Bella, Gabe and Josiah

Today was Farm Day. Since Gabe loves animals (and his new favorite words are "bunny" and "cock-a-doo") we knew that he would love it. Since parking was going to be an issue, I picked Pat up at the church, were he had been doing some work. When I got there to pick him up, he told me that one of Gabe's nicu doctors was there. That's not quite as random as it sounds. This guy has grown up at our church many years ago, and his parents still attended, until they moved to a nursing home. His mom died last week, so he was down for the funeral. Anyway, since he was there, Gabe and I went in to say hello. It was really good to see him and to show him how great Gabe is doing. He's going to say hello to all of my favorite nurses for me. It's strange how you can be so attached to a place, even though you never want to go back... Afterwards, we went to Farm Day. Gabe thought it was great! There were ponies and chickens, turkeys and peacocks, pigs and bunnies. He

Some general Gabe silliness... Gabe was very helpful making pancakes on Saturday. He even stirred after all the batter was gone! I introduced Gabe to the joys of cookie dough. He may have taken it too far. Apparently Gabe thinks that he needs to be shelved? He really likes clothes pins.      

I was driving home and a little voice suddenly said from the back seat "Dey do" (there you go) and a little hand was reaching out over the edge of the carseat. He was handing me something imaginary that he wanted me to take. I touched his hand and said thank you. Then we started the whole game all over again, until I told him that I was driving. He did not understand why that meant I had to stop playing... He is a little parrot! Everything we say or do, he repeats. I had a cold last week and everytime I would blow my nose, he would try and blow his nose too. He even started fake coughing. His vocabulary is exploding! He repeats everything and surprises me all the time with the words that he can say. He really likes "Flowrs" or "Flau Flau" (flowers), "maoma" (water-no idea where that came from...), "cow" (who says "mu"), "ca" (car), "tuck" (truck), "book", and "ball". He says a lot more t

Years ago, back when we were dating, Pat had a mouse problem. He set some traps, caught a dozen mice and the problem went away. Right before we got married, we got Max for Bella and that may have helped. We never saw another mouse. Once, when we were out of town and Max was at a friend's house, my parents were here watching tv. A mouse ran out, saw them, froze and then disappeared. We never saw him again although after Max came back he stared under the dishwasher for a couple of hours, not moving. Then we got rid of Max... A couple of weeks ago, I saw a mouse running around outside on the back porch. Then a few days later, I saw him in the house. Um, no. We will not be doing that. Pat set some traps and caught. Problem solved. He rebaited the traps just in case, but we didn't see anything. Then last weekend, while I was gone, they trapped another. And there was a very brazen one running around the house where everyone could see it.  And both traps were stripped,

It's been a rough week around here. I managed to come back from the race with a cold. I've been holding it off for two weeks and I may have avoided it entirely if I'd slept for more than two hours on Friday night.... Oh well. I made it through the race, which was my only goal. Unfortunately, since I came back with a cold, cleaning the house has not been high on my priority or energy list. So my living room is a disaster. Pat was off work last week, so he spent the week redoing our bathroom. He isn't finished yet, so I have a toilet and a vanity in my bedroom and our bathroom is completely useless. Also, I stayed home sick two days this week, which meant laying on the couch, where I got strange flashbacks to being on bedrest. And we have a mouse that is currently evading all of Pat's traps. So I was sick in a disaster of a house, having bedrest flashbacks listening to a way-too-gutsy mouse run around my house. It was fun... But I'm feeling better now and it's

This weekend I ran the Klondike. It's a 10 person road relay from Skagway to a Whitehorse, a distance of 112 miles. It also goes through the mountain pass, which means that there are some nasty hills to run. I started running the Klondike 5 years ago. Lacey, my running buddy, decided to put a team together and it's been going ever since. I ran the first two years, but then I got pregnant and took two years off. But this year I decided to start running again and the Klondike was great motivation. Since I have the baby, I got to do the princess leg, which is only 7.8 miles and only had one big hill. It was great and I got to run it at 10:30pm! The race was great. I mean, it was a brutal run, but it was really good. And I'm glad that I went, even if I did have to leave Gabe alone for the first time for three days...  

Gabe's favorite book is King Jack and the Dragon. He loves it! For awhile we were reading it multiple times a day. It's a super cute book about a couple of kids who build a castle in the yard and then spend their day defending the castle against dragons. As they're fighting the dragons, they yell "Raaaahhh!!!" Tonight we went to Home Depot and they've got all their Halloween stuff out already, including some very large blowup dragons. Gabe was fascinated. He pointed at them and made a deep, gutteral "Raaahhhh!!!" over and over again. While Pat got the car, we had to walk back into the store so that he could point and Raaahhh some more.  Clearly he felt the need to fight dragons just like King Jack.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks up here. Jason's death has been pretty hard on all of us. Last week Gabe and I went up to see Teresa for the funeral. It was a lovely service and it made me wish that I'd known Jason better. We got to spend a little time with Teresa, but she also had a lot going on.  We did get to have lunch with Uncle Tim, which was fun. In other news, Gabe is a little parrot. He repeats everything. It's adorable! He's also started saying Mommy. It actually sounds more like Marmee and he says it like "MommyMommyMommyMommyMommyMommy", but it's absolutely adorable! I've waited a long time to hear someone call me Mommy and I love it! He's also started saying "Bewa" today. Bella is on cloud nine! She's convinced that it's his new favorite word. Gabe insists on carrying his own lunchbox to school. (As a side note, I posted this on facebook and a friend asked me how much fruit I packed him...) Gabe and I went on a

This story actually happened last summer, but I don't think I ever posted it here. I remember it randomly and it's one of those stories that I want to make sure that I remember, so rather than sleeping (which is what I should be doing), I'm going to write it down now. Years ago, Pat became good friends with Donna, one of the older ladies in the church. She was a counselor and helped him process his divorce and work through all of the pain that comes along with that. He ended up viewing her almost as a second mom. Over the years they had a special relationship, until Donna and her husband moved sometime after we got married, but before Gabe came along. The day that Gabe was baptized, they came back to visit. After the service, she came to talk to us, telling Pat how excited she was to be there to see our son be baptized. As we talked, we realized that she didn't know anything about Gabe's story, so we filled her in on everything we'd been through. When he finishe

We've been working on the yard for the last two years. Well, we've actually been working on it since I moved in when we got married, but it's a big project... Pat took down all of the trees last summer, but there wasn't any time to deal with the trees before fall hit, so we spent all winter with piles of branches and stumps all over the yard. I'm sure the neighbors thought it was classy. This year we pulled out the stumps and got rid of the branches. Pat rented a little excavator and put in more dirt, as well as building a wall around one of the drains. It looks really good. Unfortunately the weather has been so bad that it's taken us all summer to get it done. Driving an excavator around a mud pile is a bit counter productive... Anyway, we finally have everything ready so we were able to put down some seed...in late August. Better late than never, right? Last weekend the weather was reasonable, so Pat and Bella did the seeding. Gabe was pretty sure that he need