"More details please..."

Hey all!

Sadly, I don’t have much time to blog at the moment, but I just had to post these pictures – I think they're hilarious!

I have talked to Luke about Daddy leaving soon – but I guess he wanted more details! I was sorting some books the other day, and had stacked them up in our bedroom. I guess he went in there and picked this one out to read in his wagon! Too funny!

I’ll blog more later – things have been busy busy busy lately. I hope all is going well for you all!

Happy Easter Part 2

I was thinking about some of my favorite Easter memories and thought I would share a few on the blog.

I can remember as a child sitting around our kitchen table in our cozy little house with a pot full of hard boiled eggs, cups of food coloring water and egg cartons. It was always so much fun to gather as a family and color Easter eggs together. We would try to create different colors, designs and art work. My parents would hide them for us and we’d always go looking for them. It was always so much fun, but I think what made it even more fun was that we did it together as a family.

One year I remember my mom and dad had cut out construction paper footprints that lead us all around the house. Along the footprint path, a little Easter gift was placed. We had so much fun following our designated footprints to find our treasures! I’ll never forget doing that.

Another year I remember my mom coming in the bedroom Easter morning. The money had been a little tight but my parents wanted to give us a little gift regardless. I can remember very clearly my mom sitting on the bed saying, “we just wanted to give you something…” They had been able to purchase two cassette tapes of music and we each got one. It was so meaningful to us – even as a young child I remember that meaning a great deal to me.

When we could, each of us in the family was able to get a chocolate Cadbury egg. It was always such a treat! One year, instead of eating his, my dad split his Cadbury egg in two, put it on a plate and hid a half in each of our rooms. Then we were able to go look for them and eat the chocolate yumminess! It meant so much to us to have a little extra treat!

We always celebrated Easter together as a family and my parents always taught us that Easter was a time of celebrating Christ’s resurrection. I will always look back with fondness at the Easter's past. I only hope we can teach our children the joy and hope of Easter in the same ways our parents taught us. We are so thankful for their example.

The last few years I had the complete joy and blessing of being able to direct or co-direct the Easter Productions in our church in Manhattan. It brought me great joy to be able to share the Easter story through drama, music and multi-media. It was an amazing experience to share this time with our good friends who were always so willing to participate. I will never forget these experiences and will always look back at them as an incredibly amazing time. I loved being apart of each production and I loved working with each and every person who participated. I have so many wonderful memories of these Easters – from putting scripts and music together, to making videos, to creating – building – and decorating props and scenery, to practices, to the performances, to the fellowship with one another, to the Easter Day meals after a performance with friends.

I would love to hear about your Easter memories and/or traditions, so if you have a moment, post a few memories/traditions in the comments section. I would thoroughly enjoy reading them!

Since we’ve all been so sick, we sadly weren’t able to attend the Easter service today. After Luke’s afternoon nap, we dressed the boys in their Easter outfits and took some pictures though. We also gave Luke and Will some Easter presents. Tonight we will be sharing the Easter story with Luke and Will during our book reading time. I look forward to the traditions and memories we will make as a family throughout the years.

Luke seems to be feeling much much better. Will is still pretty miserable – and Chris and I are as well. =) Hopefully we’re not too far behind Luke in getting better!

I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed Easter!




The boys in their Easter outfits...





Easter gifts from Guka and MeMe (the ones we ordered haven't come in yet, but it's mostly new books.)


Cars!


Will got a bunny and a little book set from daddy and mommy...


Elmo does the chicken dance...


Candy!!!


Luke trying to share his candy with Will...


Look at that bunny!


Luke eating an M&M (pronounced "num-a-num...")


Smile!



Precious boy!


Cutie in overalls!



I wasn't able to find an Easter basket, so we used a bowl...here is Luke sitting in it!


Luke's pants were a little loose around the waist (he's lost a bit of weight since he's been sick) so he ended up taking them off - too funny!


Luke looking at his little Bible...


Beautiful boy!


Holding hands...

Happy Easter!

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy and blessed Easter!

It is so good to serve a Risen Savior! As I sit here trying to think of what I want to say about Easter, I find myself without adequate words to describe how blessed, humbled and grateful I feel for the sacrifice our Lord Jesus Christ made so many years ago. So since I can’t think of the words, I’ll post this reading that expresses the message of Easter so eloquently.


He has risen!
He has risen indeed!

Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?

Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Christ has indeed been raised from the dead,
The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead,
He cannot die again;
Death no longer has mastery over him.

For this very reason,
Christ died and returned to life
So that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life.
He who believes in me will live, even though he dies;
And whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

Thanks be to God!
He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.


Happy Easter!

Our destiny is to be sick…all the time…

I’m not sure why, but we just seem destined to be sick. Just as Luke was getting over his last sinus cold, he caught another respiratory virus along with another stomach virus. Will had yet to completely recover from his last sinus cold and caught the respiratory virus right after Luke did. And of course, Chris and I both have had a touch of the stomach bug and we’ve both started getting the lovely colds. When will it all end?! I feel so bad for Luke and Will – poor boys have been sick with one thing after the next since before Valentines Day. ‘sigh’

So needless to say, I’ve kept quite busy with two sick boys. Chris continues to remain very busy at work as all the last minute details are completed for going downrange. He has a 4-day this weekend which we plan to use to try to get better and to do a mountain of paperwork and errands that need to get done before he leaves.

Here are quick updates on the boys:

Luke:

Luke’s appetite has suffered greatly with this last round of sickness, which is really frustrating since I felt like he was starting to do better with his eating. Anytime Luke gets sick it seems to really affect his eating. I hope that his appetite will soon return so we can get some meat on those bones!

With this last cold, Luke has learned how to blow his nose. Right now he likes to do it because it’s something new – it’s pretty funny! We’ll hold the Kleenex to his nose and say, “blow” and he’ll give a little blow with a smile.

The other day, Luke started jumping with both feet off the ground! He’s leaped around and attempted to jump up and down before, but this time he finally got both feet off the ground at the same time. He was so excited! He’ll crouch all the way down, hands on the floor, and then with all his might he’ll juuuuump into the air. He’ll do it over and over again.

I’ve also noticed that he has started to color in a different way. Before he would just make a mark or two on the page, but now he’s starting to circle his crayon around the page, pick different colors, and even start coloring specific objects on the page. It’s obviously not in the lines yet, but it was pretty exciting that he’s learning how to color a picture. Of course I think Chris and I have just as much fun coloring as he does!

Some of the things he does is so endearing. He’ll try to give his puppy a drink from his sippy, or feed a stuffed animal a cracker. He’ll cook a meal on his grill kitchen and try to put shoes on his doggie. It’s pretty funny to see him mimic so much of our behavior.

Some of his behavior is not so endearing though. =) He’s started throwing tantrums a lot more then usual. It may be because he’s sick and doesn’t feel well…at least I hope that’s the reason. He’s very adamant about what he wants, and if he can’t have it – tantrum time!

Luke is still loving on his little brother although the more he gets used to Will being around, the more we have to remind him to be gentle. He’s not usually intentional with his roughness – he just wants to be able to play with him. Lately he’s started trying to read his books to Will – too cute! He’s very willing to share his toys (for now) with him. He also likes to have Will sit in his lap. He’ll try to pick him up (luckily Will is to heavy for Luke to be able to do so – otherwise I’d worry about him dropping him) so we’ll tell Luke to sit down and then put Will in his lap. Luke loves it!

Will:

Poor Will has been sick for half his life so far. I’ve tried to get him into the doctor for the last three days, but it’s impossible to get an appointment. His cough sounds horrible and I’m very suspicious he might have RSV from the research I’ve done. From what I’ve read though, there’s not much a doctor can do for a mild case of RSV. Obviously for a serious case they give them medications and hospitalize them. Will hasn’t had a fever so we’ve just been keeping a very very close eye on his cough. If he gets any worse we’ll have to take him to the ER in Landstuhl (since we can’t get him an appointment here.)

I started doing tummy time with Will. Since he’s been so congested the past few weeks, I hadn’t been putting him on his tummy much (though before he got sick way back when, he was taking some of his naps on his tummy.) He loves being on his tummy and I really want him to be able to work on strengthening his neck, so I've started putting him back on his tummy again. I feel really lucky that he likes tummy time so much as I know a lot of babies don’t at first. I know Luke didn’t like it at first!

I have no clue how much Will weights at this point. Thankfully he’s still been nursing fairly well despite his many colds. Speaking of nursing, I’ve very slowly started to reintroduce dairy into my diet. I’ve had a little bit of cheese and chocolate (wow do I miss chocolate!) He seems to be doing better with it, though it’s hard to tell for sure at this point. I do think it’s promising though!

Will is quite alert. He loves to look at his play gyms or mobiles. He’s even started trying to swipe at the toys on his play gym. He’s smiling more and more and making those way cute cooing noises. He still likes to be held a lot – but we’re slowly managing to lay him down for longer periods of time…though he’s not always happy about it.

Alrighty, I’m gonna post this. It’s taking me on average 3 days to write a blog…and I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll take a lot longer once Chris leaves. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll get anything done (other then taking care of the kids) when Chris leaves! Hehehe!

Luke's expression says it best - "I'm tired of being sick!"

Lately, the weather has been more of what I expected Baumholder to be in the winter. Now that it's spring, it's cold, windy and snowing allllll the time. Here is Will all bundled up!

This never happens - Luke fell asleep on his truck chair...

Will doing Tummy time!

And lift that head!

Luke trying to help Will do tummy time...

Luke entertaining Will...


Will sitting on Luke's lap...

Luke reading Will a story...

We got Luke a booster seat so we could recline the highchair and let Will sit at the table during our meals. That way Chris and I didn't have to hold him and try to eat at the same time. Luke was very excited about getting to sit in his big boy chair. Chris had just taken it out of the box and put it together in this picture. Luke started sitting in it and putting the tray on even before we got it on a chair.

Here he is at the table. We did raise the booster seat higher after this picture was taken. At first he was about eye level with his food! Now that it's higher, it fits him just right. He can even climb in and out of it...and is working on strapping himself in too!

Will in the high chair (the back is reclined)... the funny part of it all was that we didn't really have to adjust the straps that much! Luke is so skinny and Will is so big that the strap setting worked for both of them. Will enjoys being able to sit up and see what’s going on – it’s made meal time much much easier.

Luke has started counting to 3. I'm not sure he completely understands the concept of numbers yet - but it's so cute to hear him counting even if he is just mimicking us. Here he is reading one of his counting books...

Will sitting up and alert...

Happy Boy!

Just a cute picture of Will laying his head in Luke's hand...

Update:

We ended up taking Will to the ER last night. He started wheezing badly and breathing really fast so we were pretty concerned considering he’s still so young. I called the nurse advice line and they said to take him into the ER. So at 7pm, we all loaded into the car, drove in the nasty snowy/sleety weather and headed for Landstuhl. Once we got there it took foooooooorever to be seen. I think it was close to midnight when the doctor finally got in there. They did a rapid test for RSV which came back negative, but then the doctor said a lot of the rapid tests come back negative and then when they culture them later, find that they were actually positive. He went on to say that he wouldn’t be surprised at all if he did have RSV. Since his wheezing was pretty bad, they gave him a breathing treatment and had a chest X-ray done. Thankfully the X-ray came back fine. The doctor prescribed an inhaler for him to help with his breathing. I think we left the hospital at around 1:20am in a bad snow/sleet storm and got home at 2am. Luke was a mess. He did pretty well for the first few hours at the ER – but because we were there waaaaaaay past his bedtime (and because he’s still sick as well) he had one meltdown after the next. If it wasn’t that Chris and I are miserably sick as well, we might have been able to entertain him a little better. All in all, we all made out ok though. I’m just relieved that Will is ok.
Alrighty, now I’m going to post the blog. =)

The Toddler Bed...and an update

Saturday, March 8th:

We’ve been planning to switch Luke over to a toddler bed for some time now. We tried last weekend by converting the crib into a toddler bed, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with how high it had him off the ground. I was afraid he might hurt himself if he rolled off. So we decided to purchase a toddler bed. They only had one style and one bed left at the PX here, so we took it. Chris was able to pick it up during the week and put it together today. Of course Luke wanted to help. =) After we got the bed set up, we stayed in Luke’s room so he could adjust to the bed. He would climb up in it and we would say, “show us how you go night-night” and he would lay down and we would praise him. We kept telling him how he got to sleep in his “big boy” bed now and how exciting that was. His afternoon nap was our first try. We put him down, said “night-night” and left the room. He got up around 4-5 times in all before falling asleep. It was amazing! We actually used the Super Nanny technique. The first few times he got out one of us would go in and tell him he needed to get in bed and go “night-night.” After a few times doing that, Chris just went in and put him in bed without saying anything to him. For some reason that seemed to do the trick. Super Nanny really knows her stuff! So he slept his whole nap in the bed. When it was time for him to get up, Chris opened the door so he knew he could come out when he was ready. He happily trotted out of the room well rested. He thinks his new bed is just the coolest thing ever. When we got home from grocery shopping, he ran into his room (with his coat and hat and shoes still on from being outside) and jumped into bed saying, “nigh-nigh nigh-nigh.” It was so adorable! Tonight is the BIG test…to see if he’ll sleep in the bed through the night. We put him down a little while ago and he’s still in bed – that’s a good sign! We’ll see how the rest of the night progresses. Anyway, I just wanted to post a few pictures of this big milestone! It just doesn’t seem possible that Luke can be old enough to be sleeping in a bed.

Monday, March 10th:

Luke did AMAZING his first night in the toddler bed (Saturday night.) He laid down right away and went to sleep. We kept listening to see if he had gotten up, but he stayed in his bed the whole night! We are so proud of our big boy! He continues to do really well with his bed. Last night he did roll off the bed and fall on the comforter I had placed on the floor for just such an event. He wasn’t hurt and thankfully doesn’t seem to remember it as of this morning (though last night he wasn’t very happy about the whole ordeal.) I’m just so excited this transition to the “big boy bed” is going well. Now if only potty training could go this smoothly! =)

Tuesday, March 11th:

Luke continues to do amazing in his bed! This has been such an incredibly smooth transition from the crib – I’m amazed! I can’t say how much we’re proud of our little boy. I can’t believe he’s old enough to be sleeping in a bed. They grow up so quick!

In other news – we are all finally mending from the last round of colds. Will is still pretty congested, but he seems to be feeling better. I’ve also found the missing puzzle piece in his stomach issues – caffeine. And if you know me, you know this was quite a blow! I am a coffeeholic. The difference is undeniable though. So the elimination now includes, dairy, peanut butter and anything caffeine. Thankfully I’ve found decaffeinated coffee, tea and coke at our commissary. Though I am suffering through caffeine withdrawal, at least I can still drink some coffee, tea and coke…though it’s not quite the same without that wonderful dose of caffeine. But Will’s stomach feels much better with these eliminated. He still wants to be held around the clock – and putting him down almost always results in a screaming fit like you wouldn’t believe. I have managed to lay him down a few times for a few minutes without a fussy fit. I hope that means we’re making progress. He continues to eat often and is quite heavy (14 pounds on our home scales – but that’s probably not the most accurate reading.) I think I’m going to have to pull out the 3-6 month old onesies! We also had to go up to size 2 diapers a few weeks ago. He’s smiling more and more and his personality is starting to show through.

Luke is talking constantly. He repeats everything we say – it’s so funny! He tries so hard to play with Will. He’ll bring his toys to Will and lay them on him – or he’ll try to offer food or his sippy to Will. If he see’s Will’s pacifier, he’ll try to jam it into his mouth…usually backwards. =) When we’re out in public, he will often times go over to the car seat look at the people around us and proclaim to them, “Brodur.” It melts my heart! He does seem to be going through a time of high defiance right now though. We’re trying to find and figure out what discipline measures work the best for him. I do think that this may be his way of acting out to get attention. Will has been very demanding of my attention and though I try hard to give Luke as much attention as possible, I can’t give it like I used to. Though he doesn’t take anything out on Will or act jealous around Will – I think this may be his way of saying – “Pay attention to me!”

Luke got an army hair cut yesterday (by daddy.) He wasn’t as thrilled about this haircut, but he endured through it. I don’t have any pictures of his new short cut, but I’ll post one soon. He looks so much older with his hair so short.

Chris is still staying really busy at work and I’m still really busy with the kids. The weather has been icky – really dreary and rainy…just like the usual weather here in Baumholder! =) I’m looking forward to some sunny spring days.

Well, I’m going to post this. If I don’t post it now, it may take me another 3 days to complete (since it took that long to get this blog written.)

Hope all is well with each and every one of you!

Until next time…


Luke and Daddy putting the toddler bed together...




Luke trying out the bed...



Luke showing us how he goes "nigh-nigh."


Luke and Will hanging out on his new bed...




Will smiling at Luke...



Daddy and Will...



Mommy, Luke and Will...


"You talking to me?"


Daddy, Luke and Will...


Mommy and Will...


"I am huge!"



The Family...


"Watch out Mommy! I'm gonna get you wet!"

Playing in Play-Doh...

Daydreaming about the next meal...

I was sitting on the couch with Will the other day and Luke brought me an empty bread bag. Thinking he had brought me the empty one I had just thrown away, I told him to go and put it back in the trash. When he kept saying, "bwead, bwead" I realized he must have grabbed the loaf of new bread on the table and dumped it somewhere...yep, that's what he had done!

Will sitting on the couch all snuggled up...


Our last snow a few days ago...

Luke wanted to share these toys with Will...don't worry, none of them were heavy...

For Uncle Randy! Luke insisted that Will wear this hat. If I tried to take it off, Luke would put it right back on. I guess he wants Will to play baseball!