Expanding

Things have been pretty hectic here at our house. W is one month into his deployment so I'm running the show solo here. We're doing fine, but it means that I generally don't have much free time to keep the blog up. However I did want to pass along the news to any far flung family and friends that keep up with us this way, that we are expecting baby #2! I am due April 13th which is about 2 weeks after W is scheduled to be home. Baby J came 2 weeks early so I'm hoping that isn't a trend. I have faith that it'll work out but I'll have a contingency plan in place. And I'll be accepting applications for back up labor coach :)

In other news, I've been remiss in posting pictures of the last project that W completed before he left. He built a beautiful window seat in the dining room with big pull out drawer that we keep J's toys in. He loves playing up there as you can see!

And one final shot of one of J's latest antics.

Hope you're all doing well out there...

Baby J update

I seem to have fallen out of the habit of posting to this blog, but tonight I had the itch to write one of my letters to J, so I'll share it with you, to give you an update on him as well.

Dear J,
Oh you are so sweet these days. Tonight, and most nights this summer, as normal, you insisted on your evening Ice Pop (by hanging on the freezer door). I gave it to you, and boy, you chomp down on that thing. But despite your obvious love of them, you always offer me a bite. And you really want me to have some. It is the sweetest thing.

We're in the process of weaning you off bottles to sippy cups. It's a rough process. And of course I worry all the time that you're not getting enough to eat. But I think you're getting the hang of it.

Another of your favorite things these days is identifying body parts. You know where your head, ears, tongue, belly, toes and now, nose are. But the funny part is that you like to find these parts on me. And when you find my belly, lifting up my shirt to actually see and touch it, you give me a big hug around my waist. It melts me.

You say several words now- light, bottle, belly, shoes, ball, bat, dog, Dada (still not Mama consistently). And you really understand those words. I can ask you to get your shoes, and you get them and lift your feet for me to put them on.

One of your newest tricks is climbing into your high chair, even if the tray is on. Obviously I am there to spot you and prevent you from doing this when necessary, but your climbing skills are pretty impressive.

As you can tell, I'm absolutely in love with you. I think you're the most charming, smart, adorable little boy in the world. And I think that's a pretty unbiased opinion

I love you,
Mama

New Front Door!

Almost 2 years in, and we finally have a proper door. It has glass everywhere its supposed to (no more cardboard wrapped in "Have a Nice Day" Chinese take-out bags or plywood for missing glass). Like most projects on this house, we did it right, which means it took awhile and it went backwards for much longer than most could tolerate. I started to describe the full process, but we basically tore the whole thing apart and rebuilt it. Now its solid, sound, and pretty. It's nice to have a door that opens and closes smoothly, quietly, and firmly. I used to take such for granted!

First, a nod to the novice help. Safety and cookies are the priorities.



You can see a "before" photo in the sidewalks posting below. The door was flimsy, the glass thin, and it had about 18 coats of paint on it. Here's the after. I think the only exterior issue left out front is a proper mailbox. All the mail carriers reading this probably cringe to see the box sitting on the steps.



And here's a close-up on the door. The color is "hot peppers" from Behr.




Here's the door as it looked when we bought it off the shelf!

Walking and Talking

Sweet Baby J,
You’re really walking now!! Of course it seems that you took your first independent steps when I went out of town for the one night, my first night away from you. But you’re really doing it now. You walk about 8 steps alone, although if you’re in a hurry you revert to crawling. You started off by just lunging or running between Dad and me. But now you take deliberate steps on your own. And you look so pleased with yourself. As I expected, you didn’t start walking until you were totally capable of it. You didn’t want to mess around with falling.

And the other milestone- you’re talking! Oddly enough, your first distinguishable word was “light”. It sounds more like “schmy” but you point to the light and say it over and over. It’s really funny. You also say “dog” while pointing to Scout and Ruby. I have to laugh that you’re saying these 2 words before Mommy and Daddy but that’s ok.

You’re sleeping great these days, for the most part. 10 beautiful hours of consecutive sleep. Last night was an exception- you were ready to go at 5am.

You made the transition to whole milk without missing a beat. You slurp it down as fast as I serve it up. So you’re fully weaned now. After a full year of nursing you, it’s over. It was sad for me, but you were ready. I’m proud that we made it without ever needing formula, and nursing you was really wonderful, despite the hassle of pumping at work.

I haven't been able to capture your new feats on camera yet, but we'll post some as soon as possible.
Love, Momma

Damaged Goods

I don't have a fancy car by any means. It's a cloth seated station wagon- no frills. But it's a good car, and I like to drive it. But it appears that I will only be able to drive it and park it with the windows down for the foreseeable future. This is because today my son projectile vomited in the back seat. As you might expect with a 13 month old, it was mostly milk. So despite my best cleaning efforts, (involving the hose all the way down to q-tips) my car smells like curdled milk. It is awful. sigh...

Sidewalks

After months of deliberation, we hired a contractor to install brick pavers around the house. The sidewalks were in terrible shape, where we had them. W toyed with the idea of doing it himself for a long time, mostly because I think he enjoyed the idea of renting really big machines. But these guys did a great job! Check out the before and after shots. I tried to match up the pair of before and after shots... hopefully that's not confusing.

It is so nice to be able to walk around the house without jumping over cracked concrete. I can now push the stroller from the garage to the front of the house without going through mud puddles. And it's a joy to walk up the back steps, and not have a wood pallet as a door mat.

Things I learned today...

1. Blood meal fertilizer is made from porcine (pork) blood.
2. Dogs love it.
3. Blood meal is non-toxic (thank goodness).
4. When it comes out the other end on my rugs, it's the most disgusting thing I've ever encountered.
5. Of the 5 different cleaners I used to clean the rugs for 3 hours, baking soda works the best at getting rid of the odor.
6. Waking up to the smell of dog poop is possibly the worst alarm clock ever.

Nursery Completed!

I remember when I was pregnant, people would ask me, "Is the nursery ready?" and I would say nope! We did get the crib put together a few weeks before J arrived and the essentials were there, but it was a little rough. I'm happy to report to all those people that almost exactly one year after the baby's arrival, the nursery is (almost) complete! It looks awesome. The windows are trimmed out, the crown moulding is up, the gaps are caulked. It looks wonderful and inspires hope that some other rooms may eventually follow suit.


See where the stair tread hits the baseboard? W hand cut the trim to fit around the tread. Now that's good work!

My meager contribution was the curtains that I sewed.

Hooray!!

Happy Birthday Baby J!

We've been having so much fun that I didn't have time to write about Baby J's first birthday! I have been on vacation, in between jobs, for the past 2 weeks, and it's been great. We had a really fun celebration for J's first birthday. He's such a funny kid these days. One of my favorite things is his "cheese" smile. As I'm going through my recent pictures it looks like I don't have one that really captures it, but this is close. What I call his "cheese" smile is more like his head thrown back, chin out, eyes squinted shut, teeth bared. It's a riot.

Here's the cake that I made for him. He really seems to share my love of dogs. In the morning when he wakes up, after he has seen me, he calls out for the dogs to come over. He likes to greet them first thing. He's even been caught french kissing Ruby- ew!

He wasn't too sure about the cake and candle deal though. This was the biggest reaction we got. And he thought we were all crazy when we sang to him at his party. I don't blame him.

He loves his stacking toys- knocking them over and stacking them back up. He also loves to push his toys (or household items) around the house. He's not quite walking yet, but cruises around everything. I think he'll probably start walking in the next month or two.

This past year has gone so quickly. It's been fun, exciting, and challenging and I think W & I are better people for it. And baby, we've come a long way.

Bad Dog

Which of the following items has Ruby ingested over the past 6 days?
a. a block of Colby cheese
b. half a cooked pork tenderloin
c. 2 raw chicken breasts
d. all of the above

If you said d., you're correct! It looks like we've introduced a counter cruiser into the house, and she's fast. It's been a while since I've had a dog with this inclination. Anyone have any tips? I think I'll try to string coin filled cans together and leave them along the edge of the counter. Do you think that'll work? We'll find out.

Landscaping at last

At long last, we planted some shrubs around the house. They're small but I think they make the house look nicer, and maybe in a few years they'll fill in. The dogs already tore out one of my photinia but we put up a little barrier to keep them out. Hopefully they'll learn quickly to leave them alone! The second picture really shows the sad state of the sidewalks. They're high on the list of things to fix.

New Additions

We've reached a major milestone here at the house! We have all the doors hung! I think I need some retraining on the use of doors. It's been a long time since we've had that option. I look forward to a steam filled bathroom. The door knobs and other hardware are back ordered but that's ok.





Baby J had a great first Easter and thoroughly enjoyed his snack filled eggs.




And perhaps most exciting of all - we adopted another pup! She is a 9 month old lab mix. I take her to the vet tomorrow, but I think she weighs about 50 pounds, and she fits nicely under Scout! They get along famously and played for about 3 hours straight. She is great with baby J too- the only risk is that she is very adament in her kissing at times. She had a rough start at life and spent the first few months in a crate on a porch. Then she was at the pound for a month. So she was elated to find her way around our (albeit small) yard and house.

Happy Baby

First lego set!

I'm so lucky to have such a good natured, and happy little guy.

Baby Proof Stairs!

Well would ya look at that? We've got handrails on the stairs!! I actually made myself somewhat useful, and I helped W assemble the rails. We still need to get some baseboard trim up that will cover the sides of the stairs, but I wasn't patient enough to wait for the weekend when they'll probably go up.


I'm not sure if it was because of all the activity around the stairs this weekend, but Baby J is now very interested in the stairs. Yesterday he went up 2 steps, and back down. Tonight, with me spotting him, he climbed all the way to the top. Luckily, I bought a gate for the top of the stairs last weekend. J thinks that the gates around the house are there for the sole purpose of his enjoyment. He grabs them and dances.

Also tonight he finally figured out how to drink from a sippy cup. Until now, he only wants to drink from my cup, and I envisoned very messy days ahead if he only wanted to drink from a big boy cup. But it looks like he'll give the spill free sippy cup a try!

Porches and Stairs

W has been working hard on the stair case. It's been quite a project. He's not finished yet, but I think he will finish just about the same time J will start walking (he's getting really close!). So here's the progression:


The stairs when we moved in! very colorful.

And then after about a year, we scraped the risers (white part) and repainted that. And W repaired and refinished the newel posts (they're leaning against the wall here).

Just tonight, he tacked on the baseboard trim. This might not look like much, but he had to create a high tech template, since each stair is slightly different than the next. And it covers up the big hole in the dry wall! (Remember when the birds flew in on J's birthday? That was their entry way.)

The contractors also wrapped up the porches! Here's the finished look. We finally have hand rails on front and back porches, although I haven't taken an updated picture from the back.

So after 5" of snow on Monday, it was 75 degrees over the weekend. Crazy weather. So I took him to the playground nearby to play on the swings. He wasn't too sure at first, but warmed up to it quickly.



So things seem to be progressing pretty quickly here at our house! W is getting a lot done with our "renovation assistant" who comes most weekends. And J is learning so much every day. He'll be 10 months old this weekend! He's learning to wave and making more consonant sounds daily. He loves "b" sounds- his first word might be baby! He's a riot!

First Swim

Tonight was J's first time in the pool! (Not counting the time that I dipped his toes in the pool over the summer.) We had a great time. He clung to me at first but quickly loosened his grip and enjoyed the warm water. He floated on his back a little and splashed around. It's a group of 4 and he's the 2nd youngest. There's a 3 month old girl, and the other kids are much older. He did well when I dunked him under the water and liked it best when he "fell" in from the side of the pool. We're going to a swim center that's focused on kids, so the water is extra warm and chlorine free. I think he'll really like it!

Sorry, no pictures. I had both hands on J the whole time.

Pictures

Hi! I haven't posted pictures in a little while so here goes!

An update on J's health: he had 2 ear infections and eye infections. Today is the last day of the eye drops (thank goodness! It's not easy giving a squiriming 9 month old eye drops) and he's feeling much better.

W and his helper are working on more moulding this weekend!

Scout has developed a new appreciation for J. He's a hidden source of food. And J likes that when Scout is snorting around, he pushes him in his high chair- free ride!

See what I mean about pulling up?

And standing!

I think this is so funny! He reminds me of those African tribes with plates in their lips.

And our bathroom with crown moulding!