March 11

Ummm... I know stuff happened this week, but my mind is drawing a complete blank. Hmmm.

Well, I finished weaving the first half of the stole! That was so exciting. I cut it off the loom and everything. Later today or first thing tomorrow I'll start on the second half.
This morning, as I was changing Brendan's diaper, Luke came over with Teddy and dropped him on Brendan. Brendan said, "Dee do, Buke!" (Thank you, Luke!)
On Friday morning, the boys and I walked up to the Lanham's. As we reached their house, the dogs came running around the corner barking. Brendan started barking back. Luke started quacking.
This afternoon, Brendan helped me make soft pretzels. He had a great time playing with a little ball of dough. He tasted it too, but wasn't too impressed with that! He was very happy to get to eat the pieces he had made.
Lately, Brendan has been calling Luke "Buddy". I referred to Luke as that while cleaning him up after breakfast the other day and he's been calling him that ever since.

There's our updates for the week!

March 4

Hello again.
I've been quite busy here. Working hard on finishing up an ordination stole for a Sem 4 student. Plus, trying to keep the house and family from sinking too far into chaos while I do that. Not an easy task...
My parents are coming to visit for Luke's 1st birthday. So, I've got to work on tidying up the basement for them to stay in. Shoot, and I should probably get Luke a present too, shouldn't I?!
Let's see, what else has been going on? We've been talking about potty training Brendan. But every time we ask him if he has to go potty, he says, "ummm... nope." Luke is finding plenty of mischief to get into. We have also learned that Luke loves popcorn and Brendan can't stand it. Brendan is speaking in sentences more and more now. Very cool! He can also be a great little helper to me.
We're going to be doing psanky here pretty soon. I'm really looking forward to that. It's been two years now since I've done it.

February 25

A blessed Lent to everyone!
We have had a fairly good week here. Well, other than the fact that I twisted my ankle yesterday afternoon. Not sure when or how I did it, but it sure hurts.
Luke has cut his 6th tooth! He's been working on it for a while now and has been quite crabby about it, so this is a very exciting event for us! He also learned how to click his tongue the other day and spent hours doing it. He thought it was absolutely hysterical.
Brendan has his own laptop now. Well, in his imagination he does. He took the green box from the toy shelf, dumped out the cars that were in it, propped it up on the end table and started typing and told us that it was "Myenen's dapdot." (Brendan's laptop)


He also drew his first picture of Jesus the other day. Fortunately he told me it was Jesus... It was very cute, he was sitting at his desk and drawing a big blue circle round and round. When he saw me watching, he pointed to it and told me that it was Jesus.

February 18

I've decided to cut back drastically on my internet use for Lent. Thus, I will only be online on Sundays. But, I will try to update the blog AND the website each Sunday. Which actually means that they'll probably get updated more often than they normally do!
We have some really nice warm weather coming our way the next week or so. I'm really looking forward to being able to take the boys outside to play more (without having to wrap them up in so much clothing that they can barely move)!
We had lunch with the deaf today after church. Brendan watched with fascination as they signed and after a few moments he started to "babble" in sign. Very funny and cute.
This morning was his first time having cereal with rice milk on it. He usually eats oatmeal or dry cereal for breakfast but today he noticed me putting rice milk on my cereal and asked for it on his. He did remarkably well. Only a few drips got on the table.
Luke slept through the night again last night! Yay!!! Some nights he does and some he doesn't, but it's definitely getting better. He's also starting to say Dada. I think Michael's pretty thrilled about that.
Well, dinner is ready so I'm going to go eat!

February 14

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

We're all doing quite well here. My back is completely recovered! That's a huge relief and is making life so much easier for me. Brendan is doing very well in our home preschool, I'm quite proud to say. He's getting very good at identifying the colors, letters, numbers and shapes he's learned so far. And he loves to point out Jesus in the pictures he colors each week. Luke is a daredevil as always. I think he spends all his naps and nights dreaming up new ways to injure himself. He has cut his two top front teeth! He has the two side top ones coming in, I think maybe later this week - two weeks at most. He also seems to be starting to sleep through the night! A very exciting thing for me.

I've recently come up with substitutes for soy sauce and cheese that are safe for our family to eat! Yay! We can have stir-fry and macaroni and cheese again!

Enjoy Brendan's first post below. I was trying to get him to type the alphabet as far as he knows it (A-E), but he got a bit excited and threw in a bunch of other letters. I don't think any of you mind!

Brendan's First Post!

ACCCCCBVCCCCCDDDDS WEEE

January 29

"Ummm... No Ecks, Mommy. Bret!" Translation: Ummm... No eggs, Mommy. Bread! Except that it was pancakes, not bread and there were no more. Explaining that to a two-year-old doesn't work so well. He seemed pretty sure that I could just magically produce more pancakes for him and he wanted nothing at all to do with my offer of scrambled eggs instead. A minor meltdown ensued. On the plus side, this was his longest sentence yet!
Luke's not speaking in sentences yet. Give him a few more days. He's already got two words. Bye and Duck. And yes he does use them both in the appropriate contexts and yes he is barely 10 1/2 months old. He's learning to eat slightly pureed table food. He loves spaghetti and Spanish rice. He's not too thrilled about meatloaf and veggies.
I could use a few prayers. I got a knot in my back last week and it's gotten worse and worse. Saturday night and Sunday morning it was so bad that I could barely move. It's a little better today. It still hurts, but at least I can move without crying. Of course, with the slightest bit of improvement I went and overdid it. I did way more housework than I really should have today and it now hurts worse than it did this morning.

Updates

Sorry it's been so long since I posted last. These last few weeks have been quite busy for us.

On New Year's Day we headed up to Wisconsin for my brother's wedding. Well, we tried at least. We got about two and a half hours down the road and discovered that Teddy had been left behind. Brendan was distraught. We had no choice but to go back - we know from experience that getting a new Teddy won't work at all. The next morning we actually succeeded at leaving for Wisconsin and got there in the mid-afternoon. After a busy and crazy week, it was finally Saturday afternoon and we went to the church to take pictures before the wedding. Got Brendan dressed in his little tux, got Luke dressed in his little suit, turned to talk to Lydia and heard from behind me - thud, scream! Luke had fallen and hit his head on a rather sharp edge of a table leg and gotten a deep cut in his eyebrow. I nursed him right away and decided that we needed to take him in to get stitches. So, Michael, Luke and I went to St. Mary's, which is really close to CUW, and Luke got three stitches. He did really well and everyone in the ER loved him. We got back to CUW in time to see Stephan and Penny's vows.

Even stitches can't slow Luke down. We still spent a lot of time chasing that child around the hospital and the church.
Michael and I after the wedding, in of those few brief moments in which neither one of us has a child attached to us!
I'd post a picture of Stephan and Penny, but I can't seem to find any really nice ones right now.

After we got home, everyone got sick. Brendan had pink eye and a sinus infection, Michael had pneumonia and Luke and I had nasty colds. We're all recovering now, but it made for a rather yucky week.

Then this week, I started preschooling Brendan! It's been lots of fun.

Here's a picture of Brendan pointing out the letter A for me on his preschool poster.

And here's Brendan pointing out the number 1. We are also doing Bible stories, shapes, sign language and other stuff as well.