On the new site, be aware that sometimes I write in the slightly exaggerated style that I find so amusing on some of the “mommy blogs” I read. Part of the reason I haven’t mentioned the site here, is that I know I have a tendency to complain too much about how challenging it’s been to manage Jack, and I could just picture some of you reading my posts, and thinking, “there goes Randa, complaining about her kids again.”  LOL But, in the end, I began to feel silly not as least mentioning it as there are things like the vintage posters I bought for the boys’ room this weekend that I wanted to show y’all, but I’m not going to post in both places.

Thanks, as always, for visiting us here in this little corner of the web. We have so many friends and family that we’re separated from. We miss you all and appreciate being able to connect with you in whatever way we can.

When mealtime comes, David turns into an eating machine. At dinner especially, he will just eat and eat, screaming between bites if they don’t come quickly enough, until finally I just cut him off. I can’t believe how much he packs into that little tummy of his. He is getting all 4 top teeth at once to match his bottom 4. He weighed just over 20lbs at his check up yesterday, falling in the 50th percentile.

These before and after shots show why Jack goes to the barber with Daddy or Poppaw. WalMart is good for cheap cereal and eggs. Hair cuts? Not so much.

Funny how kids change so suddenly at this age.  A month ago, he wouldn’t try anything new to eat and nothing would persuade him. He wanted “Pinch” fries and chicken nuggets anytime we were out to eat and nothing else was even an option, and then suddenly, he’s ordering a cheeseburger from Sonic AND eating the pickle that came on the burger! He’s eating oranges and an occasional bite of banana, and many other things he’s turned his nose up to in the past.

Jack is steadily becoming easier to manage, and I’m really appreciating the fact that he’s growing out of some of the issues that come along with being a toddler. He loves to play games on the computer, and regularly surprises me when I check in on him and he’s playing some game that looks really complicated and using the space bar, arrow keys, etc in a way I never showed him how to do.

We inherited a trampoline from the prior owners of this house, and Jack is enjoying jumping on it (until someone buys it from my Craigslist lising that is).

We’ve had a big month of progress! David is eating really well, and enjoying picking up Cherrios and other finger foods and is a big fan of crackers. He is army crawling everywhere and pretty close to actually crawling. His main target whenever he gets going is wires. He LOVES to play with wires and I have a big nest of them in front of my desk. If I leave him alone for even a minute, I can count on coming back to this:

We’re on a really good sleep/nap schedule, taking 2 good naps a day and sleeping from about 8pm-almost 7am. He rarely wakes up in the night, but when he does it’s easy to get him back to sleep.

Jack regularly gets to play with my best friend’s kids, Ethan and Abby, and the house is rather chaotic when they’re all running around having a good time. The above pic is a relatively quiet moment, as Jack watches Ethan playing big boy games. He looked so sweet there, resting his head on Ethan’s shoulder.

Jack is learning to read, and we’re working through the Bob Books, which are excellent. He is interested some days and others, not so much. These days everything is a tragedy of epic proportions. He bonks his hand a little and comes to tell me, “I bonked my hand and got a bruise! A big, big bruise!” He can’t find a toy and exclaims, “Oh no!! It’s gone FOREVER!! What are we gonna do?”  So funny… so hard not to laugh when he says things like that.

There are lots of wonderful things about the house, and it’s definitely the kind of place we’ll enjoy staying long term, Lord willing.