Allison Turns Two

Our sweet little Allison turned two on the 27th. We have inadvertently been calling her our "two-year-old" for the past several months, so it's nice that it's finally official. We got to celebrate her birthday with the entire Nelson family, which was a lot of fun. We were also celebrating my mom's 60th birthday (Dec. 24th) so it was even more special!
Some highlights of two-year-old Allison:
She is talking all the time, copying big sister Emily and everything anyone else says. Some favorites are "ablankiebinky" when she's tired, "dat's mine dat's mine dat's mine", "YES, mommy, YES!", "I wuv you Wukas", "Iwatcha show", "just call me mischief!", "happy birfday, gwamma" and myriad other words and phrases.

A favorite pastime is getting into anything she possibly can...a big change from Emily's two-year-old days. She likes to dump things on the floor, practice drawing all over herself and putting on mommy's mascara, and opening anything with hinges.

Her favorite place to go is the park, or to playgroup with our friends. She loves to run, dance, and sing into her plastic microphone and do anything else that makes noise. She also likes to eat cat food, poke her belly button, play in the bathtub and drink her favorite apple juice.

She is just too cute right now with her chubby cheeks, cheesy smile and wispy hair that falls constantly in her face. Allison, we wuv you!

Merry Christmas 2009

Sunday before Christmas the we got the kids all dressed up for church...Lukas looked so cute in his little pants and vest, and Emily and Allison were adorable in their fancy dresses.

We had a fun Christmas this year. The kids got lots of toys and clothes, and we enjoyed a delicious homemade lasagne dinner with the missionaries. Marianne was here, too. Lukas got this cute "first Christmas" hat from my mom - look at those gorgeous blue eyes! Emily got her art set that she wanted...she has been drawing, painting and coloring all week!

Allison got a little princess bike. She sat on it all day. And her feet actually reach the pedals!

Ho Ho Ho! Santa is coming...

Lukas met Santa for the first time at our credit union's annual "Breakfast with Santa". I think he said he wants to learn how to sleep through the night for Christmas!! Allison was a little too nervous to sit on Santa's lap, so I was able to hold her next to him, at least.

Besides the breakfast, Emily also got to see Santa at the Zoo's ZooLights event. I believe she asked for an art set this year. (Yay! finally done with princess stuff!)

Where did the time go?

Lukas is a large 3-month-old now. He's outgrown everything but the 9 mos size clothing already, and is two feet (24 in) tall! Allison and Emily look the same...so here are some photos of Lukas.

One Month Old

Already Chubbing Out

I think Lukas is already getting some chubs! Mostly in his face. We like fat babies over here. I remember when Emily was a few months old (5 or 6) we were visiting family in Utah and my uncle asked me if I was feeding her pure cream. She was a chunk. Allison is a chunk right now. And we hope Lukas will follow in his sisters' footsteps. Just for fun - I caught this beautiful butterfly on a flower in our front yard the other day. We get lots of little butterflies but not big ones like this very often. I thought it was neat.

Allison is quite the little character. She loves putting on Emily's swim goggles. And now climbing on things. I taught her how to climb into her high chair (since I can't lift her for six weeks) and now she tries to climb on everything! And she says "climb up" while she's doing it. She sure adds a joyous element to our home! And the hair in the face is typical - almost down to her mouth now but she doesn't care!

Kindergarten

Emily had her first day of Kindergarten August 24. She was excited but very nervous when the day actually arrived. Kevin and I took her to the school in the morning and took pictures by the school sign (Kevin attended the same school when he was a little kid!). She was anxious to see her best friend, Savannah, who we met up with in the playground area before they lined up to go inside. They aren't in the same class, but at least they'll get to see each other before and after school.

There are 27 kids in her class - it seemed like the line was so long as they lined up to go inside!

After school she didn't say much about what she did at school, but she did smile when I asked her how her first day went. I think she will like it. After a week, she seems to be having a good time and getting more comfortable with going every day. And it's nice for me to have her out of the house doing something constructive on a daily basis!

One Week

Lukas is one week old today. It's hard to believe that just a week ago at this time I was passed out in a hospital bed hardly able to open my eyes for more than two minutes...now we are home and functioning as well as can be expected. I feel surprisingly well and don't have nearly as much pain as I expected from having a c-section; so far so good.

One-day-old Lukas.

Proud big sister Emily. She is in love with him and wants to hold him every chance she gets.

Big sister Allison is curious, although she still doesn't pay too much attention to him. He has jaundice so we have to keep him uncovered in the sun as much as possible.

One-week-old Lukas. He is a great eater and sleeper.

Our Baby Boy

Great Grandma Boam looking for the dimple chin.

First off I don't blog or post anything on our family blog, lets add to that I'm not very good at writing things, but I wanted to give everyone an update to how we welcomed the newest member of our family: Lukas Ryan Boam.

Yesterday we went to the Hospital at 6AM for a scheduled induction. After sitting in the waiting room for a couple hours (they didn't have beds available) they let us go home, and said that they would call. It wasn't long after we arrived home that they called us back.

When we finally got into the room the Doctor arived not too long after to start the labor by breaking Amy's water. Contractions started pretty spaced out but after a few hours started lingering on more than a normal contraction. This was when all the fun started.

We noticed that blood was being discharged and notified the doctor. When he took a look at Amy he said that the placenta was detaching itself from the uterus. Why was that bad well because it was going to be a short amount of time before the baby would stop receiving oxygen. How short, I'll just say it took about 5 minutes from the time the doctor exaimined Amy to her being in the surgery room for the c-section. It wasn't but a couple of minutes after they put Amy in the room that I heard our son's first cries.

Everything happened so fast; it was a big indication to me to how serious they needed to do the c-section. About 3 minutes after I heard the cries they came out with our son. I went into the nursery as they cleaned and measured and did all those things they do when a baby's born.

He is a healthy 8lb 8oz, baby boy, 21.5 in long.

Amy was put to sleep, no epidural during the c-section, so she had a rough time coming out of it before the pain killers kicked in. Once those pain killers kicked in she had a hard time staying awake. She slept all the rest of the day and last night while the nursery took care of Lukas.

What can I tell you about Lukas besides sending the picture well he's a big pooper, much more than his sisters.

We're Almost There!

Baby update: My doctor scheduled me to be induced on Wednesday, August 12. It happens to also be my older brother Ryan's birthday. Yay! Look for photos coming soon of baby boy Boam. And you gotta love that farmer tan I have, huh? I know, very sexy. Allison made her official princess debut last week. Up to this point all the princess clothes just seemed too big, but Emily decided she needed to put a dress on her little sister, and doesn't she just look adorable? We pinned up the skirt so she wasn't tripping on it, and she and big sister were two happy little princesses.

Summer Update 1

I guess the summer updates are kinda backwards now, since this one has older stuff. Oh, well. This is some of what we did in May and June:

MAY

Emily finished preschool. On one of the last days they had a pie throwing party for reaching their fundraising goal with recycling. Each child got to throw a plate of whipped cream at one of their teachers. Emily is on the right side in the orange shirt.
Allison decided she really likes eating with a spoon and fork. This was one of her first attempts eating yogurt. I think most of it ended up on her bib, face, arms and hair. But she liked it.

Emily started "putting Allison to sleep." This involved reading her a few books and singing a song or two. Mommy still got to put her in her bed. This lasted about two days before Emily got tired of it. But it was cute while it lasted.

JUNE

We took a trip to Pleasanton to visit my parents and have a little "vacation" for the summer. Being six months pregnant at the time, I didn't feel like going anywhere far, and there is always so much to do in the Bay Area, plus it's just nice to visit Grandma and Grandpa!

One of the days we went to Fairyland in Oakland. I had been there a LONG time ago when I was a kid, but it was perfect for Emily and Allison. And my mom just loved it. There are all sorts of storybook "scenes" the kids can walk through and climb on and to top it off, the weather was just about perfect that day. So nice.

Emily's favorite: the merry-go-round. It wasn't very crowded so she was able to stay on ride after ride, at least 8 times in a row until we made her get off to go have lunch.

Allison enjoyed the wishing well...

...and the flowers. The whole day she walked around touching every flower in her reach. I don't know if it's the bright colors or the soft petals or what, but she really has a thing for flowers. Even now I take her for little walks around the neighborhood just to go see the flowers. She sticks out her little chubby finger and touches each one.

Of course we had to stop at the "Wizard of Oz" stage and take a picture in every single cutout. Literally. Different characters on each side of the wall. Every single one Emily stuck her face in and made me take a picture. This is probably the only photo with all three of them in it.

And we couldn't miss the big dragon at the end. The little elf on the mushroom behind us was blowing bubbles - I think that's where Allison was trying to escape to.

EMILY TURNED 5! She decided she wanted to have dinner at our favorite chinese restaurant, Chinese Szechuan. She got her very own green chopsticks as her special treat from the restaurant, plus two extra takeout boxes of fortune cookies.

Back at Grandma and Grandpa's we celebrated with a special cake that she had picked out of a magazine several months earlier. Chocolate cake with a cherry whipped cream frosting. Very yummy. And of course she couldn't do with just five candles...she had to cover the whole cake!
We also took a day and went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We bought a membership earlier in the year so it doesn't cost us anything additional to go over and over again. They have (besides the amazing aquarium exhibits) some really fun play areas for the kids. Allison loves this little water feature that gushes tiny streams of water from the fishes' mouths. I think both of the times we have been there so far she has played there for at least half an hour, just putting her fingers in the water.

Jellyfish...they just look so cool. They have many different varieties, but I think these ones are the most stunning (and there are like 100 in the tank, this photo just shows two of them).

More fun kid play area...they have these rocking seahorses, plus in the back is a little slide and some fish costumes the kids can put on.

When we were done at the aquarium we drove up the coast to Capitola (just south of Santa Cruz) and walked around a little bit. Kevin had to check out the surf, of course. Apparently the surf was the best they'd seen for a long time on that day. Kevin was sad he didn't have his board with him, but called all his surfing buddies to let them know how awesome the waves were.

Then we ate dinner overlooking the ocean (I have my back to it taking the picture). It was so beautiful, and again, perfect weather.

Later in the month, back at home, Emily had her birthday party. She invited a bunch of kids from church and playgroup and had a swim party at Grandpa Boam's neighborhood pool. I tried to do a "fishy" theme, so we had blue tablecloths and lots of fish candies. She said it was her best birthday party ever. Success!

Summer Update 2

JULY

Harvesting the backyard garden - we have been growing a bazillion cherry tomatoes, some artichokes, bell peppers, banana peppers, blueberries, two varieties of grapes, peaches and nectarines!

4th of July - our friends invited us over for a BBQ and swimming. Lots of fun. Allison was scared of the fireworks noises and would start crying every time one went off. I took her home early and put her to bed; Emily and Kevin got to stay for the show.

Bob the Builder exhibit at the Fresno Met. Bob himself made a showing. It was really fun for the kids with lots of interactive hands-on activities.

Allison likes socks. And shaggy hair. I don't want to cut bangs but the front is not quite long enough to stay back. She doesn't seem to mind, and she pulls out anything I try to put in it.