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.

New House?

We put an offer in on this house yesterday:

We knew putting the offer in that they weren't going to accept it.  It's $45,000 under their current asking price, and $85,000 under their original asking price.  It's also $105,000 under what the current owned apparently has into it.  But, it's been sitting on the market for 5 months with no offers.  It's certainly not in turn-key condition.  It's 33 years old and while it is extremely well built, and way better quality than any other homes in the area, very little in it has been updated since it was built 33 years ago.  It only requires cosmetic work, though, and after thinking about it for awhile we are confident we can get it looking very modern without spending a ton of money.  We'll just have to DIY a lot!

We expect them to counter offer much higher than our original offer.  We hope we can land somewhere in the middle of our offer and their asking price.  We will see what happens.  It's also conditional on us selling our current house (anyone want to buy it?;). 

This house is pretty perfect for us.  It's on over half an acre, and is extremely private (you can barely see it from the road) with a circular driveway.  It's a 2300 sq foot bungalow with a 2300 sq foot basement with huge windows like we have in our current raised ranch (so it's pretty bright down there, not like a normal darkish basement).  The basement was finished last year, but it's not completely done.  For example, a lot of the basement walls are missing trim; a possible bedroom is missing flooring, a proper ceiling, and trim; there is a new bathroom that isn't actually dry walled, they just put up panelling for the walls, etc, etc. However, there are three sets of stairs leading to the basement - one from the house, one from in the garage, and one from off the covered porch.  Pretty cool!

There are 3 bedrooms upstairs, with the possibility for 2 more bedrooms upstairs since there are two rooms that we wouldn't use for their current functions (a formal dining room and a sitting area, both measure 11x14 and have big windows).  We would just have to wall off the large openings and put in doors.  There are 4 bathrooms total, 2 full and 2 partial, but the partial one downstairs is huge and has the plumbing roughed in for a tub shower or even a stall shower and whirlpool tub.

The backyard has room for a pool, if we choose to put another one in.  It has a great brick shed, concrete paths winding through the trees (kids would have so much fun with that!), a big patio on one side of the house, and a huge covered patio built off the other side of the house (covered with the actual roof of the house).  It also has a bunch of pear trees that produce a ton of fruit every year! 

The biggest draw for us is probably the 33x33 ft garage.  That gives Justin almost 1100 sq feet to set up the gym, and room to train 10-12 people at a time INDOORS (which is not possible in our current 400 sq ft garage).  It also happens to be right across the street from the high school Justin has been transferred to for the fall.  And its 2 minutes from my parents house!!  I am so excited to be moving back to town instead of living 25 minutes away!

With us selling our house and negotiating on the new house, there is a TON that has to occur before we can actually call this home ours.  It could all certainly not happen, but I'm trying not to stress. We are moving to town regardless, so that's in my favour. And I am really trying to hold on to the whole "if it's meant to be it will be" thing. The way this has all happened so far makes me think that it might be meant to be. For example, we were not even interested in looking at the house at all because of the asking price and the pictures. Then on Saturday we were driving home from my parents' house and we saw it was having an open house. I was still not interested in looking, but there was literally 10 minutes left in the open house so I told Justin we might as well take a look. We ended up actually liking it and feeling like we could live there.

So, next, we decided to try and go to the open house on Sunday, which was from 1-3. It ended up working out PERFECTLY with Isaiah's naps, and that is hard to accomplish. Then our realtor wanted to meet with us at Remax at 4pm, which ended up totally working with Isaiah's next nap! He slept at my parents' for half an hour and woke up 12 minutes before 4. So we made it to the Remax office RIGHT AT 4.

Considering how hard it is to do things when working around Isaiah's naps, the fact that everything has worked out so far, timing wise, has me feeling optimistic.

But who knows.  Maybe they won't want to go low enough on the price.  Maybe our house won't sell fast enough.  There's a lot that has to happen.  Wish me luck!

Isaiah is 8 Months Old

Last time I logged in it had been so long that I forgot my password and had to change it.  And that just happened AGAIN!  Screw google for not letting you use the same password you've used in the past!  I'm never going to remember the one I just chose!

Anyway, Isaiah is 8 months old today... yay for being on time with a post!

So, at 8 months old...

-Isaiah weighs 19.5 lbs.

-He is about 28.5-29 inches long... it was hard to measure him; he didnt want to stay still.

-His head circumference is 18.25 inches.

-Still no teeth... I never would have guessed he would still have no teeth at 8 months since he started teething at 4 weeks old.

-Still exclusively breastfed with no bottles and no solids.  He did have a tiny taste of a pear I was eating the other day, but he just licked it, didn't actually ingest anything.

-Like last month, he's still in the awkward place between 2 and 3 naps, but moving closer to 2.

-He is now cross-crawling on his hands and knees!  I just love crawling babies, they are so darn cute.

-He is pulling up to stand.

-He moves from laying down to sitting up (and vice versa) with ease.

-He is starting to become more adventurous in travelling around the house, so we now close the gate at the top of the stairs.  We also recently put our mattresses on the ground because he is too mobile.

-We cosleep, and honestly sleep is not wonderful for him lately, but still within the range of what is biologically normal. The past few weeks have been really yucky for sleep.  One night he woke up 6 times.  He is waking up a minimum of 3 times a night, and almost always wakes up within the first hour of going to bed.  I expect this now so it doesn't bother me like it did when Noah did it. I just go in, nurse him, and he goes easily back to sleep.

-He's doing pretty well in the car.

-We still babywearing all the time. I'm still a carrier-churning maniac, and right now I have 32.

I have been awful about taking pictures in the past few weeks, but here are a few of the recent ones!

Right after a haircut... I didn't realize 1/8 inch was so freaking short!:

What's Been Happening...

I have been absent from blogging for 1 month and 1 day.  Yikes!  I have never not blogged for that long.  I also never thought I wouldn't blog for that long.  Not only have I not been blogging, but I also have not been reading any blogs, so I am seriously behind in what is going on in your lives!!  When I tried to get into blogger again I had completely forgotten my password.  I had to actually reset it.  That's how long it's been.

I know I don't owe anybody any explanations, and possibly many of you don't even care to read them (haha), but I would like to write some of the reasons why I haven't been blogging and also some of what we've been up to.  I will try to write fast, as I'm doing this during Isaiah's nap time, while Noah would like my attention and I have other things that need to be done!

I think the two main reasons I haven't blogged are:

-My blog is a secret from everyone I know in real life except my husband.  I used to keep my blogger dashboard open on my laptop browser all the time.  But whenever my family visits they use my laptop for various reasons, and sometimes my blogger dashboard has been open and they've gone on there... yeah it's just a disaster waiting to happen, a secret waiting to be discovered, which I don't want because I have private information/complaints about people on this blog.  So I stopped keeping blogger open, which means I forget about it a lot.

-Isaiah doesn't nap in a carrier anymore, and I used to blog while he napped on me because we had to be quiet anyway.  Now his nap time is time for me to spend with Noah/do things that are difficult to do while babywearing.


So,  what's been going on in our lives?

-Justin is training a lot more.  By choice he used to just train one client 3 times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), but he could always have done more.  We decided a couple of months ago that he should start trying to grow the business a little bit more, which could possibly lead to him teaching part time and training part time.  He now has "open sessions" on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  They are all very well attended with up to 10 people at a session (10 is way too many for our "facility" aka garage, but he can make it work with the nice weather by using the driveway).  It's difficult to find a balance between having enough available sessions to make the clients happy and hopefully gain more clients, but still have enough family time.  We're managing, though.  It's nice that Noah is at the age where he can actually go hang out outside while Justin trains.

-Justin is surplus at his highschool again. Unlike the other 2 years that he has gotten a surplus letter but was able to stay after all the staffing decisions were said and done, this year he will actually have to leave the school.  It's ridiculous since he has taught there for 5 years, so you would think he'd be safe, but it's a seniority thing.  In the last few years his school has lost so many teachers that there is now only 1 person underneath him in seniority, and his school is losing another 4 teachers.  Out he goes, and we have no idea where to.  It sucks, because he has no say in where he ends up and we've heard rumors of him ending up at a school that we really don't want him to go to.

-I recently discovered that during the first 2.5 years of Noah's life, we had a family snapshot taken on 7 occasions.  That's it.  30 months, only 7 family pictures.  That is so lame.  For the past month I've been making a specific effort to get a family picture taken every week, even if it's a crappy iPod picture.  Here they are in chronological order!

This was the first one, an impromptu iPod picture from when we were playing on the floor, but I like it :)

Playing outside... Noah kissing the soccer ball??:

This one is my favourite, and definitely the best of the bunch!:

I'm not a big fan of this picture and neither is Justin, but it still makes me happy that it exists: 

This was yesterday - crappy iPad picture, and rather amusing.  Noah is sick right now and looks very grumpy, but he actually wasn't:

Okay, gotta go.  Between this and Isaiah's 7 month update I've been on the computer for way too long.  See you in another month?  Haha.

Isaiah is 7 (and a half) Months Old

I'm so so behind on writing this since Isaiah turned 7 months on April 22 and it's not May 6.  But I still have to write a few things. This is not his 7.5 month update, though, it will only be up until he turned 7 months.

So, at 7 months old...

-Isaiah weighed 19lbs

-He was about 28.75 inches long

-Still no teeth... I never would have guessed he would still have no teeth at 7 months since he started teething at 4 weeks old.

-Still exclusively breastfed with no bottles and no solids.

-I stopped bathing him in the sink right at 7 months old when he started literally trying to climb out.

-We switched to using all fitteds and wool covers (all sustainablebabyish) around 6 or 6.5 months.  He'd had red, raw chafe marks on his chunky thighs from his PUL covers that would NOT go away.  It was an expensive switch, but a fun one!  And the new diapering system is sooooo cozy for him.

-Still in the awkward place between 2 and 3 naps, but hopefully moving closer to 2.

-He is army crawling.  Still not cross crawling, even though he's been pushing up on his hands and knees and rocking since he turned 5 months old.

-He's a great sitter, moves from sitting up to laying down fairly easily, and looks like he's starting to try and figure out how to get from laying down to sitting up on his own.

-He is a lot more content to stay in one spot than Noah was.  Maybe it's because I babywear all the time so he gets carried around the house constantly, seeing different things, so when I do put him down he is fine staying within the same area.  Noah was already into everything all the time at this age, crawling through the whole house.  Isaiah stays in the play area when I put him there.

-We cosleep, and honestly sleep is not wonderful for him lately, but still within the range of what is biologically normal.  He wakes up to nurse 2 or 3 times a night, lately it's usually 3 times. I would be at my wits end without cosleeping.  I'm going to figure out how to nurse him while laying down more easily.  At this point it's too hard to get positioned properly, so I might as well sit up to do it (and that's what I do).  But sometimes I'm sooo tired that I would really like to be lying down with my eyes closed.  It's hard to do this properly when we're sleeping on different mattresses though.

-He's okay in the car and has fallen asleep in it a couple of times when it was nap time for him.  Unfortunately, though, he won't fall asleep in the car without crying for awhile first.

-We still babywearing all the time.  I'm still a carrier-churning maniac, and right now I think I have 30.

Here are some pictures from right around when he turned 7 months old... I am not neglecting my child or my attention to his milestones, development, and picture taking.... I'm just neglecting my blog!

First bath in the big tub:

Noah had to join!:

He plays in his exersaucer beside the kitchen table while we eat dinner:

Noah always did this too:

LOL FOREVER!

THIS just happened:

Noah: "How much does Isaiah have testicles?" (this was the actual wording of the question, haha)

Me: "Pardon me?"

Noah: "Does he have two testicles?"

Me: "Ummm, yes he does."

Noah: "How much does Papa have?"

Me: :"Uhhh.. I don't know, I have never talked to Papa about his testicles."

Noah: "Does he have two?"

Me: "Probably.  Most boys have two."

Noah: "How much does Gramper have?"

Me: "He probably has two, like most people."

Noah: "How much does McQueen have?"

Me: "None, silly, he's a car!"

Noah: "How much does Chick Hicks have? [starts laughing]  Chick Hicks has zero testicles!"

That was 10 minutes ago and I am still laughing.

Randomness

Literally I cannot remember the last time this child "slept through the night".  And by "sleeping through the night," I don't mean sleeping 7pm to 5am and not waking up to nurse.  I mean not waking up and then deciding to STAY AWAKE for an hour or an hour and a half.  

What the HECK!!!!!!!  This was happening a couple of times a week for quite awhile, but it has been weeks (literally) since it HASN'T happened.  It's frustrating.  If we didn't sleep together I would be the most miserable person ever.  

Whoa.

~~~

THIS child has decided he does not want a haircut.  This isn't new, he has been hating haircuts for the past year.  But now he has decided that he wants long hair like Mommy, and to wear it in a ponytail.

Noah is the kind of kid who "forgets" to hate things if he has no exposure to them.  Therefore, I've been wondering why he still detests haircuts even though he's only had 2 or 3 since he started hating them a year ago.

Wonder no longer.  Apparently my Dad, aka Gramper, talks to Noah about how he needs a haircut all the time.  I just about smacked him when I found out.  Now Noah is THREE, and he remembers the most random crap that happened ages ago, so there will be no forgetting that he detests haircuts anymore.  And freaking Gramper has been constantly reminding him of this by talking to him about haircuts on a weekly basis.  STUPID GRAMPER!

Yesterday morning I was going to the bathroom and Noah stood in front of me and said, "Someday you will have a penis, like me!"  I bit back laughter and said "No, no I won't."  Noah looked me in the eyes and very sweetly said "Someday!" in a "Cheer up, Mom, it's okay that you don't have a penis right now, it will happen soon!" voice.

I just about died laughing.

Isaiah is 6 Months Old

9 days late... oops.

-Isaiah is about 18.5 lbs.

-He is 28 inches.

-His head circumference is about __ inches (it was 17 inches at 5 months)

-Same as last month, he is on the medium rise setting on his diapers. We exclusively use Flip covers with various inserts (stay dry, organic cotton, Thirsties inserts, flats, or prefolds) during the day, with a few bumGenius Freetimes thrown in, mostly for Daddy. At night he wears an sbish snapless fitted (with both doublers) with a Blueberry one size cover with aplix. The rise on the cover is completely unsnapped to fit over the fitted.

-He still has those two bottom teeth playing peekaboo (since he was 4 weeks old), and his bottom gums are swelling out in other areas, so I think some of his other teeth are moving around. I cannot believe those teeth haven't come through!

-He has no bottles ever, nor will he ever.

-He has had no solids, and we don't plan to introduce them anytime soon.

-We cosleep, and I can't imagine how much life would suck if we didn't.  He sleeps like an infant is supposed to - getting up to nurse anywhere from 1 to 3 times in the night.  1 time a night has been rare this past month, it's usually twice.  But almost every night this past month he has had a long awake period in the middle of the night, ranging anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half (this is why life would suck if we didn't cosleep).

-He goes to bed between 7 and 8, depending on when he woke up from his final nap, and wakes up between 6:30 and 7:30 (we are very very lucky if he sleeps all the way until 7:30, though).

-Isaiah isn't sleeping very well on me anymore, so most of his naps are in bed.  Like last month, most of his naps are 30-45 minutes long, but a few times a week we get one that ranges from an hour to an hour and 45 minutes long.  I big-puffy-heart LOVE those ones.

-We're in that awkward place between 2 and 3 naps.  He needs 3 but we can only fit in 2 most days.

-He still sleeps on his tummy, but this month he started flipping to his back on his own while he's in bed (he has been rolling over for a long time, obviously, but just never did it in bed until recently) and so occasionally he sleeps on his back.  He's finally at the point where I can lay him down on his back and his windmilling arms wouldn't wake him up immediately.  I don't usually do this, though, because he sleeps shorter periods when he's on his back.

-In the past I have said that Isaiah is the happiest baby I have ever met... Well, the past 2 or 3 weeks he's been kind of miserable.  He still has big smiles and giggles, but he's a lot fussier again this month.  It's been reminding me of when he was a newborn and things sucked.  Obviously it's not THAT bad, but we have seen far far better days.

-He started pushing himself up on his hands and knees and rocking right when he turned 5 months old.  Still not cross-crawling, though.

-He scoots himself all over the house, but hasn't perfected the army crawl like Noah had at this age.

-He is a really good sitter.  His back is straight, he doesn't need to be propped up by anything, and he can stay like that for a good 10 minutes.  Right when I started thinking he might not be sitting "properly" by the time he turned 6 months, he started sitting really well!  Just a few days before he turned 6 months old.

-He is friendly to people and smiles at them when they talk to and smile at him.

-He loves Noah!

-He is getting better in the car.  He won't nap in there (booo!  My sympathies to those of you whose children don't nap in the car!  I never understood how this was possible before), but at least he doesn't scream the entire time we're in there.  If I provide him with a steady rotation of toys he can make it through a 20 minute car ride with no issues... once a day, anyway.  The car ride back home usually involves screaming.

-He still has all his baths in the kitchen sink because it's easier for me.  I have no idea when I'm going to switch this to the bath tub.  Now that he sits up straight he is fitting really well in the sink and I have even less motivation to change the location.  Oh well!

-While last month I had 25 baby carriers, now I have 35 (even though I continue to sell them off).  Hello, my name is Lauren, and I am a babywearing addict.

This was a very cranky day... and he has since decided he doesn't like the soother (which I didn't even give to him until he turned 5 months old... I was shocked he took it in the first place!):

Happy baby! 

I forgot to mention... instead of reclining in the bouncy chair, he now insists on sitting straight up.  He can even do a sit up to get in this position if I lay him in the chair.

Things Noah Says

These quote are from when Noah was about 2 years and 8 months until 3 years old.  Most of them are from earlier in that time period.


While eating dinner, with a sly smile: "Mommy and Daddy, there's a crab coming up the stairs!  It's gonna eat us for dinner!  With a fork and knife!  It's gonna cut us!"


Noah, enthusiastically: "Just some cheese, please, I'd like some cheese!"
Me: "You want some cheese?  How many pieces?"
Noah: "Like one two three four five, six seven eight nine ten!"


For awhile, every time he walked into the room after Isaiah woke up from a nap (on the rare occasions he doesn't nap while I'm wearing him), he would say in a high voice: "Hi Isaiah!  It's your Noah!!"


"Mommy, I want to talk to you!  I want you to look at me!" I look at him, and he gets all shy, "Your milk will make Isaiah get older... right?"


"Let's have crackers with some cheese butter!!" (aka cream cheese... I think I like "cheese butter" better!)


"And when Isaiah is bigger he can play with me!  And then we will have another baby!  That's a good idea, right?!"


On his way to go "help" Daddy clean the litter boxes: "Let's go empty those poopy cat potties!!!!"


"It is apparent that we need to go downstairs and watch Cars."


"Look at Isaiah!  He's so beautiful!"


"Let's go have some porn cops!" (Ummm... that would be Corn Pops).


"I can't watch the not nice Cars...  I can watch the not nice Cars when I'm 50!" (I don't like the Cars 2 movie, for the record, I think it's inappropriate for this age).


Mommy: "Noah, you're almost 3.  3 years ago you were still in my tummy!"
Noah: "Yeah!  Who will be in your tummy next?"


Noah brought Isaiah a toy to play with and told him, "Now don't be drooly!  Drool on the blanket."


These are for my own memories:

Noah used to always use the "f" sound for anything that started with "sw" (fwim instead of swim), "sm" (fonck instead of smock), "sp" (fecial instead of special).  Well, a month before his third birthday he finally stopped doing that and started using the proper sounds!  He is extremely proud of himself.  I will miss those hilarious mispronunciations.

Ever since we had Isaiah, Noah has loved to pretend that each of us are someone else.  It goes something like this: "I'm Daddy, and you're Isaiah, and Daddy is Mommy, and Isaiah is Noah!!"

He constantly says "Aww, I love you Mommy.  You're a cutie-girl.  And I'm a cutie-boy, and Isaiah's a cutie-boy, and Daddy is a cutie-boy, and you're a cutie-girl!"

And because it just makes me laugh...

(I did not tell Noah to go beside his brother.  He insisted in being in the pictures and kept making ridiculous faces.  This child cracks me up.)

That's my boy.  Actually, those are my boys.  Isaiah's faces are pretty funny, too.