Gaining Weight

After Joseph's last doctor's appointment, we were given instructions to try and feed him more. So that's what we've been trying to do. More hot dogs, peanut butter, eggs, cheese, etc. Unfortunately, he's entered the stage where one day he'll eat a lot of one type of food, and then next time we serve it he has no interest in it.

One month later, I think we can safely say that the daily Pediasure drink and extra higher calorie snacks have helped Joseph to gain a bit of weight, but won't know how much for another 2 weeks when we go back to the doctor's office to check. One thing is sure though...

when it's mealtime, Molly is all about the tasty morsels flying off the tray, and she's certainly gaining the weight that Joseph should be! After he's eaten enough to take the edge off any hunger he might be feeling, it's time to share... over and over and over until we just give up on him eating at least as much or more as Molly.

Oh well. I guess it's a fair trade for all of the "pillow-ing" she does for him. I swear he's decided that laying on the ground is much nicer when you have a soft spot to cuddle on, and they spend plenty of each time just like this!

We've also made a breakthrough with sign language! Joseph now knows and makes the sign for milk, although so far it really seems that he uses it more to mean "drink." At least he's very clear about making the sign repeatedly until we offer a sippy cup. I think he's also got the sign for "more" figured out as well, but that one is a little difficult to recognize. Especially if he already has something in his hands (which is frequently the case).

Since he doesn't really seem interested in speaking English, I think it'll be handy to watch him learn more and more signs as his language skills develop!

So Close

Sorry, no pictures this time. :( Friday was our 5 year anniversary, and Joe decided to take the day off/work from home. What a fun treat! Of course, we didn't really get to do anything terribly exciting - I worked on painting my grandfather's cabinet (yes, the same piece of furniture I've been refinishing for over a year now), Joe did some work, and then we went to lunch at a pizza place that had the old car rides. Hence the picture in Joe's post.

Friday afternoon Joe came home from a haircut appointment with a gorgeous flower arrangement in a beautiful blue and white glass vase I had seen a month ago and really liked. I was really surprised! We then ran to Lowe's to buy tiles for the laundry room and hardware for the bathroom drawers - really romantic, aren't we? Finally it was time for our true anniversary night. Ashley and Mikael watched Joseph so we could go out.

We ended up seeing Limitless in a cinema suites theatre, which basically means you get to sit in a super comfy recliner chair and have wait staff like a restaurant, so you order off a food/drink menu throughout the show. It's a fun twist on the old "dinner and a movie" date. Except that when you condense your dinner and movie into one two hour block, you're done before 9pm and wondering what to do with the rest of your night!

We opted for cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory, one of our (ok my) favorite splurges. Then, not wanting to go home early, we decided to go bowling. Yes, bowling for an anniversary! Whatever, it was actually a lot of fun. Joe won all three games, even after having to bowl "granny style" when his wrist was too sore from bowling all of those strikes and spares. Oh well.

In other news, we had really planned on moving back home this past weekend, but the walls still weren't finished as of Friday afternoon. Sigh. Yesterday they got back to work and accomplished quite a bit - they sanded all of the walls, which produced crazy amounts of joint compound dust. The painter started painting the bathroom, so they'll be out of the room when the tile guy returns later today. I stayed late at the house last night priming the walls of the dining room, living room and spots of the kitchen than need to be repainted.

This morning I returned to the house to meet a tree trimmer (the power company had stopped by to upgrade our electrical service and decided that a few trees in the backyard need to be cut back before they'll run the new lines) and discovered our bathtub sitting in our front yard.... Turns out the workers tried to carry the 500 lb cast iron tub through the front door, and it was going to be too difficult. I had pulled up in the middle of this whole process, right before they decided that it would have to go around the backyard, turn the tub sideways through the door in the screened porch, and through the french doors in the dining room before heading up the stairs. I'm glad we had 4 guys available, and it appears the tub made the trip ok, even though I'm sure those guys could use a night in a hot tub and a few drinks after hauling that thing all around the house!

Our built in cabinets were delivered this morning, and are ready to be painted. They are a lot bigger in person than I expected, and should provide great storage opportunities in otherwise unused space. The tiling should be finished in the next couple of days, just in time for the vanities to be delivered, stained and installed. It's getting so exciting seeing all of the details come together! Every night this week I'll be working at the house, painting, cleaning and organizing, so that the entire first floor is as finished and ready for us, and more importantly, Joseph, to live in just a few days.

ELEKTRO-MOBILTECHNIK

No, really. That's what it is called.

Wet Walls

This first weekend of spring was absolutely beautiful here. Although it was a little rainy on Saturday, Sunday was blue skies, breezy and upper 70s. A perfect day to play... inside? Well, if you're me and have a willing husband to watch the baby, it sure was.

Saturday afternoon, after spending the morning picking out carpet and showing Ashley's house to the new buyers, I worked for a few hours to count the thousands of pieces of marble tiles we had purchased. I picked them up earlier in the week, but there were so many boxes I didn't have a chance to sit down and go through everything to inventory it all. So that's what I finally had time to do. Fun times, let me tell you. At least I know it's all there!

Sunday I decided it was finally time to finish painting the downstairs bathroom. It has looked like a construction zone train wreck since it was "finished" in early January, with paint swatches on the wall, no light switch covers, goofy trim, etc.

Joe and I had picked a new, darked paint color, but had never found the time to paint the room. I figured it would only take a few hours to finish, not counting on having our neighbor Carmen come over and help me pick paint colors for the upstairs, and needing to take a dinner break. Oh well. After some good scrubbing, here's how the bathroom looks this morning:

 As you can see, I still have to finish the trim, touch up the ceiling, and we have all of the little detail work, like installing door hardware, hanging mirrors, towel bars and toilet paper holders. The workers were going to get the door frame re-hung (since adding the new I-beam this door is one of those that no longer closes properly), and hopefully patch the cracks in the walls in the next couple of days.

Although it's moving at what seems like a snail's pace, the upstairs is coming along nicely. The workers were at the house for most of the day Saturday finishing up hanging drywall and putting the first coat of tape and mud on the walls/ceilings.

I'm standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up in this picture.

The north bedroom, view from the doorway.

 The north bedroom closet with pocket door frame installed, and cut-out for the bank of built-in drawers.

 View of the loft space and master bedroom door, taken from the door of the north bedroom. The smaller opening is where the access doors for the air handler are going to be located.

This is the view of the bathroom, standing in front of the window, looking north. You can see the chimney in the distance. The door to the bathroom will be hung next to the shower wall.

This is the toilet space, with the pocket door framed in. It's rather small and dark, but at least there's some privacy, right?

This is the view of my closet, taken from inside the bedroom looking west.
 

 A different view of the master bedroom as it's taking shape.

As you can see, there's still plenty left to do and to clean before we'll be ready to move back in. We're still shooting for moving most of our stuff back this weekend, and possibly staying there starting next week, depending on how quickly things progress this week. Our biggest concerns right now are the dust from drywall sanding, finishing out the bottom of the staircase so Joseph doesn't fall right through, getting all of the first floor doors hung properly so they all close, and hopefully painting all of the first floor spaces so that we aren't trying to do that with the little guy walking around and bouncing off the walls. We'll see what happens. :)

Achievement

Joseph passed! What, you may ask? His swim lessons, of course! :) Last night was our final class, and at the end each kid received an achievement certificate declaring his/her proficiency in a number of skills. I'm not so sure I'd call Joseph proficient at anything other than blowing bubbles, splashing and the full body shiver, but we had a good time nonetheless.

Our biggest surprise came last night when the instructor wanted the kids to "dive" for the sinking toys. We figured there was no way Joseph would get this skill. He shocked us, though, when we showed him the bright pink ring sitting 6 inches under the water. His response? Reach as far down as he could, and when it was time for his chin to go under the water, start blowing bubbles till he grabbed the ring! No prompting necessary! Of course, beyond that he figured out that if he just turned his head, he could grab the ring and keep his face out of the water, but baby steps people, baby steps.

We figure we'll continue to take trips to the pool so he stays comfortable with being in water. Hopefully we can find an indoor pool with heated water!

Some Craftiness and a Tooth

So before I forget, since I haven't written any of these dates in his baby book yet, Joseph cut tooth #8 on Friday!

Another first this week - swim lessons! We signed him up for a short spring break parent & child (or two over-excited parents and child) lesson, which meets for 30 minutes Monday-Thursday this week. So last night we packed him up and headed over to the pool. The water is rather chilly, even though it's indoors, probably because it's normally an outdoor pool that the city just covers with a dome durting the non summer months, so no heater. Joseph was a little fussy about the whole thing before "class" started, but once we got him moving, he was much more excited about it. He particularly liked the parts where he got to splash in the water, and be dragged around on his belly like a fish... I think we might have the makings of a future swimmer!

The best part? He came home, eat a lot of dinner, slept for 13 hours, woke up happy this morning and didn't fuss while actually eating his breakfast! If 30 minutes in the pool each evening is what it takes for him to start eating, then that's what we'll do!

And this is a little late, but I went a bit overboard with the craftiness for our Disney trip. Besides the group tshirts we all made, I wanted to make a few more things that I knew would come in handy. Last year when I was traveling with Joseph by myself, one of Joe's sisters suggested taking a small pillow so I had something to make the baby sleeping on me trip more comfortable. Great suggestion, but it was really hard to have one more bulky thing to carry on the plane.

This time around, I decided just to make my own pillow, with an attached loop so I could secure it to my diaper bag when it wasn't being used:

It took about 5 minutes to sew and since I couldn't find the travel pillow I bought last year, I just used the stuffing from an old pillow and filled it while we watched a tv show one night. So much easier, and it definitely got used!

I bought an umbrella stroller off craigslist for $10 for the trip, so I didn't have to worry about our nice stroller getting damaged on the plane or potentially lost at the parks. I have learned that I hate trying to push a stroller while carrying/wearing a bag, and found a tutorial online for a messenger bag style diaper bag with smaller straps that could be secured to the handles of the stroller.

I found some fun all weather fabric, a good pattern (since I'm not ready for most freehand sewing projects yet) and spent a few days the week before the trip putting this new diaper bag together.

Best part? I was able to completely customize it for everything I wanted. I have two deep pockets on either end, sized perfectly for water bottles or sippy cups, a large pocket on the back, two large pockets on the inside, and a few sewn in d-rings for attaching toys/keys/etc with carabiner clips.

You can see in both the pictures the black webbing and bright pink clips, my solution for being able to adjust the straps for both the skinny umbrella stroller handles and the much larger bar on our jogging stroller. The stitching certainly isn't perfect, but it worked out great for the trip, and I'm still using it at home.

Next up? Pictures of the quiet book I made for Joseph. MUCH more time intensive and still not completely finished, but I'm really excited about how the pages I've made so far have turned out.

False pretense

Lisa probably said she was sharing, but I only count one spoon.

- Joe VI

San Francisco

After our fun trip to Disneyland, Lisa, Linda, Joe and I took the kids to San Francisco to visit with Joe 5 and Joe 4. 6 and I had been hoping to meet up with Joe 4 since 7's birth so that we could get a multigenerational photo with all of the living Joes, and this side trip worked out really well, thanks to Joe 5. A weather delay caused us to arrive a bit late, but after checking into the hotel and renting cars, we headed to visit Joe 4.

Unfortunately, he has been having health issues, and was in the hospital while recovering from pneumonia. We didn't get to stay long, but did manage to take some photos, thanks to Lisa! We'll post them soon. Sunday was also Joe 4's birthday, so Dave and Diane had driven in to visit.

After the hospital we all headed to Grandma Ruth's home for a fun dinner. Ethan and 7 fell asleep in the backseat of the car and managed to sleep for the first half of dinner, while Linda, 6 and I took turns checking on them. Ruthie and James had plenty of energy to power them through the evening! We were able to visit with Grandma Ruth, her husband Dave, uncle Dave, aunt Diane and Joe 5 for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel for the evening.

Monday morning we let the kids sleep in as much as possible, and after a yummy breakfast in the hotel diner, packed everyone up so we could head into the city. Joseph had fun playing in the car while we loaded up the strollers and carseats.

He goes crazy whenever there are buttons to push, so he was having a blast with the dash board! And since receiving his little red car from Aunt Jennifer for his birthday, he really gets the steering wheel, and will sit there pretending to drive for as long as we'll let him.

Once again, Joseph and Ethan fell asleep for a quick morning nap in the car. James and Ruth? Not so much. Once we parked and decided to wake the kiddos up, we headed to the end of the cable car line for some pictures and a round trip on the cable cars.

It was really windy, so we opted to sit inside. The kids had fun people watching and looking out the windows when the crowds weren't too big.

After the cable car, we headed down the road from Fisherman's Wharf to Pier 39. We all split up a bit to do some sightseeing and shopping. I hadn't dressed appropriately for the chilly, windy weather, and found a hoodie on clearance for $15 - I was happy to pay for it and wore it the rest of the day! I also felt bad that Joseph's overalls kept riding up, so we tried to find a blanket or tall socks to cover up his legs. After a few misses at stores, we found a pair of black and white striped Alcatraz baby pants, and layered him right up! Joe also picked up a 49er's hat, since he'd been looking to buy one for a while.

We then met back up with everyone and watched the sea lions lounge around on each other for a bit.

On our way to see the sea lions, we discovered a neat two story carousel at the end of the pier. We knew Joseph would love it, so 6 took him on a ride on the ground level, while everyone else took a trip at the top of the carousel.

Joe kept trying to get 7 to wave at me, and he'd finally start after passing me by and stop just before making the full revolution back around again.

By this time, we'd worked off our breakfast, and stopped for a yummy lunch of clam chowder in bread bowls. The kids ate some bread and fresh fruit, and Joseph had a lot of fun playing with the empty fruit cup.

Ruthie decided to check him out, and they were too cute not to film for a bit.




We wrapped up our trip to SF with a stop at Ghiradelli Square for some crazy good ice cream sundaes and free samples of chocolate. We decided to head back to our hotel before getting stuck in rush hour traffic, and put the kids to bed early, as we all had early morning flights back home the next morning. It was definitely a fun and memorable quick trip, and I'm so glad we were able to see Joe 4. We hope there will plenty more opportunities to visit again when he's feeling better and up and moving again!

Our Insulated Space

I'm going to go a little out of order here, but things are getting exciting at the house so I wanted to post about it. Unfortunately, while we were gone, very little progress was made, so we're about a week behind schedule now. The workers pushed on though, and took advantage of the nice weather last week, getting a lot accomplished. The key was to get the electrical, HVAC and rough framing wrapped up, so that the space could be insulated. That time finally came on Friday...

Here's the north bedroom, with the recessed wall for built in drawers on the left and the crazy closet on the right. The square footage of the closet isn't too bad (the space is 5' wide), but since we have to deal with the sloped roofline, it'll be interesting to see it completely finished.

This is the view from just inside the north closet looking south. The opening on the right wall is the access for the heat pump, with the door to our new bedroom in the center of the space.

Here's one view of our new bedroom. We are really happy with the new ceiling, even though it was a totally unexpected budget buster.

This is Joe's closet, with a recessed cavity for built in drawers.

Here's the shower space. We'll have a bench built in against the back wall, since the ceiling height comes down to just over 5'. We also have recessed niches in the wall to the right for bottles, soap, etc. By buying all of our fixtures online, we managed to save enough in the budget to splurge on body sprays, which you can see roughed in on the left wall.

Here's the view of the rest of the bathroom. The shower is to my immediate right, the toilet room to the left. The tub will be just under the window, and those are storage/linen closets on either side of the window. The vanities will be on the same walls as the closets.

The view of one of the storage closets. I'm standing in front of the window, and you can see the rough plumbing for the shower and one vanity on the right side of the picture.

Sheetrock gets installed this week, and hopefully it doesn't take longer than a week to finish that task. We ordered all of the tile for the bathroom on Friday night and have to figure out how we're going to lay out the tile for the shower space.

In anticipation of moving in soon, I worked on organizing the basement Saturday, and took a full car load of things to Salvation Army. I also brought a car load of stuff back to Ashley's house for Joe and me to go through - old photos, trinkets, etc that were taking up a lot of space. We hadn't gone through most of it since moving into the house, and really needed to evaluate and condense it down, since Joseph's stuff, along with holiday decorations, sports gear and extra kitchen stuff filled the newly built shelves! It's been kinda tedious, but fun and makes it seem like we're getting that much closer to moving back home!

Disneyland trip

Warning: this post is long, picture and video heavy! :)

We just got back from a crazy fun long weekend vacation! Last Wednesday, Joseph and I flew out to LA, meeting Jill, Gary, Lisa, James, Ruthie, Linda, Ethan, Mike, Susan and Angelina (Gary's daughter and granddaughter) for a 3 day trip to Disneyland. Dan and Joe met up with us on Thursday evening, after our first day at the park. I'm in the process of going through all of the pictures (we only took a few hundred!) and posting them, along with some of the funny videos we took. 14 people, with 5 kids under 5 was definitely a challenge, but I think we all had a great time.

Knowing full well that Joseph probably isn't going to remember any of this trip, we tried our best to balance the time spent in the park with fitting in his "normal" naps, which usually meant a mid-morning nap in the park, in my arms. Especially when he'd look this relaxed (read: sleepy) before we'd even left the hotel in the morning!

They redid the Small World ride recently. We heard it was nice... :) never made it in for a visit!

Thursday morning we headed to Fantasyland for the first part of the trip, and hit many of the popular rides - Dumbo, the Carousel, Pinocchio. By that time, Joseph was ready for a nap so we hung behind while the rest of the group took the train ride and had some snacks. He wasn't really ready to wake up, and was happy to cuddle with Nana while we headed off to the next ride. Nana didn't mind much either. :)

After he was more awake, she tried to share her cotton candy with him. He didn't really know what to make of it, and had more fun just feeding it to Nana!

After a few more rides, we headed over to Toon Town to try and meet some of the Disney characters. Joseph had a blast running around and exploring.

 

And pretending to hide from me. :)

He also had a lot of fun making faces at people sitting behind us while I tried to feed him some lunch.

He didn't really pep up after eating, so I took him back to the hotel for what I thought would be a quick nap. Nope! Three hours later, we managed to meet back up with the group for a few early evening rides on Pirates, Nemo and the Haunted Mansion before heading back to find Dan and Joe and bedtime for the little guys.

The next morning we were able to get into Toon Town an hour early, thanks to passes we had for staying at the Disney resort hotels. The characters put on a little show, then took their places around the area for pictures and autographs.

Joseph wasn't really sure what to make of the experience at first:

But then he warmed up, especially after watching his cousins do much better.

Ethan was absolutely adorable at getting to meet Mickey, and I had to post this video of him getting his picture taken. He looked totally starstruck!

Since he'd missed the first day at Disney, Joe wanted to take Joseph on some rides. We headed over to the rocket ships where Joseph started entertaining the other people waiting in line.

Getting ready for take off!

If you enlarge this picture, you can tell they were both having a great time!

After a few more rides, we headed to the Disneyland Hotel and Goofy's Kitchen for a lunch with the Disney characters. The food was amazing, and we must have had our reservations at the end of the lunch because the restaurant wasn't crowded at all, which was so nice.

We told them we were celebrating Joseph's 1st birthday, so they brought a cupcake and sang to him. He then wiped his plate clean and started flirting with Alice!

Periodically the restaurant would play music and encourage the kids to get up and dance. They were too cute not to record!

After lunch, Joe took Joseph back to the hotel and he managed again to get a 2-3 hour nap in. I headed over to California Adventure with the rest of the group and rode a few rides while waiting for 6 and 7 to meet back up with us.

At the end of the night we headed back into Disneyland for the Jungle Cruise ride and the Tiki Room, one of Joe's favorites. Turns out, Joseph enjoyed it too! Of course, he was getting a little slap happy by this point, and just about anything was making him giggle.

Friday night we put the kids to bed, and Mike stayed behind so the rest of us could go back into the parks. We got some ice cream on Main Street, then watched Captain EO and did some of the big kid rides - Indiana Jones and Big Thunder Mountain before the park closed at midnight.

Saturday was our last day at the parks, so we got up early. We headed first to the castle for family/group pictures.

Lisa brought her professional camera to take good shots of everyone, along with documenting parts of the trip. We are so lucky to have her and her talent!

Joe decided to get Joseph a churro while we waited for everyone to finish pictures.

He loved it! (No surprise there!)

He also got really good at walking during this trip. Sure he still stumbles, but he's definitely a walker now, no crawling unless absolutely necessary! Such a cutie.

We all decided to head our own ways to make sure we were doing the rides we wanted. Joe, Joseph and I headed back over to Fantasyland for a trip on the train and a few rides on the carousel, which was defintitely Joseph's favorite Disney ride.

Joseph started to melt down and napping in my arms didn't work as well as the first two days, so Joe and I both headed back to the hotel for a nap and lunch. Once again, 7 managed to sneak in a 3 hour nap... guess who's buying blackout curtains for his bedroom once we get moved back in at home! Those things are magic!

We met up with the group in California Adventure, and played in A Bug's Land for a bit, before waiting for our fast passes for California Soarin' to become available. I had brought some bubbles, thinking they might come in handy while waiting for rides, so we had some fun just hanging out and playing with bubbles.

We then went to the back of the park, hoping to squeeze in a ride on Mickey's Fun Wheel, a giant ferris wheel with cars that will swing around as the wheel turns. The line was deceptively long, and it took some effort to keep Joseph entertained.

Until we got to the end of the line, when Joseph learned it was fun to try and climb between the gate posts. After that ride, we learned that Dan had found front of the line passes to the new Toy Story ride, so we all hopped on. It's a great 3D ride where you pull a trigger to shoot at targets. It was so fun!

There was time for one more ride before Joseph was totally ready for bed, and luckily for him, another carousel was right next to the Toy Story ride.

Yes, I know I shouldn't have been laughing, but he was mouthing the pole like the kid in A Christmas Story and it was just too funny.

 Once again, after all of the kids were in bed, Jill and Gary stayed behind, so the big kids could go out for a nice dinner and hit Disneyland for the last few hours. We had such a great time!