Max's Birthday, Easter, & Updates

Max is TWO!  Can you believe it?  It's been a couple of weeks now and it's hard for me to believe it myself!  It's been amazing to see the transition from baby to boy over the past few months.

Speaking of the past few months, they have been crazy busy around here.  We've been trying to prepare for Baby Collin's arrival.  It's also hard to believe that he will be here in just a couple of weeks!  The current "plan" is a scheduled induction on May 12.  If I haven't progressed any more between now and then, it will probably have to be pushed back.  So please send some positive baby vibes our way to get things moving.  Of course we want him to come when he's ready, but it would be really nice if he was ready sooner rather than later. :)  I'm definitely finding out that being THIS pregnant while also having a 2-year old is a lot more of a challenge than doing it the first time.  Luckily Max has an amazing Daddy to do most of the taking care of him. 

Backing up a few weeks, we've had some rough days & nights with illnesses around here.  It started out with Max getting the Roseola virus and his temperature staying very high for a few days.  It topped out at 105.3, which was terrifying for us.  We're so thankful Oma was here that week to help care for such a sick baby.  About a week after he was over the Roseola, he came down with a stomach virus that lasted for about 5 days.  Aunt Em got the pleasure of being here for the worst part of that virus (the many, many diapers).  As a thanks for helping out, Aunt Em came down with the virus herself.  I also had it the same weekend.  Unfortunately this was the weekend of Max's birthday party, which Aunt Em had to miss because she was still sick in the bed.  We had a good time at the party (more to come on that later), but were so sad Em had to miss it.  Oma had the pleasure of again taking care of the sick ones that weekend, and came down with the same virus a few days later (on her birthday, no less).  Since Max's birthday, all 3 of us have had a cold that lasted for 7-10 days each.  FINALLY, we all seem to be pretty healthy.  Fingers crossed we all stay that way until after Collin gets here.

The week of Max's birthday party, we were so happy to have Nicola & Thomas come visit from Germany.  Max got to meet his foreign Aunt & Uncle for the first time.  Unfortunately that was the same weekend Emily & I were sick, so we didn't get to spend nearly as much time with them as we wanted to.  It was still such a blessing to have them here for Max's birthday party.  We hope they get to come back soon to meet baby Collin.  Or maybe we'll finally make it to Germany.....it shouldn't be too hard to travel overseas with an infant and a toddler, right? :)

Max had such a good time at his birthday party.  BIG THANKS to Gamma and Poppy for letting us hold the party at their house.  I wasn't sure I could manage it at our house this year (and good thing, since our house turned out to be full of viruses!).  We had 2 delicious cakes - one each from Nicola & Stacia.  They were both so adorable.  Poppy made his famous homemade chocolate ice cream and Max had a blast opening presents and playing with Caitlin.  Here are some pictures from the party. 

Max loooooved his new Lego set from Nicola & Thomas.

Playing with his Legos in his new Cars chair from Aunt Em!

Cars cake - made by Stacia - so cute!

Nicola worked really hard on this adorable (and yummy) ladybug cake.

Max & Caitlin had a mini Easter Egg Hunt at the birthday party.  This is them enjoying the chocolate inside the eggs.

Max is a big fan of the Easter Eggs, as long as they have candy in them. 

Eating Nicola's lady bug cake



When everybody was in for Max's birthday, he also got to enjoy his first zoo experience.  Aunt Em & I were really looking forward to going, but unfortunately that was the day we both came down with the stomach virus, so we had to enjoy it through the lens of Thomas's (amazing) camera.  Here are a few of the things Max got to see along with Oma, Jiggs, Nicola, & Thomas.

Last weekend was Easter, and Max had a blast hunting Easter Eggs again (twice) and hanging out with the Colberts & Greers at Uncle Adam & Aunt Bri's.  Here are some pics from that weekend.

Sad face - empty basket before the Easter Egg Hunt at Westland Methodist Church

Decorating a rice krispie treat.  He ate more of the icing and jelly beans than he put on the cookie.

Finally getting some eggs for that Easter Basket!

Family pic - Easter 2011

The Colbert Clan

A little rough-housing with Uncle Ken

Max wants his own Barbie Jeep now...think they make them in something other than pink?

Hope you've enjoyed the pictures!  Maybe next time I won't have 2 months of updates and it won't be as long.  There are a lot more pictures up on the shutterfly share site.  Click the link to the left.  Enjoy!

It's Official...Collin James Greer

So after months of indecision, we're happy to annouce that Baby Greer #2 will officially be named Collin James Greer.  Collin is in honor of the Collins portion of Matt's family, and James is in honor of both my grandfathers - Jimmy Ward and Jim Hamilton.  Both names are derivatives of James.  Max is learning how to say his little brother's name.  It mostly comes out as Coll-Coll or Coyin (the L is still hard for him).  We're about 9 weeks away from my due date, and I know it will come so fast.  We can't wait to meet little Collin and have our family complete. 

We've got a really busy next couple of months coming up.  Matt has a couple of trips planned to Atlanta and Louisville for work, so Oma and Aunt Em are coming to stay for those weeks that he's gone.  Nicola and Thomas are coming to visit from Germany the 2nd weekend in April and we are so excited to see them and let Max meet his German family for the first time!  We'll also celebrate Max's and Oma's birthdays that weekend.  A couple of weeks after that is Easter, then only a few weeks until Collin is here!  We started our busy weeks off with a visit from Aunt Gwen, Mariah, Erica, Maddie and Rivers.  Matt and I got a (very small) taste of having more than 1 toddler to take care of when we watched the 3 kids last night.  Here are some pics and a video of the fun they had.

Max and Maddie hanging out on the body pillow...after taking turns jumping on it.

Max decided to have some alone time reading so he climbed up on the pillows and bean bag and covered his face with his book.  Rivers tried everything he could to get Max's attention...with no luck.

Almost all three smiling!

I'm not sure which boy hit Maddie, but this was the beginning of the end of our photo session.

Drumroll please.....

…And the name is…


We don’t know! You may all be very surprised to hear this, especially since we’ve practically told everybody it would be Mason, but Mason is no longer in the running. Sorry everybody! We just decided it’s a little too popular right now and we don’t want him to be one of 3-4 other children with the same name in his class. Not to mention the Kardashian baby is Mason, and we just don’t like that connection! So hopefully no one has bought or made anything with the name Mason or the MTG initials yet.

Even though a few months ago I said it wouldn’t happen, we’re leaning heavily towards Collin for the first name. Middle name is still being decided. We hope to have a firm name for you soon. Fingers crossed!

Lots of changes in the Greer household the past few weeks, trying to make room for Baby. Jiggs made Max a new platform bed (will post pictures as soon as I get the bedding for it!). Max’s bedroom will remain a nursery, and Max has moved into the space formerly known as the guest bedroom on the queen sized bed. Last weekend we let Max sleep in his “big boy bed” for the first time. We were terrified that he would be upset about it, or love it so much that he stayed up and played all night. And I’m not sure why we even worried! Our robot baby had no problems at all getting used to the bigger space. In fact, we think he’s been going to sleep faster – either because he has more room to spread out, or he doesn’t have the animals on his bumper pads to talk to! Either way, we’ll take it! Even with a fairly bad cold the last week or so he’s been sleeping like a champ. This morning I came in to find him laying under the 2 pillows at the top of the bed…not sure how that happened. And I am convinced that one day we’ll walk in there in the morning to find him curled up in a corner of the bedroom in the floor…once he figures out how to climb out of the bed anyway.

We still have a lot to do to get ready for #2, but at least that big hurdle is out of the way. We’ve done some rearranging with the bonus room furniture and downstairs living room to make extra room for double the amount of toys/clothes/books, etc that we know will soon take over. We still have to move all of Max’s clothes over to his new bedroom (as soon as we figure out where we’re going to put it!) and bring down all the little baby clothes, but at least we have a few months for that still!

I’m posting this from a computer other than my laptop, so I don’t have many pictures to share this time – except this one. Max got a surprise Christmas present all the way from Germany yesterday and here is the picture of him opening it! He was so excited to unwrap another present…I think he went into withdrawal after having so much fun with it at Christmas. Thank you so much Nicola and Thomas for sending the gift (and the chocolate, especially) all the way to Nashville! Max loves his toy motorcycle – and baby #2 loves the chocolate! :)

Happy 2011!

Happy New Year!  We are so looking forward to welcoming Max's little brother into our family in 2011.  That's right - we're having another BOY!  I know everybody secretly (and not-so-secretly) wished for a little girl, but we are so happy to have 2 boys....and a little relieved, since we already have everything we need for a boy. 

Now the big question is...what will we name him?  That's still a work in progress...we know the middle name will be Taylor or Collins.  For the first name, we're tossing around a few...Mason, Wyatt, Owen, Noah, Evan...these are all options and in no particular order.  We realized that we picked Max's name exactly 1 month after we found out he was a boy...so I've given Matt until Jan 16 to pick a name or I'm revoking his naming privileges. :)

We've had such a great time the past 6 weeks celebrating the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year holidays with all of our family and friends.  I'm in the middle of posting a whole batch of pictures from the last month to the shutterfly site, so check those out soon.  I've posted some of them below. 

First snow for Max to play in this winter...he loves it!

One of his favorite pasttimes now...playing in his crib.  Too bad he's about to lose it in a couple of weeks.....

New wagon!

We loved our White Christmas!

With Cousin Luke at the Colbert Christmas

Max had a blast at Uncle Ken & Aunt Gina's being thrown onto the huge beanbags. 

One of about a thousand pictures of Max opening presents...click the shutterfly link to see the rest.

The aftermath of Christmas at Oma & Jiggs'

Christmas at Granne's - Somebody wasn't happy that we wouldn't let him hold a lit candle...

Cooking with Oma!

Christmas at Nana's