Catching Up

So much has happened in a month. With the house, the little boy and the little girl within. We traveled back to Kansas to visit family. We won't be visiting again until spring when we can introduce our newest little addition. So we had a lot of people to visit with Hayden. He'll have to share the spotlight from now on so I hope he enjoyed the singular attention.





















We (and by we I mean, A LOT Derrick, some work that we are grateful for by our parents, and me when I can secure someone to watch Hayden as a toddler in a construction zone is not the safest thing) have mostly been consumed with the house. This week should bring some great change to the house as cabinets will be installed. Derrick has masterfully tiled 2 bathrooms and a kitchen with a little more to go. He pretty much has a second job as my contractor at this point. The pictures capture some of what we have done. Its amazing how much prep work has to go into something before you can even begin the final rebuilding process. You don't just paint a wall. You have to repair holes, sometimes re-texture, then prime, then roll and trim a ceiling twice, then roll and trim the walls twice with paint. And that's just to paint. HGTV makes it look so much faster. But we're moving along.


The master bath-missing cabinetry and shower and toilet still. Will be one of the last things done completely.











Hall bath-missing cabinetry (this week) and toilet.










Family Room- trim and carpet








Kitchen - cabinets (this week) and countertops and appliances (the following week.) Also Derrick has completely tiled this area since I took these pictures a day ago.







As for Hayden, he is just a little parrot. He is picking up words left and right and stringing them together to make sentences. His language development is amazing to watch. He also loves to imitate movement (especially with his daddy and grandpa.) He comes into a room and Derrick is leaning against a post, Hayden will lean against the post. Grandpa (or Manka, as Hayden refers to him) thought it was especially funny to get him walking sideways while he was visiting here. Hayden LOVES anything with a motor and loves playing with cars and trucks. He has 2 Hot Wheels cars and one he refers to as his "fast car" and the other is his "cool car". He was amazed that a fire truck honked so loud the other day too that we keep bringing it up by saying "big truck honk" . Of course it is not as clear as you and I say it. Luckily, I speak toddler. It is more like "fa car" and "coo car" and "big guck onk." He is also doing a stellar job feeding himself with spoon and fork (no knives yet :) and he can know even handle small cups. Not that he's all that interested in eating because he'd rather play all the time. I also finally caved and bought some Sesame Street DVD's and he loves Elmo. All this time that voice has just grated on me. Its amazing what you can push through though when your little one gets so much joy from it. He loves to color (and always manages to find permanent markers laying around which I swiftly exchange for crayons and paper.) He loves to ride on his little cart, play in water (if a baby pool is not available, then a dog water bowl will suffice even if we just stand in it with our socks on.) He loves to be "outide" and gets very upset when the door is shut (as we are trying not to cool the still 90+ temperatures.) Anyway, he is at such a fun age and everyday he makes me laugh and amazes me is some way. It is amazing to watch someone develop from birth. Despite the effort that goes into child rearing, I can't imagine missing a second of it and am looking forward to doing everything from the start. I feel like I took my days for granted until Hayden. I was always looking forward to the next thing in life whether that was graduating, getting married, and then having kids. Watching someone change so fast makes you realize you are too and that you should savor every moment of it. Its really easy to get caught up in things that won't matter a bit to you 10 or 20 years down the road. I look at these pictures and can feel the joy I had in the moment and I am just so grateful to have had each and every moment of them. I hope you all enjoy every moment of every day too, even the rough days.

Stripped Down version of our New Old House

Daddy's little helper











Getting his work gloves on. Point me to the power tools.










Master Bedroom









Another Bedroom












Hall Bathroom









Family room







Breakfast nook looking into bare kitchen









Master bath















The staircase and open hallway to second floor






The entry way and family room

Thank God for Little Boys

I didn't grow up with any brothers and so have never had the experience of what a little boy is like in the day-to-day. I just know what my sister and I were like as little girls. I do remember being fascinated with anything with buttons and loving to play on the playground. I liked water, in an orderly fashion with swimsuit or at bathtime. I remember wanting to hold and nurture smaller animals (cats, puppies, and the occasional hamster or gerbil) but never wanting to saddle them up and ride them into the sunset with my box of mac and cheese cargo. It amazes me everyday how he explores the world around him with such different eyes than I did and do. I am so grateful for my little boy and the opportunity to raise him up to be a man. I am grateful that for today he is still my little boy and will let me attack him with kisses, cuddle him, and kiss his ouchies. As excited as I am to have a little girl coming and to have that new and different bond with her, I'm going to miss my little boy only days that have passed so quickly despite my trying so hard to make certain parts of them just hold still for a moment or at least freeze in my memory. I can't help but everyday at 8pm get a little nostalgic for how life really does seem to speed up when you're watching someone change so quickly before your eyes. Anyway, I'm just thankful for everyday, no matter how tired I am. I wouldn't trade my exhaustion for anything.



















PS-None of these photos are posed especially the last. We have a very patient lab who actually lets him ride her occasionally.

Button Pushing and Other things

How is it that a toddler has radar on how and when to push your buttons? Hayden apparently has the magical ability every 5 seconds or so to zone in on exactly the precise activity that will make my miraculously low blood pressure this pregnancy (thank God) soar. What? Mommy is having a stressful moment trying to negotiate pricing with someone who is blatantly trying to rip her off? Now would be a good time to give my stuffed animal a swim in the dog bowl. Or maybe I'll just pull my pants down and then cry when I can't walk or run very well. Anyway the last one made me laugh because I love his little non-baby legs. Hope all of you buttons are unpushed out there.

Summertime Fun!

So our little Hayden is 18 months now and we are a mere 3 months away from starting the baby journey again with our new little girl. If you're curious about whether or not we've picked a name, know that we still need to select countertop and lighting fixtures because they are scheduled to be installed before her debut and we seem to be running a JIT life right now.

So if you haven't heard, we Finally, Finally bought a house. It took us 4 1/2 years to bite the bullet. We were able to get a good deal on a fixer-upper in a nice neighborhood but are doing a big renovation on it. Now by we, I mean mostly Derrick, as I am limited in my painting abilities and handiwork abilities at that. So while he labors away, and gets away occasionally, Hayden and I have been playing in the sun enjoying our health. The usual swimming pool and zoo visits and even some tram rides and hiking trips have been part of our summer activities.

We have been keeping very busy, needless to say but Hayden often reminds us that we need not be all work and no play and reminds us to not be in adult-mode all the time despite our life-changing and uber-important decisions about cabinets and carpet we are always making. He keeps me on my toes these days and wears me down. I can't think of a time in my life where I've wanted so badly to go to bed the second I put him to be at 8 o'clock. The thought of staying up past 10pm makes a wave of exhaustion sweep over me.

He's a toddler boy for sure though. A lego-playing, turning everything into a car (from chicken nuggets, to books) with his little motor noise, to full fledged temper-tantrums which are interesting to watch develop, to mounting his horse-dog Sadie for a ride around the living room (if you think I'm kidding, I'm not, you should see it-bare back holding onto her fur.) Its fun because he totally knows how to melt mommy by puckering up (to his best ability) and giving me a kiss as soon as he knows he's broken the law.

It's A Girl!

That's our biggest news of the last week. We're very excited to get the opportunity to experience raising both a boy and a girl and can't wait to meet her. The keeping the name top secret thing is on again, so we won't be telling until she's joined us and we're making it official. No pics this post, but I'll get on it!

Life's a Toybox

It is so funny looking at pictures of my home before little Hayden. It was so clean. So uncluttered. And now I'm pretty sure that it won't be that way again for a very long time. But its okay because we have some fun getting it to that point. Tractor races and playing ball are some of our favorite things today besides our favorite stuffed animal Woof-woof who has an amazing resemblance to our lab, Sadie. We love Woof-woof so much that we tried to get him into the bath just before Hayden joined him. When Daddy is home, we find a way to sit between his feet, whether he is resting or has paused just long enough to situate ourselves there. We are in major need of a backyard. Right now we settle for parks where I spend most of my time toddler-herding. He lets out the war-cry of the baby and runs for the nearest street which is why we choose large parks and I we always start in the middle. But when we're not outside, we're wishing we could be. If you look to our windows you can often see a little boy and a chocolate lab head peering out the window watching the "cucks" (cars and trucks since we are too lazy to say both words though perfectly capable.) They are both interested in watching the world buzz by. Anyway, we have fun letting go of the organization that once was for us to live in each moment with this guy. After all, when will we again get to play tractors, cars, or show simple ball tricks to an audience with more enthusiasm.







We had so much fun playing ball we had to get ready for bath time with the balls in hand.







Nap time for Woof-woof and Sadie










In his nightly position.










A boy and his dog

Easter Blessings

We hope you all had a beautiful and blessed Easter celebrating the gift of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ's resurrection. We certainly did. We had a lovely visitor, Derrick's sister, Michelle for the weekend. We relaxed and Hayden and his aunt did much bonding (I don't think I've gotten that much time off from diaper patrol ever.) There were some casualties and many Starburst Jellybeans lost their lives. I'm still crossing my fingers that my teeth recover. I even chewed the hard outside off the jelly bean and gave Hayden the bean innards, which he loved. I know it sounds crazy but my kid has turned down everything sweet and I was starting to think that his sweet tooth had a cavity. I just wanted to make sure he wasn't broken. Don't worry, it is labor intensive to remove the casing of a jellybean, so he only got four. However, we had to hide to eat jellybeans the rest of the weekend because he always wanted more. He even knew the sound of the jellybeans in the bowl after awhile. Anyway, we had a lovely weekend where we went to the zoo and church on Sunday and even had an Easter Egg hunt. Hayden enjoyed spiking the eggs, so good call on the plastic eggs. We'll hold off on the real ones for a little while longer. It was a little depressing to have rocks and cement walls as the dramatic backdrop for our first Easter egg hunt. Oh well, here's to hoping we'll have grass next year! God bless!

Long Over Due and Other Due Dates

First, my apologies to the ever faithful blog checkers who have spurred me on to get back to doing this (ehehehe, Michelle). From our previous blog entry, you can see that we had a rough start to the year, well, Hayden did. He didn't get better until mid-February and is currently suffering through a second bout of RSV this season. We'll get through it though. And, in case you hadn't heard, we found a specialist who correctly diagnosed his first and most worry-some illness as a bacterial overgrowth post Rotavirus which caused him to continuing throwing up and having diarrhea for weeks after the virus was dead and gone. So the few weeks that we had between illnesses, we have been living it up spending as much time out of the house as humanly possible. Play dates, zoo trips, library children times, parks, and more. Hayden is mastering walking and now working on running. He is into everything he's not supposed to be and so my productivity has decreased while he's been awake and awake time has increased with dropping down to one nap. Great for getting out but a killer when it comes to getting things done. So in that one naptime, I've been napping because I'm a little sleepier the last few months. Which brings me to the second piece of news, a due date. Baby #2 will be joining on or around September 30th. We're very excited for our growing family and have been hard at work looking for a house. We need more room for kiddos including more of a backyard and a little more of a place to offer our guests who we so enjoy having. So we have a deadline, otherwise it could get a little, um, shall we say tight in our current living situation. And now for the pictures which I'm sure most have skipped right to...




We got Hayden some blocks to practice his stacking (and his real joy, knocking over)






Mommy, Sadie and Hayden stacking blocks in new ways. Yes, this is how we fill the evenings sometimes. We're wild!!





Baby #2 at 12 weeks (just last week)




A far away profile shot











Baby sucking his or her thumb (5 weeks until we find out whether the baby is a he or she)






A face shot










A closer profile shot

Update on Prayer Request

After visiting 4 pediatricians and 1 Pediatric GI specialist, we have done a lot of lab tests and are still in the process of getting all of the results. However, we have been advised that this is most likely the remnants of Rotovirus (some good the vaccine did) and because little man is not very chubby, that it is most likely affecting him more severely (I guess chubbier thighs scare the virus away more effectively.) We are almost 3 weeks into this come Monday and we were informed it could last up to 8 weeks. We are no longer considered contagious, whoo hoo, however little man is a time bomb and could explode from either end at any given time during an outing so be prepared for wardrobe change and be prepared to continue our nightly and sometimes twice nightly visit from the barfing fairy. Thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray that this illness will resolve quickly and his immune system and GI system for that matter will turn to steel! Also visit another blog to see some of our new family photos and photos from Hayden turning 1. Yes, we got his pics taken on what appeared to be an upswing and a good day. The blog is www.staleyphotography.blogspot.com. We're on her January 18th posting. God bless!