Long Time, No Blog

Thanks to Keith's stepdad, we all came home from Thanksgiving vacation with a wicked outbreak of the cholera plague. It was the first time I ever had to deal with a vomiting child, which was not fun. Isaac had the worst of it & it actually took him a full week to recover. Praise God though, we are all well now!

Because we were all so sick when we came back from Michigan, we did not get around to Christmas decorating until a week ago, and we did not get our Christmas tree until this past Saturday. Therefore, we are quite behind on sending out our Christmas cards. We just did our little photo shoot in front of the tree last night. Isaac was anything but cooperative. We did manage to get a few good ones though. The photocards are expected to arrive between 12/15-12/19. I usually have my tree decorated the day after Thanksgiving and the cards in the mail before December 1. Just wasn't happening this year.

Sidenote-this is the first time I've ever had a real Christmas tree! I love it, but it isn't very fragrant. I thought a pine scent would permeate my house more, but that hasn't happened.

Moving right along, our dishwasher broke, for good. Not sure when we're going to be able to get a new one, so we're doing dishes in the sink. I was really trying to clean my fingernails up for Keith's work Christmas party this Friday too. Now I have dishpan hands. Oh well. Life goes on.

Over the weekend I finally got around to watching a DVD on vaccines that my friend loaned to me. Hearing the information on this DVD made me sick to my stomach that I've blindly allowed Isaac and Josiah to have all of their vaccines without hardly asking a single question. The issue definitely warrants further investigation . I want to encourage all moms out there reading this to learn more for yourselves. Don't just take the pediatrician's word for it. Do your homework and learn both sides of the issue.

On a lighter note, Josiah is sitting up very nicely on his own. He's also trying so hard to get up onto all 4's and crawl. He officially has two teeth. He has worked his way through all of the vegetable purees, except zucchini and yellow squash, has mastered oatmeal, and is going to begin more fruit purees this week. Because he stopped nursing so early (2 1/2 months!), I wanted to find some other special thing I could do for him in place of breastfeeding, as Isaac nursed for 8 solid months. What I decided to do was make his own baby food homemade. It really isn't that hard or time-consuming at all. I just make as many different purees as I can one day a week, pour it into ice cube trays to freeze, then pop the cubes out and store in Ziplock freezer bags. This way I can better control the consistency of his food as well, as he prefers thicker consistencies.

I am vexed about one thing with Josiah. He still doesn't sleep all the way through the night! He's 6 months old and I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. He makes it until usually about 5am, and then will not fall back to sleep without having a bottle. I'm afraid we've gotten into a bad habit by giving him a bottle in the middle of the night like that. The only other thing I know to do is just let him cry it out. I hear that the first night is bad, the second is worse, the third is better, and then they have it. I'm going to check a book out at the library called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and what it has to say. I really want a full night's sleep again!

Isaac is still a human sponge. He just says more and more words everyday. He is beginning to use please and thank you. He also says words like hungry, food, vitamin, banana, elephant, fork (though it sounds like a bad word, if you know what I mean), coat, hat, and mittens. He's even starting on some phrases like daddy working, josiah sleeping, i'll fix it, and i'll get it. He calls Josiah JoZo. We call Josiah that a lot and that's easier for him to say. He's just so adorable right now. Still loves books & music. He's really good at identifying shapes. We're still working on colors. He's doing very well with potty training too still. I guess the next step though is to actually put him in either a pull-up or underpants and teach him to stay clean and dry. I mean, the kid can't run around naked forever, and it's cold outside. The only thing that worries me about this is that he's never pulled his pants down or up before. I guess he'll just learn. He'll probably learn very quickly at the rate he's going. Right now though, with no bottoms on he can just go to the potty whenever he has to. I hope the added step of pulling his pants down doesn't totally make him angry and give up. We shall see.