Things Are A'Hoppin' Around Here

Weekends? We don't have those these days. The days formerly known as weekends have become better known as yard-days to us. And as tiring as it is to go-go-go all seven days of the week, it feels SO good to see progress being made.

When we bought our house we had a vision, and though that vision has changed some, it's starting to come around. It's just taking a lot more elbow grease than we ever thought we had. In fact, we've enlisted the help of our family more often than we expected to. And for that we are SO grateful. There is no way with Little-Miss-Runs-A-Lot that we'd be able to get anything done without the extra hands to help pitch in! :)

So below you will see the progress that is being made...

THE FRONT YARD

We finally got the boxes in the front cleared out and leveled, ready for planting!




So we took a shopping break one morning to go load up the car with EVERY available inch filled with plants, dirt & bark! (the car was literally so full Sophia looked like she was riding in a Rain Forest!)

Plants in the front. They look so little!

Complete!

And Now...
THE BACK YARD

Taking out the bushes around the pond; What an undertaking! These things were matted in and tangled so bad...

Starting to frame out where the cement would be poured.

The Grandpa's Hard at work.
(Thank you both Grandpa's for all your work!)

Matthew supervising the Grandpas!
He is a perfectionist, you know!?!

Cutting boards on the most exciting Christmas gift a homeowner could get!

The pad for the shed, done!

Funny little corner (someday Sophia's toy storage area), done!


The sidewalk out to the shed pad, done!

A Special Thanks to Papa for all of his cement expertise! :) I know that Matthew will forever be grateful for the time and finishing that you put into the cement!

Leftover cement dumped into the pond...sorry to say there were a few left over fish. :( Matthew likes to say they gave them an Italian Mob Burial!

The back cement areas with curbing installed

The pond is gone...no going back now! It's amazing to me, even after a week, that there used to be a pond there, and now we have a mud puddle waiting to be seeded for grass...It seems so BIG!

And...all of these big projects just wouldn't be complete without some kind of injury in the making! On the day of the big cement work, I saw my phone lighting up with a phone call just after walking my kiddos to the cafeteria for lunch. When I saw that it was Matthew, I wondered what he could be calling about at 11:30 in the morning. Call it the "Mother's Intuition" that kicked in, but I had a feeling something was up.

And I was right. He tells me, "I'm on my way to urgent care." The first thing I am thinking is that he cut his finger off with the new chop saw he was so excited to finally use; Not because I think he's a clutz or doesn't know what he's doing, but I just know how it can get when you're preoccupied with a dozen other elements in a big project like this...But thankfully it was MUCH less scary than that. But my stomach still turned a little when he told me "I stepped on a nail." Yuck. (Aunt Char, Uncle Jim, Devin, Dan & Erin will remember the little stint I had one summer when I stepped on a nail at their place!) So, being that it had been 10+ years since he'd had a tetanus shot, that's where he was headed. So, the following are pictures of the "culprit" and the injury (Note our mini-Vanna White modeling the injury on the foot!)






So a few days of dealing with a sore arm from the shot, and an urgent care bill to follow, all is well!

***Many, Many Thanks to both of our Dads, Josh, Papa & Both of our Moms for helping in the yard, and helping with Sophia so we could both be in the yard! We really appreciate all your help!***

Sophia's Silly Side

Our Little Love-Bug

Monday of Spring Break we were up before the sun...and on the road before the sun...heading down to Sacramento for Sophia's ear-tube surgery. (Long version will be posted later) Everything went PERFECT and now we have been experiencing a whole new girl. A MUCH happier girl at that! :) So here are some pics that capture just how sweet & silly our little girlie is these days!

One Saturday morning Sophia and I had gotten up early and had breakfast together. (as we usually do together, as Saturday's are Matthew's sleep-in day, Sunday mine). We were playing up front and she was being her usual silly, playful self. I took her into her room to get dressed, only to hear Matthew waking up. Upon walking into our room, SOphia went right for our mirrored closet door. She stood there and made the "kissy face!" I was cracking up! Where in the world did she come up with this? So I grabbed the camera and told her to make a kiss again, and here's what we got! Smooches!



Her hair is growing at a rapid rate! Thank goodness because I was a little worried it might never grow at all, and we'd end up with a baby mullet! But I picked her up from daycare the week before spring break and our little cutie had these, not one, but two! Pigtails!




Excuse my morning look! Sophia woke up just as I was getting home from the gym this morning, so we had some early (5:30am) cuddles and watched some Handy Manny. Her favorite show! (And yes....she is drinking milk here! FINALLY!!!! We thought that day might never come!)




All dressed up! We went shopping a few weeks ago, and at the request of Daddy, Sophia got a few new summer dresses. This particular morning she even asked to wear the cute hair flower I made her!



And her newest trick: Undressing herself at nap time! :) Although we've avoided the diaper disappearance (knock on wood!) it was still a shock to find her naked when we went in to get her that afternoon! Don't mind the nervous look, we were laughing hysterically, and I'm sure she was wondering why we were laughing at her!

***Updates from Spring Break will be here shortly...or rather, in a while...we had so much happen around the house (the yard, really) that it will take a while for us to post...but we will***

And we might be kinda biased, but you know some of these pictures are just too cute NOT to comment on! :) Don't be strangers out there!

Spring is Here (part 2)

Here are some pictures of our little Sophia Girl. The little munchkin was too interested in that bunny to smile for any of the pictures! Figures...But we just LOVE how they do capture her interest in all things new. If only there was some way to freeze the curiosity of a child...it's amazing to watch! Enjoy!

Spring is here

Not only are our allergies letting us know, but the jungle formerly known as our backyard is screaming at us as well...

Oh home ownership...It's a love/hate relationship. The upside is that our monthly payment is going to something that is ours. Something that is (hopefully) going to turn around and gain equity. Something that we can make our own. The downside is the yard work. When we were house shopping, having a big yard was something that was important to us. Okay, maybe more important to me because yard work has never been something I loathed. Until it became a priority. So, we got a house we loved, with a backyard that would take more time than we could EVER imagine.

Let's premise this. We've lived in our house for over two years and the yard is no where near where we envisioned it. Partly because EVERY year we put the yard project on hold while we waited out the dreadful layoffs. And when the school district finally announced that the jobs were safe, mid-July, it was boiling hot outside, and there was NO WAY we could have made new plants survive, much less ourselves. So, yard work has been put on the back burner. Until this year! YAY! The visions that we had in the beginning are finally starting to take shape.

So, below you will find some pics of our progress, but you won't fully be able to appreciate them without seeing what our yard looked like on day 1. So here's a little preview of the old yard:

Garden Beds

What seemed like a fantastic find upon our house hunting days, turned out to be a mess. One season of enjoying the tomatoes, squash, peppers & strawberries left behind by the previous owners turned out to be a big project for us. The garden beds that housed these delicious crops were quite literally being held together by the dirt in them. So we crumpled them up, and began the deconstruction of what is known as the "back-back yard" around here!

The Pond

I admit this is one major feature of the back yard that I reaped the most benefits from. But, Matthew will not be sorry to see it go. What looks like a beautiful, well cared for pond ended up being a major inconvenience, and now with our little munchkin running around, a major safety hazard. Between several broken pumps, a weekend up to my thighs in icy cold water scooping scum out of the water, dead koi in the pump, hundreds of frogs/toads in the yard, and often in the house, and now the fear of Sophia falling in, we've decided this beauty is a gonner.

The Shed
It's huge! It holds everything we need for the backyard. The patio table & chairs fit in it for the winter. AND it's infested with rats. SERIOUSLY. This winter wrecked major havoc on the shed as rodents took over. :( So you can imagine the joy Matthew felt as he opened the shed doors this spring to find it a total disaster. Don't worry, we disinfected every inch of the patio furniture, and we're proud to say...the shed is already gone! (Destruction pictures below!)

One of the many "entrances"
No joke, this is a wooden shed on dirt...no cement foundation. What were these people thinking?

And Some Progress...

This is the Back-Back Yard now. No more garden beds. (And although that looks like grass, I assure you it's not. The weeds were as tall as Sophia, if not taller.)

The Tall Weeds

Draining the Pond
Not to worry about the fish...We rescued (most) of them and took them to the river. No lie. I didn't have the heart to flush them. And Sophia LOVED them! So funny!



Sophia admiring the goldfish



Our Blue-Eyed Cutie helping out too!

She LOVES being outside, and even tells me on the way home from daycare "ouuuusiiiide"
So stinking cute!



Matthew and Whit starting the shed destruction

And in case you're wondering if I do any of the work here...I do, and here's some proof of my work...(I'm just usually the one behind the camera!)

The front is all ready for 'tilling, fixing a few minor sprinkler issues and planting! I thought that day might never get here, but it's close!

So, as you can imagine, if we do not already have plans set in stone we've dedicated the next 2,000 weekends to finishing the yard. Family and friends, we know you'll wait for us to be social again. Someday! :)

Tubes or No Tubes?

Our little munchkin entertaining herself (for almost 30 minutes) with her sunglasses! Too cute!





Sophia's ears. Sigh. Ever since this fall, around September or October, we've been battling Sophia's ears. It's been infection after infection. I think the worst part about them is that there really is no way to look at her and say, "Yep. She has an ear infection." She rarely gets a fever with them, so we have to rely on signs. And let me tell you, the signs of an ear infection make for a different child.

Our normally sweet little girl gets cranky. And who wouldn't? Ear infections hurt. She doesn't always tug at them or give us signals, and it almost always coincides with her teething. So we're left guessing if the screams are from teeth or ears. She won't nap at daycare. Which not only wrecks havoc on the daycare naptime routine for Sophia, but also the other little toddlers she keeps awake during that two hour quiet time. She wakes up inconsolable (multiple times) a night. (Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my sleep...but when she wakes up screaming, my heart breaks, and I want nothing more than to sit in her rocker and cuddle her back to sleep...wishing it were under different circumstances.)

So, Dr. Midha referred us to a Pediatric Ear, Nose & Throat specialist in Sacramento. We spoke with the Dr. about the frequency of her ear infections and the complications that come from them. And while he checked her ears, he said they look good, as in no scar tissue, but there was a little bit of fluid in the ear drum. Granted she had just finished her latest dose of antibiotic, and it is normal for the fluid to be there. So, he left it up to us. We left with the intention of waiting another month or so, as we are heading into Spring and warmer weather, to see what happens with her ears. These infections could be a product of the cold and wet weather we've had...or a product of her ears not being fully formed and not draining the fluids.

But 2 days later we were in Urgent Care. Saturday night was one of the worst nights yet. She was absolutely inconsolable. NOTHING helped calm our little girl down. She had a very hard time getting to bed, and we chalked it up to the weird schedule since the time change that morning. However, 2 hours after putting her down to bed and getting her up for some more playtime, and more dinner, and then bed again, she still would not lay down. (Red Flag #1) After more bedtime stories, and more cuddles she finally laid down for a snooze. That's right, a snooze. Because less than an hour later she was up again. I spent most of that night upright in her rocker, but I'm not complaining, because I got in more cuddles that night than I have in the past 6 months combined!

So, after talking to Dr. Midha this week, and thinking about the rise in fluid in those tiny little ears...we're going for the tubes. Thankfully, after a week of phone-tag with the ENT office, I was able to take his first opening, which falls during my Spring Break. The timing was just right.

Chatting with Sophia

Sophia watchin' Daddy cleaning up the yard.

The minute we get home, things do not slow down. The evenings are filled with juggling who is doing the playing, reading, dinner for Sophia, bath time, brushing ten little teeth, saying prayers and putting Sophia to bed, all before making dinner for Matthew and I, doing dishes, folding laundry and hitting the gym. All to wake up, go to work, and do it all over again the next day.

As exhausting as it is, and as hard as it is to not sit down or even rest until we're laying in bed at night, every second that we are moving around and running around, Sophia is learning. And she's learning at such an amazing rate, that sometimes it really scares us. Sophia is picking up so much from her environments and she is just chattering away.

When we went to her one year wellness check up, I don't think her doctor quite believed us when we told him all about her talking. (Kinda the way he doubted that she was really walking, all by herself at her 9 month appointment.) She literally chitter chatters all evening. She tells us "please" and "thank you" she will let us know that she is "all done," or that she wants "up." When she's playing with Bandit, she's nick-named him "Bubbas," and she's recently begun finding her Tickle Me "Elmo" (and not being so scared of him anymore!). When she's eating lunch, if we ask about string cheese, she'll tell us "stree chee" and she's mastered the cell phone already; She'll pick it up and answer it "hiiiii." And when it's time for us to go, or for someone to leave, she waves and says in the sweetest voice ever, "buuuu bye" She knows that Bandit is a "doooog" and that he says "wow wow" when he barks (for bow wow!). When she drops things, she'll tell us, "oh no" or "uh oh." And recently, we've heard "baaa tiiii" at bath time, and she's also been telling us "Nigh Nigh" when we lay her down for prayers and bedtime.

It's just amazing to us, the way her brain works, and how we can literally watch her brain working before us. There are times where the chitter chatter slows down, and she simply takes in everything that is happening. She's like a hawk sometimes the way she watches us! It makes getting away with things that we don't want her to mimic almost impossible!

I think that the kitchen is the most complicated of spaces! Dinner has to be made, but Sophia just doesn't understand why I can touch the stove, and open the oven and she can not. It's hard to explain to a tiny tot what dangerous means or what could happen with very much understanding. The dishwasher is also a danger zone. I think parents could be some of the most influential people when it comes to the design of household items. If I were to design a dishwasher, I'd move the silverware rack to the top. How? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that I'd be able to get more dishes done while our tot was running around if I didn't have to worry about her grabbing a steak knife every second.

She really is the sweetest girl, and we know she is just exploring her surroundings and that is how she is learning. We know that most of the things she gets into are not intentional, and that she is just curious, but she certainly keeps us on our toes.

Lately it's been so cute to watch her little personality come out more and more. She knows when she's being mischievous, and she laughs and runs from us. She knows when we get home from work that it's all play time, and we get down on the floor and have tickle-wars! Her giggle will completely erase any of the stress left from the work day. She knows when we're going on a bike ride, a new adventure that she LOVES. And she's making choices about foods that she wants to eat and foods she does not. When she does not want something, I think the whole neighborhood knows it, as she says "No. No way" firmer than anyone I've ever seen.

Not only is her vocabulary expanding at a rapid rate, it's been amazing to watch her actions and she shows that she knows what we are saying. About a month ago, we were watching Sesame Street in the morning, and as she lay there watching, one of the characters (Snuffy) was allergic to Big Bird. He kept sneezing and sneezing. Next thing I know, Sophia sits up and says "chooo." Or earlier this week when we were playing after dinner. It was getting later, and I said to Matthew, "I think it's getting close to bath time." Sophia stood up, walked down the hallway, and went straight to the bathroom door, and began hitting hit, "baaa tiiii." So amazing.

It just melts our hearts every time she utters one of these things, and completely astonishes us as well. How is it possible that this teeny-tiny little girl is ours? How is it possible that she is picking up so much and then repeating it?! We truly are blessed to be given such a little miracle.

I've been getting back into my country phase of music, as I tend to do as summer nears, and I have fallen absolutely in love with this song by Lady Antebellum. (CLICK HERE!) As daunting and sad as the video is, I feel like we can all get in "that place" when we just live from day to day. There are days when I feel like I am just going through the motions with school, but the minute I lay my eyes on Sophia, I feel like the end of this video. I feel like I am awakened to the reality of my life. The reality that there is so much more to live for. Especially when I hear that little voice utter "hiiiiiii" and giggle. It's all a gift, given to us to live the best we can. And now that we have a little "mini-me" running around and repeating what we say, and mimicking what we do, it's more important than ever to live this life setting the best example we can.

She's driving already!!?

Smiling girl

(I was having a rough day at school and this picture was sent to me on my phone from daycare at just the right second! LOVE surprises like that!)

My heart melts every time I see this picture. She LOVES books, but there's something about this little cuddle-bug walking up to us with a book and asking "up?" to read it in our laps...
The two loves of my life. My Matthew & My Sophia-girl.

Sorting through her train blocks.