snow, and other stuff...

it's about time for a post on this blog.

the big news this week is that it snowed here! i was hoping it would snow while we lived here, and it did! i was most excited because love has been wishing for snow. she spent tuesday afternoon and evening peering out the windows to see if the snow had started to fall. it didn't start snowing until after she was asleep. i was so tempted to wake her up, but i resisted (that would have been a stupid move on my part). when she woke up on wednesday morning, the first thing she did was jump out of bed and look out the window. she was absolutely thrilled to see snow on the ground and was ready to head outside immediately.

we got about three inches i think. the bad part was that there was freezing rain before the snow, so the roads were slippery. of course, in a place that is not used to snow, this "storm" was a huge deal. it was all over the news and the city shut down about 8 hours before the storm even began. the big thing when there is snow is that people mob the stores to buy milk and bread. it was even reported in the news that stores had ordered extra deliveries of milk in preparation for the storm. unfortunately, it was too late to get extra orders of bread delivered, so i'm guessing some people had to tough it out being stuck in their houses for two days with no extra bread. i find this whole phenomenon hilarious and mind boggling. what in the world are people doing with all this extra milk? before the "storm" hit, we were low on milk, but there was no way i was going to the store to fight the mobs just to get a gallon of milk. i would rather live without for a couple of days. to me, the whole thing just shows how reliant our society is on grocery stores (a fact i already find sad anyway) and what consumers we are. also, how we are not used to being without things that we "need". anyway...enough of that soapbox. it's just funny.

even though love was ready to go outside immediately upon waking up, she waited patiently for breakfast to be made while lovingly gazing out the window at the snow. jeremy got to head into work a little later than usual, so we had a bit of a slower morning.

after he left, i began the process of bundling the kids up to go outside. whew! since we live in south carolina, we didn't have any snow boots for the kids to wear. we did have two pairs of rubber rain boots (one in love's current size, and one a size larger), so we used those. i layered up the socks and even put a pair of my wool socks on each kid. jobot was able to wear his slippers inside the boots, so his feet stayed nice and toasty. we did have winter coats, hats, and mittens for each kid. no snowpants, though, so both kids wore a pair of jobot's wind pants as well as two other pairs of pants underneath. the wind pants were a little short on love, but they worked.

once the kids and i were dressed in our hodgepodge of winter gear, we headed outside for some fun in the snow. as soon as we got outside, both kids immediately started eating the snow. and ate, and ate, and ate. it was so funny! love and i made some "train tracks" in the snow in the front yard and puffed along the "rails" for a while, taking turns calling out "faster" and "slower" and adjusting our speed accordingly. love was most fascinated by the (tiny) icicles hanging off of our roof and i found myself using a pool noodle to get some down so we could collect them in a bucket.

by that point, jobot had stopped eating the snow and was back to trying to do his usual outdoor activity - using a little shovel to scoop up dirt and put it in his wagon. he was quite perturbed that there was snow in the way and became quite crabby. i tried to convince him to scoop up the snow and put it in the wagon, but i was unsuccessful. he cried a lot and did not have much fun.

after about 45 minutes we came inside (picture me walking toward the house with two crying kids - jobot repeatedly falling down in the snow - as a couple walked by with their dog and found it all quite amusing) and the kids had hot chocolate and snacks. our neighbor brought over some warm muffins and sat and visited for a while, and another neighbor took me up on my offer to watch their six-month-old baby while he took his older child sledding. we had a house full of kids and neighbors for a bit there and it was fun - it felt homey and neighborly and warm and cozy.

surprisingly, there is still a bit of snow on the ground today, but i think this is probably the last we will see of snow for a while. it's supposed to be in the mid-60s tomorrow, so the snow will definitely be gone by then.

in other news...these kids are both at fun stages right now.

jobot is at one of my favorite stages. he is twenty months and his vocabulary grows every day. he is so proud to try out new words. the other day i asked him a question and was shocked when he responded with, "no thank you mommy". when asked a question, he has also started responding with "hmmm...huh....mmmm..." jobot wants to eat all. the. time. the first word out of his mouth every morning is "EAT!" this morning we had pancakes for breakfast and he ate FIVE of them. he had a doctor's appointment on monday and once again he was off the charts for height and weight. the pediatrician said that he is proportional and that if he keeps this rate on the charts, he will probably be about 6 ft 4 in, which is how tall jeremy is. love and i are going to be surrounded by tall men.

he is a loud and busy boy. he makes anything into a hammer and goes around "fixing" things in the house. he is very interested in music, so i have been making an effort to play more classical music in our house during the day. it's nice for everyone. i have even seen him look at a page in a book that has pictures of instruments and start swaying like he is listening to music. i am curious to see if anything will become of this music interest. he got a tambourine/drum for christmas and it's one of his favorite toys. he has started singing and jeremy and i were shocked one day in december when we were listening to christmas music and he actually started singing along to "ave maria"!

he currently spends his days throwing toys and stuffed animals in his crib so they can go "nigh-night". he constantly asks for bandaids, even when he doesn't really need one. due to his daring nature, he does bleed several times a week, so i guess that all makes sense. he wears his bandaids with pride. he also wants to take baths all the time - he walks around the house saying "ba-ub" (bathtub) and looking at us with hopeful eyes. the other day jeremy started a bubble bath and jobot was so excited that he dove right in, clothes and all!

love is also at such a fun stage these days. in many ways, it's a challenging and dramatic stage, but she is becoming such a lovely young girl. when i drop her off for preschool, we almost always talk about being kind to other kids, and she says, "i am a kind girl, mommy". and she is, too. we have had several playdates lately where i have seen her being kind to others, without any prompting from me. it makes me so proud of her. although she and jobot fight (even the classic both kids pulling on the same toy screaming because they both want it), she has many moments of being a kind and caring big sister. there is a boy in her class who has some special needs and behavioral issues, and i am so proud that love is the one the teachers have seated next to him at the table. i have been so pleased to see her interact with him and be so loving and encouraging. makes my heart want to burst with love and pride for her!

we had some free movie tickets and i recently took her to the movies for the first time to see "frozen". she was so excited and sat on my lap the whole time. it's so fun that she is getting old enough to do those kinds of things.

just after christmas we (finally) moved love from a crib to a bed (our guest bed). this involved switching the kids rooms and rearranging a bit. it has made our house more functional and has worked really well. love was so ready to make the transition that it has gone smoothly for all of us.

she currently asks multiple times a day, "mommy, tell me a story about when somebody got hurt." we share stories of our childhood injuries (most involve falling off of bikes!) and she is fascinated by these stories and wants to hear them again and again. if the story we tell isn't interesting enough, she lets us know that she would like to hear a different one. ha! so, a lot of our life seems to revolve around injuries these days...either jobot is getting hurt, or we are telling stories about people getting hurt.

she is also really into playing with her train set these days. for some funny reason, her favorite character is "diesel 10". she often says "no mommy, i'm not karis. i'm diesel 10." she pretends that she is him and "chuffs" around the house using her "wheels" to get around. she recently used some of her christmas money to buy a wooden diesel 10 to add to our train collection.

love is very particular and orderly and recently made a block border for our living room rug (see photo below). she often heads to her room saying that she is going to "organize sometheen". jobot, on the other hand, is quite the opposite, which causes some tension in our home as he undoes whatever organization love has set into place.

also...that slide has taken up residence in the middle of our living room. it was a christmas gift and the kids love it and play with it every single day. for the first week or two after we got it, we had to put a blanket on the slide and give it a good night kiss at the end of the day or jobot would throw a tantrum because he had to stop playing with it.

these days are full and busy, but in many ways, it feels like we are currently in a good stage as a family. these kids bring us lots of joy and humor and we have so much fun watching them grow.

december so far

i've been really feeling like i can't keep up with life lately. it's been frustrating. and then today it hit me...in the past month i have taken jobot to six doctor appointments (the sixth one was this morning), spent a good part of two days in the ER with him, stayed at the hospital for two days, gone on a six day cross country road trip, and tried to keep up with laundry, housekeeping, parenting, and general tasks of caring for our family in the midst of all of it.

that realization made me feel a little better at least. there's been a lot going on.

but, i have managed to put up some christmas decorations, and even make some new ones, so at least there's that.

the little houses are made of paper. last year, i got a little kit to make them on clearance after christmas. i stashed it with our christmas decorations and forgot all about it. what a fun surprise to find! putting them together and decorating them has been an enjoyable little project. also, i really like having a mantle.

 our tree has been toppled over three times and counting. we started with several unbreakable ornaments on the tree. well...several of the "unbreakable" ornaments have been broken (including charlie brown, who was unfortunately beheaded by our little one year old), and ornaments were being removed by little hands faster than they could be put back on, scattered all over the house, and stepped on...so we are going with a mostly ornamentless tree this year. there are a few (tacky) plastic ornaments up at the top of the tree. the christmas tree is not a battle i am willing to have with the kids...so we make due with our little three-foot artificial one for now and they touch it and play with it all they want.

 we even already had a christmas themed family movie night with pizza in the living room.

and we have been enjoying our christmas present to ourselves - a portable fire pit! we have wanted one for years and found a great black friday sale on one (although we bought it on monday, and i think it's the only thing i have ever bought on a black friday sale...i am not a fan of that shopping day). we tried it out the other night and it was so much fun! a little chaotic with the kiddos, but they enjoyed it, the weather was perfect, and our neighbor even came over and sat around the fire with us for a bit. looking forward to more fun times with the fire!

 oh, and we also put a few christmas lights on our house...how could we not with such a cute little house to decorate?

love had her first french braid. brought me back to the days of braiding my american girl doll's hair...except the doll sat still, love did not.

 there were about ten fun minutes when love and i crafted together post rest time the other day. it didn't last long, but it gave me a glimpse of future times of creating together.

 

 

there has been lots of dress up these days (two little princesses around here)!

and then there was yesterday when we were playing dress up. a few minutes after the fedex delivery guy left i realized that i had answered the door with this antenna hat on my head. ha!

smoothie mornings

we often have smoothies as part of breakfast in the morning. or we have them for an afternoon snack. it seems to be the only way to get green veggies in jobot these days.

(these photos aren't the best quality...our kitchen does not have much natural light, and it was still mostly dark outside anyway. most of the photos are blurry, but that captures how life feels at this stage! a lot of these days, especially ones that involve making something in the kitchen with a one and three year old, seem like a blur!)


the kids each get a little pile of kale (or sometimes spinach) and frozen berries to throw in the blender. sometimes we add a banana or other fruit.

next we pour in the kefir or yogurt and add some milk if we need a little more liquid. sometimes we throw in a few ice cubes, if we feel like it. maybe some honey or stevia.

 then the kids take turns running the blender.

there is usually some fighting.

and someone often ends up crying.

and then we are done!

staycation and back in the routine

jeremy had a week off of work two weeks ago, in between his summer program ending and year-long residency program beginning. we had a little staycation. then, this past week he had orientation for his residency and it was a lighter week schedule-wise, so that was nice. now today he has been on call, so we are back in that schedule again (not so fun).

the kids and i joined him for dinner at the hospital tonight. one trauma came in while we were eating dinner, and another came in as we were leaving, so jeremy was keeping busy. the helipad is right in front of the hospital, near the road, so it is a perfect place for the kids to see the helicopters. there were two tonight and before we drove home we sat in the parking lot and watched one of the helicopters take off. there were two kids in the backseat of my car who were very excited to watch.

our staycation was okay. some days were good and a few were not. it rained a lot, then we had a couple of beautiful days that were unseasonably cool, and then the heat and humidity came back with a vengeance. we went into the week with a substantial list of free or very cheap activities we could do as a family. we ended up not doing much at all, which was fine. (and now we still have ideas for days when we are looking for something to do).

we took the kids bowling (through the kids bowl free program). the two of us didn't even bowl, and we only had to pay for love's bowling shoes. the kids thought it was a lot of fun, and we had fun with them!

we went to the zoo. always a fun, free (because we have a membership) activity. we go just about once a week. we fed the lorikeets (something i don't dare try to do with the kids when i take them by myself!).

and one of them bit jobot.

jobot got his first black eye (thanks to a collision with our coffee table).

 
love and i were in charge of feeding our neighbor's cats (she was on vacation). it was the second time we have done it and the five cats seem to like us more each time. they should, as they spend a lot of time sitting on our front porch and lounging in our yard.

we checked out a local health food store and it was a winner. we also found a source of raw milk. awesome.

the best day we had was last weekend when the weather was refreshingly cool and we spent monday playing and working in the yard. love collected backyard treasures in a dishpan. she found two frogs (toads?) in our backyard and held them captive for a little while. she holds them so they lay on their backs and she gently rubs their tummies. they actually lay there looking very content.

jeremy mowed the lawn with a baby on his back. i love this photo, it reminds me of my dad. he did the same thing back in the day!

i got a haircut which was a frustrating experience and i actually almost cried when the guy said he was done cutting my hair. it was terrible. i mean, really terrible. thirty minutes later i left the salon with an okay haircut.

jeremy gave me a day off, which was a wonderful gift. i spent the morning at a coffee shop sipping coffee and catching up on my scrapbooking on the computer. it was so relaxing. in the afternoon i went to a thrift store with hopes of spending a bit of my birthday money on some new to me clothes. i ended up with a shirt and a pair of shorts, so it was successful.

this week we are really going to be back in the routine. jeremy will be working full days again and love will be starting preschool. she will be going just three mornings a week for three hours and i think it will be so good for her and for me. we will also be doing some informal homeschooling at home, and of course, all of life is school for her anyway!

i am feeling ready for the new routine and am eager to figure out what our days will look like with this new schedule. i am looking forward to getting back into sourdough baking for our family (i have a new friend who is willing to give me some of her starter so i don't have to start from scratch!), and yesterday i got started making kefir (something i have been meaning to do for two years...silly me, it is so easy!). i am eager for fall weather, but i don't think we are going to be getting that any time soon. it's been in the 90s and humid with no relief in sight. i find myself missing the cooler fall mornings of the Midwest.

on the move...

We have internet at the new house, so I can finally post all about our move. I kinda disappeared from blog world in the midst of moving, so I have several posts planned to catch up on the past six weeks or so of our life.

Today found me caring for our little ones in the midst of a stomach bug. It came out of nowhere...I didn't even feel sick until I started eating breakfast and then it hit me. Unfortunately, this was also a really busy day for Jeremy and tonight is his first "on call" night at the hospital. Being on call actually means being at the hospital from 4 pm through the next morning, so it's really just being at work...I don't really know why they call it "on call". Anyway, I had a fever this afternoon, the chills on and off, and just felt pretty miserable. The kids did okay and I somehow got them fed and to bed. I am feeling a bit better, so that's good.

Let's see...writing about the move. Two-and-a-half weeks ago the moving truck was packed and waiting in our driveway and we were sleeping on our mattress on the floor in our empty bedroom.

Loading the truck on a rainy afternoon.

Yes, we will definitely be bringing these two with us!

Our dining room in a state of disaster.

Our last dinner in our house. Dear friends brought over dinner and we had a picnic on the dining room floor in our (mostly) empty house.

Love checking out the "Diesel Truck" (her name for it).

My mom came for those last couple of days to help us with the kids, the packing, and the cleaning, and she was so helpful with it all...even making us delicious meals out of the random odds and ends left in our fridge with only one pan, some olive oil, and salt and pepper (everything else was packed!). We also had an impressive crew of seminary men help load the moving truck, as well as numerous other friends who helped with the kids, cleaning the house, food, etc...

After a week of packing, cleaning, and saying goodbyes, we finally loaded the last few things into the moving truck and the van and then locked the door for the last time and drove away. I expected more sentimental feelings with leaving our house, but the reality was that by the time we left, I was so ready to be done packing and cleaning that I couldn't wait to get out of the house. (By the way, our house never did sell, so we are renting it, in case you are wondering.)

We drove for about three hours and spent the night with my Great Aunt in Indiana. A good time, good food, and good conversation were had by all. Friday morning we hit the road for a long day of driving. Jeremy drove the truck all day (there was no way I was going to drive that thing!). I spent about 8 hours total by myself in the car with the kids. It was quite possibly my most challenging day of parenting yet, and it will be a hard one to beat. We all survived and finally arrived at our hotel in Knoxville, TN for the night, where we found that the one bedroom suite we were expecting was actually just a normal hotel room. (Our entire family sleeping in one room = terrible night of sleep for everyone). Jeremy had not yet arrived at the hotel at that point, and I had just taken our kids out for dinner and then hauled all our stuff and our whiny kids up to our room by myself and I was in no mood for arriving to our room to find that it wasn't the suite we were expecting. In my state of exhaustion, I may or may not have kind of lost it on the phone with Jeremy at that point. Thankfully, he arrived at the hotel shortly after and we were moved to a different room that was a suite and was handicap accessible, which meant it had a huge bathroom. Love slept in the living room, Jeremy and I slept in the bedroom, and Jobot slept in the gigantic bathroom. {At this point, I should add that Jobot had developed hives at some point during the day...possibly from the stress of moving, or from the fact that I fed him strawberry baby crackers pretty much all day because that was the only way to get him to stop crying while we were traveling. Seriously...if he wasn't sleeping or eating in the car, that kid was crying. He is not a good traveler. I had new-to-us toys for him to play with and new books to look at, but he would not have any of it.}

We all collapsed into bed shortly after 10 and everyone slept all night long.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the hotel, cleaned out the van (which was a disaster from the day before), filled up on gas, and headed out for a shorter day of driving. The kids handled the drive about the same as the day before...lots of crying, whining, and misery. Lots of me trying to ignore them because safety on the road was more important than their latest demand, and lots of me passing back snacks, books, and toys to the backseat when I could. And, again, lots of a crying Jobot with hives. Taking a long road trip alone with two kids ages 3 and 1? Not such a great idea. And with kids who are all stressed out because you have just loaded up their entire home onto a moving truck? It makes is even worse. We didn't have any other options though, so we did it and survived.

We drove through the Smoky Mountains on Saturday and arrived at our new (rental) house around 5. A hired crew of three really nice guys helped us move in, we met some of our neighbors, and one of our neighbors even ordered dinner for us and ate with us after the moving truck was unpacked. It was a nice welcome.

Jeremy had the first week off, so we spent that week unpacking, setting up the house, and cleaning (the house was filthy). It was exhausting, challenging, disorienting, and honestly, just pretty terrible.

Things are a bit happier these days. The boxes are unpacked, the house is mostly clean, and we sort-of know our way around. This moving thing, though...not easy.

Jeremy is really enjoying his program and is excited about what he is doing, so that is great. He is working at the Children's Hospital, which is what he was really hoping for.

We are looking for a church, and for friends. The days are long and boring for me because I don't have anyone to hang out with. Not boring in the sense that I don't have anything to do, because these two little people take quite the energy these days...they are both at such busy stages. Just, bored because I don't have any other Moms or friends to interact with. I think I am going to go to a Mom's group on Friday, and a relative of someone Jeremy works with called today to "meet" me over the phone, so hopefully soon we will have some friends.

A few photos from our days here...

Fun with the hose in the backyard.

I will take photos of our house and do a little tour post at some point, and also tell the story of how this came to be our house (pretty amazing). Anyway, that's all for now.

a day in my life: saturday, feb. 9

{i thought it would be fun to record some days from our life...so here is the first one. the disclaimer is that i am not this productive every day and our kids are not this cooperative or portable every day either. this is really long, but i want to remember it. i always enjoy reading similar things that other people post - maybe you will as well? if not, that's ok}

5:30 am. jobot wakes up. i get up so that Jeremy can keep sleeping until the alarm goes off (at 6:30). he is really tired from snow-plowing for ten hours (!) on thursday night. jobot and i go downstairs. i change his diaper, get him dressed, and nurse him.

love wakes up crying at 6 am. jobot and i go into her room and get her out of bed. apparently she thinks it is still night-time. she is crying and i can't figure out why she is so upset. we go downstairs and she stands in the middle of the living room crying. she refuses when i ask her if she will come snuggle on the couch with me. jeremy comes downstairs and she goes up to snuggle with him in our bed. she comes downstairs in a much happier mood. it seems she wasn't quite ready to get up yet.
i give jobot a bottle. love has her juice (she gets one small cup in the morning and then no more juice for the day, so she really enjoys her juice in the morning).

jeremy makes breakfast (a "stack" of a slice of uncured canadian bacon, a fried egg, and a slice of dubliner cheese). love gets a fried egg and some banana slices. jobot has his usual 2/3 of a banana mashed with some rice cereal, raw milk, and cinnamon. he also gets some egg pieces from my plate.

7:35. jeremy heads out the door for a full day of work. first he has to shovel all the snow that the plow has left at the end of our driveway. i get love dressed and cleanup from breakfast.

the kids are playing really well together, so i do some work in the kitchen. i make the day's batch of raw milk formula, throw a chicken carcass and some veggies in the crock pot to make a batch of chicken stock, sweep the floor, and double check my grocery list. i break up a few squabbles.

jobot starts to get tired. i somehow find motivation and decide that i am going to try to work on a house project while he naps. the kids and i head upstairs. i set love up in her room with a snack and the ipad (she watches veggietales). i nurse jobot, he falls asleep, and i lay him in bed. i check on love, who is doing just fine, and start the project...removing the caulk from the shower. (a project that we knew we had to do soon, but after a big piece broke off on friday, it wasn't something we could put off any longer, so it moved up in the priority list to this weekend. jeremy was planning to work on it when he got home from work, but i figured that it would make the day easier if i could at least get some of it done before he got home).

jobot wakes up after twenty minutes (the usual length of his nap). i have made some good headway on removing the caulk. i bring the exersaucer upstairs and put it in love's room. he is happy to sit in there for a while. when he starts to fuss, i bring the exersaucer into the bathroom and buy myself a few more minutes to work.

i think that jobot must be getting hungry, so we all head back downstairs. love's movie isn't quite finished, so we watch the rest of it while i give jobot a bottle. i make sure the diaper bag is packed with what we need, take love to the bathroom, and get boots, coats, and hats on everyone. we are headed to get groceries and meet jeremy for lunch at costco on his lunch break.

i get the kids out the door and leave love on the porch while i take jobot to the van to put him in. his door is frozen shut. so is love's. what a surprise. this happens almost every time we go out on these cold mornings. so...i put both kids in through the front seat. not easy, but it works.

love chatters the whole way to costco. she wants to listen to her kid's cd, but it won't work because it is too cold. it finally starts working.

we arrive at costco. i am there at just the right time and get a front row parking space. i get a cart. hurray - love's door isn't frozen anymore. it makes things much easier. we walk through the store getting the things we need. love samples a variety of foods (her favorite part!). the kids are very well behaved (which is not always how those trips go...especially since they sit in the cart together and can really annoy each other)!

shortly after noon, jeremy calls and says that he is on his way to meet us for lunch. we buy our groceries, and there he is waiting for us. the kids are both excited to see him, and so am i. my mom often sends love $10 to "take her parents out for a treat", which usually means lunch at costco or a trip to starbucks. jeremy and i both get salads and love gets cheese pizza. jobot eats the applesauce i brought for him. we sit and enjoy time together as a family. love eats almost all of her huge piece of pizza(!), with a potty break halfway through. jeremy has to leave before she is done eating, so we kiss him goodbye and sit for a bit longer.

i debate about just going to the grocery store to get the rest of the groceries i need (not very many). i hadn't planned on stopping at both places, but the kids are doing so well that i decide to just get it over with. and both doors on the van are working, so it's much easier to get the kids in and out of the van! on the short drive to the grocery store, jobot falls asleep.

we get to the grocery store and i try to figure out how to get groceries with a one-seat cart, a sleeping baby, and a two-year-old. i feel like a genius when i put our detachable stroller seat in the back of the cart, transfer a sleeping jobot into it, put love in the seat in the cart, and pull a small cart behind me as i go about my shopping. we stop by the bakery desk and get a free cookie for love. jobot wakes up in the produce section. we are almost done with our shopping trip. he happily sits in his seat in the back of the cart and eats snacks while we finish our shopping. we check out and then i realize i forgot something...so we head back to get it. the kids are fading a bit, it's good we are done.

we drive home. love chatters away. when we pull into the driveway, i realize that she has fallen asleep. i bring all the groceries up to the porch, get jobot and then love out of the car. i bring a sleeping love up to her room, lower her into her bed, and she suddenly wakes up and announces, "i want to play!" knowing that's the end of that nap, we head downstairs so she can do just that.

i bring all the groceries into the kitchen and then sit down to nurse jobot. after he nurses, he has a bottle. when he is done i change his diaper and then i start putting the groceries away. love plays and jobot crawls around on the floor playing with various items he finds in the grocery bags. i clean a few things out of the fridge and wash a few dishes.

i decide to try to get some more done in the bathroom, so i bring the kids upstairs. i set love up with another veggietale movie and leave jobot in her room in the exersaucer. he fusses, so i bring his exersaucer into the bathroom. he plays for about fifteen minutes and starts fussing. i'm almost done and i really want to finish, but his fusses soon turn into screams, so i stop and we all go back downstairs. love finishes her movie and i get jobot's dinner ready - homemade pureed butternut squash mixed with some rice cereal and raw milk, mashed up raspberries, and some wheat-free puffs.

the kids and i play on the floor for a bit. then...jeremy comes home! everyone is excited. after some playtime, jobot is getting tired. jeremy gets his pjs on, i nurse him, and jeremy brings him upstairs to give him his last bottle and put him in bed. i get started on supper. we have homemade pizza. low carb and sugar and gluten free (more on this some other time).

after we eat and have devotions, love has her mug of warm milk before bed while i read to her. (we do this almost every night and we usually read poetry. she loves it.) jeremy washes the dishes during that time. then it's on to love's extensive bedtime routine (it's complicated, but it works for her and us)...

she cleans up the toys and gets a sticker on her chart. she brushes her teeth and gets another sticker. and finally, she gets her pajamas on and gets another sticker. she chooses two books for us to read to her, says goodnight to me (i'm in the kitchen putting my freshly made chicken broth into mason jars) and we sing our song twice ("all praise to you my God this night"). she does two flips (she runs to jeremy and he flips her over his shoulder and around) while i watch and cheer, and then jeremy takes her up to bed.

after i wash the dishes from the chicken broth project, i make some chai tea for us and we collapse on the couch. we drink our tea, eat a brownie (low carb, sugar, and gluten free, of course...and it even had cauliflower in it!), and watch an episode of alias, our show for this winter. we had planned to work on the bathroom, but realize it would make a lot of noise while the kids were sleeping upstairs, and we were both exhausted anyway, so that didn't happen.


we sit on the couch, jeremy gives me a backrub (as he does just about every night), and we relax a bit. we start a second episode of alias, but jeremy starts to fall asleep, so we turn it off. we head up to bed and i read for a few minutes in bed, but start drifting off after a couple of pages so i turn out the light and go to sleep.



whew! what a day.

flew the coop

i haven't mentioned it here, but jeremy suddenly and unexpectedly lost his job in october. things have been a bit stressful, depressing, and boring since. there have been lots of jobs applied for, some interviews, a job plowing snow (we've only had one snow that needed to be plowed, though!), and lots of long days of uncertainty.

the winter weather and lack of things to do was really getting to us, and we were missing family. on saturday, we decided that it was time to get away. on sunday, (thanks to my generous father-in-law), we found tickets. and on tuesday, we found ourselves flying across the country (on three different planes, i might add!) and landing in warm and sunny california. we have been playing outside, drinking extra coffee and tea, and enjoying time with family. it's just what we needed.

we thought that we would still be job hunting while we were here...but on tuesday morning, jeremy got a call that he got a job! it's just a job that will hold us over for a few months (selling shoes at a local store), but it's a job, and we are thankful. jeremy plans to become a certified chaplain and will be doing a residency program (likely starting in the summer), so we just needed something to hold us over until then. this is perfect. and now we feel like we can just relax and enjoy our vacation instead of stressing over finding a job.

it's been a stressful few months...grieving the loss of what we thought was going to be our future, struggling with God and his plans for our family, and dealing with the daily stress of providing for our family. through it all, we know that God is good and we are thankful for all the people who have spoken encouraging words into our life as we walk through this. we have had so many people who have prayed for us and who remind us that God loves us, has a plan for us, and will use us to glorify him. we have also been provided for in ways we never could have imagined...from money and gift cards unexpectedly showing up in the mail to an old acquaintance (who had no idea of our circumstances) showing up at our door with a gift card to the grocery store on a particularly stressful day.

as hard as this time is right now, i hope that we can look back on it someday and see it as a time in our lives where we saw God's faithfulness to us. right now, it feels like a huge horrible event in our lives, but in the future, i think it will just be a blip on the timeline of our lives. i hope it's a blip that helped us grow, strengthened our faith and our marriage, and led us to a fruitful place that we never could have imagined. and thanks to all of you who read this who have prayed for us, especially at times where it has been hard for us to pray.

i'm off to have another cup of coffee. this morning, we are going to go for a walk in the sunshine and find a park with a slide (love's request). i'm feeling thankful and even a bit hopeful this morning.

happy new year!

welcome, 2013!

i've been having a bit of an issue with uploading photos to the blog, so i haven't been posting much, because it's just not as fun. i do think it's time for an update, though. 

december passed by rather quickly. we enjoyed the season of advent as much as possible. originally, i was going to do a special activity every day. i ended up doing it a bit differently. a friend told me about truth in the tinsel, a daily advent devotional for kids, so i decided to do that with love. it's an ebook and each day has a scripture reading, devotion, and instructions for making an ornament. i modified some of the crafts for love's abilities and to use materials that we had on hand. we certainly didn't do all 24 days, and we did more at the beginning of the month than the end, but it was a great way to observe advent, and something that we can do in future years as well. 

instead of scheduling an activity for every day, i made a list of things we wanted to do together and we went through the list for what worked on whatever day. we didn't get to everything on the list, and i'm okay with that. here is what we did get to:

- visit the train display at our local mall
- make homemade "gingerbread" play dough
- make salt dough ornaments
- drive around and look at christmas lights
- watch a christmas movie and eat homemade pizza (we watched the polar express)
- send christmas mail to grandparents
- visit the local botanical gardens
- read new christmas book ("room for a little one" from my sister)
- get christmas books from the library
- color in christmas coloring book

we also enjoyed observing advent by lighting our way of light wreath each day and moving the wooden mary a little closer to bethlehem each day. love learned "away in a manger" with motions as we sang it each day after devotions.

the four of us were home together for christmas, and then we traveled to visit family last weekend.

unfortunately, the flu struck our home just before christmas. jobot came down with it the friday before christmas, it hit love on saturday, and jeremy and i got it on sunday. christmas eve found me crawling into bed with a fever and chills, huddled under piles of blankets and snuggling close to jeremy to get warm. it was a bummer. thankfully, we all felt pretty good on christmas morning. we opened our stockings, had a nice little gift exchange, ate some cinnamon rolls, and headed to church. some friends came over in the afternoon and we had christmas dinner and played games. it was a good day.

we went light on the gifts this year, which was the usual for us. jeremy and i decided to get a few things that we needed. they weren't surprises, but i wrapped them up anyway. we got ourselves a nice pair of scissors, a food scale, and i got a pair of tennis shoes and jeremy got some new slippers. we gave jobot a pair of booties for his cold little toes, and we gave both kids a set of wooden blocks. love was given a water bottle and...the big gift which several family members went in on together...a wooden dollhouse, doll family, and furniture! i really think this has been as much fun for me as it has been for her. jeremy did well with my stocking...vanilla almond tea, which i have really been enjoying, a beautiful new mug, and a bar of lavender soap. all things that add a little luxury to life. the best gift was that jobot finally started sleeping through the night, starting on christmas night. it is amazing to sleep all the way through the night again!

of course, more than enjoying the gifts and the family time, we basked in the reality that God is with us. we recently came across a prayer by max lucado, which we have found very fitting for this time. here is an exerpt from the prayer:

"Jesus, the world sure seems dark. i have a good eye for silver linings, but they seem dimmer lately.
your world seems a bit darker this Christmas. 
but, you were born in the dark, right? you came at night. the shepherds were nightshift workers. the wise men followed a star. your first cries were heard in the shadows. to see your face, mary and joseph needed a candle flame. it was dark.
dark with herod's jealousy. dark with roman oppression. dark with poverty. dark with violence.
oh, Lord Jesus, you entered the dark world of your day. won't you enter ours? we are weary of bloodshed. we, like the wise men, are looking for a star. we, like the shepherds, are kneeling at a manger.  
this christmas, we ask you, heal us, help us, be born anew in us."


and to continue the prayer as we enter this new year...may the light of the world shine brightly even through the darkness of our lives. may the hope of Jesus be born in us as we walk on this earth, and may Jesus be invited and faithfully enter into our lives.

happy new year!

halloween

our little lamb in a mama-made costume, and our little guy who dressed as his daddy.

she loved the sheep costume. especially her ears and little black nose. i loved that i made it for her.

handsome boys. our friend did an amazing job knitting jobot's little beard.

in the afternoon, we told love that later we were going to walk up to people's houses and say "trick-or-treat". and then...people would give us candy. a look of amazement and disbelief spread across her face followed by a huge grin. oh, the wonder of being a child. we had as much fun watching her trick-or-treat as she had trick-or-treating. oh, the joys of being parents.

day trip turned overnighter

it all started two days ago, on friday. it was supposed to be a day trip to the east side of the state with two goals: to get a much-needed crib for jobot at ikea, and then to visit our dear friends bekah and ryan in ann arbor.

we got out of the house in record time and hit the road, planning to be at ikea by lunch time. two hours in and jobot was sleeping and love was accidentally buying things on the iphone. oops. glad she only spent $1.96, though we didn't really want those digital coloring pages. we changed the settings on the phone so that can't happen again. we were cruising right along...until we weren't. the van stopped shifting gears and the rpms were getting higher and higher. (as a side note, i have always been worried about the transmission in this van even though two mechanics looked at it and said it was just fine. any time the van makes a weird noise, i say something about the transmission, which jeremy - understandably - finds irritating).

so the rpms were getting higher and higher and we were waiting for the van to gear down, which it wasn't doing. so, i said, "jeremy, this is not right. something is wrong with this, this is not what the car is supposed to be doing" and jeremy says, "don't go off on this tangent about the transmission again. we're just going up a hill" (may i add, it was slight incline in the road...not classified as a hill). cue smoke to start pouring out of from under the hood and also pouring into the van through the air vents. it smelled bad. something was really not right.

it was providential that in the minute that all of that happened, we came upon a rest stop and pulled into a parking spot. more smoke pouring out. someone pulled into the space next to us and asked if they could help us. it turned out that they knew about cars. they said it was the transmission...there was no transmission fluid. could just be that a seal broke and all the fluid drained out, or it could be worse.

thank goodness we were at a rest stop with bathrooms. anyway, we called a tow truck with aaa (knew there was a reason we pay for that every year!). they could tow us within a five mile radius for free, so we agreed to just tow it to the town that was (thankfully) only two miles away. the problem was that they didn't have a tow truck that could fit all of us. we called around town for a rental car. all we could find was a car that was available in an hour-and-a-half. so, the plan was that we would unload the van, the kids and i would wait at the rest area while jeremy eventually came back to pick us up with the rental car. it wasn't ideal considering it was 45 degrees outside and there was nowhere to sit inside the rest area...but that was our only option.

amazingly, at that moment, someone pulled into the parking space next to us. it was an older couple. the woman came over to our window and asked if we were having trouble. we explained the situation and she was very nice. then the tow truck came so we unloaded the van and up onto the two truck it went. the woman was still walking around and kindly offered to drive the kids and i to the rental car place! so, we loaded up the car seats and soon the kids and i were being dropped off there (the woman even gave me a big hug goodbye) and jeremy was at the mechanic. conveniently, there was a bucket of candy inside the office, so love enjoyed her first tootsie pop while i did paperwork. the rental car arrived earlier than anticipated and we headed off to the mechanic to pick up jeremy. we decided to just continue on with our day and wait to hear about the van. by this time, it was early afternoon and we were hungry so we stopped for lunch. as we were about to leave the parking lot after lunch, we got the call from the mechanic.

it was the worst case scenario...our transmission was shot. the quote to fix it: $2800. i kinda felt like i wanted to throw up. we started driving. we couldn't decide what to do. we ended up sitting in a parking lot and both kids were screaming in the back seat. then love decided she had to poop...it was crazy. we called our mechanic and asked for his advice. we decided to have the van towed home and fixed here. but we decided not to do anything until monday and try to enjoy the rest of the day.

so we headed to ikea. it wasn't a leisurely trip, but we fulfilled one of our goals - we got the crib. our wonderful friends in ann arbor offered to let us stay at their house overnight, and we thought that was best considering everything. after a quick stop to pick up a few toiletries, we headed to their house. shortly after we walked in the door, jeremy had a beer and i had a much-needed glass of wine in hand (thanks guys!). we enjoyed a relaxing evening of conversation, pizza, kid craziness, and staying up later than usual. it was such fun and we are so thankful for their friendship and their hospitality. after a rough night of sleep thanks to our children (i have officially self-diagnosed love with a made-up sleep disorder called "unfamiliar surroundings weird-somnia"), we enjoyed a bit more time with friends and headed out to make it home in time to drop off the rental car by noon. the trip back was less eventful than the way there, jeremy shared his starbucks gift card with me and bought me a chai and we had good conversation as we drove along. oh, and love didn't buy anything else, so that was a bonus as well.

what a saga. but, you know what? the weird thing is...these days weren't horrible. we were encouraged because we didn't have a huge fight, which certainly would have happened at past times in our marriage (we must actually be learning something!). we enjoyed being together, and we were amazed at the ways we saw God taking care of us and providing for us amidst the craziness. we thanked him all throughout the days. we enjoyed visiting with friends, jobot now has a crib, and we made it home safe and sound, thankful it was only a transmission and not a car accident or serious health problem.

the zoo!

we went to a zoo with papa - such fun!

love had a blast feeding the giraffes! (i love this photo!)

and so did daddy. (really, all of us did.)

we rode the zoo train. it was definitely a highlight for love - and a highlight for all of us because we got to watch her enjoy it.

jobot was very interested in the goats...

they rode the carousel.

we all rode the tram.

and this kid looked cute, as usual.

we were all tired out at the end of the day, but we were thankful for such a fun day and good memories made with papa!

lately

what have we been up to lately? oh, just the usual. you know...

playing with homemade slime in the sink...

lining up trains in empty egg cartons...

dressing up like a princess...

finding trains "resting" in our slippers...

learning how to use scissors...

looking cute...

riding a pony for the first time and loving it. (she saw another girl riding the pony and looked at me and said sweetly, "mama, pretty please i want to ride the horse". how could we say no?)

being goofy. (the eyes were a birthday gift that love picked out for jeremy at the dollar store. "daddy wants those eyes!" apparently he did. haha. they came in a pack of twelve, so we've had creepy eyes rolling around our house for a week now).

waiting for papa at the airport. he just left yesterday after a fun-filled twelve day visit.

making sure we are prepared for winter...

enjoying lots of time with papa.

 

the kids and i have a cold, so we have been laying low around here. wiping noses, snuggling, waking up more during the night, missing social events, and soothing a frustrated baby who can't eat and breathe at the same time. we also had a short incident of the stomach flu from love. short as in 

(thankfully) only one episode of vomiting. unfortunately, the episode occurred on monday evening during dinner out at a restaurant. she went from happily sitting at the table to walking around hunched over and moaning and crying and saying her tummy hurt. and then all of a sudden we were those people...the ones who were sitting in the middle of the restaurant whose kid vomited all over. and yes, that was my husband who was examining the vomit in his hand and actually asked me what i thought a chunk of it was. seriously, he did that. (sorry, that's probably too much information). we sat there awkwardly while the servers brought towels upon towels, assured us that it wasn't a big deal and that it had actually happened three other times this week. we packed up our food, our just opened bottle of wine, and i took our girl to the bathroom and changed her clothes. it was an unfortunate outing to have forgotten baby wipes and an extra shirt...but we made due and used a baby blanket as a shirt. sometimes you just have to get creative, right?

i'm not such a happy mama when it comes to staying home with sick kids. especially when i'm feeling under the weather myself. i'm ashamed to say i was pretty grouchy this morning before jeremy left for work. i think there may even have been some words out of my mouth that went something like, "i am thankful that i can be the one to care for our kids during the day, but today i really don't like my job."

but...i had a few more swigs of coffee and said a few prayers, and i was "back on the rails" as love would say. the morning went okay and jeremy even got to come home early. he is working...but he is sitting on the couch next to me working instead of being an hour away. i like that better.