New nephew

I have a new nephew! My brother Steve and his wife Jennie had a baby boy this evening. Charlie Robert was born at 7:34 p.m. He is 8 lbs. 9 oz. and 20 1/2 inches long. He has TONS of dark hair. I was able to go right away to the hospital to visit them, so he's only about 2 hours old in these pictures. Check out Jennie's blog for a few more pictures!

Proud daddy with his new son

Proud auntie :)

Baby Charlie

Check out all that hair!

Just a thought

I actually had this thought earlier this week:

"Oh well, at least it was only one Cheerio in the toilet."

Mr. Micah

Dear Micah,

Today you turn two years old. You definitely are not a baby anymore! I think about the day you were born, and I smile when I remember how I was in denial about being in labor with you. Daddy told me we should bring your brother to grandpa and grandma's "just in case". It was a good thing he did, because it definitely was labor...and you made a quick entrance into the world. We were only at the hospital for and hour and fifteen minutes! You came so suddenly that we don't have any pictures of you immediately after you were born. The nurses were cleaning you up and your your dad had to quick grab the camera from my bag. You've been a joy since the minute you were born.



Over the last year you've gone from walking an unsteady toddler walk...to an outright run. Your dad and I laugh when we walk behind you because you're so cute. You are always on the move, and you can't get enough of the outdoors. It's been nice enough to play outside again lately, and you're busy the whole time we let you be outside. We have to stay close to you, though. You will happily run straight toward a huge puddle, and you aren't too thrilled with the fact that we don't let you run down the driveway (you know, because of the busy street).



One of the most difficult parts of this past year was when you had to go in for surgery. It was a simple, outpatient surgery, but I still had to hand my baby over to medical professionals and pray that God would bring you back out the same cheerful little boy. Your dad and I did not go into the operating room to hold you while they gave you the anesthesia...mainly because I wasn't going to let your dad go in without me, and we knew that I wouldn't leave the operating room without daddy pulling me out. Since we couldn't both go in, we sat with you in the waiting room until it was time for you to go back. They gave you some medicine that made you, how shall I say this, act like a drunk. You stared at your hands like they were the coolest things you ever saw. And then you were singing a little baby song. This all made me laugh, and that's how we let go of you.


We very rarely see you sleep. When we put you in bed at night, or even down for a nap, we kiss you, say "goodnight", cover you up, and close the door as we leave. We don't go in your room again until we know you are awake in the morning. Every once in a while, your dad or I will think that we can be sneaky and quiet. We'll crack the door open just a bit and take a peek at you. This is generally rewarded with you immediately popping your head up to see what's going on. You also do not want to go back to sleep, and you tend to sleep very badly for the rest of the night. Really, we aren't having any fun without you. We just want to see how cute you look when you sleep!



You're learning how to talk pretty well. You call your brother "E-T" and daddy and I are "mom" and "dad". I have to say I wish you hadn't skipped right over calling us mommy and daddy. I guess I'll have to be satisfied with hearing you say "mom" almost like a sigh. Like it's the best word you know. You've also mastered the word "mine" and "I'm first" and "no E-T". Sometimes you talk in your own little language. Your dad and I look at each other for translations, but only you know what you're saying.



You love to read books, sing, do puzzles, and play race cars. We can sit in the chair and you'll bring us one book after another and say "read book". As soon as that one is done, you march right over to the basket for another one. You have parts of your favorite books memorized, and especially like the one that ends with "hip, hip, hooray" (which you say emphatically every time). Your favorite song to sing with us is our "Bye-o-bye" song. It helps you settle down and fall asleep. If you're restless, your grandma can get you to fall asleep to that song by the third time through. You also love to sing "This Little Light of Mine". We ask you where your light is, and you hold your little finger up with glee.


You love your brother like crazy. We are always saying "monkey see, monkey do" because you copy everything he does. The two of you will hold hands while riding in your car seats, and even will reach out to each other on a walk. You get pretty frustrated when you can't keep up, or when Ethan really doesn't want company in his play, but most of the time you are more than content if you can have your line of race cars next to his.



Baby boy, my prayer is that you continue to look at the world with joy and wonder. That you always giggle and smile. I also pray that you continue to value your family members the way you do now. It is my hope that the simple two-word prayers that you have now, with your hands folded neatly in front of you, expand into a wonderful relationship with Christ.

Happy 2nd birthday, sweet baby.

Love, Mom

100

So I realized that this is my 100th post. It's also approximately one year since I started this blog. Not a very good average...100 posts in 365 days. Oh wait, it was a leap year. 366. Who knows if I'll do better or worse in the coming year! I may bring my average up this week since it's Micah's birthday tomorrow. We'll be celebrating all week again since I have to work at night on his birthday. We had a birthday dinner with my parents yesterday. He loved opening his present. Hopefully this will train him to do the real thing when he's older.



Also, here's a sneak peek of things to come:



Micah loves cookie monster, so this is my version of cookie monster. The real test will be if he recognizes it when I bring it out! More to come...

Hello, blog.

Hello, blog. How are you? I've been too busy to hang out with you lately. Plus, I've been feeling lazy about posting. A lot has been going on in my life. Many things worthy of a post, but many things that have gone unsaid.

I could use a lot of excuses, like how I went to go post today and had to search through the Google features to find Blogger...yeah, it's been that long that I couldn't just easily click on Blogger. I am going to place some blame on the fact that I've started using the Google Reader feature. I decided that I was spending WAY too much time mindlessly blog-surfing, so I linked the RSS feeds from the blogs that I frequent the most to the Reader. Now I can know who updates with one click instead of clicking from blog to blog to blog looking for updates. So, I spend less time blogging as a whole...hence my lack of posts.

I may as well get to the "newsy" portion of my post. AKA "the month of March".

We enjoyed celebrating Easter with our families this past weekend. Once again this year we went through the Resurrection Eggs with the kids. They enjoyed opening all of the eggs this to see what was inside. I love this unique way to present the wonderful Easter story to the kids! We also enjoyed our church services and the reminders of the Hope that we have because of our risen Savior!

The boys continue to enjoy their newest cousin. Ethan loves to hold Colin and Micah likes to look at him (sometimes he identifies his facial features and I'm scared he'll poke his eye).



We don't often have much success in getting Micah to sit by Ethan and Colin for a picture.


I think Ethan would sit and hold Colin for a long time if we let him.

I've been at my new job for about six weeks now. I'm feeling pretty settled and am having lots of fun. It's great to have a job that I look forward to, and one that I have fun at! It definitely keeps me busy at home on my days off. I'm still working on fine-tuning the balance of my husband, kids, laundry, cooking, and cleaning. Some weeks it goes well...other weeks I just hope no one comes over unannounced (and if they do, I hope they don't mind stepping through a maze of toys and other "stuff" that accumulates on busy days!).

Micah has developed a new bad habit (one that I probably didn't help). As many moms know, sometimes it's difficult to get yourself ready quickly in the morning. In order to speed up the process at my house (translate--keep people within an arms reach and where I can see them), I encouraged Micah to stand on the step stool by me while I got ready. My hope was that he'd brush his teeth, play with the comb and, I don't know, lovingly chatter to his mother. Apparently he watched me too closely, because now I have to fight him for my makeup.


I know it looks like he's sucking on the lip gloss, but he's actually trying to put it on his lips (for once, usually he puts it on his cheeks). You can notice that he has carefully wet his hair in the front to get it to lay down nicely.


He tries to put on my blush with his fingertips. He's surprisingly adept at getting the makeup open.


I'm trying to break this habit, especially after he figured out how to open my mascara when I wasn't looking. Not a "pretty" sight that time. I think I'll try to get him to brush his teeth a little longer.

Ethan had a fun idea the other day. We have a big thing of butcher paper (I think that's what it's called!). He decided he was going to make a life-size tent. He cut all kinds of pieces out and drew a door and windows for me to cut out. I helped him tape it up, but he was definitely the architect.

He was very proud of his final result, though I think he had more fun building it than playing in it.

I had to put this picture on because he was being really goofy about me taking his picture. I just loved the naughty/mischief/silly look that he has.

And, since boys will be boys, this is what happened to the tent when Ethan and Micah were tired of it. Thankfully we could just shove it all in a bag to recycle it.

I guess that's enough for now...I'll try to be more regular in my posting again!

Edit to add...I'll admit to being a little obsessive compulsive (but only a little). I have all of my thoughts nicely separated into paragraphs in my post. However, when I view my blog it's not all nicely separated. It drives me nuts and I can't fix it. So, know that I don't tend to just have random thoughts all smashed in one paragraph.

Something to watch out for

I was waiting to pick Ethan up from school today and Micah and I were standing by the wall while we waited for Ethan's class to finish. As usual, Micah was chatting to me about his surroundings. He looked at the wall, reached over and pointed. "Light" he said. No, Micah, that is not a lightswitch. That is the fire alarm. Why do I feel like he'll pull it someday?

Incentive

I overheard a conversation this morning between Jason and Ethan. From what I understood from the other room, there was a story on the news about someone going to jail for six months. I believe Ethan asked Jason about that. Here's what I heard:

(Jason) "Six months is April, May, June, July, August, and September. He doesn't get a summer vacation."
(Ethan) "Does he get to eat in jail?"
(Jason) "Yes, but he has to eat broccoli and mushrooms"

Wow, that's incentive for me to never go to jail! No summer vacation AND you have to eat vegetables! :)