5 reasons to love winter...

Because your house looks like this...

Because your garden looks like this

Because the street you live on looks like this....

Because your geese practically blend into the background....

And last but not least because your husband looks like this...he he he

love...

When I was pregnant with James I couldn't imagine how my heart could expand to love this new baby as much as I adored Alexander but I have to say it does! I am just so in love with this little man it is ridiculous! I love the way he just lays in my arms and stares adoringly up at me with his little hand caressing my face (until he grabs my hair that is...). I love his infectious laugh and his beautiful (as yet to be determined color) eyes. And the way he snuffles into my neck when I am finished feeding him. And the way he reaches for me when someone else is holding him and how he smiles at me when he hasn't seen me in awhile. Yesterday when I got home from work and I got him up he just gave me this wonderful sleepy smile that made my heart melt a little.

I love each of my boys in their own special way. I love when Xander wakes up first thing in the morning and he is all cuddly and cozy. I love watching him play with his stuffed animals (a new found fascination) and pet them and hug them. I love the way he will sit in your lap and turn the pages of his book. I love the way he tilts his head to the side as if to see the world from a different angle. I love hearing him say new words and trying to figure out what the heck they mean! And when he says "what or where" and throws his hands out to the side I love the way that he loves his brother. I was thinking about this the other day and realized that they are never apart! Frank and I are away from them when we are at work but the two of them are always together- whether they are home with me or home with Frank or home with Nan or at daycare they always have each other. I hope that that will foster a special bond between them. I wonder how Alexander will handle going to school and leaving his baby behind... They are so sweet together (when they aren't beating on each other- hence the bruise on James' forehead- but he is getting big enough to fight back). Frank had them in the playroom the other day and I swear they were wrestling with each other and James was egging Xander on!

Well I guess this is enough cheese for now!

Feed Me!!!!!

So James has been showing a real interest in food recently but the other night we were out at dinner and he was literally eating the plates. It was hilarious! He would reach out, grab the plate and literally shove it into his mouth. Luckily most of the time he was grabbing at an empty plate and we were at Pizza Hut so the plates were plastic but at one point he was sitting with Frank and just went for his pasta! I guess it mightbe time to consider some baby food but I hate that stage so much!It's so time consuming and messy and obnoxious! I guess I can hope that James will easier than Xander and I got rid of the cloth highchair for a vinyl replacment so that should at least make clean up easier. I just hate the point where everyone needs a bath after a meal. Why we can't just skip from breastfeeding to feeding yourself seems like a flaw in design to me!

See Xander has the right idea being a big boy eating with his fork and all! I can't believe how fast he is developing skills. He is just climbing everywhere - even on the kitchen counters! The other day he pulled the step ladder up to the counter, climbed up, and helped himself to some oreos- smart cookie! He's eating with a fork and spoon, albeit messily. He started his speech therapy last monday and has another session this monday. He was so good the last time- Emily, his therapist, had some wooden fruit that velcros together and he spent like 1/2 hour cutting the fruit, puttting it back together, cutting it some more. I was so impressed with his attention span and by the end of it he was basically saying "cut." He is saying more words for sure now. We have been trying to utilize the important words often so he really gets them and now he can tell us what he wants to a certain extent. He still isn't using distinct words- like joe-shmo off the street probably wouldn't be able to understand him- except for "ball" which is his favorite word by far- but he is clear enough that at least Frank and I know what he wants. "Milk" and "Bath" seem to be the 2 most recent additions. The last couple of nights that we have tried to put him to bed without a bath he goes upstairs and says "baaah", goes in to the bathroom and will try to climb into the tub full clothed! Apparently he likes the bath!

ps- not many pics of Xander recently b/c taking a photo of him is like trying to hit a moving target with a toothpick!

Speech therapy here we come...

So Xander had his evaluation for early intervention yesterday morning and it went about how we expected. He is age appropriate in gros motor, fine motor, self-help, and social skills. He is age appropriate in cognition with some omissions and language...well let's just say he isn't exactly age appropriate when it come to language. He was placing in the 8-14 month old range and all off his omissions in the cognition area were in regards to language- apparently with the developmental assessment tool they use receptive language is part of the cognition area where as the language section is all expressive language. So big suprise he qualifies for speech therapy which we will begin in the next few weeks. They also recommnede that we get his hearing checked to make sure that a hearing loss isn't the cause of his language delay. So the referral for that is also in the works. Fun times.... Although Xander thought it was pretty darn cool being the center of attention and having someone come and play just with him!

James is 5 months old!

I can't believe the little bit is already 5 months old- how time flies. He's doing well sitting up on his own, rolling over, enjoying tummy time more. Both his tear ducts were infected so he had some pretty nasty goopy eyes but with some erythromycin eye ointment they seem to have cleared up nicely. He was a much happier baby today than he has been for the last few weeks and last night anyway he slept for 4-5 hour stretches which is much longer than he had been doing. So hopefully the sleeping will continue!

chuggin along...

So we've just been chuggin along.... James has had goopy eyes this week and this morning woke up with full blown infected tear ducts on both eyes- so on the way home from work I will have to pick him up some eye drops. He's going to love that! I've spoken to the phone nurse at the MD's office 3 times in the last week! It's getting a bit ridiculous. On the plus side despite the goopy eyes he seems to be feeling better in term sof having a cold- he's back to sleeping 5 or so hours at a time so that makes me very happy! The other day he lay in bed and played with his toes and coo'ed I swear for like 30 minutes and then he just fell asleep. I love my happy baby! I can't believe he will be 5 months old tomorrow. In developmental news he is holding his own bottle and sitting up with minimal support.

In farm news we received our chicks yesterday from McMurrays. 30 baby chicks- eek! Well actually it was 31 but we had one transport casualty. So we had 25 brown egg layers, 3 silver laced wynadottes, 2 araucanas, and 1 unknown exotic chick- all female except the unknown rare one (it was free) which could be female but who knows at this point. We're not exactly sure which one died- I think it may have been one of the araucanas which would be unfortunate since we only got 2. The only ones I identified for sure were the turken (we have one), the light brahmas (we have 2 of those), and the silver laced wyandottes (there are 3). Other than that I haven't officially identified all of the other yet. I think we have quite a few white stars and maybe a couple buff orpingtons or NH reds- hopefully they will demonstrate some more definitive characteristics soon. We have 10 Khaki Campbell ducks coming sometime this week so that should complete the fowl for this year. We had one more muscovy casualty- the chocolate drake unfortunetly but at least we still have the black drake so we'll still get babies. But in any case we should have more than enough birds!

We have Xander's speech eval tomorrow morning so hopefully that will go well. Updates after...

2/15

my cutie....

lost in the shuffle

I swear the last couple of weeks have just disappeared on me! Both the boys have been sick and it has been sucking the energy out of me. I think everyone is feeling better now so hopefully that means that James will go back to sleeping more than 2 hours in a row and we can get back to life as "normal."

I have nothing much to report, we have spent a lot of time huddling at home recently. We did hire a contractor to work on our house- we are starting with the front door and the demolition of the hearth. Now we ahve to figure out where we want them to put all the brick and get that room cleaned out so they can work- and hope that when it comes time to move the stove they can actually move it without having to take it completely apart (b/c we're not sure it will go back together again!). Then assuming all goes well we'll go ahead with new windows and siding in the summer. I'd like to do the bath project while we are at it but then I keep coming up with all sorts of projects and I have to draw the line somewhere! although I will probably see about installing a butler staircase to the attic b/c somehow storage room is getting very sparse! Somehow we have managed to fill up all the closets in our house and the basement looks like a junkyard- some spring cleaning (and purging- difficult with 2 pack rats in the house) is in order this year!

We got new ducks- chocolate muscovys who were featured on the cover of the current issue of Backyard Poultry if you'd like to see them. Unfortunetly 2 of the newbies have succumbed to unseen forces- racoon, foxes or maybe Cassie... If they wouldn't fly out of their pen then they would be better off but what can you do! Unfortunetly one of the casualties was the drake so now we just have a black drake- so I guess it is a good thing we don't care about pure bred chocolates...Baby chicks coming on monday or tues- we got the brown egg layer assortment from McMurrays plus a few silver laced wyandottes, some aracuanas, and some khaki campbell ducks so we will have waterfowl galore! Hopefully we can train the little ones to stay in the pen so they don't get eaten! I'll post pics whent hey arrive- I'm hoping Xander will be interested in them- he loves to help me feed the birds as it is so I can't imagine that he wouldn't be interested in the babies. I guess maybe I should hope that he isn't too rough with them!