Love You, Daddy!

Phil was able to come home this weekend and spend some time with us and it was wonderful! He's such a totally awesome dad and husband... Jackson and I love him so much and he is such a great help to me! It is so hard to have him gone but it sure makes us appreciate the time we do get to spend together. I love you, Phil!

Here are a few pictures of Emmett. I weighed him today by weighing myself alone and then myself with E and subtracting the two. It appears that with a diaper and a onesie on he weighs 13.5 pounds. Whew! I knew that car seat felt heavier!

I took a picture of this quail because he was sitting outside on our patio without moving for about 15 minutes. Look how fat he is! Phil and I think quail are the funniest birds. They are all over the place in our neighborhood and for some reason they like to run really fast to get out of the way of things instead of just taking off in flight. It's funny to watch.

Jackson cracks me up all of the time now, and he did something for the first time this afternoon that I thought was really funny. I was sitting and nursing Emmett and J ran over to jump on our leather ottoman. His belly hit first and caused him to break wind. I laughed and he looked over at me and started laughing, too. Then he looked right at me and pushed out another toot and cracked up! It was a good thing he had a diaper on, because once he realized that he could make that funny sound he pushed another few times to try to do it again. It was so funny!

Here's a cute video of J and E together. I was trying to catch E smiling, but of course he wouldn't do it for the camera. Hopefully he will soon!

Please Pray for Conor

The son of one of my very good teacher friends from Alaska, Patty, is really in need of prayers right now. Conor was in a terrible car accident a few weeks ago and is in a coma. This comes a year or so after he was hospitalized for severe burns from a bonfire accident. He's in his early 20's. It is hard for me to understand why God would allow something so sad and terrible to happen to the same family, let alone the same person, but I'm trying not to focus on that. Please pray for Conor's recovery and for Patty and her family, as they are having to deal with so many difficult issues right now. I wanted to post this because I know that I have many prayer warriors that read this blog. Thanks for your help.

How Will Our Garden Grow?

We planted a garden this past weekend. Very exciting for us, as we've wanted to do this for a long while but have never gotten around to it. Phil dug out a portion of our side yard that gets full sun for most of the day (with help from Hank, who had already dug some of it up) and I planted the vegetable starts that we bought. We're trying to grow 2 kinds of tomatoes, 3 kinds of peppers, sugar snap peas, lettuce, spinach, strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb (we actually planted this last year, Heidi ate it down to the roots, and it has come back with a vengeance), two types of onions, and a whole bunch of herbs. We'll see how it turns out.

Emmett has become quite the fan of the pacifier. It really helps keep him calm and happy and he seems to like it better every week. I was hesitant to use it at first because I didn't want a toddler with a paci addiction, but I've since decided that I'm willing to deal with that later in order to have a content baby right now. :) I'm getting really good at this "pick-up/put-down-the-baby-with-both-hands-while-keeping-one-thumb-on-the-pacifier-so-it-doesn't-fall-out" move that I've started using. Thankfully, the past two days he's been better about being put down in the bouncy seat without fussing. I've actually been able to fix a quick dinner and do a quick clean-up without having him scream at me. And today he tolerated a 45-minute walk in the car seat without getting upset at all! I'm very proud of him when he's kind and helpful to me like this.

In other news from my not-so-exciting life, after years of Phil asking me to do this (I don't know why I haven't until now), I finally started making sweet iced tea. I make it with Splenda so it's not so bad for us and it is super yummy. My first batch was too weak and not sweet enough, but the second one was much better. The only bad thing is that I didn't realize just how much caffeine you ingest from several tall glasses of tea and I had a bad case of the jitters after sampling my first batch. I guess being off of caffeine for 9 months makes a person extra-sensitive to it later. I have since made a separate decaf batch for myself.

Train Trip and Other Happenings

Today my grandparents invited Jackson, Emmett, and I to go with them to a train museum about 30 minutes from home where they give miniature train rides through the woods. They thought that this would be something that Jackson would really enjoy, and it was! We all had a really nice time. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, too. 70 degrees and sunny with no humidity. Nice!

I was proud of myself for getting everything and everyone ready by myself pretty much on time and managing to remember everything that we needed. It feels so great to have these little successes every so often! I had one last night, too - I took both boys to Wal-Mart for the first time by myself. We walked around, bought a few things (I treated myself to a People magazine so I could read about Jon & Kate - what a train wreck that whole mess is), and managed to get home again with no meltdowns. I know that may seem silly to be excited about, but it keeps me going. Here are some pics from our train trip...

When we got home Jackson played in his room for about an hour when he was supposed to be napping. After it was finally quiet for a few minutes I dared to peek in and found this...

This happened one other time a few weeks ago. Usually he's a great napper, but some days he's just not feelin' it when it's time to go down, I guess. Phil thinks I am crazy to take a chance at waking him up just to take a picture, but I love these shots!

Before we left I tried to get a picture of the boys together on the couch... you can see how successful that was!

A shout-out to Daddy whom we miss so much already...

My sweet Aunt Pam sent J and E a present the other day. She got Jackson a counting book about frogs that has a button that you can push to hear croaking. He is really into pushing buttons right now - especially buttons that make noise, so you can imagine how much he loves this book, Aunt Pam! Thank you so much!

Emmett can't quite hold his head up yet, so he really shouldn't be in this exersaucer yet, but I was grasping at straws to try to find something that he would be happy to be set down in. I tried to wedge him in there with blankets. He likes it a little bit, but not as much as I hoped.

Just another shot of chubby hubby in the tubby... what a cutie!

Sweet Success

Just had to document today's successes, after feeling like a total failure earlier in the week...

Emmett only woke up twice last night!! He slept for two good three-hour stretches and only woke at 1:45 and 4:45, which was totally awesome! The night before he was up almost every hour and a half so this was a big improvement. I hope tonight is just as good, although I'm not counting on it. He has also been napping much better today with less fussing beforehand. Hopefully I didn't just jinx everything by writing all that.

We went to the park today to let Jackson have some fun and enjoy the sunshine. I managed to wait until it was almost time for Emmett to eat again, then tentatively took him out of his crib and placed him in the car seat. He did get a little upset, but was able to wait until we got to the park to eat. He then stayed awake the whole time at the park (a little over an hour) without fussing! I was able to put him in the car seat without having him fuss and he actually almost fell asleep on the way home. When we got home I was able to transfer him to his crib successfully and now both boys are sleeping. Hooray!!

I know not every day will be this easy, but we've been having a rough week so I thought this deserved a mention. It's crazy how you can feel so defeated as a parent one day and the next day feel like you can conquer the world. I guess that's what keeps life interesting. Now I'm off to lay down myself...

Grandparent Gifts

We had gorgeous, sunny near 90-degree weather today, so we spent some time outside. Someone didn't want to keep his hat on, so we tried to stay in the shade. Klamath sun is very intense.

Jackson, Phil, and I love our new double jogger... thank you so much Nana and Papa Swoop! Unfortunately, Emmett is not so fond of it yet. He's actually not in this picture... he's hanging on to my chest in the Baby Bjorn. He's going to have to learn to like it, though, once I start running again. J was not wanting to pose for this picture - especially with that hat on. I was able to peek into his mouth the other day when he was upset about something and noticed that he's in the process of cutting 5 or 6 teeth just on the bottom. I guess he has a right to be a little grumpy.

And, there goes the hat...

Your package finally arrived, Grandy and Popeye! Thank you!

Cute- E- Pie!

Just had to post some recent cute pictures of Emmett. He's such a chunker compared to Jackson! We can't get over his cute baby rolls. I'm trying to be good about taking pictures of him so he doesn't end up with second-child syndrome because we have 2,407 pictures of Jackson's first year and 34 of him.

My friend, Katie, gave Emmett this onesie and I love it because it says, "mc dreamy" on the front. For those who don't watch, McDreamy is the nickname given to Patrick Dempsey's character on Grey's Anatomy - I love that show.

Not picking... just looks like it!

Today Emmett was actually enjoying his bouncy seat for a few minutes while sucking on his pacifier. Eventually the paci fell out and E started to fuss. I was washing dishes, so J ran right over there and tried and tried to put the paci back in Emmett's mouth, to no avail. It was so sweet, though - I had to capture it.

Totally Worth the 90-Minute Drive

We get bored over here in our tiny town sometimes, so we take frequent day trips over to the nearest city for some shopping and civilization. We went over last Wednesday to get a protective coating put on our new van and actually had a pretty nice time. We even went out to eat as a family of four for the first time. We went to a great pizza place that is just like our favorite pizza place in Alaska, Moose's Tooth. Not quite the same, but close.

Jackson got to pretend-drive Dad's truck and play with all of the buttons during a nursing pit-stop.

While Dad was at the car dealership I spent some time at the mall with the little boys. Jackson loved the mall play area. Oh, how I wish we had a mall over here!

He's decided that he prefers to go down slides backwards for some reason. We never showed him how to do that - one day he just turned around and slid backwards and has been doing it ever since!

I Wish I Had a Padded Seat That People Carried Me Around In...

Well, maybe I spoke too soon about Emmett hating the car seat. I think he only hates it at certain times - like when he's hungry or wants to be held (which, as I mentioned before, is very often). We had two good walks yesterday and today, though, during which he fell asleep in the car seat. He had just been fed, so I think that helped. He slept in it yesterday while we were in Fred Meyer, too (although he woke up and screamed on the way home - hungry), and today we went to the park and he slept in the seat for almost 2 hours. So maybe there's hope for us yet!

Phil and I got really frustrated last Monday when the weather was rainy and cold here and we were driving around trying to find an indoor play area for Jackson. The one option we had is closed on Mondays, so in our frustration we went to Wal-Mart and bought a swing, small plastic slide, and bouncy thing and set them up in our garage for J. He loves that swing (so much so that we now need to take it down when we're not using it b/c every.single.time we go into the garage he wants to swing and gets upset when he can't) and loves the slide, too, but is not too sure about the bouncy thing. We might take that back. The slide also works well outside in the grass on sunny days, as would the swing if we had any trees to hook it to.

Here are two more videos to keep the grandparents happy... :)