Tag Archives: Change

Learning New Things

27 Sep

Jonah’s vocabulary has just been exploding lately… phrases combined with subtle little sounds and gestures that just leave us in stitches… like frumpling up his eyebrows, smooching out his lips, shaking his head no and say “umm, I don’t really need to go night night right now” or the little lip smack and sigh followed by an exasperated little “you know that!” cause obviously… I should know these things. Everything is “I love” right now too. “I love our furniture”… “Oh I really love grapes.”  “I love my bed (talking about our bed)… it’s all comfurbal.”

That’s the other thing he’s been working on trying to figure out… what comfortable means. He had a flap book out that has touch and feel parts on it, like this padded angel. He was poking it and say “oh, it’s all comfurbal” So I try to tell him that comfortable is something that feels nice to sit or lay down on… so then he sits on the brick fireplace hearth “It’s all comfurbal?” hehe not so much kid, but you’ll get it eventually.

I have a video that I’ll have to load up from tonight too… his first attempts at trying to tell us about a song he sang in Sunday School today. Our church just did “Promotion Sunday” (where the kids all move up to the next level class) a month or two ago. He’s no longer in the “baby hall” where all they do is play for 2 hours. His new Sunday School class actually has tables and chairs, they do art projects, sing songs, learn Bible studies and all that. In fact, if I can remember to, I’ve been intending to scan his first Sunday School art projects and post them here. Ironically, they learned about the story of Jonah and the whale. hehe Anyway, he’s been telling us for weeks now about “sing songs, and guitars” after church… so that’s how we know they have a music time… but tonight he was going around smacking his fist on his hand saying “Stand on rock” and then with prompting we asked him what else he sang about and he said “Fall down” and he wiggled his way to a squat and popped back up. So my video clip is of him doing the 2 of those together plus doing random flips all over the place. He was WOUND UP tonight. He actually worked up a sweat before bed! haha

Carly’s learning new things too, she’s rolling all over the place, and sometimes it looks like she’s actually rolling with a purpose. We’re sitting up now from time to time… not right after eating or bad things will happen, and not when she’s tired cause she’ll stiffen her legs and fall over… but if she’s happy, and especially if she’s busy watching brother… she can sit up for as much as a minute at a time without support from me. She’s also started “talking” to Jonah. They both take turns shrieking as loud and as high pitched as they can, giggling in between. Worse than a couple of parakeets I tell ya! Oye! It’s cute though.

Hard to believe she’s already 5 months old! We started her on her first “baby food” last night… mashed up avocado and milk. With the price of pre-packaged baby foods these days, I’m thinking I’m going to try making the majority of her baby food meals myself. The avocado thing is what most moms, who make their own baby food, start with… that and mashed up bananas, because they both have a lot of good vitamins, healthy fat content for brain development and such. She seemed to like it last night, so tonight I gave her a little larger serving size (about 3 tsp + milk) and that seemed to be just about right. She was getting a little tired of it right near the end, but did end up eating it all. Now if I could just get her to take the dang bottle! She just chews it and plays with it… not really drinking anything. :-\ Oh well. I’m learning to cope with it. So I guess we’re ALL learning new things!

Good news also to share, Jason got a promotion this week! We’re on such an ancient cell phone plan (one they don’t even offer anymore cause it’s TX calling only, no mobile to mobile, no family talk, no free texts… nada) so we’re both excited about getting iphones in a month or two (after we save up for the phones themselves, the pay raise increase will pay the extra monthly service charges.) We don’t generally blow pay increases so “frivolously” but we have both been wanting to upgrade for a very long time, our phones are both having some battery life issues recently, and on so many occasions, we’ll be talking and Jason will ask me something and I say “I don’t know, let me get out my iphone so I can tell you” hehe. So this was actually a planned budget move… planned for whenever the next pay increase came. :) There’s also talk of a possible performance bonus coming that’ll get us the savings for the phone sooner… and maybe a decent Christmas tree since I “blew” all the money I made, painting Audrey’s kitchen, on Christmas gifts, a clearanced patio furniture set, and a portable outdoor fire pit, instead of buying myself the new tree I’ve wanted for 3-4 years now. We’ll see though. I’m just thankful that Jason’s finally getting some recognition for all the hard work he’s been putting in.

Getting Ready for a Change

16 Jul

Jason has been out of town all week on business, and will be back late Friday night. We decided that we’d go ahead with our plans to officialy start potty training Jonah, even though his trip cut his long weekend short. Mostly because Jonah’s being very interested now, and if we wait two weeks until the next long weekend, he might not be so interested anymore. It’s also because we’re very close to the end of a box of diapers and I’d really just rather not have to buy more. ;)

So tonight I told Jonah that we’re going to have a special Potty Party when Daddy comes home in a day or two. That he’ll get presents and will get to start using the big potty all the time, that he won’t have to wear diapers any more. He seemed like he liked the idea cause he was nodding and grinning and telling me “Daddy come home, potty party, big boy unnerwears” and such. Oh I hope this works well… he’s really smart so I don’t doubt that he CAN learn it quickly, it’s a matter of us not doing anything in the process to piss him off about pottying or he’ll outright refuse the whole idea… that’s just the way he is about stuff. If he’s happily eating his dinner and you tell him to not swing his fork around with food on it…. he’s likely to sulk up and shout “ALL DONE!” and refuse to eat another bite. We’re just going to have to do a lot of tounge biting I imagine.

I am glad that it’s working out with Jason being gone because it will feel like a major shift, like I said “when Daddy gets home” it’ll be time to be a big boy.

Oh no! Elmo, here we come!

18 Jun

As you all know, from a previous post on the subject, I have tried to keep cartoon character infatuation at bay, in order to keep the more expensive/lower quality “licensed character” items out of our house. Well, I’m here to admit that I’m bringing this soon-to-be Elmo infatuation on myself, and I’m even asking for your help to do it!

We’re about to start potty training soon, and as I started reading the library books I checked out on the matter… most techniques seem to encourage the use of a few teaching tools, to help make potty training into a big deal. They say to have a potty weekend where that’s the focus of everyone’s attention, all weekend long… kind of a “coming of age” thing for the trainee. They say to start off by helping your kid “teach” a doll how to potty, then let them read books and watch dvds about pottying. Then start hourly potty-sits and give rewards or stickers on a chart for good tries and even the smallest of sucesses. By the end of the weekend, the kid should pretty well have it down, and to celebrate that, some say you should have a potty party to invite a few friends and family over to congratulate them on their potty success.

So after reading all that, I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed. I did sit down and start a shopping list of supplies that to get the ball rolling. A potty book, a dvd, a potty doll of some sort, and a progress chart w/ stickers. Once I started researching what was out there, I discovered a major money pitfall… most of the stuff is geared for either a boy or a girl. I have one of each, and I don’t want to have to buy this stuff twice, cause it’s expensive! So, I needed to find something gender neutral.

I first found a pretty cool potty monkey doll that came with a book for the kids and one for the adult. But being that I had already checked the adult book out from the library, I really wished it had come with a dvd instead. Then I found a a wide variety of potty bear items, but no cohesive set, which I feel would make it easier for Jonah to understand the relationship between what the character is doing in the book/dvd and what we’re trying to get the doll to do. Then I stumbled across Elmo. There is a complete line of Elmo potty training products out there, and since Jonah’s never really watched much Sesame Street, Elmo will be new to him.

I was going to put a big Amazon.com order together with everything we’ll need for potty weekend, but then I decided that I might have friends who might have some of the stuff on my shopping list that might be wanting to sell/get rid of it. So let me know if you have any of the following to offer up for borrowing/buying/giving away!

Potty Time Elmo Doll -OR-  A Plain 1-2′ Elmo Plush Doll that we can teach to sit on Jonah’s Potty Chair

Potty Time With Elmo Little Sound Book

Elmo’s Potty Time DVD

Potty Book Coloring & Activities With Elmo (Let me know if you know where I can find this new in stores anywhere… I imagine if you own it, it’s already been colored and the progress chart used up)

Anyone’s leftover Elmo Party Supplies to make a VERY small (like maybe just us if that all we can get) Potty Party with (preferably ones that don’t say happy birthday on them, like the Hooray for Elmo or Elmo Loves You supplies, but beggars can’t be choosers right? ;) hehe)

Got Alot Done

11 May

With my mom hanging around and helping out last week, we got WAY more done than any couple with a nearly 2 year old and a 1 week old should! My mom is a major DIY handy-woman, and just couldn’t contain herself when she came to stay. By the end of the 1st day she was just itching to get started on some projects. Who am I to complain?! I knew it’d happen, so that’s why I had already started a list of little projects around the house that needed doing, that just haven’t gotten done, for whatever reason. She actually started working on things while we were still in the hospital!  My to-do list that my mom tackled this week… as you’ll notice, she didn’t leave us much to do after she left! hahaShe got Jason involved in a lot of the projects too, and some of these he actually did on his own.

  • Install Handheld Showerhead & Caulk Around the Ring
  • Install Blinds in Our Bedroom
  • Fix Drippy Master Toilet
  • Fix/Oil Master Closet Door Knob
  • Fix the Storm Door Alignment so it’ll Actually Close
  • Remove the Satellite Dish
  • Remove the Antenna
  • Put a Piece of Screen Over the Chimney to Keep Birds Out (need to call chimney sweep first to get current nesting birds out)
  • Put Hinges on the Sandbox Door
  • Re-Configure the Sandbox Lid Boards to Make an Easier To Open Lid
  • Dig Out the Rose Bush in the Front Flowerbed
  • Dig Out the Bush Stumps in the Front Flowerbed
  • Check on the Roof Leak and Seal Where Possible
  • Hang the Letters for Carly’s Name in the Nursery
  • Fix the Wet Bar Cabinet Door that’s Sagging
  • Install Trim Around the Guest Bath Mirror (need to buy trim)
  • Change Light Fixtures in the Guest Bath (need to buy light fixtures)
  • Install and Overhead Light in the Garage (Bonus! They ended up re-wiring a bunch of stuff and putting in 2 new outlets too!)
  • Paint the Nursery Furniture (need a non-muggy day to paint)
  • Some Projects she thought of that I hadn’t -
    • Replace the Missing Toe Kick Under the Dishwasher and End Cabinet in the Kitchen & Install Trim
    • Fertilize the Yards
    • Replace Missing Pickets on the Fence
    • Replace the Damaged Board Around the Garage Door (We discovered ACTIVE termites there! Yuck! so had to get that treated first, so that project is sitting unfinished right now.)
    • Clean Some Previous-Owner Junk Out of the Attic

It was such a busy week that I’m probably forgetting some of the other stuff that got done, but we always appreciate having my mom come stay for a while! Jonah CERTAINLY enjoyed having his Mamaw around to play with, and to “help. work. hammer. outside. saw. ears. noise. loud.” with!

Going To 3-Columns

13 Apr

As I’m sure you have noticed, the blog has changed looks again. I have been trying to figure out how so many of my friends had lists of the blogs of their friends where it’d show the most recent post as part of the link. Well today I discovered the RSS feed function and figured out that THAT’S how they’ve been doing it! I am horrible about not going to check my friends’ blogs for updates because I just don’t have time to go through the list that often… but this way I can scan down the right column of our blog to see if any of my friends have updated their blogs. Maybe I’ll be a better blog reader now!

I switched to the 3-Column blog design because I follow a LOT of blogs and the RSS Feed makes each blog link take up about 3 lines, but with 3 columns I can have a side bar for my guests (the left side) that has all the info they might need for navagating around OUR blog, and then I have a sidebar (the right side) that helps me navigate all of my friend’s blogs quicker. Hope it doesn’t cause too much confusion for some of my less technically savy readers!

Jason’s New Hairdo

12 Feb

I gave Jonah a little trim last night, with the new hair clippers I got for Christmas, because he was starting to get a little shaggy. Jason’s been complaining about needing a haircut again too, but he’s never let anyone near his head with clippers, so I’m not sure what convinced him this time. He let me use the 1″ blade guard on him and by the time we were done, I think there was more hair on the floor than on his head! I don’t think it looks half bad though… definitely shorter than he’s ever had it before. I think it looks more professional for the workplace than the crazy fro does, but I guess if he ends up not liking it, he can always just let it grow back out. If he DOES like it, then I can cut his hair for free from now on! (Sorry for the horrible flash shadows… I didn’t take time to try to make a nice picture!)

Before

Before

After

After

Nursery Project – Weekend 1

17 Jan

Since this nursery painting and renovating thing is going to take us several weekends, I’m not going to even TRY to get it all on one post. I’ll just give updates of each weekend we work on it.

Project Photos -

Day 1 – Saturday

Goals for the Day:

  • Get little stuff moved out of the room.
  • Move big furniture to the center of the room.
  • Remove coverplates and old nails.
  • Patch and prime old nail holes as necessary.
  • Sand, prime, and paint the chipped areas of the crib railing (From Jonah’s teething days).
  • Remove mini blinds, closet rod, and shelf.
  • Finish drawing the stripe.
  • Tape off the stripe.
  • Paint 1st coat of white (on the stripe and in the closet).
  • Paint 2nd coat of white (on the stripe and in the closet).
  • Remove 1st round of tape.

As you can tell, we didn’t really get as far as we hoped we would today. I guess it was for a lot of reasons: I finally used my Valentine’s Day Coupon (from last V-day) for a “Saturday breakfast in bed” so we took longer to actually get started on the project, then we took time out to go to Sonic for lunch, play with Jonah at the park, and pick up a few things at Wal-Mart. I also took a much needed nap while Jonah napped and Jason worked on re-installing stuff on the laptop, which he just fixed last night (it was continually rebooting itself, so it needed a good re-formatting), we also stopped working on the room while we made dinner and did the whole bed-time routine with Jonah, and stopped entirely shortly there after because Jason has some papers to read for his class. So at the current rate… we MIGHT be finished with her room before she gets here! ;)

Day 2 – Sunday

Goals for the Day:

  • paint the chipped areas of the crib railing
  • remove mini blinds & shelf
  • patch holes in the window sill
  • paint 1st coat on stripe, closet, window sill, shelf, and closet doors
  • paint 2nd coat on stripe, closet, window sill, shelf, and closet doors
  • remove 1st round of tape
  • touch up where neccessary

We managed to get quite a bit of painting done, but by 9:30 we were both beat, so we didn’t finish it all. I guess that’s what we’ll be doing on Monday night… finishing up the white paint details. Other than that, the only complaint we have is that the people who were here before us did some kind of crappy patch work in some areas… we ran across the same problem in Jonah’s room in one area… where the paint causes the patch to loosen off the wall and just crumble when you pull the tape off of the wall. I posted a picture above of the one area in the nursery, where we had already done the best we could, with touch up paint, to make it look better. I’m still not really happy with it though. :(

Jonah’s Big Boy Room Project

30 Dec
Photo Gallery

 
Day 1 (Tuesday)

Our Goals for the Day – Paint the closet and white stripe.

What We Accomplished – Painted the closet and white stripe, patched and primed all the drywall holes, installed 2 out of 3 new electrical boxes.

Details of the DayToday marks the first official day of work on Jonah’s new big boy room. Jason emptied out the room this morning and took off all the faceplates and blinds so we could prep for painting. We had our accent stripe measured out and taped off by nap time. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting 2 coats of paint on the white accent stripe and painting the inside of the closet white (which Jason did on his own cause the fumes were pretty intense in the closet) After all that was done, we went to dinner, then went to Lowes to pick up some new electrical boxes and face plates because the phone jack, cable jack, and sattelite jack in that room were all dated/the wrong color/broken/painted over. We also bought some new 2″ blinds to hang in there after we finish painting because the vinyl mini blinds that came with the house were beat up and broken. After Lowes, we stopped back by Wal-Mart to exchange the green paint that I had selected earlier because it was just WAY too close to highlighter yellow. KINDA LIKE THIS. So we exchanged it for a color that was a couple of shades darker. KINDA LIKE THIS. It’s still bright, but so is everything else in the room, and at least it doesn’t look yellow anymore. And yes, I got teased by my husband for picking a “bad color” since I’m supposed to be an “expert” at choosing paint colors. :-p

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Our Goals for the Day – Paint the blue stripe, replace all the lower electrical sockets/faceplates, and find new homes for all the seasonal junk that used to be stored in this room.

 What We Accomplished – Painted the blue stripe, found homes for the seasonal junk, replaced the electrical stuff, bought and put together the storage unit.

Details of the Day – With one round of taping and painting done, and the white paint dry. We got right to work on painting the blue portion of the room. Because of the heavy texture on the walls (and ceilings) throughout this house, the tape doesn’t want to lay entirely flat, so we’ll have a lot of touch up work to do between the color changes. The base boards are also too thin for my edging tool to work right, so there will be a lot of touch up to do there, on the last day, as well. I’m LOVING the blue color though. I’m just hoping the green won’t be too loud when we paint it tomorrow. Oddly enough, I think the blue, white and khaki combination looks good together too, just not for this application cause the khaki won’t go with ANYTHING in his room. While we waited for the 1st coat to dry, we found homes in the attic and garage for all the stuff that’s not going back into either of the kids rooms. I know that made Jason happy cause he hates to have stuff just sitting out all over the place.

After naptime, the 2nd coat of paint was done and we were all getting hungry, so we decided to pack up and head to Ikea, for 50¢ hot dogs…. oh, and to buy the storage unit and a few other small things for the room. I think I impressed Jason because I went in with a list and a budget, and I spent 6¢ less than what my budget was, and didn’t get anything that wasn’t on the list! :) We got home with all our loot and started working on replacing the outlets and coverplates. The original ones were all almond colored with mismatched plates and everything had been painted over multiple times. We decided as we renovate each room in the house, we’ll replace the sockets and switches with new white ones cause it’s cheap and easy, and looks SO much better. It’s amazing how much something so little can make such a big difference.

Once Jonah was in bed for the night, we busted out the storage unit from Ikea to start putting it together. It went together really easily and is really sturdy feeling. We moved a few of his things into his new closet, just to get them out of the living room, and called it a night. While we were waiting for the ball to drop, I ran to Wal-Mart to get some wall anchors and washers for tomorrow’s projects. While I was there, I found out that my baby bedding, that I’d ordered online, had just arrived!!! I was so excited! I went and picked up some paint swatches to figure out what colors we’ll do in her room. All I know at this point is that we’ll be doing the same treatment as Jonah’s room, the big white stripe with 2 different colors above and below it. I’ll post my ideas for her room on the baby blog sometime tomorrow. Got home just in time to ring in the new year and crash in my bed… exhausted from the past 2 days.

Some Unexpected News

2 Sep

WE’RE HAVING ANOTHER BABY! :-o

If you’re finding out via our blog, don’t feel bad, you’re not alone! We just found out this morning, and the only people we’ve actually told in person is our immediate family, and my dad’s parents. But it’s true, or at least this little stick leads me to believe so! We’ll be calling the Dr. tomorrow to schedule my first appointment to confirm it and all, but given my numerous trips to the bathroom, zitty face, and heightened sensitivity to smell, I’ll believe it!

OMG! WTC?!
OMG! SRSLY?!

 To answer your questions, no we weren’t trying to get pregnant… yes, we were actually trying NOT to get pregnant before Jason graduated from grad school, but it looks like God’s got other plans for us instead… yes this is almost the EXACT same time frame I was pregnant with Jonah… how close? the due date I calculated is only one day earlier than Jonah’s was… May 11th, 2009 is what I came to, but we’ll find out for sure when we see the doctor for the first time… yes I plan to find out the sex… no, we’re not really specifically hoping for a boy or a girl, I just want to be able to be prepared ahead of time… and I’m still undecided on whether we’ll share the names ahead of time this time around or not.

And to answer the BIG question of
“If you were trying NOT to, what happened?!”

Firstly, I’m not on birth control pills anymore. I’ve heard about some things that it can do to harm an accidentally fertilized egg… you know, that 1% chance where it fails… including indirectly causing the death of a 7-10 day old embryo, which I’m just not ok with now that I know. We decided we’d just keep track of the cycle and play avoidance. Well, I’ve only had 2 cycles since I stopped nursing Jonah, and both were 36 days long… just like they were before (except for that one time that it was 31 days in August of 2006 for some strange reason) So we based our timing off that… Day 26 (or really the few days before and after that) was off limits. So Day 21 should be ok still right?
Well apparently, God likes to give me 31 day cycles in August. Sparing you the details, day 30 showed up and I thought, this seems WAY too early to have things starting to happen… day 31 and 32 are the same as 30, no change… then day 33 comes with nothing. I start to worry… this seems familiar. I look back at my August 2006 calendar (I keep up with all this cycle informaion online at http://fertilityfriend.com ) and then I really panic… Concieved on day 21, spotting on day 31-33 then nothing for 2 days, then a positive pregnancy test on day 36! :-o
So I tell Jason of my weirdness on day 31, and the suspicions I’m having on day 33, and then of the weird “sour milk smell” that made me want to throw up while we were at my Great Aunt’s house that he didn’t smell at all. We discussed it everynight, and he’s told me he’s surprisingly more ok with it now than he was a week ago, which is a huge relief for me. Anyway… today was day 35, and we were there at my parent’s house and I had to run out and get a test because if I WAS pregnant, I wanted to be able to tell them in person this time, instead of on the phone, or via blog! ;) Sure enough, my instincts were right!

My New Wheels

22 Aug
I have been saving up for a couple months (ever since we moved in here) so that I could buy myself a little trailer for my bike. We live about a half mile from Target, and a mile and a half from our Wal-Mart Supercenter (where we do all our grocery shopping). So I thought if I could get a trailer, I could go on bike rides with Jonah, and we could take ourself to the store and buy things we need without wasting gas. The icing on the cake is that it will be some much needed exercise for me to get back into shape. When we lived in McKinney, I got to where I could bike 3 miles to the Wal-Mart and back, so that’s my goal. If I can get my 3 mile radius back, I could go from our house to the mall at the south most exit, or all the way up to the movie theatre at the north most exit of our city! We really DO live right in the middle of it all!
Check out my new wheels

Check out my new wheels

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