Isaiah at 18 Months

Isaiah was 18 months on March 22, so I wanted to record a few things about him at this moment in time.

-He's 25lbs and just shy of 32 inches tall.

-He still only has 8 teeth.  His molars have been huge bruised "marbles" under his gums for MONTHS, but just now one is actually cutting through so that part of it is through the gums.  The other ones are still just bruises.

-He gets up between 2 and 4 times a night to nurse.  It's just recently he started sometimes getting up only 2 times.  I love those nights.  But I usually end up laying awake for 2 or 3 hours anyway.

-We cosleep, and we love it and have no plans to stop.

-He doesn't talk much, but he does say Mama, Dada, Noah, more, no, yah, ball, block, Papa, Nana, baby, bird, moo, cheep, and maybe a few other things.

-He likes to build now, not just destroy.

-His "lovey" is a panda that Noah built him at Build-A-Bear, named "Pandy".  He ADORES Pandy, which is especially cute because Noah made him for him. I don't think I have a picture of it, unfortunately.

-He hasn't been sick that many times.  4 or 5 times total, one of them being right now (we all have a cold except Justin).

-He's a super smiley, friendly baby, but he is not easy.  He is pretty high maintenance and requires a lot of attention.  But he's a toddler, so yeah.  I expect that.

-I've always said that 12-18 months is my least favourite age (for so many reasons), and literally just in the 1.5 weeks before Isaiah turned 18 months he suddenly got a little easier.  Up until that point he still wanted to be held or worn every second, even while I was cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, etc.  Right before turning 18 months he suddenly preferred to play than to be worn.  Nothing else got easier, really, but that made a HUGE difference.

-He is a MAJOR STINKER.

-He loves to strut around like a peacock on the dining room table.

-He's not a "good eater" even though he always wants to eat.  He just doesn't actually ingest a whole lot, and he's rather picky.  He still gets about 95% of his nutrition from breastmilk, which is fine.  It's healthier than most things he could eat anyway.

-In the tub he is constantly doing this (don't mind the old lady tiles):

-He continues to be a hitter, scratcher, pincher, and biter. He's always done these things, ever since he was an infant. It's usually not even malicious, but it HURTS! We are just finally starting to make some headway with the whole "Be gentle, be gentle" and petting things instead of hitting. And finally when we say "No biting! Just kissing." He will kiss whatever he was about to bite. Up until now those things didn't work. And interestingly, if he's hitting or biting and we just say "No hitting!" or "No biting!" it will make him do it even more. Every single time.

Trying to bite for no reason:

Still trying to bite...

A split second before I yelled "ISAIAH NOOO!!" and he smashed Noah on the head with the old diaper sprayer:

-He's a HUGE gym rat, and pretty much his favourite place to be is in our garage gym.

In short, he's "challenging", but he's a pretty awesome kid!  We like him :)

Happy 4th Birthday Noah!

On March 18 we celebrated the fourth birthday of our first baby, our sweet Noah.

Noah is sweet, funny, smart, and kind.  He loves Cars (especially Cars 2) and fish.  He loves to play racing games on the iPad or Wii, and he loves putting on his "tuner" ("Shoom SHOOM!!") and then racing around the house against his Daddy.  He also loves to paint, draw, make bracelets, and build things (although that's mostly been on the back burner for the past while because his little brother is The Destroyer... Noah calls him "Isaiah Godzilla").

Everyday he tells me a hundred times that he loves me, and it always comes out somewhere along the lines of "Mommy, I love you a million thousand two hundred pieces!"

He got a trampoline for his birthday, and he loves it (this was before we put the net on).

We are so thankful for the past four years with our Noah.

March 18, 2010:

March 18, 2014:

The kids really didn't want their picture taken... here is an example of what the rest of the pictures looked like:

That's real life, people!

Noah and Isaiah

Again, I've taken a super long break from blogging.  Mostly because I can never remember my freaking password.  BUT, for the heck of it, here are a few pictures I took of the kids yesterday (March 11, a week before Noah's birthday).  Noah is almost 4, Isaiah is 17.5 months old.

This is the squinty-eyed scrunchy face Isaiah makes all the time.  We get such a kick out of it, as does everybody he does it to:

Things Noah Says

Me: Noah, do you want to go see big birds, and snakes, and real crocodiles, and big dinosaur skeletons??

Noah: (unsure of himself) But... crocodiles EAT people.

Me: These crocodiles won't be hungry. And they'll probably be on leashes. They won't eat anyone. It will be SO cool!

Noah: I'd rather have a race against a chicken.

Well... okay then.

Things Noah Says... and Does... Well, Just a Noah Update.

Noah is (almost) always adorable, but here are a few things he's said and done, and conversations we've had lately that I really don't want to forget:


After he poured orange juice into the blender for our smoothies...
Me: "You did such a good job!  You're a good pourer.  I'm impressed."
Noah: "I know!  I'm almost a grown up."


Noah: "Where do the TV shows go when they're not on?"
(Seriously I didn't know how to answer that)


Noah: "I'm your kid and I'm Daddy's kid.  And Isaiah is your kid and Isaiah is Daddy's kid!"
Me: "That's right!"
Noah: "Mommy, do you share us with Daddy?"
Me: "Um, well kind of, but not really.  Because you're just both of our kids, so it's not really like I'm sharing you with him.  You're just both of ours."
Noah: "But Mommy, that's sharing!"


A long time ago, probably before he even turned 3, I told Noah "I love you to pieces."  He responded with "I love you THREE pieces!"  Ever since then he always tells me how many pieces he loves me, which often goes something like this: "You wanna know how many pieces I love you?  I love you one hundred, 2 fousand, free hundred, two fousand, one miwwion, FREE FOUSAND, TEN FOUSAND pieces!"


About a week ago he fell outside and smashed his forehead on the cement.  He got a HUGE goose egg (I'm not sure I'd ever seen one so big), and at first he called it a "goose egg".  But then somehow he switched to calling it "my headache".  As in, "Be careful of my headache!"  And "Mom!  Isaiah is trying to touch my headache!!!"

(You can see slight evidence of his "headache" in the picture below.)

Noah loves to be creative.  He loves to draw, cut, tape, glue, and paint.  Then he tapes up his creations all over the house for us to enjoy.  Actually, as I'm writing this he just got out his paper and pencil crayons and said "Let's get creative!"  His absolute favourite thing to draw right now is fish.  Sometimes he draws his own fish, other times he asks us to draw a fish for him and then he "customizes" it.  He doesn't "decorate" things, he "customizes" them.  He came up with that term himself back when we were still living at our old house.  It still makes me laugh.

Talking about that made me remember this time in the summer when I was taking the boys to get my parents and go down by the bridge.  Noah had coloured patterns on little squares of paper, and then gave them to Granny and Gramper, calling them "gift cards".  "I made a gift card for you!"

A couple of weeks ago we were going to this grocery store that gives out a free cookie to kids who come in with their parents to shop.  I told Noah we were going to go there and he looked very serious and said "But I don't have anything to give her!  I'm going to go draw her a picture."  So he did.  

Everyday for the past couple of months we have made smoothies.  And Noah loves for us to sit on the floor and "have a picnic" while we drink our smoothies.  He is so good about sharing his smoothies with Isaiah.

Overall, Noah is just a totally awesome kid.  We feel so lucky to have him.

Isaiah is 14 Months Old!

Who am I kidding, I am not even a "blogger" anymore.  I just don't have or make the time.  However, I don't want Isaiah's baby/toddler/childhood to pass by without me recording ANYTHING.  Even if it's just every couple of months.

So, at 14 months old, Isaiah...

-Weighs 23lbs, which is about 65th percentile.

-Is 30 inches tall, which is apparently 25th percentile.... I knew he was a shorty!  Justin is in denial.

-Has 8 teeth - he just got 2 teeth (the two on the bottom to complete the set of four in the middle) this past month after 2 or 3 months of no new teeth.

-Started talking at 13.5 months old, just like Noah.  He's been saying Dada for a long long time, but he said it even when not referring to Justin, so I don't count that so much.  His first official word was "more" (more food, of course), followed by Mama, no (nah), and Noah (Nah-Nah).

-He also started signing to nurse on the same day he said his first word.

-He actually eats now.  When he turned one he liked the tastes of things but never actually swallowed anything.  He swallows things now.  He doesn't eat A LOT - maybe 3-5% of his nutrition is from solids, the rest from breastmilk - but it's an increase.  He started drinking water from straws and sippy cups, too.

-He still sleeps not so great.  Up 4-8 times a night.

-He naps well.  He went to one nap right at 12 months and that one nap is anywhere from 1 to 2.5 hours long.  Generally it's about an hour and a half.

-He was walking the week before his first birthday, and within about a week was walking totally full time.  He never crawls anymore... *tear*... crawling babies are so adorable.

-He wears 18 month pajamas and 24 month pants and shirts.  He's not as tall as Noah was, and he could fit into 18 month shirts, but I like them to be a little bigger so they don't ride up when he gets picked up.  All our 18 month pants are too short for him though, and the 24 month pants aren't TOO long... If we're going outside I cuff them, but he's not tripping over them or anything.

-This is random, but something I want to remember - He loves to sit on Noah's potties.  LOVES it.  He just sits there and grins, then stands up, sits back down, stands up, sits back down.  It's hilarious.

-He gets into everything.  Just like Noah did.  But he does something Noah never did: When I tell him "No", he says "NAAAHH!"  back at me in this kind of throaty voice.  It's quite funny.  I'm not sure what age that will stop being funny at. haha

-He is such a little cuddle bug.  We still babywear for several hours a day.  We all love the cuddles :)

-He LOVES Noah, and Noah loves him.  The two of them are as best of friends as brothers can be when they're 2.5 years apart.

Can I just take a moment to revel in the fact that It's the 22nd of the month, Isaiah's actual 14 month birthday, and I'm ACTUALLY posting this on the correct day??

I should really post more often.  Life is so full and it's just passing us by with no record of it.  Sigh.

Isaiah is ONE!

Isaiah turned one on September 22!  It's so strange how it feels like he was just born, but at the same time it feels like he's always been a part of our family.  Since I haven't posted in forever this is going to be a mash up of what he's like now and what's been going on with him in the past few months.

At one year old...

-Isaiah weighs 21.6 lbs (weighed on our digital scale).

-He's only 29.5 inches tall, but that was with him standing up and I'm sure he wasn't totally straight, so it's possible he's a little taller.  Still, that's 2 inches shorter than Noah was at this same age.

-His head is 19 inches around, which I believe is exactly what they hope a child's head circumference is at 12 months old.

-He finally got teeth around.. eek, I'm kind of forgetting here.  Okay I just checked pictures and it was around 9.5 months.  I know it was definitely after we moved, and we moved when he was 9 months and one week old.  

-He is not a good teether.  With Noah we hardly ever knew he was teething.  Seriously, even molars, they just appeared.  No distress, no nothing.  With Isaiah?  His gums swell and bruise, he gets blood blisters where the tooth is trying to come through... He even had a hanging flap of skin when his top left tooth was cutting.  It was horrid.  And of course he's cranky from all that - who wouldn't be?  

-He got 6 teeth pretty much one right after the other between about 9.5 and 10 months - the top four and the bottom two.  He hasn't gotten any since, but he's started teething again just int he past week.  His bottom lateral incisors and his top cuspids seem to be on the move.  I can't tell what will be first. 

-Oddly, his first tooth was the top left lateral incisor (I had to look up what it was called... it's the tooth next to the top middle teeth). 

-He started walking just before his birthday.  Literally, in the week leading up to the big day it was like he knew it was coming and was determined to be "walking" before he turned 1.  I thought it would happen after his birthday but he suddenly made big leaps and bounds in that one week, and he is a walker!  He probably spends equal amount of time walking and crawling right now, but each day he walks more and more, and he really enjoys himself while he's doing it.  You should see the little stinker smile he has the whole time he's toddling around.

-He doesn't eat ANYTHING.  He is still exclusively breastfed.  We do baby led weaning and started giving him things to taste at about 9.5 months.  This is how that went:

This was actually his very first taste of something and it was strawberry.  He kept licking it and then making lemon-tasting type faces.  It was very amusing.  In general he really enjoys tasting things, but he will not swallow anything unless it's by accident (and then he chokes and gags it down).  I don't do the puree thing but I have tried giving him pureed food a time or two, and while he's fine with tasting it, he pushes it right back out of his mouth.  It actually seems that he hasn't lost the tongue-thrust reflex yet.

-He also doesn't drink from a cup or bottle or anything.  I am literally his only source of nutrition.  But hey, he more than tripled his birth weight and he is a really healthy baby (waaaay healthier than Noah as a baby) who has only been sick 3 or 4 times in his year of life (pretty sure Noah was sick like 13 times in his first year of life).  So there you go.

-After learning that breastfeeding is his only source of nutrition, it probably doesn't surprise anyone that he's up 3-6 times each night nursing.  Blaaah.  One day this will all be a distant memory...

-We cosleep, of course.

-We still babywear for hours each day.  Isaiah has finally been in a stroller (once) when Noah wanted him to go in one.  He thought it was like an amusement park ride and shrieked and cried every time we stopped moving.  He did the same thing when I took him and Noah on a wagon ride.  And the few times I've sat him in a grocery cart next to Noah (just for a short time during the grocery trip because Noah was asking for Isaiah to be next to him), he's gotten so hyper and excited.  It's funny how these things are novel experiences for him.

-Isaiah's favourite toy is... anything Noah is playing with.  And vice versa.  Really though, Isaiah really likes anything big that he can push around.  Walkers, bikes, ride ons, brooms, whatever.

Okay, it's 9pm and I have a doozy of a cold (I basically haven't been sick since Christmas so I shouldn't complain), so I want to go to bed.  First, a few pictures of the cutie...

9.5 months:

This is on his 10 month "birthday"... I can see 5 of his 6 teeth, which is how I knew he got them all between 9.5 and 10 months.  Otherwise I honestly wouldn't have remembered.

Just a few days before he turned 11 months old:

About a week before turning one:

Hahaha....

The day before his birthday... he keeps climbing in the warming drawer in my stove!

(don't mind the ugly floor, our kitchen is finally getting reno'd this month!)

Isaiah's 1st Birthday!!:

I liked the little smile he had once he realized what this present was:

"Noah, back off!"

Well, Hello There...

It has been forever since I've written.  June 10th was the last day, and it is now October 1.  So much has happened.  A few things have been...

We got our new house on June 21.  It was a filthy mess, and we spent the following week cleaning it and getting it to a point where we could actually live in it.  On June 29th we actually moved in.  We spent the whole summer painting, landscaping, getting quotes for various projects (like $16,000-$20,000 for a new roof... holy frick, 4000+ square feet of roof is expensive), and generally enjoying living back in "the city".  We wish we had never moved to the little farm town we were living in, and are so glad to be back in town.

Justin also started the new school year at a "new" school.  It's the same school he taught at for his first year of teaching.  It's been... interesting.  That's all I'll say on that.

My friend Jenn moved from our old town to our current city a couple of months after we did, and we've been getting together with our kids a lot.  It's very cute to see our boys be each other's "friend".  They even talk on the phone.  Not that they say a whole lot beyond "Hi!  How are you?  Do you want to come with us to the animal farm?"  But still, it's awfully adorable.

Finally, Isaiah turned ONE!  That deserves it's own post, and I'm sick and need to get to bed, so I'm going to try and bang that one out quickly now.  I really regret that I haven't been posting much since he was born, or AT ALL for the past almost 4 months.  I'm sad that I won't have those posts to look back on to remember what my kids were like during those 4 months.  But all I can do is move forward!

I leave you with our most recent family picture, taken on Isaiah's birthday...

Sigh.  I love them.

Moving Update

It's been 2 weeks since I wrote my last post saying we put an offer on that house.  In that time we negotiated a deal for the house, ultimately getting $20,000 off the list price (and $60,000 off the original list price).  On May 31 we listed our house for sale.  On June 6 we had an offer on it, and by June 8 we had negotiated that deal.  

There are still a few conditions to be lifted until this is all final.  We have lifted our house sale and inspection conditions on our new house, so all that is left is the finance condition (this gives us an out in case our house sale doesn't go through).  The inspection went great, the only issues were a leaky pipe under the kitchen sink that is easy to fix (owner will do that), a roof that will need to be replaced in a few years, and a little bit of normal chimney damage.  Our inspector (a carpenter friend with like 40 years of experience) was very impressed with our incredibly well built new home :)

There is no home sale condition from the buyers for our house.  The only conditions that need to be lifted are an inspection (not worried about that with a 5 year old Giampetri built home... if I were them I wouldn't even spend the $400 on an inspection), and financing, which they were pre-approved for.  They have until this Friday to lift those conditions.

We are hoping to get started on our financing asap, and close on the new house on June 21.  We want to have some time to do some painting and whatever else we can do before we move in officially, which we'd like to do before July.

If everything goes according to plan, the sale of our house is completed on July 5.  We are getting bridge financing for the 2 weeks that we own both houses.  If we could have we would have gotten bridge financing for even longer since after the initial $250 cost to set it up, it's only $62 a week for interest.  However, the buyers of our house want in quickly and we're in a hurry to move to our new house and get out of the small town where we live.  So we'll be doing a lot of cosmetic improvements once we're living in the new house.

So, that's the news.  We're going to have some pretty sweet before and after shots from this house!  It'll take some time, though.