Saturday, July 19, 2008

middle name

I've been meaning to write this out for a few days - if nothing else, for posterity sake since it's kind of a cute story. And since Alannah doesn't have a "baby book" yet, I figured this was the best place. Besides, I am sure you are all curious about what her middle name might be.

I have been thinking about middle names for some time. In fact, Alannah has been the chosen first name for a girl for quite awhile, but we never came up with or settled on a middle name. So, this pregnancy I have been looking online and various websites and lists coming up with quite a variety of Irish girl's names. Every now and then I would give Kieran a list of names I kinda liked and they were pretty much vetoed quickly every time as not being "the perfect name". By the time the ultrasound got here, I had exhausted my resources. I had looked all over the internet and baby sites and just couldn't come up with anything new. 

After finding out she was a girl, I told Kieran "well, I guess you'll have to come up with a good middle name now!" We tossed around some names as we were driving home, a few random ones mixed in with some of my favorite names that had already been vetoed :-)  Then Kieran asked Caeden what he thought her middle name should be. He already knew her name was Alannah, we had been talking about that one for awhile. And you know how exotic 3 year old name ideas can get........ so I wasn't real sure what we were going to hear as his response! He said, "I think it should be Alannah Girl" - well, that wasn't as bad a Alannah Potato Chip or something! Kieran said, "well, what's the gaelic word for girl?", my first thought was "I think it's Colleen". So, after getting home I looked up Colleen and it does mean "girl". We tried Alannah Colleen - sounds okay.......... then I looked at the other variations of Colleen listed and one was "Cailin". This is actually the gaelic that Colleen comes from. Well, Alannah Cailin sounds pretty good too. But after saying it we realized Cailin sounds really close to Caeden and though it's the middle name and not the first, we weren't sure about it even though we really liked it. So, I looked up Cailin, one of the variations of Cailin is Caileen - basically a cross between Colleen and Cailin - still meaning girl or lass in the gaelic. Well, this sounded like a good compromise with the names, sounded nice with Alannah and has the meaning that Caeden picked.......... Alannah Caileen it is! 

"Alannah" means - dear child, precious, a term of endearment 'o child' in gaelic 
"Caileen" means - girl or lass in gaelic
 So, she's our "dear, precious girl"! 




Friday, July 18, 2008

the boys




FREE!

Hey, for all you Jamba Juice lovers............
Go HERE for a coupon for "buy one, get one free" on any smoothie!

(and if you will use it more, mine let me print it several times...........!)

thanks to www.moneysavingmom.com for the link!


Thursday, July 17, 2008

"Pray for China"

Yesterday mom gave me a little gray bracelet that says "Pray for China" on it. Caeden thought this was pretty cool but the bracelet's are a little large for his wrists.  This morning he found a small rubber band on my desk and put it on and told me - "this says "pray for China",  it reminds me to pray for China and Uncle Andrew and that's very important" - so he proceeded to wear the rubber band the rest of the morning.  
(I mean, how could I take even a rubber band away after him telling me THAT!)

Here he is with his rubber band bracelet
After he got up from his nap, I asked him if he wanted to make a bracelet that was more his size (and a bit safer then a rubber band) - so I found some floss yarn and made a little bracelet. I know, if I was more organized I could have found all my floss and picked the colors of the Chinese flag or something, but these were the only 2 colors I could find quickly! Regardless, he thinks it's pretty cool and told me "it reminds me to pray for China", so the point is still made :-) 

Here he is with his new bracelet


Don't forget to keep Andrew and China in your prayers the next few weeks. I think he left today sometime. I don't know that he will update it, but I did recently add the link for his blog to the list on the left. 

In other news - my cousin Melissa had a new baby this week - little Lily is adorable!

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to MOM, DAD AND BEN - all have birthday's this week!



Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Playing with a 3 yr old!

Life is always fun with a 3 year old running around - here's a couple cute pictures I took recently!

Playing with his trains............ 


And he told me "look mom, I have a riding mower!" - and yes, Colm is trying to push him


Monday, July 7, 2008

It's a.......

BABY
(looks very healthy, growing well, all organs in their proper place and size, due date still good at November 20, 2008 and she weighs about 12 ounces!)
GIRL!
and the u/s technician was very confident of what she was seeing :-) 

Random thoughts and photos

Caeden is quite the chatterbox these days........ he has an opinion on everything and offers constant commentary on any and everything :-) His latest is mastering recognizing all the letters of the alphabet and knowing their sounds. He won't always remember on command, but he knows them. We have had this leap frog dvd home from the library and he loves it. Caeden is napping still in the afternoons, with Colm. And his bedtime going to bed is improving - though it has been quite the challenge for some time. 


On the 4th of July we ended up not going anywhere to watch fireworks but see what we could from our deck. I let the boys watch the "Capitol Fourth" on PBS - which conveniently does fireworks at about 8:15 :-) After enjoying those I put Colm to bed but let Caeden stay up and watch the re-run; figuring he would either fall asleep on the couch or he could watch with us outside in a while. He ended up awake by the time we went outside and we sat out on the deck and watched a show off toward Peyton or so. After watching for a few minutes Caeden asked "where's all the instruments"?  :-) I guess he had rather enjoyed the musically accompanied display on TV! So, we made instrument sounds while we watched the rest of the show. 


Caeden enjoying the afternoon rainstorm with a new umbrella! 

After a hail and rainstorm - same storm as noted on Uncle Ben's blog -
they had fun watching the storm and thunder and lighting and then when it stopped we had to go out and check out the hail

Colm is walking well now. And is usually choosing to walk rather then crawl wherever he goes. It is so cute to see him toddling about. Chasing big brother and listen to him try and talk and explain himself. He understands everything that we say, though his spoken vocabulary is rather limited, he can usually get his point across. He loves to play outside and dig in the dirt. He loves to eat, pasta is a favorite - any flavor or style. He loves to wear hats and can ask for "hat". He is sleeping well, down to one nap in the afternoon - usually 12:30/1 for a good 2 hours. And is sleeping a good 12 hours at night. Often sleeping in till 7:30/8 - even past 8 occasionally! Too bad big brother doesn't do this as well and really thrill mama! 

"Train up a child............." - now that Colm is walking so well we figured it was time for him to be helping out :-) He loves to sweep! 

Kieran has been working around home the last couple weeks. He is keeping busy and has a couple jobs lined up over the 4-6 weeks. We enjoyed a nice visit with his mom and dad and they are now off visiting around Ireland for the summer. I am keeping busy with the constant circle of laundry, dishes, kids, cleaning - repeat for the day and the week as needed


We have a baby appointment this afternoon and will hopefully be back later tonight with some nice pictures and updates in that department. He or she is getting more and more active and I am enjoying feeling baby kicks and turns during the day pretty often. Caeden asked this morning, "when the baby grows up will it be a boy or girl?" Rather sweet since we have told him the baby needs to grow quite a bit before it is ready to come out and he knows this afternoon we are going to "get pictures of the baby inside and maybe find out if it's a boy or girl" - he is excited about it and often gives the baby kisses and tells it good night. 

Friday, July 4, 2008

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY 
FROM CAEDEN AND COLM!



(Colm is very proud of his new walking ability!)


Tuesday, July 1, 2008

the boys

Caeden Sean - 3 years old
Colm Michael - almost 16 months



(don't all smile at once!)



Caeden's haircut!

Here's the last "long hair" pictures




Colm's First Haircut!


We cut Colm's hair a little bit last week - didn't take much off and you cannot tell too much. He wasn't too sure about those trimmers!



The next morning