Weekend in MN

I think it's about time I write a new post, so here goes...

Life is basically back to normal with our little family. Sometimes it's almost as if nothing ever happened (except for the fact that our entire world was rocked to its core only a few weeks ago...). Elijah has completely recovered, and then some! He is better at walking, starting to even run a little bit, but he mostly just gets too excited and falls on his face... He is talking more, maybe not saying anything we can understand, but he knows what he's talking about and that's all that really matters to him at this point :-P He can also point out most everything he plays with if you name it. He also knows where his belly, nose, ears, eyes, and mouth are. He refuses to say "touchdown" anymore, but we still try sometimes :-)

This weekend Chris had drill so we finally made it back up to MN for a visit. Thursday night Elijah got to see his grandma and he was very excited about that. He made sure to ask her what everything was by pointing everywhere and saying "dat". The rest of the weekend we stayed at Darren and Alaina's house where Elijah just roamed around and played with random stuff while Alaina and I had some girl time. On Saturday we got lucky and got some free passes for the MN Zoo from the library so we went to the zoo for a few hours. Elijah refused to take a nap the whole time we were there, even though he was totally exhausted, he didn't want to miss a thing. I think his favorite part was when we went underground and could look at all the tropical fish through the glass. He just stood there and stared and made "Ooohhooohhh" noises. We also got to visit great-grandma and great-grandpa and uncle Chris and auntie Lisa and his cousins Sophie and Abby. All in all, it was a very exciting weekend :-)

Here is a picture of me and Elijah sitting on the turtle at the MN Zoo :-)

So let's see, the excitement of the day today is when I cut Elijah's fingernails. It was extremely traumatic and he screamed his lungs out. But man, I gotta cut that kid's nails, they are like razors! Plus he is not a gentle boy, I have been scratched more times than I care for. And I have to cut them constantly because they grow so fast and he can't seem to hold still so then I have to hold him down, and then the screaming comes... Crazy kid. That's all for now! :-)

Happenings

So I know it has been quite a while since my last entry, but things have been rather hectic. Now it's 10:30 at night and my husband is gone and my baby is sleeping so I have a moment to myself and I'm only kidding myself if I actually try to go to sleep right now... So I might as well update my bloggity blog :-)

I am currently in Walker, MN staying at my parents house with Elijah. Chris is in Arkansas at Sniper School for not one, not two, not three, but FOUR weeks... So far it has been four days and I miss him terribly! Especially when I have a moment to myself and can actually think about how much I miss him... He's been able to call every day, which is fantastic! Much better than in Iraq when I never knew for sure when I would hear from him. Plus he's in the United States which is kind of great as well :-P So it sounds like he's having a good time so far. They are working him hard, but I'm sure it's only going to get harder. He is going to get a major butt whooping while he's down there, it'll be interesting to see how the phone calls progress over the weeks...

So Elijah and I are staying in Walker and so far we have been keeping busy. My sister just moved into a townhouse in town so we've been "helping" (as much help as I can be when I have to watch every move Elijah makes) her with that. My parents are remodeling some rooms in their house so it has been busy around here as well. I had to take my car into the shop today because although my check engine light has been on for as long as I can remember (I just ignore it), it started flashing at me when I was driving the other day. It's one thing for the light to be on, but flashing? Probably not good... So I had it checked out and there's quite a bit wrong with the car, but nothing that's going to make it explode anytime soon, so I'm content with leaving it as-is. I also got an oil change, because I needed one, I figure that's a good enough reason. It was such a blessing though, over the phone they said they were going to charge me for both the oil change and for checking the check engine light, but when I got the bill it was just for the oil change - sweet! Thank you Lord for that little bonus!

Well I was going to write more but I can't stop scratching my hands so I gotta put something on them to ease the pain and itching. Going to see a dermatologist June 29th - really hope he can fix me!

I'll try to update more often with hopefully some more exciting things, like all the fun stuff Elijah does now. Coming soon...

Update

So Chris left today to go to drill for the weekend and I missed him the second he walked out the door. I thought for sure I'd be sick of him by now, but I just can't help but the love the guy! :-P I tell ya, it is great being married to your best friend :-) I know, mushy, mushy, yeah, yeah...

So things have been going pretty well lately. Elijah is growing like crazy. He's really starting to get taller and I can see that he's thinning out a lot while he's stretching out. It's so crazy how fast the time has gone by. When I'm holding him in my arms he feels like this huge kid, not a little baby... He's wearing size 2T shirts now. Yeah, and he's 8 months old. Granted they are a little bit big, but the 12 month shirts are too small and I don't have anything in between. What a little chunker :-)

He is sooo close to crawling, he can taste it! He gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth and he scoots backwards a lot. But to go forward, he's still stuck on the army crawl with belly on the floor, but he is getting better everyday. Of course, he's going through kind of a stinker-butt phase right now and wants me to hold him all the time, so we aren't getting too far. Today was a really rough day for him, he was just really fussy all day. I'm not sure if it was gas, teething, growing pains, or something else altogether. The kid's got some troubles. But really, I can't complain, he is such a good baby. Sure, he has his moments, but all around he's very peaceful and joyful which is a HUGE blessing for us.

I'm having a hard time getting him to eat baby food. He freaks out if I try to put a spoon anywhere near his mouth. He does love finger food, but all he really ever has is cheerios and peas. I'm not creative enough to come up with good finger foods and he isn't excited about it enough to really eat more than a few pieces. It's frustrating me a little bit because I would like to get him eating real food regularly so that it will be easy to wean him when the time comes. I do NOT want to breastfeed forever. I think breastfeeding is fantastic, but it definitely has a limit.

So that's what's new with Elijah... As for me everything is about the same. I stay home and take care of the baby of course. I'm anxious for better weather so we can start getting outside more. Yesterday it was beautiful so Chris and I brought Elijah outside and they sat in the yard while I raked - even got some blisters on my hands :-) But then today it was nasty out, but tomorrow is supposed to be nice again so maybe we will do something outside tomorrow. I am SO excited for summer to come!

So Chris is still going to school and doing the military thing. He was in the application process for the police department but he just got the "thanks, but no thanks" letter from them the other day, so that is a no-go. We were praying about it really hard, so we know now that it wasn't what God wanted for him and we are just thankful that we got an answer from them and didn't have to wait any longer without knowing. So now he is starting to think about other jobs. It's going to be difficult since he's going to school full time and he has to leave the whole month of June for sniper school. But we are just praying that God will show us where to go and what to do. He knows better than we do :-)

Yeah, that's about all for now. I need to get in bed and get some sleep since I won't have Chris to help me with the baby all weekend (yikes)... Ciao!

Nothing in particular

Bloggity blog blog - Here I am to blog some more. Baby is napping and the other Baby is doing homework - practicing piano to be exact. So, alas, I'm back at the computer. I can see out the window straight in front me and it is snowing... giant white flakes of misery. Apparently we are supposed to get 3-6 inches. Not cool.

So let's see, what kind of exciting things have happened lately? Well I finally caught Elijah in the act of sucking on his toe and snapped a quick picture which is on facebook, kid's so stinkin cute I can't hardly stand it! He started this new thing today where he kind of chews/sucks on his lower lip and makes funny noises. Not sure why, but it kinda makes him look like a turtle...

Chris doesn't have school today so he's been doing a lot of homework, fun, fun. We actually got out of the house today though, headed to the always exciting Walmart to pick up some generic diapers - oh yeah. Plus I got to pick out a treat because I cut Chris' hair today and he knows how much I hate doing it. I do it because it's worth it to save the money and, not to brag or anything, but I have perfected the military "high and tight" haircut. But it drives me nuts because his hair gets everywhere and it sticks to me and it's just a big ol' mess. So yeah, he allowed me to get myself a treat at Walmart. I have such a wonderful husband :-P So I got a box of chocolate fudge cookies from the bakery - yum! We also made a run to the bank because - praise the LORD! - we got a check in the mail from school yesterday. So now we can pay our bills this month which is fantastic :-)

So I've started going tanning because I have heard this will help my hands, which are covered in what I've always thought was eczema but I'm not entirely sure because it has gotten so bad in the past month that I wonder if it's something more serious... beside the point. Anyway, I've only gone a couple times so far so I haven't seen any results yet. But funny story about this tanning salon... I go in and I sign all the health stuff and give them my info and pay for my package and everything and then the lady tells me that they will ask for my last name when I come in each time to look me up in the computer, and then, get this, they will have me give them my fingerprint - yes, my fingerprint - to make sure I am who I say I am. In a tanning salon! Isn't that weird? In retrospect I sort of wish I would have said no and seen if she still would have let me go there. Just really bizarre I think to have to give your fingerprint for a tan...

Oh and I just realized this morning that it's my birthday in a little over 2 weeks and I'm going to be 23, which is so weird to me! Well I'm going to go bother Chris until he pays attention to me...

Blogging

So I've decided to start a blog (obviously). I don't know if anyone will ever read it, but I'm going to do it anyway for my own personal enjoyment. I keep telling myself I want to start journaling, especially since I want to keep record of all of Elijah's new accomplishments, but I just never get around to picking up a pen and paper. It's so much easier to type, plus I sit at the computer for a good portion of my days, so it all works out. So here's to the beginning of a new blog - yay!

So Chris is up north today and I'm missing him pretty bad. He's actually in Moorhead getting his head shrunk - he has to do some psych evaluation in order to become a sniper for the guard. So we are finally going to have proof that he is, in fact, a whacko. But ya gotta love him! :-) So he's only up for the day and it was just too much driving to bring Elijah along so we stayed here in Iowa and so far it's been pretty boring. I'm doing laundry today, yippee. It was a little embarrassing because I'm in men's pajama pants that are covered with Pepsi logos and a green tank top that doesn't match in any sort of way and of course a delivery guy had to come to the door... *sigh*

Elijah has been really irritable lately and taking lots of naps today so I'm hoping that he is finally gonna cut some teeth already! I brought out some new toys for him today, some blocks and stuff and he was very excited about those this morning. This week he had peas and pears for the first time and really liked them both. I also gave him some little chunks of cooked carrot last night from my dinner and he worked really hard at trying to pick them up. He would get it and then go to put it in his mouth and completely miss and then it would be stuck to his face or his hand... poor kid.

Well I am pretty hungry so I'm going to go find some lunch, ciao!