December 18, 2013

One year old!

Can you believe it?  I can't.  My baby is a whole year old!

On his birthday, I was thinking a lot about where we were a year before.  All that waiting and anticipation... and then our lives were forever changed by our baby boy.

In the past month, Andrew has taken steps on his own!  He has also been enjoying a walker that we borrowed from my brother's family.  He's getting so sturdy on his feet- I know that one day he'll suddenly be running.  For now though, he seems to know that he can crawl faster than walk, so if he wants to get somewhere he drops to his hands and knees.

Andrew is 25th percentile for weight (20lbs, 15.4oz), and 50th percentile for both height (30") and head circumference (46.5cm).

He had his first Thanksgiving this past month- the last of his first holidays.  Crazy to think that this Christmas is actually his second!

Andrew waves if you say hi to him, feeds himself like a champ, and babbles all day long.

We can't imagine our lives without him.  It has been a great first year and I have loved watching him grow and learn every day.

New things for Andrew this month:
Thanksgiving
Playing in the snow
Using a walker
First steps!









No more monthly posts from here on out!

November 25, 2013

Peek-a-Boo

Just wanted to share this gem from about a month ago.  I'm having so much fun being home with my little guy!

November 21, 2013

11 Months

I'm totally late in this post but Andrew is 11 months old!

The big change this month has been his napping. A couple of weeks ago, Andrew started throwing a fit every time I tried to put him down for his second nap of the day. So now he's down to one nap most days. Occasionally he takes a second one in the afternoon, usually if we go somewhere and he falls asleep in the car. We're still transitioning so his nap time isn't consistent yet though.  And still, I'm not sure whether this is the new normal or if it's just a phase.  But for now, it's one nap most days.

I've been saying it for a while, but I think Andrew is so close to walking.  He now does this thing where he gets up on his hands and feet, with his little bottom sticking up in the air, and takes a few steps.  Sometimes it's just when he's turning around to sit facing a different direction, and sometimes he's actually going somewhere.  It's just about the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Four teeth.  He's got an adorable toothy grin now and I love it.
Andrew had his first Halloween and first Trunk-or-Treat!  He was dressed up as a dog.  Aaron and I were lame and didn't dress up, but Andrew's cute costume made up for it, I think.



Andrew's waving has become so much better and more consistent!  Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough to teach him, but in months past he would sometimes wave to people, but not often.  But now that we all wave to him when we say hi and bye, he totally does it back.  It's funny, he usually waves with both hands- rarely do we see him doing a one handed wave.

We're looking forward to celebrating Andrew's birthday in less than a month!  I can't believe how fast the time has gone by!

New things for Andrew this month:
First Halloween
Waving
High Five






November 1, 2013

Moving In: The Clean-Up

I freely admit that I am way behind in posting about my new house.  I have a few good reasons excuses for this:
  • I have been super busy unpacking, cleaning, and otherwise moving in.
  • Andrew.
  • Our computer mouse was not functioning properly so I pretty much avoided using the computer for more than two minutes at a time.
  • The computer isn't on the main level, where Andrew and I spend most of our day.
But now we're pretty much unpacked (though not completely organized), Andrew is sleeping, we bought a new mouse, and I'm upstairs.  So here we are.

So this house had been vacant for about 2 1/2 years before we moved in.  As I understand it, the previous owner lost his job and found a new one in Florida.  So they had to move out there pretty much right away.  They had two mortgages (with two different banks) on the house, and thus owed more than it was worth, which is why it was being sold as a short sale.

So I figure they had to move pretty quickly.  This meant they missed some things.

The Kitchen:

We had opened a couple kitchen cabinets during each of our walkthroughs before closing, but apparently not this big corner cabinet.  So the day we settled, I went to wipe all the cabinets out and found this:

Gross.

Fortunately there were no live bugs in there, but still.  The contents of this cabinet filled a whole trash bag- you know, one of those giant black garbage bags.

And here's what it looked like after I cleaned it out and put in the shelf paper:

Much better, yes?

This was the nastiest thing I had to deal with as far as cleaning up the house.  Thank goodness.  Aaron, however, had to deal with the basement.

The Basement:

When we were at the house a month before closing, there was standing water on the floor (as there had been every time we had seen it).  Some water had evaporated up into the insulation on the ceiling.  And we even found a few mushrooms growing on the cement floor!  Yuck!  We removed the shrooms that same day.  Fortunately when the house was finally ours, we found that the water on the floor had all dried up!  But Aaron spent the next day or two downstairs- ripping out the wet insulation, removing the mold-covered drywall, and cleaning every surface with a mold killing cleaner.  I don't have any pictures from the cleaning process, but here's what it looked like before:

And here's what it looks like now:

So now our basement is dry and clean, and it's already starting to get pretty full of our storage stuff.  We're looking forward to finishing it at some point.

The Carpet:

The carpet (especially in the living room) had a lot of stains on it.  I'm not totally sure whether the previous owners just didn't bother to keep things clean or if someone got into the house while it was vacant and messed things up, but either way the carpet needed help.

We had bought carpet cleaner before and weren't super impressed.  Within the past year I discovered the cleaning power of vinegar so when I discovered a recipe on Pinterest for homemade carpet cleaner I figured I'd try it.  I tweaked it a bit (and eyeballed all the measurements) and it worked great!  The recipe calls for one tablespoon clear dishwashing liquid and one tablespoon white vinegar with two cups of warm water.  My dishwashing detergent is green so I substituted clear laundry detergent.  Seriously- never buy carpet cleaner from the store again!

I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of it before.  Here's what it looked like after using my homemade cleaner (you can still see the wet spots where the stains used to be):

And here it is after we had a steam cleaning done:

Outside:

Aaron has been working a little at a time doing some power washing.  It's starting to look really good!  Still a work in progress but we're getting there!



So yeah, this is some of what we've been up to for the past month!  Stage one of moving in is complete!

October 21, 2013

Family Weekend

For Columbus Day/Canadian Thanksgiving, my family all got together at my parents' house.  It was such a good weekend- I think we all got together last in March.  It just doesn't happen often enough!

Cassie's birthday was on Sunday, so we made her a cake, inspired (but not totally followed) by a recipe I found on Pinterest.


We walked through the Paw Paw Tunnel (even though it was "shut down").

We ate lots of good food.

But mostly we just got to hang out and play.  I got some cuddle time with baby Graham.  Andrew did some rough housing with Uncle Doug.  Aaron (and his team) won a few rounds of Tri-Bond.  All in all, it was great.







And we even managed to get a picture of all the cousins sitting together.  That was seriously an accomplishment!

October 18, 2013

10 Months

So this post is a few days late, but I think I deserve a break- I'm still trying to unpack from our move without ignoring my very active little boy.

10 months.  Wow.

As I look back at the past month, I can't really think of anything new Andrew has learned or done.  But he has gotten better at everything.  He's a champ at eating anything we put in front of him.  He climbs on top of things I thought were out of reach.  He has mastered the stairs (going up) and can even do it so quickly and quietly that I sometimes can't catch him until he's several steps up.  His third tooth (first one on top) just popped though.  And he can stand for several seconds without support- until he realizes what's going on and he sits or falls down.

It has been a whirlwind of a month and Andrew has been amazing.  Moving is tough but he has adjusted so well.  He was in a pack and play for a few nights, even took naps at other people's houses, and moved into his new room.  He rules the house and knows it, playing with everything he can find- whether it's a toy or not.

We sure love seeing Andrew grow and learn every day.  And I guess it's time to start thinking about a birthday party!

New things for Andrew this month:
3 Teeth
Stairs
New House!
First Cold

Doctor Who is his favorite.







Cousins- these two weigh about the same.  She just turned 2.



September 27, 2013

Our First House

We bought a house!

It was a short sale, so it's been in the works for a while now, but it's finally done. The house is ours!

(By the way, "short sale" is just about the worst name they could have come up with for this process. Just saying...). 

So be prepared for some before and after photos- I'm no interior decorator but this house has been vacant for a while and is in need of some love.

So I'm off to get started!

September 15, 2013

9 Months In, 9 Months Out

Well it's been 9 whole months since this little bun left the oven!

Andrew has spent a lot of time this month perfecting the skills he gained last month.  He is now an expert climber, getting up (and in) boxes, and even getting both feet up into the spaces of the baby gate.  He's gotten really good at getting himself down from his little green chair without falling.  And even when he does fall, this boy is pretty tough.  I've seen him faceplant on the carpet and get right back up without even a whimper.


He has a tooth!  It popped though in the last couple weeks on the bottom.  He seemed to be a little cranky close to naptime and bedtime for a few days leading up to it but otherwise the teething went well!  I'm hoping we get just as lucky with his next teeth!  Actually we think one more in coming in on top, but it hasn't poked through yet.

At his doctor appointment this past week, Andrew was cleared to eat regular food!  The doctor said he can eat pretty much anything but nuts now.  So he's started some more finger foods like cheese and bits of bread.  I think he's really enjoying being able to eat more things- he loves the cheese especially.

Aaron and I are both "Mumumumum" right now.  It's so funny, whenever he wants to be picked up he'll come to one of us saying Mummmummum" and climbs up our legs.  I don't know if I can really claim that he's saying a word yet, but it sure is cute.

I think this boy is super close to standing on his own and then walking!  He's been cruising for a while now, using the furniture to walk.  And just the other day he was standing up at the baby gate and he let go- he stood there for a solid two seconds before he plopped down onto his bum.  I really don't think it will be too long before I'm chasing a walker instead of a crawler.

One of his favorite "toys" right now is a door.  Seriously.  If I leave any doors open (to the bathrooms or bedrooms) he crawls as straight and as fast as he can just to sit and swing the door, sometimes even pushing it closed.  I expected him to love boxes and paper, but this one surprised me.

We also switched out Andrew's car seat this month.  He hasn't quite outgrown the infant seat yet, but he's big enough and active enough that we pretty much never used it to carry him anymore.  It just stayed in the car, so there was no reason not to switch him into a convertible seat.  I think he likes the new one a lot!

Andrew is 30th percentile for weight and 50th for height, so he's just now growing out of the 3-6 month clothing.  He's pretty much wearing 6-9 month pants and shorts, but he can still fit in most of his 3-6 month onesies, though they're getting tight.

We sure love seeing this boy grow as he explores his little world.  It's hard to believe he has already been out for as long as he was in.  This summer has completely flown by!

New things for Andrew this month:
Tooth
Finger Foods
Standing
Met Newest Cousin
More Adventurous Climbing
New Car Seat