CK LaFond on Vimeo.

You should see the other guy...

Asher plays hard and goes full force all the time.  This weekend he was running into a fort the kids made by putting blankets over the couches.  Seems like nothing bad could happen with all that cushiony goodness around, right?  Well, our boy managed to run, trip and fly head (cheek) first into the back of one of our recliners.  This was taken the next morning (today) after a lot of ice application yesterday.  Poor kid.

Soren 2-3 months

Emily gets glasses

Emily's patching has gone well (although we may have to do it on and off for awhile) but she still needed glasses for farsightedness.  Once we got a neoprene band to go behind her head and help them stay on a bit better, she's been pretty good at keeping them on.

Welcome Elijah Phineus Lageman!

Jeff, Michelle and Grace welcomed our new nephew on April 2nd- Elijah Phineus Lageman- weighing 10 pounds! 

Congratulations to the whole family and especially Michelle for birthing such a big boy with no pain medicine!

15 and 2 month check ups

We took Emily and Soren in for their well baby check-ups this week.

Emily:

• Height: 32" (90th percentile)
• Weight: 23 lbs 6 oz (50th percentile)

Soren:

• Height: 23" (50th percentile)
• Weight: 13 lbs 8 oz (90th percentile)

Reese and Soren started at the same birth weight and I believe she was around 14 lbs at 2 months so he's not quite as big as she was but still impressive ;)

Emily has started truly walking everywhere (unless she needs to get somewhere fast and then she resorts to turbo-crawling).  Soren is smiling (and growing) a lot.  Everyone is doing great and we're enjoying the last few weeks before I have to get on the road again.

House of monkeys

It's been a busy month here but, then again, with four kids now, I'm not sure it's ever not busy.  We're pretty much just trying to control the chaos any way we can.  Once in awhile, though, I manage to get the camera out...

 Emily has learned to walk recently and has also become quite the monkey, climbing on everything with no fear whatsoever.

 As you can see in these pictures, Emily has begun to wear a patch over her left eye most of the day (amazingly she actually keeps it on most of the time).  Her left eye had become so dominant that her brain stopped making connections to her right eye, resulting in her eyes crossing or looking lazy because she basically wasn't using her right eye.  The solution is to cover her left eye to force her brain to use/reconnect with her right eye to even them out.  We're not sure how long she'll have to wear it but so far it definitely seems to be helping.

 Monkey Move #1: hanging from and trying to get into the silverware drawer

 Monkey move #2: getting into the cabinet below the sink to pull out all the plastic bags

 Reese and Soren

 Daddy must've said something pretty exciting...

 Brothers

 Rocking with my Dora guitar

 Rockstar moves...maybe an American Idol in 2026?

 Soren at 8 weeks

Soren is smiling, cooing and really "talking" to us as much as he can.  He's grown so much and I can't believe he's almost 2 months old already!  One more month for me at home and I'm going to try to enjoy it as much as possible.

Soren at 1 month

Soren is one month old today.  At his checkup this morning he weighed 10 lbs, 6 ounces and is 22 inches long; both about 75th percentile.

Below are a few more shots from our trip.
Asher and Soren sharing an airplane seat

 CK and Emily trying to snooze on the plane ride home with Steve and Carson across the aisle.

 The kids in a (relatively) quiet moment on the plane

 Our mountain of luggage on the way home.  14 suitcases and 2 strollers was the total I believe (LaFond and LaPraim families combined)

 Soren modeling his Mickey onesie

Disney World 2014

As many of you know we took our first family trip to Disney World last week with 20 other LaFond family members and some friends.  Despite a few challenges (stomach flu or food poisoning took down 3 of the 6 of us for at least 24 hours around Day 3, including CK; rain, wind and cold weather for the last 3 days of the trip; flight delays causing us to have to reschedule our flight home for a day later and scramble for a last minute hotel room; Craig passing out on the plane and staying 2 extra days in an Orlando hospital) we made the best of the trip and actually had a pretty good time, despite everything.  Reese and Asher enjoyed it a lot, Emily tired of the stroller and Soren was just fine hanging out in my sling the entire week.  CK was a trooper despite his Day 3 stomach bug that likely helped him lose 10 pounds.  Overall, I felt pretty good and probably better than I expected to at 3 weeks post c-section.

Some pictures from the trip.  Asher posing in front of his favorite ride (Dumbo)

 Reese meeting her favorite princess, Ariel, for the first time

 Soren, in case you try to blame me later, Dad is the one who jacked up your pants in this picture...

 Reese hamming it up on Main Street with Walt

 Meeting Mickey and Goofy at Animal Kingdom (Asher was a bit shy about posing with the characters)

 Family photo with Donald

 Our crew (minus the photographer, CK)

 Snack time in the stroller

 Posing with Belle in her Aurora dress

 Posing with Cinderella

 Aurora and her mini-me

 Asher warmed up to Snow White

 Ariel ("with legs" as Reese called this version)

 Being silly in front of Nemo and Friends

 Emily liked the real fish

 Soren, at 3 weeks, already trying to lift his little head up to check out the world

 Meeting Jake

 and Doc McStuffins

 and of course, Sophia the First

 Thumbs up with the toy soldier at Hollywood Studios

 Asher settled for a "five"

 Reese got all dolled up like a princess at the Bippitti Boppitti Boutique in Cinderella's castle

 The "shield" from all the hairspray :)

 getting her nails done...I don't think I've ever been this pampered in a spa in my life

 mid hairstyle...they keep them turned away from the mirror so they can't see themselves until the very end

 getting her sash

 applying Tinkerbell's glitter to her hair

 closing her eyes for the big reveal...

 seeing herself for the first time (I'm the one with the flash camera in the mirror simultaneously nursing Soren who was covered in glitter himself for the rest of the day)

 Reese and Asher posing in Cinderella's castle before we had breakfast with all the princesses

 Aurora #2

 Princess Jasmine

 And the one picture of the whole crew (all 26 of us) before we went to the Hoop Dee Doo Revue.  Note the sweatshirts and blankets due to the rain, wind and cold.  But we still had a great time!