Bella, Gabe and Josiah

He took a step today. My life will never be the same! Stop growing up kid!  

My phone keeps yelling at me that it's about out of memory, so I'm trying to delete some stuff. It's really hard to delete anything, but I'm doing my best. Anyway, I was scrolling through my old pictures and I found this one. The original moose picture.  I had no idea when I started taking pictures of Gabe and the moose that my Gramps had started taking moose pictures with me! It must be a family thing?  

I now have a daughter in middle school. How did that happen??? To be fair, I didn't do this whole mom-thing the traditional way, so my time frame is a little off. Usually you're a mom for more than 3.5 years before you get a middle schooler... But no matter how the whole thing played out, the fact remains that I know have a daughter in middle school and I'm very proud of her. Yesterday was 5th grade graduation. Pat, Gabe and I, along with Gram and Gramps, all went to the school to watch. The librarian spoke and said lovely things about each of the kids. Then they all walked across the stage and got their graduation certificates. Afterwards, Dad and Gramps had to go back to work, so us ladies went out to brunch with one of Bella's friends and her mom. It was a great way to celebrate finishing up elementary school. While it's very strange to think that Bella is now a middle school kid (it nay take a bit to sink in...) she's accomplished so much and we're very

One of the best parts of having a baby is watching him learn all sorts of things that we take for granted. Tonight at dinner (while completely covered in food) Gabe discovered that his voice sounds different when he covers his ears. And it's even more different if you stick your finger in your ears. He spent a long time saying "Hi Da!" with his fingers in his ears, making confused faces. He's also discovered dogs. He hasn't spent much time around dogs, since we don't have one, and up until now, his major dog experience has been getting licked by an enthusiastic pug while stuck in his carseat. He wasn't so sure about dogs after that. That has all changed. At the graduation party we were at on Sunday there were a couple of dogs running around and Gabe thought they were wonderful. He would literally try and squirm out of our arms so that he could watch them. Now every time that he sees any sort of dog, he freaks out. He points and screams "Da!" and

Two months ago, we found out about Paige and Ruby. They were born at 24 weeks and they were very sick little girls. They both had brain bleeds and only time would tell what damage that would do to them. Ruby died when she was a couple of days old. I've never met these girls or their parents. But as I followed their story, all I could see was my little Gabe. This could have so easily been his story. How did we get so lucky that our baby avoided all of the normal preemie issues, and these girls got them all? I know it's not luck, it's Divine Providence. God has His own reasons and He saves some and others heals by taking them home. There may not be rhyme or reason, at least not in our view, but He has His reasons and His plans are always good. But that still doesn't stop me from asking why. Why did God save my little Gabe and He didn't save Ruby? For the last two months, we've followed little Paige as she got bigger and stronger. They even tried taking her off the

After a few slow days, the last couple of days have made up for it! Gabe for to go to the Capitol Building. He figured out that the finance chairman has the best job because he gets to play with the gavel! He tried to visit some legislators to make his opinions known. Unfortunately he picked a door that actually doesn't open... Yesterday Bella and ran the Mustache Dash. Gabe got to hang out with Gram and Gramps while we ran. I think I liked last year's eyeliner mustache better... Gabe got to eat watermelon. Clearly this is the best way to eat it... He also tried eating corn straight from the corn cob.  Truth be told, he didn't actually eat all of that. It was an old cob. But later we gave him a little piece and he did manage to get all the corn off of it. Today Bella had a piano recital, so we all went to that. She did great! And then this afternoon we went to a graduation party for two of the girls I took to Nicaragua a couple of years ago. And we celebrated Gramps' bi

Nothing overly exciting has been going on over here. At least nothing worth blogging about. This is pretty much the only picture that I've taken this week: Bella is finishing up her last two weeks of elementary school, so there are all sorts of end-of-school activities. Gabe has been rather cranky and clingy and I'm not sure if it's because he's still getting over being sick last weekend or that 5th tooth that just popped through today or if he's just in a new awkward phase. Pat and I started a Couch to 5K program, so we've been doing a bunch of running. We got someone to come over and take out the stumps of the trees that Pat took down last year. Gabe has been very excited to watch the excavator at work. He and Gramps stood on the porch watching him for at least a half hour the other night. So, lots has been going on, it just hasn't been blog worthy. Until today... This year, Bella has been doing Rock Band at school. Today was their last performance as part

We've had a pretty rough week since Gabe and I got back. We got back Tuesday night and all was well Wednesday. Then Thursday Gabe spiked a fever of 104. My first concern was an infection due to his procedure on Monday, but no. He just caught a nasty bug. We've spent the last few days doing a lot of napping and snuggling. Today he's finally feeling better, so we were able to celebrate Mother's Day. So far I've gotten lunch out and a two-hour nap, so I'd call that a pretty good Mother's Day! Plus, Pat and I went for a run! I'm not sure this is what I had in mind when I said "help with the laundry..."        

Gabe had some medical stuff that we needed to deal with. It's not a huge deal, just something that we needed to get taken care of. However, due to his age, he now needed to be knocked out and we couldn't do it at me. Since this entire trip has been about seeing how many things we can fit into one trip, we decided to just take care of it on Monday. Uncle Tim came with us, which was a really good distraction. Even though it wasn't a huge issue, it was pretty traumatic on me, so having him there was so nice. Isn't he the cutest little patient? Everything went really well. Gabe handled everything great. He even recovered better than I thought that he would. Tuesday we had another eye appointment to make sure that Gabe's eyes are still on track, which they are. Then we flew home. Gabe insisted that he drive through the airport like this: Silly kid.

When you're only in town for a couple of days, you have to cram in as many visits with as many people as possible in a very short period of time. Yesterday was our day to visit, and we made the most of it! We started out the morning visiting Lori, one of Gabe's nurses when he was in the NICU. Then we went to visit Grammy and Grandpa Jim. They haven't gotten to see Gabe since last summer and he's changed a whole lot since then. He doesn't get to see these grandparents very often, so it was a lot of fun to spend some time with them. Gabe also got to meet Betsy. As soon as she moved, he kept trying to steal her bed. Poor dog! When Gabe was a couple of days old, one of the nurses asked if we wanted to meet the family of another 23 weeker who was about to go home. When his mom walked into the room, we both burst into tears. The room that we were in was the same room that they had started in, four months earlier and seeing Gabe was just like seeing their little boy all ov

For my entire 20s, I had a good group of single girlfriends. Several of them were friends from college, some were from childhood and some were friends I met as an adult. They are all wonderful people, but we were all very much single and there weren't even very many boyfriends involved. Then we all turned 30. I'm not sure what happened, but as soon as we started hitting that magic number, we all started dating and getting married. As of today, only one of those original 7 is not married and 3 of them have gotten married in the last 10 months. ------------------------------- This morning, Gabe and I got up early and went swimming in the hotel pool. After he goes to swimming lessons, I usually get a 3 hour nap out of him. I was hoping that by swimming this morning, I could convince him to take a long nap before Teresa's wedding. It did not work. Instead, I put him down and he instantly decided to be awake and happy for the next hour... Then he finally fell asleep, slept for 4

My friend Teresa, who's been one of my best friends since middle school, is getting married tomorrow. Since Gabe has some appointments that we need to take care of, he and I decided to do all of them at the same time. So, he and I are on a weekend trip by ourselves. Our first stop last night was dinner with Uncle Tim. Gabe was very excited to explore Uncle Tim's house, which is not baby proofed at all... But he has a really great tupperware drawer! This morning Gabe had an appointment. It was clearly very exhausting because he fell asleep in the car as soon as we left. I decided to go to the coffee shop and read my book for a while, something that I don't have time to do much of at this point in my life. I think that lasted for 5 minutes... Then Gabe woke up and decided to show me that the proper way to eat pears involves your feet. After the coffee shop, Gabe needed to crawl around for a bit, so we went to the bookstore. After crawling and walking all over the store, I not