Life is changing

Well, things are getting spiced up once again. My darling, my heart, my sweet angel boy has hit another milestone. Climbing. I know that my dearest love is 14 months tomorrow, so I've been blessed to only just now be dealing with it. Here is where he decided to eat his snack after nap time today.




Can we just look at all the facets of this picture? First of all, sitting on the floor to eat a mix of cheerios and goldfish just doesn't cut it any more. He has to eat them on the fire place. In order to get up there he has to put the cup up there first, then use all 4 limbs to climb the foot off the floor that is our fireplace, then get all situated before picking the cup back up to eat. Then there is Daisy. She practically smothers him to get at all the pieces that don't quite make it to his mouth. Finally there is the direction of his eyes. If you knew me personally and have been to my house, then you know what he is looking at. The TV. Does life get any better for a baby? A good snack, a good show, no clothes, and a new outlook on life (you know, a more elevated one).

OH. He's also walking.

Dinner- success!

Before I talk about my successful dinner, I have to say I was disappointed in Wal Mart today. I was supposed to babysit at our church's preschool today, for all of the teacher's kids while the teacher's were in a meeting (school starts in two weeks). After I had already gotten all ready and fed Luke I got a call that none of the teachers had brought their kids so I wasn't needed. Fine by me!! I took the opportunity to run up to Wal Mart for diapers and conditioner (don't you hate it when you accidentally buy two shampoos?) and I was sorely dissapointed in the number of people there. You couldn't even tell it was the middle of the work day! Don't you people have work to do? Hmph. Good thing I avoid that place until necessary.

Whilst at Wal Mart I got a call from the oral surgeon's office about costs of the surgery. Holy moly it turned into a slight ordeal. I have coverage from my old dental insurance until August 31st, and new coverage from Cody's work starts Sept. 1st, but the new insurance wouldn't talk to the surgeon's office until my coverage started. I ended up calling FOUR TIMES to the insurance, and FOUR TIMES to the surgeon's office, but I think I've got it worked out.

So now on to the dinner. I made home made meat ball subs, and they were sooooo yummy! I had no idea it was so easy to make meatballs, I will definitely be doing that again. Plus I have an extra pound of hamburger meat in the freezer that I have no idea what to do with. And I have three meat balls left over for one more sandwich. I would have it for lunch tomorrow, but my new friend Taylor is coming over and I'm making chicken salad. My favorite!

And now to continue with the nostalgia theme:


Luke was about 3 months in this picture. I took it just for the bib. We are Texans through and through.

Us and some old people

This morning after breakfast I took Luke to the grocery store. Can I just tell you how amazing it is to go to the store when everyone else is working? There were maybe 10 other patrons in the store, and I am not even kidding, they were all 65+ years old. Awesome! I got the ingredients for meatball subs that Melanie posted, which I plan on making for dinner tomorrow night. Oooooo, my tummy is growling just thinking about it. I can't wait to go to Wal Mart during the middle of the day. The whole place will be MINE!!!

Today was the first day I kept two kids for a couple of hours. Wednesdays I will keep these two kids from 2:30 to 4:30 and Thursdays from 9:00 to 1:30 every couple of weeks. Not a bad gig! The little girl, T, is 4 and she was cracking me up. At one point she decided we were going to play pretend birthday party, and the theme to the party was old ladies. What?!? Who ever heard of a kid playing old lady birthday party? This should be good for a few stories every now and then.

Not a relevant picture. Just being nostalgic. Luke at 4 days old:

Peaceful Day

Today I finally got a day to slow down and enjoy being at home for a little while. I was supposed to have my consultation with the oral surgeon today at 2:00, but this morning they cancelled on me due to the dr. being sick. Woo hoo! That meant the only thing I had to do today was dinner with some friends tonight!

Melanie and David are a couple that we have known from college, and they had their little girl, Madison, three days after Luke arrived. They have been in town for the last month and we just finally got to hang out tonight. It was so fun! Plus Madison and Luke flirted with each other off and on, so that was fun too. ;)

Last week I thought I was possibly pregnant and while I was waiting for the results I had a chance to get past the freak-out and get excited. It turns out I wasn't, and while I am complete sold on the fact that this is not a good time for us, it didn't take away from the fact that I was disappointed about not getting to be pregnant again. So I've been trying to think of all the good things about not being knocked up.

-I don't have to tell my friends who are having trouble conceiving that I'm accidentally pregnant again. (I have two friends who want babies and are in my prayers, my heart is so heavy for them.)
-Cody and I are not stable enough to withstand another major change.
-I don't have to feel guilty, like it's all my fault.
-I wouldn't be able to pay for it.
-My insurance runs out next week.
-I'm not going to get fat.
-I don't have to drink water.
-I can continue to rely solely on coffee and Dr. Pepper to quench my thirst.
-I won't have to try and nurse due to the inability to afford formula.
-I don't have to go through the guest room and figure out where to put everything so the baby could have that room.
-I can have sushi whenever I want.
-I don't have to stress about whether I will be lucky enough to miss the stretch-mark boat again.
-In 8 months I'll still be able shave my legs.
-In 9 months I won't have to give birth.

Nope. A part of me is still disappointed. Just don't tell Cody.

Of course she would...

How is it possible that life seems busier as a stay at home mom than as a working mom? We have had something to do every day for the past week and a half, and it's not stopping anytime soon! Today was the first day of school, and for the first time in my life I was not a part of the hoopla. And you know what? It felt really good. Really natural. I would have LOVED to have spent the day on the couch, just because I can, but unfortunately I had an appointment for Luke. I took him to the developmental pediatrician because our regular pediatrician is concerned that he is delayed in a few areas of development, namely in the areas of language and social skills. The specialist today was very encouraging though- she thinks he is just a late bloomer rather than actually delayed! Praise Jesus for that!

Also today I had to take D Dog to the vet. *sigh* There was $125 I would have rather spent on something else. I even took her to the vet completely dirty. The girl hasn't had a bath in weeks, not to mention her condition the last few days. The vet wasn't exactly sure of what was wrong with her, but she got fluids for being slightly dehydrated and pills to help her colon. Also I was told that she should really stay indoors in a bathroom or somewhere with tile as opposed to outside because of the heat and how small she is. She HATES being pinned up in the kitchen and will cry and whine about it, but that's her new home right now. She even cowers when she sees me get out the baby gate.

I was watching TV just now before going to bed and I realized I hadn't heard her pathetically whimpering in a while. I crept over the baby gate and this is where I found her.


Those are actually clean clothes she is sleeping on. More specifically LUKE'S clean clothes that I hadn't put away yet. I guess that's what I get not putting her bed in with her and for leaving the laundry room door open. Anyone want to come an extra load of laundry for me?

For the love of humanity

This afternoon when Luke and I got home from church, we were greeted by an unpleasant smell. This was very foreboding seeing as Daisy Dog has had some kind of poop-issue the last couple of days. She is very well potty trained, but the last couple of days it's been like she just can't make it to the back door. So just to make sure nothing happened on the carpet while I was out, I made sure all the bed room doors were shut.

Back to the present- so when I walked in to the living room all I could see where a couple of pieces of poo and I thought "Bummer. No big deal, but I'm glad it's not terrible." THEN I walked around the side of the couch. It was awful. This poor dog couldn't even make it off the couch and made a horrendous mess everywhere. Plus she had smeared it all over the floor. Cody was taking a shower, so I ran into the bathroom and almost threw up on him as I begged for him to get out and clean it up. There was NO WAY I was able to....the smell was over whelming. Even now when I shut my eyes I can still see it and have a strong desire to gag. Awesome Sunday huh?

Not wanting to end on a nasty note, I put some stuff in a good friend's garage sale. Said good friend is moving to Abilene (noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!) and needed to purge before boxing up. I made $35 off of junk I was sick of looking at! I am not sure what I'm going to spend my hard earned money on. And when I mean hard earned, I mean I sat from 7:30-11 visiting with friends and eating donuts. Donuts were my contribution. They thought I was being nice, but really I would have just felt really guilty if I had shown up with donuts just for me and chowed down while they stared longingly at my fried pastry goodness.

New routine and a few tears

I am a person who thrives on order. I need a set schedule, a time and a place for everything. Otherwise, nothing gets done. The one glaring shortfall of my lack of schedule is carving out a daily quiet time with the Lord. With no predetermined time for this to happen, the day gets away from me and by then end I'm too tired for any soul searching to happen. So today I've changed that. From 3-4 every afternoon is the Lord's time. Luke is almost always asleep, there is nothing good on t.v., and it's too early to start in with dinner and evening activities. I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before, but I did today and I started immediately. Already I've gotten amazing results.

The first thing I did (besides spend some time face-down in the carpet) was get out my Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. If you don't have one, GET ONE! It's amazing how the same scripture read over and over will change once you find out what one little word means. Not knowing where to start in my bible, I just happened to flip to Philemon. I started reading and came to verse 6: "and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge...." Now I had always just assumed it meant sharing as in evangelizing. But something told me to look that word up. It actually means to have "fellowship, the close association between persons, emphasizing what is common between them". How cool is that! As if I really needed another reason to fellowship with my brothers and sister in Christ.

But this is where the Lord really spoke to me. This is why I was meant to read the bible today. Here is verses 14-16:

"but I preferred to do nothing without our consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will. For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother-especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord."

How desperately I needed to hear that. Those words were a healing salve on my broken heart. As soon as I read them I was just overcome with emotion, I'm even crying again just rereading them. Cody and I will be okay. He will come back to me. I KNOW it. God is working some things out in us, and he will be mine forever. But not only mine forever, he will be stronger in the Lord. Thank you Jesus for speaking to deep wounds and having grace that is sufficient enough and strength that is renewed each morning.

Bed head and more spaghetti

So, occasionally Luke wakes up with the worst bed head ever. This kid gets sweaty while he sleeps, and couple that with tossing and turning (I'm assuming) and WHOA NELLY you get quite a look. Here is an example of a couple of months ago:

And here is today:
But this smile tells me he doesn't care too much:

He had a good nap that I had to wake him up from- I'm trying not to let him sleep past 4 any more so that he is ready for bed at night. So mean! He had really worn himself out throwing fits at the mall playground today. Luke has this one really harsh mom that won't let him crawl out the front gate alone or play with other people's strollers. Oh the crying that was involved. Then tonight I made him eat the dreaded spaghetti again. This is how he told me how he felt, and this time there were actual tears involved:

It was awesome, and it took two washings in the bath to get all the food out of his hair and off of his face. I am determined that this kid will like spaghetti one day! The only way I could get any down him was to mix it with a diced plum, so that the noodle bits stuck to the fruit. Yum yum. Man, these make me realize how badly he needs a hair cut. All things considered, I think we've had better days. And for anyone keeping tally: Spaghetti-3 Luke-0

Blah

So apparently I'm a bad weekend blogger. Not that I didn't have a great weekend, I actually had a pretty fun weekend. Saturday night some good girlfriends came over and we had wine, girl talk, and toe-nail polish fun. I love having those kinds of nights, but it made me miss sleepovers. A couple of weeks ago when I went to Abilene for Kendra's wedding shower I got to bunk in her bed with her, and it was so fun to whisper after lights out until we fell asleep. Don't you miss those days? Sunday was typical church day fun- bible class, church, lunch, got straight in bed when I got home and we woke up 30 minutes before life group started that night. Talk about a lazy day!

Cody has been gone all weekend, but he comes home tonight. Whew! I missed that kid, and I'm totally drained from a weekend of single parenting. Not to mention he wasn't here to see Luke take some of his first steps. I got three out of him today before he realized what was going on and sat down! Cody was supposed to be home last night, but finally at 12 AM I called his BFF (because Cody's phone had died of course) to find out where they were and they were still at the Gulf! I refrained from making any snide "thanks for the heads-up" comments and just told him I would see him today as cheerfully as I could.

Also on Saturday I whipped up this:


It only took me about 1 1/2 hours to make it! That's including drawing and cutting out the letters. I'm trying to get faster and better. Here's a close up of the letters:


Luke has used it after bath time the last couple of days, so I'm interested to see how it holds up in the wash. Speaking of bath...we have a new favorite game:


I like to call it "let me throw everything out of the tub filled with water and create a flood on the floor". Beware- I hear it's catching on like crazy in the mid-west. Where is the mid-west anyway? Could Oregon be considered the mid west? It's the middle stated on the west coast. Hmm. That really is a toughie. Have I mentioned I'm drained? Hence the reason for "blah". Thank goodness I didn't have to go back to work today. Today was the first day back for teachers, and it was odd that almost everyone I know was at work, yet I was at the mall trying on glasses. More about that next week. Ashley and I took Mom out for ice cream when she was done today. That was a tradition that we had growing up; on our first day back to school Mom would always take us to Braum's for ice cream, so we surprised her today. Yummmm...who doesn't like ice cream 2 hours before dinner?

Fun day

Today was a really fun day, as I knew it would be due to my completion of housework yesterday. First of all, after I scooped out my coffee for the coffee pot, this was what happened to be at the bottom of the canister.

I didn't create this, I am not kidding. How can it not be a good day after a coffee smiley face? At 11 we went to the pool with my dad, whom Luke just adores. It's so funny to see him get all giddy about his Papa! Mom got there late because her school had orientation today. We stayed at the pool until 12:45, so I'm hoping this momma has more of a tan tomorrow than I did yesterday. When we got home from the pool I fed Luke lunch, where I had a brilliant moment to let him feed applesauce to himself while I unloaded the dishwasher. Here's what I got when I turned back around.

Do you see where the spoon is? What was I thinking? Although, I don't think he minded the mess too much.
I am pretty sure it will be years before I let him feed applesauce to himself again. He had to get a bath to get it all off. He finally went down for his nap at 1:15 and he didn't get up until 5:30. Child wore himself out! What did I do during this luxurious nap time? Nothing, just like I predicted. Then we played and I cut out the letters of his name to make a hooded towel for him. It's a double win- I get to practice stitching around letters some more and he gets a cute new towel. And now I'm wondering if I should go take the toys out of his crib, because instead of going to sleep I am currently listening to him loudly tell them something very important.