Feels Like Home

This past weekend I took Superman and Rosy to my parents' home for the weekend. We had a wonderful time and got to see lots of our family. I think our kids may be the most well connected kids in that town. They are related to so many people that they had 4 Great Uncles and 4 Great Aunts with them at church Sunday. I was related through blood or marriage to 8 of the 10 people in my Sunday School class. Rosy was related to 4 of the 7 kids in her class!

As much as I love going to our current church and sharing with our congregation, there was something very magical about taking Superman to Hubby's and my home church. I walked with Superman to the place where Hubby and I were standing when he kissed me for the last time before we separated for 15 years. I got to see the place where we stood on New Year's Eve 2007 when we found out that we were expecting a boy. All in all, it reminds me of the song that we used at our wedding, "Feels Like Home". We are so blessed that it amazes me!

In other news...it's VBS week. Rosy and III are really enjoying themselves. We went to the movies this afternoon and we saw Nim's Island. It's terrible! I actually went to sleep several times with my head leaning against the stroller.

One Day at a Time

When I first started my blog, I was only going to title my posts with entertainment related titles. After a week or two, I was too tired to fool with that any more and it fell by the wayside. Things have settled down now and so I'm going to try again.

A bit of news about Baby Boy - His new blog name is Superman! One of my real life friends who is also a blog reader asked my mom if we were going to be calling him Baby Boy in real life. I am horrified that my blog might stick him with a very uncool nickname with our family and friends, so I am changing his blog name. In real life, Superman will go by his first and middle names, but I'm swapping his blog name as a precaution. Hubby and I call him Superman because he often stretches one arm above his head and puts the other arm down by his side like Superman in flight.

We have put Superman on a schedule! All of the experienced moms in our church kept asking me if he was on a schedule. I had no idea what a baby's schedule would look like and had no idea how to get him on a schedule. I would just laugh and say that he sleeps when he's sleepy and eats when he's hungry - that's his schedule. Little did I know!

Superman slept during church Wed. night and then took a nap when we got home. He woke up about 9PM. When we tried to put him down at 11PM, he wasn't sleepy. He NEVER went to sleep that night. Hubby had a breakfast meeting that required him to leave the house at 5AM Thursday morning. I had fallen asleep on the couch, and Superman was still crying. He dosed off at some point because he was asleep when I woke up later. I decided at that point that a schedule was necessary. We put him on it Thursday and he did very well. He went down at 11PM Thursday night and woke up at 5AM. He stayed up for about an hour and then went back down until 9AM. This is the most sleep we've gotten since he was born!! We kept him on schedule all day Friday (today) and we laid him down at 11PM. I'm hoping that it will be another good night!

Rosy, Superman, and I are heading to my hometown tomorrow. If you are in our home area, we would love to see you. We'll be at my mom and dad's house, so give us a call!

Fed Ex

Baby Boy is really growing. He now weighs around 9 lbs.

I had to go to Fed Ex today and while I was waiting at the counter I noticed that they had a large, very accurate looking, digital scale. I asked the Fed Ex guy how much their scale would weigh and he told me up to 150 lbs. I quickly took Baby Boy out of his car seat and plopped him on the scale. He weighed 9.75 lbs. which translates to 9 lbs. 12 oz. Of course, he had on socks, a onesie, and a potentially wet diaper so I'm not sure exactly how much he weighs.

He has gained aboout 3 or 3 1/2 lbs. since he was born 7 weeks ago. The doctor said that he will double his birth weight in 6 months. We are well on our "weigh" to meeting that goal.

So, we'll be heading to Fed Ex every month now so that I can weigh him.

One last note on Fed Ex...Hubby is obsessed with the arrow in the Fed Ex logo. He had never seen it until someone pointed it out to him. Now, everytime we see a Fed Ex truck, he is compelled to mention the arrow to me. I had also never noticed it before, but I'm not really excited about it. I'm not even sure that it is there on purpose.

Mini Me

People are often quick to speculate concerning who they think a baby resembles. We pick apart individual features and the overall look and try to find a similarity to someone in the family. It's just human nature.

Almost everyone agreed for a long time that Baby Boy looked just like Hubby, but a few people are beginning to see a slight resemblance to me.

Baby Boy seems to have some of his Dad's behavior. Check out the pics of Hubby's "Mini Me".

Sharp Dressed Man

Baby Boy has recently grown big enough to start wearing some of his outfits that he was given. When he was first born, he had to have preemie clothes, so it is very exciting for Rosy and I to get to look through his clothes and pick out his ensembles.

We saved the outfit from Aunt RoseAnn for Father's Day because we wanted him to have something from Hubby's side of the family to wear that day.

Gram Sam to the Rescue

After a rough start to our week, things improved and then "de-proved" (if that were the opposite of improved) rapidly.

We had a great day Tuesday. Towards the end of my pregnancy Hubby and I went out to dinner to celebrate the sale of our house. There was a nice girl and her baby boy at the table next to us, and we struck up conversation. It turns out that she lives less than a mile from us and she is only working part time. We exchanged phone numbers and she called to check on me several times during the bed rest at the very end of the pregnancy. She and I were able to get together for lunch with the kids at Chik-Fil-A. Chik-Fil-A on Nine Mile Road has a soundproofed play area so that you can see your kids playing, but you can't hear them. I think that makes it the nicest restaurant in town. Baby Boy slept through the whole thing and the two big kids did very well. I was even able to take the whole crew to Target afterward and buy Rosy some new shorts (50% off).

Wednesday was all right. III had a doctor's appt to be evaluated to determine whether or not he has ADD and the whole family gathered for it. The big kids were with us Wednesday night and got to go to church with us.

Thursday, Friday, and the first part of Saturday were great. My mom came to stay with us for a few days. Since I got pregnant last year she has been visiting more. I think she either felt bad for how pitiful I was or she has finally found a route to my house that she is comfortable driving ( no interstate!) or maybe it just helps that my dad is retired now and things can be a little more flexible. When we first brought Baby Boy home from the hospital he didn't really know the difference between my mom, Hubby, and me. He knew that we were all his caretakers. It is really important to me that he be very close to my mom so I whine at her to come visit regularly. I really don't ever want him to go more than 2 or 3 weeks without seeing my parents. It didn't take him long to remember his Gram Sam! His only complaint was that she refuses to breastfeed. He quickly realized that she would hold him constantly and he took advantage of it.

We got lots of work done around the house and it was nice to have a backup during those night feedings when he wouldn't go back to sleep. I was sad to see her go on Saturday afternoon.

The good news is that Rosy and I are taking him to St. Stephens this weekend. I hate that Hubby can't go with us, but as he is a pastor, he needs to be in his pulpit this Sunday. We considered waiting until Hubby could be with us, but I didn't want to wait that long. Soon Baby Boy will get to go back to where Mommy and Daddy met.

I have managed to get lots of cute pics of Baby Boy this last week and will put many of them up on the blog in the next few days. I am working on birth announcements this week and so many of you will be getting pics in the mail soon.

Of course, this leaves you wondering what the "de-proved" part of the week is. The two older children had a series of poor decision making at the mom's house that was stunning in its scope and seriousness. Parts of the situation came to light while they were with their mom and the rest of the story was revealed at our house. We have had to take some fairly drastic measures with punishing both of them. As hubby told me last night - when he signed on for parenting he knew that not all of the seasons would be good. Well, it seems like one of our children is perpetually in a rainy season due to poor choices and it is starting to "trickle down".

But, to end on a positive note, my mom made me TWO blackberry cobblers while she was here!!!

Fire, Mommy, Fire

You can tell by the title of this post that is going to be a rough one. "Fire, Mommy, Fire" were the words I heard at around 7:15 Monday morning. Sunday night was another relatively sleepless night with 4 1/2 hours of sleep divided into two segments. Hubby had to leave early Monday morning to be with a friend who was having surgery at the Navy Hospital across town. At 7AM, I told III and Rosy that I was going to take Baby Boy (who was finally back asleep) to my room and take a nap for an hour. A few minutes later, I hear III and Rosy screaming and beating on my door. "Fire, Mommy, Fire".

It turns out that I had turned on the pot to sterilize some bottles before I went to lay down. Actually I have no idea when I turned the pot on. I think I had been giving Baby Boy bottles and pacifiers non-stop since 3 AM. At some point, the water evaporated and the bottles melted and caught fire. (I'm considering a McDonald's coffee type lawsuit because none of the bottles are labeled "flammable".)

I don't know if I handled it correctly or not, but here's what I did. As soon as I heard the kids, I jumped up and immediately knew what I had done. I sent III and Rosy to the front porch so that I could put out the fire. Thankfully it was still contained in the pot, but it was about 3 feet tall. I ran to the laundry room and grabbed the fire extinguisher. I ran toward the stove and then it hit me. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO OPERATE A FIRE EXTINGUISHER! I know there is something about pulling a pin. Where is the pin? What does a pin look like? What do you do after you pull the pin? These are questions that you want to answer ahead of time. Trust me!

As I stood there with my (useless) fire extinguisher aimed at the fire, I frantically looked around. There was a 2 liter bottle of lemonade on the counter, so I grabbed it and poured it on the fire. Thankfully, lemonade is not explosive or flammable and it put out the fire. Then, it was just a matter of getting the smoke detectors to stop beeping and of getting the smoke out of the house. It took about an hour to get everything back to normal and then I still had to clean the stove area. Baby Boy slept through the whole thing. He spent most of the morning in his bouncer seat on top of the picnic table in the back yard hanging out with Twinkle in her cage and III and Rosy. We have found soot all in the kitchen and tonight we found some in the living room.

Thankfully, my mom is coming Thursday and she and I can work on de-sooting the house.

God is certainly gracious to us and is often watching out for us when we can't watch out for ourselves. I'm thinking that I may suggest a family motto for our family - "We Believe."

Big Days or Big Daze

We are still so tired at our house that we can hardly function at times. I went to have 1 month pics taken of Baby Boy this week and I had to ask the photographer what year it was.

We've had some great firsts this week. I cleaned out Baby Boy's crib and he is learning to lay in it and play with his kick -start musical farm toy and to play with some of his other toys. This has really been his first interest in toys other than the mirror on his tummy time mat. He really seems to enjoy looking at the baby in the mirror.

I finally broke out the video camera this week. I had "prep the camera" on my list of things to take care of in the weeks before he was born, but then he came early and some things didn't get taken care of. We are sad that we missed his first month on video, but we can shoot lots of film now to make up for it.

And, in some very exciting news, Baby Boy rolled over tonight. He was hanging out on his tummy time mat laying on his tummy. Then he rolled to his side and then to his back! Of course, we are very excited!

Our sleeplessness is leading to a Big Daze, but Baby Boy's growth is leading to Big Days.

When the baby cryde

This is a piece of art the Rosy made in Sunday School this week. It says, "When the baby cryde I whende to go get the pacie" There is a picture of me on our love seat holding Baby Boy and of her bringing me a pacifier. As a home schooling mom, I am somewhat concerned about the spelling in the art, but I really love the use of color and perspective. Don't worry about the handwriting - she does her schoolwork in cursive and has not been taught all of her print alphabet. That is a project for this summer.

Rosy is learning to measure water and mix formula, and we are trying to teach her to give him a bottle without a lot of spillage and air gulping. (Baby Boy is about 50%/50% breastmilk and formula now.) She adores her baby brother and is very gentle and sweet with him.

Visit to Gram Sam and Papa Deet

We made this visit back on May 23rd, but I'm just now finding the time to post photos. My mom, Gram Sam, has a Winnie the Pooh pack and play set up for Baby Boy. It's soooo cute!