Curly is Walking!...and a Giveaway

So I am a terrible blogger and I forgot to write a post about 1 1/2 weeks ago Curly finally started walking regularly. He was a little over 15 months old. I have to admit every month past 12 months I was getting more and more anxious for him to start walking. I would go on the internet and search to make sure it was still "normal" for my child to not be walking yet. Even though my Dr assured me it was fine and there was nothing wrong with my child. And a week and a half later I am already wondering what I was so anxious for. Didn't I learn my lesson the first time...apparently not! Now when we go to the store he doesn't want to ride in the cart. OH NO! He's a big boy now he wants to WALK. But he doesn't walk beside me he runs around and gets into anything and everything he possibly can. And his sister just laughs which encourages him more. How people with 3 or 4 or even 5 kids do it I have no idea. Also I just ordered some cloth diapers for him and I just got them in the mail. I can't wait to start using them. I've always been pro-breastfeeding but cloth diapering I have not. Not that I don't think its a wonderful thing for the environment and the baby and all that stuff but I just didnt think I could be organized enough to wash diapers all the time. Until lately every time I buy a box of diapers and open it up I cant ignore the "chemical" smell that pours out of the box. Literally I cringe actually putting the diaper on his bottom thinking about if I can smell the chemicals how much is actually absorbing into his baby bottom. I know I sound like one of those crazy natural parents that only feeds her kids organic foods out of the garden in my own back yard but I assure you that I am not. Its just a personal observation that I have had lately of disposible diapers. So next time you open a box of Huggies let me know if its just my imagination.


So my little Boo's 4th Birthday is coming up before I know it. I can't believe that she is going to be 4 in 1 month. I hate how fast they grow up. We've decided since she has 2 years left until Kindergarten we are going to do some preschooling at home with her this year and then send her to pre-K next year. I am starting to embrace being home with them each day and I feel more and more like I want to be more involved with her learning. Now I am not going to homeschool her or anything like that but I think that it wont hurt for me to do some preschool type teachings with her. And we are also starting her in Hula classes and a program called TuTu and me 2 days a week so that she gets the social interaction that will help prepare her for the class environment. And just this past Sunday we started attending the Nazarene Church here in Kona so she is getting a classroom type environment in the Sunday school there. She definitly does not lack the eagerness to learn and she has a very open mind. I think that will be very helpful for her when she does start school. She does like to talk though...which reminds me a lot of myself when I was young. I loved (and still do) to talk. I can still remember spending most of my 1st grade in the hallway because I interupted my teacher during class. I hope that she can work through this but for now it does help her make new friends in an unfamiliar world. Which I am grateful for.


I am getting more and more settled into my role as being a stay at home mom. Even though I still know that this is not a completely permanent thing I am still learning to embrace it and take advantage of this time with my kids. I am learning to be more creative in ways to play and just learning myself that I don't have to do things the way that everyone else does. I feel a sort of freedom and confidence building inside of me that has never been there before.


So I am not sure if really anyone is reading my blog lately since I don't write very often and I don't have any comments. So I decided to do my own little fun giveaway. Just something I thought would be fun. I am not sure all of the aspects of it yet but I will tell you what I do know. I will be giving away some fun little 'pieces of Hawaii' and I will be putting this on my blog in 1 week from today and the giveaway will go on for 2 weeks and then I will pick a winner on September 6th. Please check back on Aug 23rd for all the details on the giveaway.


Oh and my wonderfully amazing husband finally gave the go ahead and I purchased my first DSLR camera. I have been having a blast taking some pics of the kids and I can't wait to start taking some pictures of our beutiful new surroundings. Here's a few I took last week :)

Please come back in a week to check out the details of the giveaway!

Aloha

Quick (Late Night) Update

Ok so its only 8:13 pm but the hubby has had to be at work at 6am all this week and somehow Boo manages to wake herself up before he leaves for work and then she doesnt go back to sleep. So guess who's been up at 5:30 every morning with her.

We have been in Hawaii now for almost 2 months. We already have moved to a different apartment then we started out in. The one that we rented sight unseen was a 2 bed 2 ba that we thought could work for us but ended up being WAAAYYY to tiny. The whole one wall in the living room and kitchen was a mirror so the pics that we saw of it online before we rented it were definitly deceiving. Luckily for us we did not have to sign a lease agreement because the place was/is for sale so that was great. We are now in a 3 bed 3 ba townhouse and LOVE it! Its perfect for us. And we are finally beginning to settle in.

We have done tons of traveling around the island checking out all the wonderful things to see and explore here. There is so much we still have not seen yet. I will post some pics when I get a chance but if you want to see some you can go to my facebook page. Unfortunately we lost out camera about 3 weeks ago so I havent been able to take any pictures other than with my phone and it takes terrible pics. I am hoping to talk hubby into getting a Digital DSLR. I sooo want one! But they are expensive.

So currently the Kileaua Crater is slobbering out some lava so we went to check it out last weekend but all we ended up getting to see was the smoke from the lava. It had already flowed too far from the road. The day that we were there though it did burn a house down. Which was the first house in the current flow. Sad but the people that live in these homes are VERY aware of the risk to where they live. Hopefully they were able to get a lot of their personal belongings out before it was too late. We also drove up to the crater which is actually about an hour drive from where the flow is going on..crazy huh. It was really cool to see. Cannot even begin to describe it. Just amazing the magnatude of it all.

Well time to go for now. I promise as soon as I get a new camera (or find the old one) I will get some pics up.

Aloha

Curly's 1st Birthday!

Well today is ending up being a lazt day so I might as well blog. Mostly family attended since it is his 1st birthday and he doesnt really have any "friends" yet. So much fun watching him eat his cupcake. He would not remove his hands from away from his mouth until every little crumb of cake was in his mouth. It was adorable! The rest of the story in pictures

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And I just have to add this picture..It wasnt his birthday but its just too cute not to post: Playin in the dryer

And last but not least. Baby Curly almost a year ago. Amazing how much they change in just 1 year:

Catching up!

So I have been totally absent from my blog lately. Actually I have hardly been on the computer at all except for listing pretty much everything we own on Craigslist. Sometime in March Jeff was offered and accepted a job in Hawaii and since then life has pretty much been a whirlwind of trying to sell our home and get things situated for the move. We leave on June 6th. We are very excited to say the least. A little nervous too of course.

Curly has just about started walking. He can stand forever without holding onto anything and he can take about 4 steps before he falls down. He is such a mama's boy and loves to cuddle up to me anytime I pick him up. Since he is now 1 year old I decided to try and start weaning him which I soon found out Curly was not going out without a fight...a big fight. So very quickly I decided with the stress of the move and everything else going on I am not even going to attempt to start weaning him until after we are moved and settled in there. He says mama, dada, hi, bye and a almost understandable "thank you". He loves his sister and idolizes her every move. When she is sent to her room for being bad he crawls to her door and waits for her to be allowed out. Uncle Brian has nicknamed his "Loie the french kisser"..dont ask. haha.

Also of course I will be posting pics of our new home as well. Right now we are renting a condo until we can buy a home which will not be until we sell our home here in Ohio. Which hopefully will be soon. We have a very positive realtor which has helped me to stay sane. Worrying about it is not going to sell our house any quicker so all can do is be patient...and pray.

Here's a few of pics from when my husband went out for his interview.







ALOHA!

Bed to Crib Part 1

So last night I committed to getting Curly in his crib and not giving in. He is 9 1/2 months old and has not slept in his crib for 1 day of his life. Yes he's slept in there for the occassional nap or two and for maybe an hour in the evenings a couple of times when someone has watched him while my hubby and I went on a date. But for the most part he has been curled up right next to me in our bed. Which I love! But he is just getting way to big and way to mobile.

So I decided to try a method of the cry it out method (I hate this method but I have tried just about everything else and NOTHING has worked) So actually the night before last I put him in his crib, let him cry for 5 minutes, went in and soothed him and left. Let him cry for 10 minutes then did the same. Increasing the time I let him cry more and more each time. This didn't work. He just kept getting more and more upset and the crying got harder each time I left. So I brought him back into our bed and called that night a bust.

So LAST night I decided to go ahead and let him cry for 25 minutes (max) before going in to soothe him. Well for 20 minutes straight he cried pretty hard while my heart broke clutching the baby monitor. Wondering what permanent damage I was doing to my sweet little boy. After 20 minutes he kinda went down to a whiney humming so I decided to let him go as it didn't seem as horrible as the full blown crying and I was worried if I went in to check on him the full blown crying would be all that would come of it when I left again. So I let it go on. This went on for about 20 more minutes and little 20 or 30 second blurps of full blown crying in between there a little bit. But after about 40 minutes of all of that there was silence and he was asleep. I DID IT! And him and I both survived it. AWESOME! Few hours later he woke up and I nursed him and put him back in his crib. He only cried for about 5 minutes and he was asleep. When he woke up at 5 am I put him in the bed. Mostly because I missed him like crazy and I just...well I'm weak! Now I am worried I totally messed it all up by putting him in bed with me this morning. But we shall see tonight I guess. Wow I really hope that this is it. I have been stressing about this for literally months.

I'm sure noone will actually read this post because its pretty boring but I wanted to write it mostly for my own records.

Oh and he is acting like the same little boy today as he was yesterday so I feel that the crying didn't do any permanent damage. I know it sounds dumb but this was a true worry of mine.

And as soon as I get around to it a more detailed post about our cruise is coming. Just been kinda busy around here.

Caribbean Cruise 2010

We are home. We had an amazing time on our 7 day cruise. For now I am just going to give mostly pics as I am still busy spending time with my little girl that I missed like crazy while we were gone.





More to come. I promise. Just wanted to get some pics out there. Check back for more about our trip.

What a week...

So it's Saturday night. I am reflecting on my first week as a SAHM. It was interesting. I really didn't lose my patience with Boo until Friday which I was kinda suprised at myself for. Honestly I didn't have anything to lose my cool about...until Friday (more about that in a minute) When I told her to do something she did it. When I told her it was nap time she would ask me if daddy would be home when she got up which I would reply "very soon after you get up he will be home", she would smile at me and lay her sweet little head down and be out for the next 2 hours. Curly was happy as a clam. I think mostly for the fact that he didn't have to take a bottle all week. Mommy all the time. He's such a mama's boy and I loooove it! I do think it is going to be a long winter inside though. It hasn't gotten over 20 degrees outside since I think sometime going on 2 weeks now so even bundling the kids up as much as possible I still hate taking them out in this cold. It sucks!

So Friday Boo was getting a bit of cabin fever I think. She was running around the house like a crazy girl almost the entire day. Wouldn't listen to a thing I told her to do. You get the picture. To sum it up it was a long day. I was glad when hubby got home and I could get away for just a few minutes for a deep breath...and quite frankly just to be able to go to the bathroom alone was a bonus.

Other Stuff From My First Week:

There is a girl. Beautiful woman, 2 young children (ages: 2 and 3 months), married, 28 years old. When she was pregnant with her 2nd child she noticed a lump in her breast, Dr's said most likely a hormonal thing from pregnancy, baby was born. Couple weeks later..diagnosis: Stage 4 breast cancer. She died Friday morning. My mind won't let it go. I have this incredible sadness for her family and her children. I also keep thinking about how she must have felt before she died. She was a Christian so she knew that she would soon be in the arms of her Lord and Savior which for anyone is an amazing thought because ultimately I believe that is where we all long to be. But again we are still human too. Knowing that you will never get to see your children grow up and they will never remember how much of an incredible strong mother they had. Only from pictures and stories will they know her. That to me is so sad! I pray for her family and ask that anyone that reads this would do the same.

On a different note: Since little Curly is now going on 9 months old he is getting a little too mobile to be sleeping in our bed. He wants to crawl to the edge and check out what's beyond the 6 foot boundaries of the mattress and I am not getting too much sleep. So we are trying to get him to sleep in his crib and its torture. I hate the cry it out method so I have been trying all kinds of other things. As of right now he will sleep the first few hours of the night in his crib then he wants me and he refuses to go back to sleep without being cuddled up next to me. And me being..well me..I give in and he's in our bed the rest of the night. Its a work in progress.

Well its getting late and I am tired. And I wanna check my facebook account so I am signing off. Take care and live like you're dyin.

Bye for now