Brothers

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts.....We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega

I'm so glad they will always have each other!

Five Months of Wes

Wes turned five months old a few days ago. I'm trying not to cry about it.
He is so much bigger than Owen was at five months. At one of the (many) recent visits to the Pediatrician's office (to make sure he just had a cold and not an ear infection, whooping cough, RSV, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc!) he weighed in at 15 lbs 5 oz with his clothes on. He is at about 42% for weight and at 26.5 inches long he is about 60% for height! I feel like he is gigantic, but he is actually just about average. ( I don't ever pay attention his head measurements. I'm always told they are normal, so I'm good with that!)
He is a sweet, sweet baby. He is still only nursing---about 3-4 hours during the day, and even though he wakes up during the night...I don't feed him anymore, and he doesn't seem to care about that. :)
Unfortunately, it has been awhile since he has slept straight through the night. He generally wakes up at least once, sometimes twice. He usually wakes up happy, and I'll typically just pick him up and rock him back to sleep. If you think I'm creating bad habits, I don't want to hear about it :) I don't do cry it out...at least not now (if he's still doing this at a year, maybe I'll reevaluate) and he's my last baby, so even though I'm tired, rocking him back to sleep is wonderful for me and it usually only takes about 10 minutes for him to fall asleep. In general he wakes to eat around 5:30 AM and then goes back to sleep until about 7:30 or 8:00.
He is teething for sure. He wants everything to be IN HIS MOUTH! :) He gnawed a little divot in pointer finger....so sad, but poor baby...I know his gums hurt. I've been orajel-ing him up and we bought him a special teething toy--Sophie the Giraffe.
He continues to roll easily from back to tummy and occasionally he will roll back, but not often. He is really interested in his toys and he is doing ok in the exersaucer...I think he might still a big young for it, but he will definitely be into it soon.
I've been holding off on solids...I've given him little tastes of things here and there just for fun...a bite of a piece of mashed up banana, carrot, avocado, and tonight I steamed some apple pieces and mashed them up. This is completely different than what I did with Owen. I had Owen on formula and around 5 1/2 months I started him on rice cereal, which he never really did well with and I ended up introducing fruit and mixing it..yada yada yada....well, this time I decided that I was going to not do cereal at all and wait for sure until six months to do any kind of real food....except Wes has been watching us like a hawk when we eat, reaching for food when we have it in our hands and acting like he really WANTS some food! So, tonight I thought...good grief, why not. Thus, the steamed apple....I mashed it up and sprinkled some cinnamon on it and...he was just ok with it. So, anyways. I'll be more regular about giving him solids after six months, but if he acts like he is just dying to have some of our food, then I'm not technically opposed to giving him some tastes. I know he will be ok, but I also know that he doesn't really need anything other than breastmilk at this point. His weight if fine and there is no real need for baby food right now....and I'm also going to try and loosely follow baby-led-weaning ...so, we'll see how this goes! I didn't breastfeed past four months with Owen, so this figuring out nursing and solids is a whole new territory for me! :)
Other fun things....Wes will blow "bubbles" (read:spit) at us :), he LOVES Owen, Owen can always make him laugh, and still really has a thing for his mother :) He is a lot of fun and its so wonderful to see his personality developing!
I think that's about it! We love our sweet boy. Happy Five months Wes! I don't want to think about you being nearly six months old, but I'm grateful for each minute I have with you...even if it means you have to grow up! (I'll try and get over that!)

Wes Dedication

We dedicated Wes at church on Sunday. Here is the big fail: we forgot to take pictures. My dear mother took two. One of Wes and one of Wes and I. I guess the second child always gets jipped on pictures.

We love you sweet baby. And just as we have prayed for Owen, we pray that you will grow into a man who knows and loves the Lord....and follows hard after Him!

Hard isn't bad, just hard!

So says our wise Pastor, Mark Vroegop.

Which is where we find ourselves today. Faced with something potentially hard...which would be: trying to sell our house. Trying to figure out how much money we can afford to loose and still have a down payment for a new house. Trying to learn how to live in the tension of...we think its the best plan to get out of our (quickly demoralizing) neighborhood, but if we can't....we trust in the protection and grace of God to cover us.

The plan. The plan was never to live here forever. The plan was to live someplace centrally located so we could be near our families, our work (north at the time for me and south for Josh) and to live within our means. Our home on the north-west side of Indianapolis solved these problems for us. We imagined our home would provide enough room for us to start our family here, and then we would move--to a different township offering better public school options. Of course we couldn't have anticipated what the economy was going to do when we bought our home nearly seven years ago. (how much do we wish that we were just renters coming into a buying situation!? things would be GREAT then! :) So instead of our home being an investment it has depreciated well below what we even owe on it. Which is, well, sad. Frustrating. Humbling. Because, its out of our hands. Well out of our control. We can't do much about it. I'm thankful that we didn't make all the upgrades that I wanted to make over the years because we'd only be loosing that much more. Ugh.

I hadn't even anticipated putting our home on the market until this summer. Because...well...because I didn't want the hassel. I have a newborn. I nurse him every 2-4 hours. I have children that nap AND its winter...where are we supposed to go all the time for showings? Super inconvenient. I was in no rush. Our relator convinced us to list anyways in hopes of getting the highest return on our house...because its likely that there are going to be hundreds of more foreclosures released in the next several months that could potentially drop our home value even more. Sigh. More sighs.

So, we have a sign in our yard :)

(I'm trying to upload a picture of our house with the sign in the front yard...but having a hard time...so...just use your imagination :))

We've listed our house. We spent the weekend making small upgrades to the house and cleaning and de-cluttering...and cleaning and de-cluttering...and...you get the idea.

So pray...pray that we can sell our house. I feel...strangely peaceful about it all. I don't know. I'm just not worried. I know that God knew our situation would happen long before we even anticipated and I know he is GOOD and wants good things for us. For the first time in a long time...about something kind of big...I'm just weirdly calm about it all. Our house meets our needs. We are warm. We have food to eat and clothes to wear. Many, many people do not. And, on top of all that--I get to stay home with my children. All day. Every day :) What a luxury. We need to live well in light of that and really keep perspective about things.

So there it is...something hard to figure out....but, hard isn't bad, just hard.

Happy Monday all :)

Edited to add: I also thought about titling this post "Forget Maui" (since we had planned to go to Maui in the fall, but likely won't since our lovely house will demand any extra cash we had in savings) but decided to go with the more spiritual title. Just in case :)

Things that Owen says (or has said)

"Dad, I just have a quick question. The question is, I spilled applesauce on my comfy pants and well, can you get it off for me?"

"Mom, if I had those...things....I could feed Wes and then he could sleep with me for naps" (Me: "Baby, only mama's can feed their babies like that) "WHY?" (Me: Because that's the way God made it) "Well, thats just silly".
"I love you mom" (its true, he tells me this all the time. how lucky am I? :))
"When I grow up I'm going to turn into a bird and fly in the sky"
Said to me today (3.1.11) while I was nursing Wes, who has a terrible cold; "Mom, you shouldn't be giving Wes milk because he has a cold and when you have a cold you can't have milk. You should give him chicken soup like you give me when I am sick" :)

To be added to. I'm sure.

Four Months of Wes

Sweet, sweet boy. You are four months old today.

You weigh almost 14 lbs. You are about 26.5 inches long...and...I hate to break it to you, but your hair is still falling out. Its ok. You are still gorgeous.

You roll (back to tummy--this just happened a few days ago: 2.7.11 to be exact). You laugh :). You smile all the time...especially at mommy. You see, you love me. You are in love with me probably. You are back to waking up at 2 AM ...and I think its just to see me. You miss me when you are gone from me too long. That must be it. And...goodness gracious I will soak every second of it up. And, I will probably love you so much that no other woman will be good enough for you! :) (Ok, stealing a line from "Friends" here, and I'm kidding of course because that would be weird and of course I want him to find a wonderful woman to marry. Someday when I'm dead. Or something). You nurse every 3-4 hours during the day and wake up pretty consistently for a snack around 2 or 3 AM. I don't care one bit. You eat and go right back to sleep. I've never been one for schedules. You are only little once and you can make the rules for now. Now, when you are a willful toddler, the big people go back to making the rules :) You are no longer a newborn, and I keep getting told by your father that you are my last baby, so that makes me a little sad....but I am loving you as a baby who interacts with us a little bit more too. Just stop growing up a little, ok? Can we take it a bit slower? Please. Thanks!

Also, you figured out recently that you have a voice. You like to scream a little bit. And shriek. Its very funny.

January was a sick month for all of us. You are finally recovering from your ear infection with a second round of antibiotics. I'm still crossing my fingers that you won't have my bad luck...since I had so many as a child. You handled all the sickness like a champ, and really only wanted to cuddle and snuggle more...no anger or extra fussiness.

Baby Boy, we love you. We are so glad you belong to us. Here's to another fun month of growing and becoming even more lovable.

The Great Ice Storm of 2011

So. The Great Ice Storm 0f 2011 came at a really good time for me. I went to the Dr. on Monday and have a raging sinus infection and pink eye. PINK EYE. Seriously? What adult gets pink eye? And, both eyes are affected. I look like I'm on cocaine. I can assure I am not. Having Josh home with me has been fantastic. I have felt SO BAD, but I would have just had to have felt bad and be a mom anyways since you know...its important for Josh to go to work. So, thank you ice storm. For coming at a time that I really needed my husband to not leave my side for 48 hours.

So far we have :

napped
played a lot of games on the Wii
watched a lot of the weather channel
watched for school closings
watched a lot of Curious George
pulled out all the blankets in our house (just in case)
folded a lot of laundry (ok, that's just me)
made cookies/eaten cookies
nursed a baby (again, just me...but still a significant part of my life so I had to list it :))
taken pictures of the ice (Josh gets this one)
boiled a chicken to help heal the sickies and potential sickies
read books
played star wars
and, wondered how many consecutive days we can spend in the house without going crazy

I have some cute pictures of the boys, but I'm not allowed to access our photos right now. Something about a birthday surprise that Josh is working on. You know, the birthday that I'm not celebrating in a few days :-)