L's Favorite Picture

Bath Time!

I don't want my child to be happy

I found this blog post on here. 

http://itsalmostnaptime.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-dont-want-my-children-to-be-happy.html

This is what we should really want for our kids....share your thoughts.

Dancing

Small World

Since we are moving and since most of our stuff will be in boxes for the next 5 months we've been going through everything and either throwing it out, putting in a garage sale pile or selling on craigslist.  So I've been listing lots of things on craigslist and I had an instrument that was just big and bulky that I had brought home from Indonesia and I decided I didn't need it and so onto craigslist it went.  Well the lady that stopped by to buy it from me came to the house and right away we both were thinking, "that person looks so familiar!"  Well we started asking each other questions to try and figure out how we knew each other and come to find out her son was in the bed right next to Lincoln when they were both in the NICU!  So we introduced the two boys and took some pictures.  Eli is such a cutie and doing great! 

Lincoln and Eli look a little bigger than they did 8 1/2 months ago!

We had so much fun catching up with Sheaukang and watching Eli crawl backwards! :)  Developmentally both Lincoln and Eli are doing great and we thought it was funny how neither of them had much hair!

 Lincoln and I with Jenny and Lily back in December :)

 It's been so great to see our friends from the hospital/NICU!  We've been able to get together with Jenny and Lily twice now and Lily is doing great! 

We are so thankful for great NICU friends like this!

8 Month Stats

Today has just been quite the eventful day: Hope is here for a visit until Wednesday, we found out Tyler will leave April 11 (yikes! but in a good way!), and then we had a Dr. checkup for Lincoln this afternoon.  This was his "6 month checkup" since that's his adjusted age and he's doing SO well!
Current Stats:
Weight: 14 lbs 14 oz. (he's got so much energy that he just burns off all the calories that he takes in!) He's in the 25th percentile on the preemie chart which Dr. said is just fine.
Length: 26 3/4 in. (12th percentile on Normal Charts)
Head Circumference: 17 in. (7th percentile on normal charts)

                             Hanging out with Kona

Our doctor was very impressed with how Lincoln was moving around so much and almost crawling!  She also saw that he has his first mild ear infection.  Apparently from what my parents tell me, I had horrible ear infections when I was a baby and tubes and all that fun stuff so I'm not really surprised that he has one but at least it's not very bad and we caught it early.  I noticed he was scratching his ears quite a bit but he never had a fever or anything.

 My Happy Boy :)

 Tyler was taking a nap and Lincoln wanted to wake him up

to play!

 That's all for now!  Our little man is just growing like crazy and I'm loving every minute of watching him grow up.  I do miss my little boy that used to like to cuddle though :(  The first year just goes WAY too fast!

We Accepted an Offer!

We accepted an offer on our house!  Well technically they accepted our counter offer after they put in a really low offer.  We're getting what we wanted so we're just so happy and thrilled and it sold so fast!  Now we're just praying that everything goes smoothly until closing on April 23.  We still don't have a date for when Tyler has to leave for the academy (we're guessing April 11 but just haven't heard for sure yet). 

The house selling so quickly was just another sign to us that this is what God's will is for our lives right now.  He hasn't just opened the door for this opportunity he swung the door wide open and is pushing us through!  It's very comforting to know that even though this is a huge change for us, God has our best interest in mind and apparently he has bigger things lined up for us than we can even imagine! 

So now we've been given lots of boxes (Thanks Pam and Vail!) and it's time to start getting packed up!  Wow, have I mentioned before how much I hate the process of moving and getting things put into boxes and then not knowing where everything is when you need to start unpacking?  Now add a crawling 8 month old to the picture and things get a bit tricky! 

I know Lincoln has two very anxious Grandma's who just can't wait for him to move back up to Nebraska though!  It won't be too long now. 

For Sale

That's right, our house is officially on the market!  We got it listed on Friday and have already had 3 showings with great feedback and a couple possible people possibly really interested and another showing in an hour!  It hasn't been quite as hard to keep it spotless as I thought it would be.  We know we could have a showing at just about any time so we're doing a pretty good job working together to keep things put away and easy to clean quickly.  The only thing that's kind of hard is finding a place to go during the showings with Kona.  Not all of our friends would appreciate us bringing a dog with us to hang out at their home until the showing is over :)  But we've figured out things that will work and won't work.  Well just thought I'd keep you all updated, I better go finish some last minute tidying up! 

Pray we sell the house quickly!  That would just be fantastic! 

Splishin' and a Splashin'

Not in the bath tub this time in the pool!  Lincoln had his first experience swimming in a pool yesterday.  For his Physical Therapy he went to the hydrotherapy class that was offered at the Y and he had a blast!  It was funny trying to do things with him because he was too busy looking around at everything and everyone!  He sure loves to kick and make spashes in the pool!  We spend a little time in the Zero depth entry working on sitting and being on his knees playing with toys and then moved to the deeper end and did kicking and jumping into the water.  He was SO tired when we came home and just conked out. 

I have some swim trunks for Lincoln for this summer but they are still way too big to wear yet, so he just had the oversized (even though it was the smallest size they had) swim diapers.  This was also a big step for me, first time in a swimsuit in over 2 years (since I missed my summer last year) I was kinda scared for the people who had to see me, yikes! 

Video to Keep the Grandmas Happy :)

8 Months Old

Wow this year is FLYING by!  I wish I could slow time down.  I'm trying to enjoy it all but things are happening way too fast!  I had a newborn baby for 5 months so I'm used to Lincoln "growing up" slowly and now he's just growing like crazy!  Even though he's 8 months old we still go by his adjusted age (which is 6 months) for his developmental stages and when to start foods etc.  Lincoln is right on track with where the doctors expect him to be right now.  He still gets Physical Therapy once a month or so just so they can keep an eye on his development. 

Things Lincoln is doing right now:

-Almost sitting on his own!  He's SO close!
-He does his own version of an army crawl and he's starting to get into things a lot faster than I'm used to.  Baby proofing the house is right around the corner!
-Finally big enough to sit in his high chair to eat!  Before when we first started cereal his head was barely above the tray so we just fed him in his bouncy seat.
-His favorite food right now is still squash but he also likes carrots, green beans and he's not sure about bananas. 
-He is finally starting to sleep through the night entirely!  Just every couple of days though.  If I can get his to take 7 oz. of formula at 10pm he'll usually sleep until 8am!  But when he doesn't eat it all he's usually starving by 4am and then goes back to sleep until 8am. 
-He's eating solids twice a day (most days).
-Lincoln had his first experience with grass last week when it got really nice outside.  He just wanted to eat it all!
-Lincoln has a new "pose" as well.  He leans on one arm on his side and puts the other hand on his hip like he's a model or something it's hilarious!  Tyler isn't too fond of it though....haha.

I'm 8 Months Old!!

 I tried to get a picture of Lincoln's pose and this is as close as I could get.  

Just picture him putting his right hand on his hip and freezing like that!  It's so cute!

Really messy eater!

Cleaning, Cleaning and More Cleaning!

Not because we're extremely messy people but because we're SO close to getting our house listed on the market!  Tyler has worked SO hard on getting everything ready and all we have left to do is touch up paint and CLEAN!  I have a feeling that I'm going to be up to my armpits in dust rags, floor polish, clorox wipes and brooms from here on out until we get our house sold.  I keep telling Tyler that this process would be so much easier if we didn't have to LIVE in our house while we're trying to sell it.  Just living in our house day to day, especially with a baby, keeps it from staying spotless all the time.  My goal today and tomorrow is to get all the "deep" cleaning and organizing done so that when we have showings or an open house I just have to put things away.  Hopefully then it won't be too stressful but we'll see how it all goes!  The plan is to call our realtor tomorrow and get a time set up for her to come take the pictures and get everything squared away to get it listed.  YIKES!  I'm excited and scared all at the same time.  I know everything will happen in God's perfect timing (we've already had quite the training session this past year with Lincoln!) 

Well that's all for now....the cleaning supplies are calling my name!  I'll keep you all updated as we go through this process!

Amazing Deals This Week!!!

Ok as some of you have probably figured out by now, I'm addicted to couponing and finding great deals!  I'm almost to the point where if it's not $1 or under, I won't buy it.  Anyways I following quite a few blogs like this one and this one and they point out a lot of great deals or coupons that are available. 

This week Big Lots had a lot of great items on sale but you can't use coupons there so by taking the Big Lots ad into Walmart (or Target, but Walmart is less picky about price matching) and have them price match the items and then combine that with coupons!!  Here is the blog post spelling out how to do this and what coupons to use:

http://mylitterofsix.blogspot.com/2010/03/big-lots-price-matching-at-other-stores.html

The Olay Body wash wasn't part of the ad but has a $15 rebate so after the rebate I spent a total of $8.16!!!!
I got the Sorry game for $1 and since we already have one I will donate it.  And notice there are only 3 packages of skittles (they were buy one get one free) so I bought 4 but ate one on the way home! :)

I also stopped by Walgreens and got each of these for $4.70 each (Regularly $10.99 for the pullups and $7.99 for the wipes)

So I was on money saving high and thought I'd share my savings with you all :)  That's all for now.

Homemade Baby Food

So as I'm learning new ways to try and stretch our money and stick to our budget, I decided that buying baby food for Lincoln was starting to add up REALLY fast!  And he doesn't even eat that much yet!  That combined with the expensive formula made me really motivated to start making my own baby food.  I've also read that it's a lot more nutritional so......plus, plus!

Starting Lincoln on solids has been quite the struggle for us.  So much of a struggle that he saw a Speech Therapist to see if it was because he is tongue-tied or if he just isn't ready to eat or doesn't want to etc.  Well she concluded that it was probably because he is tongue-tied and he has a high palate which makes pushing the food to the back of his mouth in order to swallow very difficult.  I've noticed that if I can get him to smile then I can get the food farther back in his mouth (not far enough back there to choke him of course) to help him out with getting it back there and that seemed to help.  Up until this past week I had only tried sweet potatoes and cereal with him.  Well I decided to try a new veggie, so we got out the squash.  It was like NIGHT and DAY!!!!  Lincoln LOVED the squash and has since become a FANTASTIC eater!  I've been so impressed.  He is actually opening his mouth waiting for me so spoon more food into it which makes it great for me to get the food farther into his mouth so he can swallow it without any problems!  Yay!  So really it was a combination of the fact that he hated sweet potatoes and he couldn't push it to the back of his mouth. 


I bought my first ever squash and really had no idea which kind I was supposed to get, I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of squash!  I ended up with the winter squash since it looked the most like what I thought a squash was supposed to look like :)

I first had to cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds:

Then place halves face down in a pan and cover with an inch of water

 Next you bake in a 400 degree oven for 40 minutes to 1 hour - be sure the “shell/skin” puckers and halves feel soft then scoop squash “meat” out of the shell

Place squash "meat" into food processor or blender and begin pureeing. 

And......Voila!  It made two trays full of homemade squash baby food!  I feel so domestic! :)  hehe

Recipe/Instructions from:
http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/squashbabyfoodrecipes.htm

This site also has some fun baby recipes!
http://www.nurturebaby.com/

From what I've calculated making my own baby food is 1/2 the price of buying it already made!  Totally worth it!

After all of this work I would REALLY like one of these.  :)