Sunday, February 13, 2011

Cute as a Ladybug!

One year ago, I was at Columbia St. Mary's giving birth to my baby girl. Since then, she has grown so much!!!! She loves to look at books and play pretend with her toy food. She started carrying her baby doll everywhere and has pretty much mastered walking. It's when she tries to run that she has troubles. She gives me hugs and kisses and waves buh-bye. She's eating table food and trying to mimic words that we use. My baby isn't a baby anymore. She's officially a ONE year old!

A few days old to 1 year old!!


We had a birthday party yesterday with a few friends and family. Of course we had to document it with pictures!


Sonya loved her little ladybug smash cake


I also made a larger ladybug cake for the rest of us


Guests and gifts!


Hugging Grandma good-bye

Thursday, February 10, 2011

On the road to buy a home

Everything is slowly falling into place for us to buy our first home. I'm so glad that God is allowing me to be patient during this process. While it's a little nerve-wracking to wait, I'm content in our apartment right now and in no real rush to just buy whatever looks like the best deal from an outsider perspective. God's timing is amazing and I know He'll show us which one is the right one. A few houses that we were interested in have either had accepted offers on them or are turning into short sales so we'll see what becomes of them. That's probably God's way of gently telling us that it wasn't meant for our family. 

Where we're at right now:
  • We signed on our real estate agent so she officially works for us now. 
  • All of our loan application paperwork is done and we've been pre-approved/approved for a loan of $XXX,444.00. I think for the official approval, the house has to fit certain criteria, but we're pretty much approved. We have a meeting to speak with a woman in 2 weeks to discuss the details on the particular loan that we're using.
  • We had our first homebuyer education course last night. Only 2 more to go! The first session was about budgets and credit reports. It was pretty basic, but there was still some good information. We pay off all our credit cards every month so we didn't have to worry about any of the scenarios she gave, but there was one where you buy a $10 pizza and it ends up becoming a $40 pizza if you put it on your credit card and don't pay it off right away. Crazy!! We're looking forward to the other classes because they'll have people come in that are part of the homebuying processes (ie. Loan officer, Real Estate Agent, Home Insurance Agent, and an Inspector.)
That's all for now. We're hoping to look at a few more houses that have come on the market and also ones that have been on, but don't have any pictures to really go off of. Who knows? Maybe we'll have a house by next month!

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Sick Baby + Funny Caleb

I've been trying to think of something to post about, but haven't felt fully inspired or motivated enough I guess. I'll randomly get a thought here or there when I'm away from my computer. So, I decided to just write about family life for now.

Yesterday, Sonya wasn't quite herself. She was pretty content for the most part, but very tired and worn out. Green globs of gook were stuck on the inside corners of her eyes. Her dinner remained untouched. Normally she loves her carbs. We had waffles and she wanted nothing to do with them. At snack time, I tried to give her some applesauce and goldfish. Sonya just swatted the spoon away from her face and took a little nibble of the goldfish. When she didn't want that, I knew she wasn't feeling good. As I began to unbuckle her high chair, she puked all over herself. Tim helped clean her up while I finished tucking Caleb into bed.

Once we got new pajamas on her, I told Tim to find a bucket in case Sonya needed to puke again. He was skeptical, thinking we'd never get her to do it in there. Well, good thing I went with my instincts! I heard that gurgling in her stomach and held her over the pail as she puked yet again. She only got a little on herself this time, but still needed a new set of pajamas. My poor little girl! We got the bucket cleaned out and clean clothes on her so I tried nursing her. She dozed off for a little bit and then woke up suddenly as she puked once more into the bucket. I just cuddled her and rocked her until she fell asleep and knew she wasn't going to get sick again. Then, I put her to bed.

This was my first time really dealing with puke as a mother. Caleb has thrown up like twice since he's been born; once in his bed and once in the toilet since he was old enough to walk/run to the bathroom. For my little girl (almost one year old) to be sick like this, I feel so helpless.

Luckily, I only had to get up with her once during the night. I wasn't sure if she'd puke again, but nursed her anyway since she seemed a little hungry. Thank goodness she fell right back to sleep for me and slept until morning. I chose to keep Caleb home from school today so as not to disturb Sonya's sleep and to keep the flu germs from spreading. He was pretty disappointed and wanted to go! In fact, he got dressed right away and then the next thing I knew was that he had his jacket, mittens, and backpack on all ready to go. He said, “I’m just going to walk to school because I don’t know how to drive yet. I’ll stay on the sidewalks and will be careful crossing the street so I don’t get hit by any cars.” Let’s just say that he was so adamant on going, I had to bribe him with a Pop Tart so he wouldn't go out in the snow and start the 3 mile trek on his own. Such a funny little dude.

Well, I'm glad we decided to play hooky. Sonya puked one more time this morning and has been on and off sleeping all day. She did eat a little yogurt for lunch though so that was a bit of an improvement. Caleb and I worked on predictions today since his class was studying groundhogs and shadows. We set up the halogen light in a dark area and found different options to make shadows on the wall. Caleb predicts that the groundhog will see his shadow tomorrow. :-)

Hope everyone out there is able to stay healthy... and warm!!! I'm so glad we have lots of movies and plenty of food so we don't have to go out for the next couple of days.