Quick updates on all of us…

Dave is busy playing softball each week, buying/selling music gear (he currently owns 5, yes 5 bass guitars), doing some work on the house, playing his bass(es) and lovin’ on his family. He’s a very busy man but seems to enjoy it. We’ve been dreaming up ideas for our house and landscape ideas for the yard. Lots of ideas, just saving our pennies to get it done.

Eli is talking a mile-a-minute. His vocabulary has grown by leaps and bounds. We love listening to him talk and talk and talk!! He loves to play with his cars and trains, scare Noah (he giggles the whole time) and be ‘helpful’ around the house. He is becoming very independent and wants to do lots of things by himself. We have been encouraging the potty training ordeal, but he is uninterested. Maybe in a few more months. Here is a picture of my growing boy, I can’t believe he is already 2.5 years old. Eli is scheduled to have his 3rd open-heart surgery on Tuesday, July 12th.

Noah is busy growing and becoming a porker!! He is now a master at rolling around on the floor. He’s getting better at learning to sit up. He loves to play with his toys. Noah has discovered his voice and babbles a mile-a-minute just like his brother. They can be found having ‘conversations’ together, lots of giggling! Noah is learning to crawl, he’s not quite there but he can army crawl and scooch around on the floor. Lynn, our daycare provider, said he is a man with a mission at her house (he chases the dog). :) Noah is also becoming quite the eater, he will eat just about anything put in front of him without much fuss. He recently started eating broken down goldfish and loves them.

I’ve been busy doing some cleaning and organizing. Today I’m feeling a bit under the weather and spent the day resting. I hope to be ‘back at it’ tomorrow (with moderation, don’t want to over do myself). I’ve been enjoying my snuggles and loves with my boys (all three of them). I’ve been busy scrapbooking and crocheting. Dave and I’ve been making plans for the yard and inside of the house. I’m starting to do some online shopping for house stuff – time to decorate!!!

My sweet baby boys!!

Dave – put in some crazy hours at work over the holiday season. In the two weeks prior to Christmas he worked about 115 hours – CRAZINESS!!! We were quite glad to have him home for two 3-day weekends, in a row. He has since been busy trying to find someone to mud/tape some rooms for us. He keeps the boys home with him on Mondays, his day off from work. Which is great for us, saves us over $200 a month in daycare cost. On Thursdays, when he doesn’t have worship band practice, his band gets together to practice. There is talk of a gig coming up soon. We’ll keep you posted.

Eli – is still a busy, busy boy. He loves playing with his cars and trains. He is still obsessed with Thomas, James and Percy. It is kind of funny, he knows all the characters in his Thomas movies. He also knows all the characters in his Arthur books. He loves to sit and read stories with us or with Noah. At the moment, he still adores his little brother. As I type this, Eli is laying on the floor next to Noah giving him kisses on his head. Oh fer cute!! ;)

Noah – is a growing boy. We had his 2 month appointment this week. He is up to 13lbs 5oz and is 24.25 inches long. He also got his 2 month shots and did great with them. He loves to talk and smile. He also loves to watch his big brother be silly. Noah is getting a little bit better at sleeping at night, his first stretch of sleep is typically the longest 3-5 hours, the rest of the night is anywhere from 1-3 hours until he decides to be awake for the day.

Both boys are doing great at daycare. Eli is protective of ‘his Noah’ and gets very concerned if other kids get too close. Lynn, our daycare lady, says at least once a day Eli will lay down next to Noah and chat with him for a few minutes before getting up to go play some more.

House – is slowly coming along. I’ve been going through and purging things. We have too much stuff and I want to have less stuff. So, I’m slowly getting rid of what we don’t need or want any more but I’m also reminding myself to not go buy more – that’s the key. As Noah grows out of his clothes I’ve been separating them into two boxes for some friends. I’ve been slowly giving away my maternity clothes. Yes, this means I’m done having children (that’s a story for another time). Two boys are enough for me.

Me – I’m recovering from a recent bout with the stomach flu. My stomach still hurts but the aches and chills are gone, thank goodness. I’ve been keeping busy with work, bible study and the boys. I enjoy my time home with them. I still try to find time to crochet in all my busyness and enjoy making baby blankets for friends.

That’s a semi quick update of our family. Once the picture galleries get sorted out, we’ll start update those as well.

Eli…is now well adjusted to his new bed. He does a great job of staying in bed and has only fallen out two separate times (once at our house and once at Grampa and Gramma’s house). I have to laugh, a few times I’ve needed to get the pack n’ play out for other kiddos to sleep in and Eli gets mad. He must think it is for him to sleep in. It has been fun for us to see his language (talking/signing) abilities take off and we really enjoy communicating with him now that we can understand him. Eli LOVES LOVES LOVES to watch some signing DVDs we have on loan from Gramma P. called, ‘Signing Time’ (can be found at www.signingtime.com). Lots of verbal language and lots of sign language has been picked up by both Eli and Dave (sign language component). Eli enjoys helping Dave and I around the house. He has his own water can (my old one) and likes to carry it out to my raspberry and tomato plants to help me water them. Just this morning he and Dave finished putting a culvert ring in the fire pit. Eli’s feet have also grown by leaps and bounds this summer, in the spring he was still wearing a size 4 but now he comfortably wears a 7 and sometimes an 8. I think this is just an indication of how much shoe shopping we’ll be doing as he grows up.

Dave…has been keeping very busy at work. They have needed him to come in early many times this summer. Lots of deliveries needing to be made. Softball is now over, but his team did a great job and played well together. Eli and I didn’t make it to very many games due to times, the heat and other events going on. Dave has been very diligent about working on the house and has made some great progress. We (and by ‘we’, I mean Dave) have been making steady progress in getting things done around the house to make room for the baby. I’m excited about what is done and a little anxious about what still needs to be done (pray please!!). Dave has gotten some new musical gear and has been selling other musical gear. He has been ‘fine tuning’ one of his basses and has been enjoying every minute of that. I love my husband!

Me…I have thoroughly enjoyed my summer home with Eli. We’ve had lots of fun hanging out together, working around the house and yard, running errands, going for walks, etc. I used my one free day each week (Eli had to go to daycare one day a week to maintain our spot) to get homework done. I took a class this summer called ‘Environmental Education’ it was a requirement for my teaching license. I have no intentions of using the knowledge at all, but who knows, maybe it will come in handy one day. I head back to work full-time next week for the upcoming 2010-2011 school year. Part of me is excited to go back (because I love my job) but part of me is not looking forward to going back (because I love being home with Eli).

Gilbert…has steadily been growing, the doc says I’m on target for size and should be on target to deliver a nice size baby boy (not quite sure what this means). Gilbert has taken to waking up and moving a lot from 10-11pm and 5-6am. If he can have a sleep pattern like that when he’s born, I’d be alright with that.

Dave and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary on August 7th. We had a great weekend together, kidless (well, as kidless as we could be). Eli spent the weekend with Gramma and Grampa Paulson. They had all kinds of fun. Dave and I got a hotel room for Saturday night, ordered in pizza, went swimming and went to see a movie (we wanted to test out my new hearing aids in a theater). Sunday we did lots of house and yard work, it was a very productive day. Then we went out for a fancy dinner at Vic’s in Minneapolis. It was such wonderful food and a great experience. We took a little stroll down by the waterworks system as well, since it was right there. We also saw a beaver!

That’s our not so quick update.

Now that the problem has grown from one to many, I’ve implemented some new strategies. I’ve added more traps, poison, and the garage classic: the 5-gallon bucket. Hopefully we’ll go several days without incident so Megan will be a bit more at ease once I leave for hunting.

Eli… is successfully sleeping through the night. He has been doing this, more or less, since we moved into our house. We are so thankful that he is now sleeping through the night, that means we are sleeping through the night as well. Eli is crawling all over the place now and pulling himself up on just about everything he can. He is not walking yet but does walk along furniture and other things. His vocabulary is ever expanding, he can now say – mama, dada, baby, book, oh, no and make lots of babbling noises. Because we were unable to have him circumcised when he was born, we had the procedure done last month and he came through with flying colors. Eli is also eating like a horse, he has a lot of new foods that he likes. He likes to eat – apple slices, bananas, peaches, pears, mangoes, grapes, cereal bars, cheerios, puffs, sweet potatoes, yams, carrots (mixed in with fruit), spaghetti-o’s, bean and bacon soup, applesauce, bread chunks and so much more.

Our house… is slowly coming along. We’ve been gone for a few weekends and haven’t gotten too much done. Dave did a beautiful job on our new banister. It looks fantastic! We still need to stain it, but it is up and I feel better having it up (we have the baby gate up now). Yesterday was a good work day for us. We ripped out some sheet rock from the entry way, Dave finished ripping out the sheet rock in the 3rd bedroom, finished painting the kitchen (still needs a 2nd coat), did some more organizing and overall just felt very productive. Our next project is the entryway. We need and want to finish the entry way so we have a place to hang our coats and keys. They take up a lot of space around the house.

Other news…I got new hearing aids (pictures in the ‘randoms’ photo album). I absolutely LOVE them! I wear my hearing aids a lot more now than I ever did before. With my old hearing aids it took me 3-4 weeks to go through a hearing aid battery, now it takes me 8-10 days to go through a battery. I also have a car from work now to drive. I drive a 2010 Ford Focus, its a sweet car and gets good gas mileage. Dave has gotten some new tools and is having tons of fun doing various building projects and working on his car.

I have updated several of the photo albums, please take a look.

Eli update…since moving into the house Eli has been sleeping really well. We haven’t been getting up to feed him. He will wake up during the night and fuss for a moment or two but calms down once he gets his pacifier back. In fact, last night he went to bed just before 10pm and he is still asleep as I write this at 9am. Praise the LORD!!! Hopefully we can cut out having to get up at night to give him his pacifier back. He is still crawling all over the place and pulling himself up more and more – typically on items not safe for pulling up on. Eli has been slowly settling into the routine of being home in the morning/early afternoon with Dad, going to daycare for few hours, then coming home with me and taking a short nap. We are going to start encouraging him to eat more solid foods now that things are a bit more settled. We got out of the habit while we were busy working on our house.

The other night I attempted to make a fire in our fire pit for Dave and I to relax by, well, I wasn’t very successful. The wood that I chose was too ‘green’ still and didn’t burn at all. Oh well, it was the thought that counted.

We have seen lots of critters around our yard and neighborhood. The animal sitings so far – rabbits, squirrels, frogs, turkeys and deer. It definitely makes it feel like we living in the country, especially with how dark (we can actually see stars now) and how quiet it is at night (with the exception of a few hoodlums).

Our tentative plan is to have a housewarming party this spring sometime. We want to get things more settled and more construction projects completed prior to having a house full of guest coming to check it out. So, until then, please be patient with us if we don’t invite you over to our new home.

While the place is in chaos, for the most part, Eli’s room and the kitchen are very close to being done. We’re in recovery mode after the long push the last couple weeks. We’ll try and hit it again this weekend when we’re not so busy. All in all, we’re loving it.

We thought it very strange, but I put it together when I went in the house. I looked outside through the window and saw a couple things in the dumpster that we hadn’t put there. I figured he was putting stuff in our dumpster. I had noticed while talking to the guy that he had an old computer in the back of his truck. That probably would have been in the dumpster, too, had we not shown up. He probably didn’t want to pay to dispose of his computer properly and saw the chance to dump it on somebody else. My guess is he’s a local and had perhaps seen our dumpster sitting there on a previous trip by the house. I’m hoping I see his truck parked somewhere and can return his items. It just goes to show that you can’t trust people who wear velcro shoes.