Home Improvements and Professional Athletes

We have done so much to the house in the past few weeks! It's been almost all outside, which is great, because the outside still kind of looked like an abandoned home. Dad came and painted Alex' new room and power-washed the back of our house and the fence, which looks so much better now. We had some painters come and paint the front of the house after that. THAT was an interesting experience because of all of the back-and-forth communication about it, and I had to keep going back and double-checking their work. However, when it was finally done, it looked SO MUCH BETTER! Previously the columns had been all chipped away and someone had attempted to paint the siding with disastrous results because they the right paint wasn't used, and overall it just looked horrible. So THAT was taken care of. Then mom and Earl were around because mom had some training, so Earl and I (I refer to "we" loosely because he did the huge majority of work and I made blts...) did the landscaping part. We built a retaining wall the first day and filled it with dirt, good dirt, hostas, a maple, and mulch. IT LOOKS SO GREAT!!! I feel like our neighbors don't have to be ashamed of us anymore. :) Jason and I are going to take care of the right side of the steps and build a small portion of wall there, too, and probably put a maple in there as well. Before it was mostly a barren area with a chaotic lump of a few plants, and now it has patriot and June hostas and a sharp's pygmy maple in it. We're also going to put a cross to the right of the maple, although it's not in the pictures. The next day we went to the backyard. I took care of working on some of the trimwork that surrounded our sliding glass doors. (Earl, I filled it with more wood filler and painted over it, hooray! I might do one more coat - already done two after the Kilz - but it looks so much better.) He created a drainage system for us because we've had some flooding problems in the back. We now have a defined area around our ac unit that is filled with sand and covered in rocks to help with the water, and we have the same rocks under our gate, another area that was a mini-lake. He dug a trench bordering one side of our gate and laid black piping that attached to our gutter and talked to our neighbor because his run-off goes directly into our yard. So far, so good. While it hasn't rained, we have a problem with our hose faucet back there,. Previously the area would have started to flood after I tried to fill up her pool because of the leaking, but this time around it just produced wet rocks. Hooray! Okay, so I'm a little excited abut my new house... lol.

In kid news, Alexis has decided that she wants to stay up until about 10:00. This is not good news, and I'm going to blame Babu and Bibi. Okay, maybe not, but for two days after she saw them, she didn't want to go to bed at all. Alexis also keeps mixing up their names and has it set in her mind that Babu is Bibi and Bibi is Babu. It's pretty adorable and funny. When Earl and Alex and I went to Home Depot to get stuff, she basically refused to let him out of her sight, and each morning when he was here, and for the two mornings after that, she would ask for them when she first got up. She was asleep last night a little after 8:30 I think, so hopefully she's getting over this stage. We shall see.

I went to the doctor again yesterday and all is fine. She thinks that they weighed me inaccurately last time around, because if we trusted the records, I would have lost six pounds or so, which doesn't make sense. Two weeks ago I weighed 147, and this week I wehged 141. She thinks it was just a mistake, especially considering that the previous weight would have meant I gained about tenpounds in a month, which is a lot. So my weight is good, Micah's heartbeat is incredibly strong and steady and healthy, and she said I have the blood pressure of an athlete! (I thought that part was particularly funny.) She also answered some questions about when I call to go to the hospital and traveling and a few other small things. One significant issue is that we're trying to get my surgical records from our hospital in Nicaragua. Withouth them, a c-section is automatically done because the outside of an incision doesn't necessarily tell you what the inside of an incision was like, so they can't take any chances on a vaginal birth. We'd like to try it the normal way, but we have to have a records to even have a chance at that. We'll see what happens.

On a revision note (I'm adding this later), Alexis ate cheerios in milk this morning for breakfast. Disgusting, but she liked them, and it's yet another thing I'm going to blame on Earl. ;) Also, she randomly just started saying happy and sad and acting each one out. It was unbelievably cool!

And Some Videos

I haven't had a lot of luck uploading videos lately, but I'm going to try and include a few here.

Lots of Pics

I'm uploading lots of recent pics for you. Alexisis doing just fine according to her doctor. She weighs about 24 pounds and is about 32 inches tall, and while she's small, that's not a problem. The doctor also identified a skin condition that she has (I can't remember the name of it) that causes the little (sometimes red) bumps she has on her arms and legs sometimes. Most likely she'll always have that, but there are things we can do to make them go away if she's using them. However, right now, most likely we won't use any medication. Perhaps when she's a bit older. My appointment went well, and I should get the results of my glucose test this week. Dad came up for a few days and did a TON of work, so Alexis' new room is painted, he powerwashed the back of our house AND our fence, which looks amazing now, and did other random things like babysit and clean our oven. How amazing is that? I feel like all he did was work, but it was a huge blessing. Jason and I actually went to a movie on Friday night - Star Trek - and yes, it was pretty awesome! We did a ton of other stuff this weekend, including cleaning gutters. (My husband is wonderful!) And we played in the backyard as you'll be able to see from pictures. Jason tried to teach her to play baseball!

What I love about the picture of her sleeping is that she feel asleep on her floor on the blanket that I had when I was a baby...

The Bangs

Yes, Alexis now has bangs. She's still a really cute kid, but they don't look the best. However, we had to do something, and hair accessories weren't working for her. Her hair is just so fine that, alas, there's not much we can do with it. I'll take some pictures and post them later on.

We'll also have to post a few pictures of the zoo! We went on Saturday. She was a little tired, but she had a lot of fun, even when she was on Jason's shoulders and resting her chin on his head. Her favorites that we saw were the emu, the mongoose, and the golden tamarins, which she liked last time. She was also pretty interested in the primates that were moving around. And then there was this ant that totally captureed her attention, but it wasn't part of the zoo... :) OH and she really thought the naked rat moles were fascinating as well as they crawled and fought their way through the tunnels. The mongoose was the best, though, along with some ferret-like prairie dogs (can't remember the name) that she went running to when she saw them. They were all skittering about and were right on her level and moving a lot, so she definitely liked those. She wasn't as fascinated by the panda bear that we saw, but Jason and I thought it was AWESOME! It was about as close as it could be, sitting on a slope, munching on its lunch of bamboo. It was pretty amazing. Alexis did, however, get to tought the nose of a donkey, and was really fascinated by hearing a real cow. I think she ate half a sleeve of crackers while we were there.

This morning I heard her say booger for the first time, which was really funny, although I've been informed that Jason's heard it before. She's doing really well with her alphabet and can identify and say A, B, C, D (she says b sometimes), E, S, T, U, and Y. I don't know WHERE she learned some of those, but I have a tshirt that has the word university on it, and one morning she just pointed to the u and y and identified them correctly. It's always pretty cool to discover that she knows things when youhave no clue. She's not good with numbers yet, but she does pretty well with some shapes. We hear her trying to count sometimes, but she mixes everything up. For instance, she just tried to count some stars, and it sounded like 1, 2, 5, 9, 10. It's cute.

Overall, I'm pretty encouraged with her progress. She goes to the doctor on Wednesday for her two year checkup, so I'm sure I'll find out all sorts of stuff about how she's doing. Pics to come.

My Brave Girl

Alexis got stung by a bee yesterday! She had been in the rec room for about five minutes yesterday afternoon when I heard a sharp cry of pain and immediately knew something was wrong. At first I thought she had caught her fingers in one fo the doors on her play kitchen, but then I knew it had to be worse than that. I looked around and saw a bee near her ball pit, killed it, and immediately took her upstairs to wash her hand and research what to do in case she was allergic and would have problems. She was crying so hard and holding her hand out, but she started laughing a little bit when she got to run it under the water. She did NOT like having an ice pack applied to it and I had a really hard time keeping one on so just did the best that I could. She was so great about it, though, but I could tell when the pain would come back because she would hold her had to her stomach and start crying some. It wasn't a fun afternoon for her, but she did really well and was really brave. it was pretty red and swollen on her thumb, where she was stung, for a few hours, but then it started to die down, and this morning it's just a little red. The saddest part was that it was on the thumb that she sucks, and up until last night she would try to put her thumb in her mouth occasionally and then start crying because it hurt! How sad is that to have your course of comfort taken away? I was prepared for her to have a bad night because of it, but she did fine all night - just a little fussy getting to sleep - and she seems not to notice it this morning.

In other cute and unpainful news, we went to Richmond overnight to look at some plants, and Alex sat on the tractor and pretended to drive, which was so cute! She explored all of the plants and picked up handfuls of dirt and got soaked by the hose and had a blast! She also had a huge amount of fun runnung around the grocery store with Nanny and Papaw the next day. The other night at dinner she did the greatest thing and started pulling practical jokes on us. She was in her high chair and we were almost done with dinner when she put her head down on her table and started to look upset and sad. Both Jason and I asked what was wrong, and after a minute she popped back up all smiles and started laughing. She had tricked us! And she did this over and over and over again because we kept asking her in a concerned voice what was wrong, and she kept tricking us! She thought this was hysterical and had a few times when she couldn't hold the smile in while she was pretending to be sad. It was adorable! And yesterday she was sitting on the kitchen floor when she looked at the dishwasher, which is fairly reflective, and she waved at herself and said, "Hi me!" I just laughed and laughed because it was so cute! Jason had seen her do this in the mirror before, but it took me by surprise. She's amazing!

We both have doctor's appointments next week. She has her two year check-up, so I've started a short list of questions to ask, and I have my seven month checkup next week, which will apparently take longer than usual because I have to have a glucose test, which is normal for this time in the pregnancy. I'll also probably ask what to expect when I go into labor and she's born because my experience with Alex was so different. For instance, it's going to be very different to be able to try and feed her immediately because last time I didn't get to hold her for over a week after she was born, and it was longer for Jason. It's time to start to be prepared! I can't believe this is happening in less than three months!

We're also (hopefully) going to be finishing up some work on the house this month. We have painters coming to paint the front of the house next Monday, which should make the front look a LOT better! They're hoping to be able to get it done in one day, which would be nice. Dad is coming to visit next week and he's going to paint Alexis' new room and he's bringing his power washer and we're going to was the back of the house, which needs it. Then, about a week and a half later, Earl is going to come help fix some of our drainage problems in the backyard and help with some landscaping in the front. I don't think we'll be able to get it all done, but we're going to put quite a dent in it. And while there will still be PLENTY of things to do, I think after this is done I'll feel really good about the house. Then we'll decide if we're actually going to do some kitchen renovations like new counters, sink, and dishwasher. (Having a dishwasher with two kids would be AMAZING, so it's something we're thinking about.) May has become a really busy month, and then in early June we're going to Wilson to visit our new nephew who should have arrived by then, but after that I'm staying home for the month before Micah's born. I think it will be really good for the three of us to have some downtime without anything going on before he arrives. Micah's moving around a lot and letting me know he's around, and I'm definitely to the stage of picking things up with my toes and finding it more difficult to be comfortable. However, in all reality, I feel really great! I get tired more easily so do things a little at a time and try not to wear myself out, but it's wonderful to feel so good. My stomach surges seem to have disappeared, and my back hasn't been hurting at all like it did for a while, which is great, and even though I have a few things here and there, I think I'm doing well! Also, on a random note, if you're interested, we have a brief list of some things we'd like for Micah. If you go to my amazon wishlist, on the left side you'll see a section for other of my wishlists, and Micah Nathanael is listed, as well as Alexis for her birthday. Anyway, there aren't a lot of things that we need because we have a lot of stuff, but there are a few things that would be nice if you're interested!