It's March, yay!

. . . which means it's time to bid farewell to January and February with a crazy long recap.
I always get a little stir crazy the week or so after I have a baby and then I go out and do something and then I remember that I'd much rather hole up in my house. In this case I braved a little family walk when Jack was six days old. Luckily the boys' need to stop frequently for rock-throwing set a nice, easy pace :).

It was my birthday in the middle of January, and now I am very happily 27. It happened to coincide with that random intense snow day so we buttoned down the hatches and stayed inside all day long and I snuggled with all my favorite boys!

My dad's birthday was the next day and so he came over for a quick visit before his square dancing later that evening - he even provided the pizza and balloons for our little celebration. The boys provided the wrestling and entertainment :).

Chuck's time off in January awesomely coincided with some library XBOX games finally coming our way after a while on the waiting list - the boys all loved Kinect Sports. Turns out Clyde's a decent boxer - I'm thrilled.

Chuck, Clyde, and Will have become pretty serious Hide and Seek players. If there's anything cuter than Will 'covering' his eyes to count to 'ten bananas', I'm not sure what it is. Here are a couple of Chuck's more elusive hiding spots (sorry to ruin them, honey!) - under the teddy bear in the boys' room and under Jack's crib.

One night both older boys were randomly up in the middle of the night for a couple hours, which made for a verrrry long night. The next day we were running errands (notice how they're each clutching their library finds) and they both crashed in the car. I almost crawled back and napped with them . . .

The last Sunday in January marked Jack's debut at church! He slept the entire three hours, bless his heart.

Naturally I tried to get a cute picture of my three little sweater vest-sporting boys, but that seemed a tall order, even when I joined in.

Now onto February:
After consuming a diet heavy on the brownies and hot chocolate and a fussier-than-usual baby, I determined there might be a correlation and decided to scale back on the chocolate a bit. So when a craving for sugar and butter hit one evening, I opted to make myself a vanilla cake! And since it seemed a little sad to just make a cake for no real reason, I decorated it for Groundhog's Day. See - he's poking up and sees his shadow? And I actually made it the night before, so I'm just a good predictor!

February 3rd marked Chuck's return to work, which marked my return to kind of taking care of the household, which marked Jack's first late night run to Walmart so we would have bread for the next day.

To prove that I can handle three children by myself, the boys and I went on a walk the first day that Chuck was back at work. Here are the many cute faces of Will :).

This one is my favorite.

Although this is a close second - Will was 'ducking' under the tree branches. You know, the ones that are a solid ten feet above his head.

Coincidentally, Clyde was also quite darling on our walk. Here he is giggling after a rock he threw hit the metal pipe and made a loud ding.

And here he is waiting to jump out and surprise Nicole when we stopped by to say hi.

And here's Clyde recovering his light saber from Will's hands and then hunting him down with it.

Jack wisely stayed bundled up in the stroller for the duration.

Such a happy goofy little kiddo!
This is from a walk a different day; I just wanted to record for posterity the uniform that kept me so comfortable after my c-section, aka my favorite sweatpants in the whole world. I may be wearing them right now. The saddest few hours of the last two months have been every three days when I parted with them long enough for them to go through the wash.

Chuck kind of laughed on Saturday night before Valentine's Day when I started brainstorming out loud what we would all be wearing to church the next day to coordinate with the upcoming holiday. He stopped laughing when he realized I was serious :). I opted for black and red and grey, mainly based around Jack's cute little onesie that Grandma Izatt gifted him on her recent visit.

Camera pics of the boys wrestling after church that day. Goofs.

Our actual Valentine's Day was pretty low-key. Chuck went to work, I actually made dinner, and we watched the new episode of Castle. Oh, and Jack smiled a lot at Chuck. So sweet, right? Except the wee baby had YET to smile for me (not counting post-feeding/during his sleep smiles. I want to be loved for more than my milk).

So a few days later I made it my mission to get a smile from Jack. And it worked! Granted, it then turned into a yawn as I am apparently fairly boring, but that's okay. Let's focus on the smiles.

Chuck treated us to a delicious steak dinner the other night, and Will donned his apron to help a bit with the marinade.

Then he sat on a little stool and played with a measuring spoon and eerily reminded me of that Cinderella 'In my own little corner' song. Anyone else see it?

When his work in the kitchen was done, Will retired to the living room to read books with Grandma Pam.

Oh, I should mention that Jack also smiled at Grandma Pam a few times before me. Little pill :).

All three boys had awesome colds/fevers/coughs/runny noses throughout February, although at different times - meaning I had to try to keep the older boys away from Jack. Clyde was sooo happy when everyone was healthy again and he and baby Jack were reunited.

And finally, I marked the end of February with a girls' night to celebrate Paulina's birthday. Sadly, there are now no more birthdays amongst our little group until December. Luckily we are quite sure we can come up with other reasons for girls' nights. Like, for our sanity.

And (minus our visit last weekend from Sam and Terri that necessitates a separate post) that wraps up January and February at the Izatt home. Yay for March and warmer (ish) weather and St. Patrick's Day and Dancing with the Stars premiere (followed by a new episode of Castle) and Will's birthday and Jack's blessing and Spring Break! Love March.