Bond Family Blog

We have had a busy and fun filled month! We started off October with Auntie Katie’s wedding. It was at a really fun hot springs resort. We got to spend the weekend hanging out with family and having fun. Katie looked gorgeous and Preston did awesome walking down the aisle holding his “Here Comes the Bride” sign. Hopefully we will get pictures soon to show you!

After the wedding my mom was able to come out for a week and visit. It was fun to have her here to help me finish up some projects for our big craft night at church that I was in charge of. She was sick while she was here so we didn’t get to do a lot, but Preston loved playing with her. She also made Preston a fun dinosaur cape.

It was so much fun decorating our house for Halloween this year! Preston loves spiders right now. I bought him a pair of spider pj’s and that’s all he wanted to wear for a week. I finally got him another spider shirt and Grammers made him 2 more. He was really excited when we bought spiders to put on the outside of our house.

We were able to make a trip to the pumpkin patch again this year. The only way we could get Preston to smile was when I showed him candy and he said “trick or treat.”

Halloween weekend was full of fun! On Friday Ryan’s work did a trick-or-treat for the first time. Preston loved going to dad’s work. He wouldn’t say trick-or-treat, but he wasn’t shy to take the candy! On Saturday all of the family was in town and we got to have taco night and spend time with them and have Poppy’s birthday. We carved pumpkins at home on Sunday and then on Monday Preston got to go trick or treating for the first time. We only took him down our street, but he loved going up to each house. After every house he would say “more trick more trick.” The last two houses we went to he said “trick or treat” at the door. When he came home he loved handing out candy. He wanted to open all of his candy, but didn’t want to eat any of it. He would touch his tongue to it and then push it aside.

We had a great halloween and a busy month, but we are ready to start getting ready for cold weather and more Holidays!

Oh yea, something I should probably mention. We didn’t sleep much between when my mom was here and Halloween. Preston started waking up really early in the morning and then in the middle of the night and would be wide awake. After about a week I got him to start going back to sleep in our bed, but then I wasn’t getting any sleep. So we finally went to the doctor. She confirmed that there was no ear infection, but that he had allergies. So we have started him on some meds and he is now back to his normal sleeping schedule! I am so happy for him because he was always so tired and I couldn’t do anything to help him get more sleep.

Can you believe that Norah is 9 months old already? 9 months is a sad age for me because that means she has been outside of my belly for longer than she was inside. At her 9 month check in she weight in at 19 pounds, 29 inches and 44.5 head circumference. Norah is such a sweet baby girl. Her two favorite things to do are laugh and eat. It is so easy to get her to laugh and she always has a huge smile on her face. She would eat all day long if I let her too. She is doing good on all of her solids and will often times eat more than Preston does at dinner. She is a crawling maniac. She loves to follow us around and to get into things. She walks along furniture and has started letting go a couple of times, no steps yet though. When daddy gets home at night she gets a huge grin on her face and crawls as fast as she can to him.  She loves to swing at the park and loves to play with all of Preston’s toys. She had fun dressing up for Halloween as a Ghost. Our good friend Ginnie with Rolling Shutter Photography took her pictures. We are so grateful that Norah is a part of our family!!

Can you believe that Norah is 8 months already? It is crazy how fast she is growing up. She has started crawling and pulling herself up. She gets so proud of herself every time she stands up. She loves to follow us around the house. Preston and Norah still love playing with each other.

We had a great trip to Utah. I was able to take my sister Aimee up to BYU-Idaho. It was a lot of fun to see everything that changed and to help out. While we were in Utah we also got a chance to take Preston to the Zoo and to the state fair. I think everyone had a great trip. Preston is still doing great with the potty training, and even made it on both car trips with no accidents.

I just looked at the calendar and realized that Norah is 7 months old today. When did that happen? This year has gone by so fast and the last two months have flown by. Since I last posted we had Aunt Molly’s wedding. It was so much fun to be there and help her celebrate that day. I hope that she gets her pictures soon and shares them with us because we were so busy we couldn’t take very many pictures.

After the wedding we took a week as a family to go to San Diego to see the sites. It was a lot of fun and there is a lot to tell you about, so I will save that for it’s own post.

This week I didn’t have anywhere that I had to go so I decided it was time to start potty training. Preston has done awesome! On Monday night I had him sit on the potty for two hours and we got nothing. Finally Ryan came home and suggested he stand to pee, still nothing. Tuesday morning he woke up with a dry diaper and wanted to go potty first thing. He finally got his Toy Story underwear! Tuesday was a pretty intense day and a lot of it was spent in the bathroom, but Preston is a pro! We have had accidents every day, but he has started telling me when he needs to go and he can hold it until he gets there. We are so proud of him!! I am still scared to leave the house, but each day is getting better and better so hopefully we can make a trip somewhere soon.

Norah update: So with all of the craziness that has gone all I forgot to post Norah’s 6 month stats. At her 6 month appt. she was 16lbs 4 oz. and 26.5 inches. We got to have a fun dinner with some of the family. Aunt Molly and Uncle Neil were in town getting ready for the wedding, so they were able to come too. A couple days after her doctors appt and shots she started waking up in the night….and has been since then. I think some of it is teeth and some of it must have just been a growth spurt. Finally the last two nights are almost back to normal. I realized how spoiled I have been by her great sleeping habits! Norah sits up all by herself. She was a little wobbly at the wedding, but by the time we got to San Diego a week later she was a pro. She loves to sit and play with all of her toys, and Preston’s. She loves to roll around on the floor and has starting pushing up on to her knees this week. I’m afraid that crawling is right around the corner. She loves to watch Baby Signing Time. She is eating three meals a day of real food. I am trying to make most of her food and she is so funny because she knows that when I get out the magic bullet that it’s almost time to eat. She is a very “intense” eater. Once she see’s the food, or it’s time to eat she doesn’t let you stop putting the spoon in her mouth until it is all gone. The only food I have found that she doesn’t like so far is green beans. We love her so much and are so glad that we get to spend time snuggling with her every day.

Preston Update: I can’t believe how fast he is growing! He is so smart. He is still a great help around the house. He helps me empty the dishwasher and we try to make his bed everyday. He is still pretty good about cleaning up his toys when I ask him to. His new favorite thing to do is to have “dance parties”. He loves to jump around and sing to music. He loves to play with Norah and to make her laugh. All he has to do is smile at her and she’ll crack up laughing. He likes to help me feed her, which comes in handy when she is cranky in the stroller. I have really been trying to focus on playing with him more the last couple of weeks. He loves to figure things out and gets really excited when he gets something to work. We are so proud of everything that he does and what a great big brother that he is.

Last weekend was Uncle Neil’s Bachelor party. I didn’t want to stay home alone all weekend, so I went with Ryan and we decided to make a weekend out of it. Preston and Maya got to spend some time playing together in the Tandon’s pool. We are hoping they will remember each other in 9 days for Aunt Molly and Uncle Neil’s Wedding! Here are some pictures that Nina took for us. (In the pictures are Uncle Neil’s family, Marianne (Mom), Dinesh (Dad), Nina (Sister), Maya (Neil’s niece), Jac (Neil’s nephew))

As far as how the bachelor party went…all I know is they had a lot of fun and got a lot of sun!

We had a great weekend spending time with family and cooling off in the pool. It was super hot here, so we spent a lot of time in the pool. Preston started jumping off the diving board on Friday night and didn’t stop jumping until we had to pull him out of the pool every day. He had a lot of fun swimming with everyone. I didn’t get a ton of pictures though cause I was in and out of the pool.

We took Preston to his first movie at the theater, Cars 2. He wasn’t perfect, but I think he had a lot of fun. He was very worried about Norah the whole time and sad that she couldn’t be with us. But she had fun hanging out with Poppy.

On the 4th we got to celebrate Honey’s birthday with lots of fireworks. Preston fell asleep before it got dark so we woke him up for the fireworks. He had a lot of fun throwing poppers and scaring Uncle Neil with them.

Our friend Ginnie took some awesome pictures for us to celebrate the 4th of July. Thank you to all of those who have fought for our country and our rights!!  Here are some of our favorites:

You can view the rest of the pictures on the photo gallery page. Thank you Ginnie and Rolling Shutter Photography for doing an awesome job!

What a crazy month June has been! Ryan has been working crazy this month for a big deadline at work. He was working about 100 hours a week, but that deadline is here!!! We are so excited to have him back. He still has to work a little extra, but we at least get to see him at night and on the weekends now. To help keep ourselves busy I took the kids to go see my grandparents. My sister Aimee flew here first to help me with the trip. Everything went pretty smoothly. It did surprise me that Preston was scared of the plane. He did finally adjust and on the way home he loved it!

First we went to Grandma Judy’s house. Because we were meeting my parents there were too many people to stay at her house, so I stayed in a hotel with the kids and my mom. Preston loved being outside and seeing/hearing all the different kind of animals. We also got to take Preston to the fish hatchery to see all of the fish. He of course loved it and wanted to see more. Norah loved playing with my Uncle Denver.

Then we went to see my Grandparents in Memphis. The first day we went to their Children’s Museum. Preston had soooo much fun! It was hard to get a good picture of him because he was running around so fast! He  got to play inside an airplane, firetruck and police car. He got to go to a pretend grocery store. And he got to help brush teeth at the dentists office.

We got to spend a few more days with them and even go swimming on their driveway. We were so glad to have Aimee with us for the way home. She was such a trooper and helped out so much!!!

After we got back from our trip I left the next day to go to Molly’s Bachelorette Party. Miss Norah got to come with me and Preston stayed at home and went to work with Ryan. It turned out to be a really fun day for everyone. Norah got to play with Auntie Molly and Uncle Neil while she stayed at Neil’s sister’s house with her nanny.

The next day was Father’s day. I only got one picture from this day. Both my boys look exhausted, but they were really enjoying themselves reading a new book Preston got for Ryan. We have since read that book over 50 times.

The next week Preston went to the dentist for the first time. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t too afraid either. The dentist told us that he was doing a good job brushing and to keep up the good work! He even told us that we could use the little flosser things, and that has made flossing possible. He was such a champ the first time we used them.

I’ve started feeding Norah cereal now. She loves it. She does get really tired after she eats, but she does a really good job keeping it down.

I begged my mom to come visit after the kids had so much fun with her in Memphis. It took me a week to convince her, but she finally decided to come last minute. We are so happy to have her here! She has gotten to play lots of games with Preston and gotten lots of snuggles from Norah. We are going to miss here when she leaves!!!

Preston started swim lessons this week. I found someone to give him private lessons. I was a little worried the first day when he cried for almost 15 mins when I left him, but the next day was only two mins and he’s getting better every time. He loves to play in the water and I hope that he will learn to be safe too!

Can you believe how fast time is flying?? I can’t believe our baby girl is getting so big already! She turned 4 months on the 18th. She can roll over from her back to her tummy, but hasn’t figured out how to get back to her back yet. She is still a very happy baby and loves to play and laugh at her big brother. At night she has started to “break out” of her swaddle, so it has been a long week or two trying to get her adjusted to not being swaddled and not waking herself up. Her spitting up has gotten a little bit better, but she’ll still get you if you aren’t watching. We also have to be very careful to make sure her diapers are on, or we get lots of fun surprises all over her clothes.

We went to the doctor yesterday to get shots. She did great and didn’t even cry until the third one! She was 14.8 lbs and 25.5 inches long. That puts her in the 65 percentile for weight and 85% for height. The doctor said she doesn’t need baby cereal/food until 6 month, but to start giving her a multi-vitamin. We are so blessed to have a healthy baby girl!! Here’s some fun pictures of her and a video of her laughing at Preston.

Easter was the day after Preston’s party so we got to spend another fun day with family. Grandma Honey spend the night with us and went to church with us on Sunday. Then we came home and got to play with all of our fun new stuff. Preston had too many eggs to carry in his basket, so he used his new wagon from Grammies and Poppy.

In Preston’s Easter basket he got a Buzz Lightyear Kite. It was a little windy on Easter so it was perfect! At one point when Preston was “flying” the kite he let go of the string and it kept flying, and flying and flying. Uncle Ken came to the rescue and ran to go get it on the street behind us.