The Move

It seems strange to post about the move when we still aren't settled! But we are living in the new house, so I guess it's okay.

We closed on our new house on September 13th-the day after Shawn's 32nd birthday...don't ever say you don't get spoiled on your birthday, hon!! Of course, a new house means a lot of work, so Shawn hopped to it that night re-painting our master bedroom. Wednesday and Thursday he and our wonderful guy friends moved a crap ton of stuff to the new house. Thank you boys!!! Mom and Barb cleaned my new kitchen-thank you ladies!!! And I watched the kiddos. Someone had to!

Friday was the "big move" day where the movers were bringing Jon and Teri's furniture to our old house, taking our furniture out, stopping by my parents to grab a few pieces of furniture and then delivering those items and our furniture to the new house. Whew! Confused yet? The poor movers sure were. And-GET THIS-they were early! What?! That never happens.

It did happen though. Actually everyone was early. The internet company started my day off in a rush when they called at 8:20 to say they were headed to the new house. They were supposed to come in the afternoon. Crap! Thankfully my wonderful parents had taken the day off to help out, so my Dad ran to the new house to wait for them. Because, oh yeah, the new house is SEVEN TENTHS of a mile from my parents house!! (But don't fool yourself, he didn't actually run, he drove.)

Fortunately. Unfortunately? I remembered that the hardware needed to get our internet up and running was still plugged in in our old house. (And ya'll know I need my internet!) Crap! So Mom ran over to the old house, grabbed the hardware and (thankfully!) Brian and ran it to the new house.

Literally she had no sooner pulled out of my driveway and the doorbell rang at 8:45. The movers (whose "window" was 9-11) were there! Might I point out that I was still in my pajamas at this point. I mean, who expects movers to be ON TIME let alone early?! Maybe it was the fact that my pjs were somewhat low cut and I am nursing, or maybe not, but the movers were super duper nice all day long. They were truly wonderful and I wanted to keep them! They could tell I was freaking out so they took care of everything. The even helped me strip my bed (so they could move it!!). They just kept telling me to take care of that "little one" (Miss L) and they would handle it.

Mom and B arrived back at the old house just in time. The movers were moving Jon and Teri's stuff in and I had no clue where it was going. Thankfully Mom had a list Teri had created. After a minor issue where the list was lost briefly, we were back in business. It wasn't Mom's fault really. She put it on my couch and the movers moved my couch to the front porch!

Everything went really smoothly and around 11:30 we were all just about ready to roll over to the new house. The company we bought our new front loaders from called and they were heading over with the CORRECT dryer cord (do.not.even.get.me.started on that mess from the day before moving day), so that worked out pretty darn perfectly! The electrician also stopped by as I arrived to fix something he had forgotten about the day before. Score!

I walked inside pretty overwhelmed I must admit. Shawn had literally no time to take off work for this and I was having a little pity party for myself about having to handle things "alone." (Yes, I realize I wasn't alone, I had my wonderful parents! Come on, you know I am a drama queen!) Anywho, I went inside and upstairs to the kids rooms where Barb and Mom had hung their curtains the night before. Let me tell you how very much I love Lilah's curtains. They are purple with silver shimmery polk-a-dots...a girl's dream. Truly!

And it finally hit me. And I got really excited about our new house. I felt like one lucky girl!

The rest of the day was largely uneventful. I unpacked some of the kitchen while the movers arranged furniture. There was a bit of a fight in my driveway between the movers over my brother's childhood dresser (that Brian is now using). Apparently it is really heavy and one of the guys was NOT happy about that.

One of my teachers took Brian for the afternoon so he was not underfoot during the move into the new house. She even brought him home as her in-laws live around the corner and they were having dinner over there. Score! He had fun and it kept me from stressing about where he was and what he was doing. Thanks Steph!!

Overall, the day was pretty much stress free which is hard to believe. The kids were just amazing in the morning and Lilah behaved in the afternoon too!

There is still much to be done, but we're here! More to come on the new house soon. Here are the last pictures taken in front of the old house (thanks Teri!). These were taken on the day of Lilah's baptism. I figured I would throw them both up here since one boy is not looking in each of the two. Silly boys!

First Day

(Yes, Tory, this post is for you! I promise to respond to your email soon. Love you!!)

Brian's first day of school was September 6th. I was very nervous about how he would do. He has been coming to the preschool since he was about 11 months old and really thinks he owns the place. I was afraid he would cry for me, or at least run away and try to find me when he realized I was gone. (I hid in the church the first couple of days just in case he made a break for my office. Ridiculous, I know, but I left I had to let him get adjusted to the idea.)

But he didn't cry and he didn't run. He did really well. He even stayed dry the first day! (He's really supposed to be completely potty trained, but the teachers are working with us on this given all of the change we've had in our lives the past 3 months. Job perk!) He sat when he was supposed to sit (mostly), he played with the other kids, he participated (some). What more can a mom ask?

He has continued to do well and has improved in his focus each time he has attended class (which is a total of 7 times now). He's not the worst one in the class (YES!!) and the teachers even think he's "cute." He even talks to them. He answered a couple of questions the first week that no one else knew the answer to. This is huge on so many levels for a kid with a speech delay!

The four year old teachers have graciously allowed him to participate in class on the days he's not in school as well. They don't keep him all day long, but when they do, he pretty much does what they ask of him and they enjoy having him around. And it's a huge help to me as I adjust to working with a two month old on my lap! ('Cause you know Miss Lilah doesn't like to be put down. Ever.)

I'm just so glad he's enjoying school. We plan to keep him in preschool for 3 years, so this year is really just about him learning to follow directions better and to love school. Hopefully he will continue to have fun and maybe learn a thing or two as well!

Baby Girl Gets Baptized

On Saturday, September 3rd, we celebrated Miss Lilah's baptism. I love the Catholic sacraments and baptism is one of my favorites.

Gotta love that Lion King moment...

When the family gown couldn't be located, we enlisted Mom's friend Kay to remake my high school graduation dress into a baptismal gown for Lilah. My high school has a long standing tradition of graduating their girls in white (wedding) dresses, white gloves and big white hats. I promised my Dad I would wear my gown as my wedding gown if he would let me have that one. Well I didn't. But almost 15 years later it was put to good use anyway.

And I LOVE the results. I love just about anything that is rooted in tradition. But I really LOVE the gown Kay made for Lilah. The pattern we picked made it look a lot like a mini version of my gown. LOVE!


The day was very, very hot and Lilah wasn't in the best mood...let's face it, she's not in the best mood a lot of the time! But we made it through.

We were lucky to share the day with so many family members and dear friends.

And Lilah was especially lucky to have two wonderful sets of godparents to celebrate the day with her...thank you Jon, Teri, Matt and Shannon!

Oh, and of course we were all very blessed to have Father Jeff there to celebrate with us. He is such a great joy in all of our lives (even if he called Lilah Vivian everything BUT Lilah Vivian)!

Yes he really did hand that lit candle to my THREE year old. Gotta love Father Jeff!

The Mass after the ceremony was topped off by the two little Communion bearers. I don't have a picture, but Jade and Brian were so proud to carry up the gifts to Father Jeff. They are so adorable together!

The after party was in the church hall. This is not the way it was originally planned, but it worked out very well. My job has perks as we rented the hall for free!!

The kids at the party enjoyed playing with each other and everyone enjoyed the yummy soups, sandwiches and beautiful cakes! It really was a wonderful day.

Can you count the THREE children in this picture? He he...

Time Sensitive

I am posting this first because it is time sensitive. I don't want Lilah to be 3 months before I get her 2 month chair picture and stats up on the blog!

Plus, I forgot to list it in my list of blogs I could blog last post. That and the blog about Lilah meeting the family. That's also coming, folks!

But for now, here is Lilah's 2 month chair picture.


And in case you have forgotten how "small" she was last month, here's her 1 month picture...


And her stats:

Weight: 14 lbs .6 oz 98th percentile
Length: 23 3/4 inches 95th percentile
Head circumference was 75th percentile

Miss Lilah has gotten very social this month. She smiles and coos like crazy. She is also grabbing a hold of objects and holding on. Not just my hair, but toys too! See...


Her hair is getting redder and redder and her eyebrows are too! Her eyes are still blue and she still doesn't like to be put down. Ever. Well not ever, but not very often.

She is sweet as sweet can be and we just love her to pieces! Our little snuggle bug!

All the Blogs I Could Blog

If I had the time.

And if I could find my freaking card reader so I could download pics to my computer. (Thank you Teri for loaning me yours, but unfortunately that only gets them on Shawn's computer and with our network still not totally right since the move, that doesn't get them to my computer.)

If I could blog I would write about the following events that have taken place over the last few weeks...

*Lilah's Baptism
*Mom's 60th birthday party
*Brian's first day of preschool
*The move
*Our new house
*Brian and Lilah's first Red's game

But since I cannot write about all of these things without the above mentioned time and pictures, you are getting this for my 400th post.

Someday, the real posts will come.

A Big Potty Day

Today was a big potty day! Brian woke up and peed in the potty, as he does most days now. He went again before we left the house. We went to church so I could do a few work things. Brian played dinosaurs with Brad. They do so well together!

As we were leaving Brian pointed at the little gingerbread man that is hanging by the bathroom door and started making monkey noises. The preschoolers did a scavenger hunt last week so they would know where things were. They had to find all of the gingerbread men who were posted around the school. I really didn't think Brian was paying attention. Apparently I was wrong. Anyway, I took the monkey noises to indicate that he needed to use the potty. I was right! HE TOLD ME HE NEEDED TO PEE! It's a sad, sad day when I'll take monkey speak as a positive thing. But this was really huge for Brian. His potty training issue has been his inability to communicate his needs all along.

When we got home from school I took him to the potty again. It had only been about half an hour, but do you know that little guy squeezed out a teensy weensy bit of pee just to make me happy? Good little guy!

Now we did have some pee and poo in the pull up before we left home again.

BUT then we went to Mom's work where he tried to go in her potty, but didn't need to. After that we went and bought our new washer and dryer for the new house. Still dry. Then we went to Kroger to buy everything for the Baptism party tomorrow. It was about a half hour trip through the store by the time we had everything. Anyway, we were checking out and he said, "Mama I pee in the potty." At first, I kind of ignored him, and then I though, "what if he really does need to go and I am ignoring him?" Kroger's bathroom is in the very back of the store. I really did not want to take him all the way to the back of the store. But mom and Max were there, so they handled the groceries and sleeping newborn and off we went to the back of the store. Where he PEED IN THE POTTY! He really had to go, so I was totally impressed that he held it as long as he did.

We had one more poopy diaper in the evening. Then Daddy took Brian to Pappy and Nanny's tonight. He forgot to bring extra pull ups and wipes. No problem though, because Mr. Brian peed in the potty at their house too! He also went again after bath time.

In case you have lost count the score today was as follows...

7 pees in the potty!
2 poopy diapers!

Poo is typically the hardest to master, so in my world this was a HUGE potty day! He's really growing up. I really hope the potty success continues! Really, really, really.

Enjoying the Weather

Not today, of course, as we were under a heat advisory and it reached 97 degrees. Yuck. But last weekend was beautiful! We took advantage of the gift and headed to the Zoo. Lilah didn't make it out the stroller the whole time. She was sleeping. But she can still say she went to the Zoo before she was 7 weeks old! We will get some pictures of her the next go around. If she's awake!

Mr. Brian enjoyed himself immensely. He has become so much more aware of his surroundings lately and is able to verbalize it much more. He knows exactly what he wants to see and pretty much demands that this happens. For example, Shawn wanted to see the new Night Hunters exhibit and Brian kept saying, "No cats...gorillas!" He didn't get his way, but at least he was able to tell us what his way was.

Brian checking out the map. He needed to be able to direct us to the correct exhibits.
"Mom do you see that crazy woman in there with the mountain lions?"

I'm sure the monkeys they were looking at were just as fascinated by them...

B did not want to get off this gorilla!

We also spent some time out back on Sunday. Brian loves to play ball with Ruben and Shawn!

Lilah likes being outside too!