Colby Ryan Costin

Colby Ryan Costin joined our family at 4:15pm on Sunday, November 13, 2016. He weighed in at a whopping 10 lbs., and was 21.25 inches long. He lost over a pound in the first few days because apparently he was holding a lot of water, but at the time he was born, he was a big boy!

For about the first week of his life, this is all he would open his eyes, and it was pretty rare that he would even do that, so I'm happy that they got a couple of photos with his eyes cracked open!

Andy brought the kids to see us on Monday night, and they were all so excited to see their new baby brother. The nurse took them out to the nurse's station and got them all hospital bands that said "Big Brother" and "Big Sister" and they got to put stickers on them and everything.

We got to go home from the hospital on Tuesday morning, and I was so glad! I always feel so much better once we can get home and be in our own space.

Like all our other children, Colby LOVES to sit in the vibrating bouncy chair and the swing. Notice that he will not have to suffer the embarrassment of photos in the pink bouncy chair like Skyler. We gave that one away when we moved to Florida, and I picked up this "new" one at a yardsale in our neighborhood here a few months ago. The people barely used it for their one baby, so it is really pretty much new. Interestingly, my friend offered to let me borrow her swing because she's not having another baby until her husband is done with school here, and when she gave it to us it turned out that her swing is an exact match to this bouncy chair, so Colby gets a matching pair.

Halloween

Skyler made a spider hat at school for Halloween, and he was really excited to show it to Andy when he got home from clinicals.

Ally has been watching Kylee take piano lessons for a couple of months, and she has now decided that she is also going to play. Look at the concentration on that face! I recently taught Kylee how to use the headphones because I had a meeting when she was trying to practice, so now Ally thinks she needs to use the headphones, too.

A few nights before Halloween we decided to go to the beach to watch the sunset. It was kind of cloudy and for a little while it seemed like we might not be able to see it.

The clouds looked really cool, though.

Finally the sun came out below the clouds and it looked really pretty.

Andy had clinicals on Halloween from 3-11pm, so I took the kids trick-or-treating myself. Kylee went with her friends, and Ally insisted on wearing her pink boots. Luckily it wasn't nearly as hot as last year. And by "not as hot" I mean it was something like 88 with 50% humidity instead of 95 with 95% humidity. About a month ago, Skyler was thinking he was going to be the bee AGAIN for Halloween this year (he's been the bee two years in a row), and when I told him there was no way the bee costume would fit him this year and Ally was going to wear it, he was really sad and decided he wasn't going to dress up at all. He was just going to go trick-or-treating as "regular Skyler". I told him there were lots of cool costumes to choose from, and pulled up Google Images to show him. I suggested Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Lightning McQueen, a doctor or astronaut or robot or cowboy or fireman...all the typical things little boys dress up as. He wasn't interested in any of them. Then suddenly as I'm scrolling down a page of photos of costumes he says "Wait. Mom. Go back up. Look at that hot dog. That looks silly!" And I said, "Do you want to be the hot dog?" And he said, "Yeah! That one is silly!" So that was that. We ordered the hot dog. He loved it, and so did everyone that saw him. He got more compliments on his costume than you would believe. Now he thinks he's going to be the hot dog again next year, which is totally not going to happen. I already had to cut it and sew elastic on to make it fit over his humongous head! It's not going to fit at all next year! Maybe we can find some other food costume that will interest him...

Kylee carved her own pumpkin this year, and it turned out really cute and happy looking!