Keepin’ up with the gaedtkes

We were lucky enough to spend Valentines Day weekend in Santa Cruz this year with Jeff and Libby. The weather was nice, the beach was great… even with high tide hitting in the middle of our photo op. Cali got to run her little heart out; I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time. And Rob and I got to to sleep in, see a movie and leave the kids with the Grandparents–By definition that makes it a great weekend : )

This is just a quick update as to how the kiddies are doing.

Carter:
Carter continues his transformation from my baby to my little man. He constantly amazes me. Potty training is going great, he has graduated to wearing his big boy undies in public and only uses diapers when sleeping. We do “learning time” everyday, mainly to teach him how to focus his energy and attention (harder some days than others). He now can identify all uppercase letters (and all lowercase on good days), their sounds, and can put the alphabet in order. He can count to 39 without help (higher if you tell him the 10s place), and we are now working on sounding out 3 letter words and learning new sounds like “sh”, “ch”, “th”. It’s a very slow process though. He is the best big brother and likes to help take care of Hailey. When she cries he goes running to her room yelling, “I’m coming Hailey”. He loves to hold her hands and touch her feet, it’s very cute.

Hailey:
Hailey has proven to be a more difficult baby than Carter ever was, but she gets better every day, and I couldn’t love her more. On the up side, she’s a better sleeper than Carter was at her age. She now smiles at people and I can get her to laugh (sounds more like grunting), when I tickle her neck in just the right place at just the right moment (meaning when she’s in her best of moods). Tummy time is getting better, instead of crying after 1 minute on her stomach she waits 3-5 minutes, Carter helps keep her distracted. You can tell she is going to adore her big brother. She stares at him and smiles all the time. Now that we’re done having babies, I wouldn’t mind if she took her time growing up, so I can savor it as long as possible : )

Rob, the kids and I made the trek to Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast for NMHS’s New Years 10. My wonderful friends from North Medford High School get together annually to ring in the new year. This tradition started 10 years ago (wow, time does fly). Every year we pick a new location and this year we were in an amazing four story house (with an elevator!). The family’s with kids stayed on the second floor to give a buffer level between sleeping babies and the top floor, which is where majority of the partying took place. Everything was perfect, except our baby monitor failed us, but thanks to technology we were able to monitor our children through iChat video conferencing so we could play in our beirut tournament. Phil and I took 2nd place. I’m not sure what place Rob and his teammate took (heehee). That’s two years in 2nd place for me, I’m gonna have to step up my game next year (in actuality I’ve just jinxed myself and won’t come anywhere close to winning next year). Can’t wait for NY11. Love you all!

Oh, and we missed you Jered & Bev. Can’t wait for baby Cartmill to arrive!