October, November and a little December

So, I like pictures, they really do speak well for themselves.

Nathan's done with all of his applications for med school. We're just waiting for interview invitations; he had one a UNM in October.

I'm 18 weeks along and doing better weekly. I've had debilitating heartburn even while on prescriptions, but it's starting to kind of ease up. I've also been nauseous after the 1st trimester but most days I'm not nauseous anymore.

Zac is 2 and 1/2 and in 4T shirts. He's obsessed with trains and cars. He talks a lot. Recently, he's started putting "me" at the end of sentences. For example, "Put socks me." or "Lunch me." It is very entertaining.

Kate is in the 40% for height and 10% for weight and off the charts for development for her age. We think she recently had a lengthening growth spurt and her weight will slowly catch up.  She talks a lot and just tries to keep up with her brother and stay girly at the same time.

They adore their daddy's bike but most especially his water bottles.

 

Folding their arms for the prayer for our pizza at the park. 

 



 

I wore this outfit as a kid. Kate did not want to wear anything but this for a while.

 

 

 

My attractive man before his UNM Med school interview.

 

The little hooligans decided it'd be fun to push and pull Diko's kennel into their bedroom.

 

There are a lot more cute pictures but our computer is being slow and I can't get them to upload. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Sunday Delights

Nathan and I laughed pretty hard at this picture today.

This was in January of this year. Man, has our boy changed.

Surprise, Surprise

From 6th-12th grade I went to school with this kid named Steven Suprise. Ever since I met him in the 6th grade, I cannot remember the correct way to spell surprise. He said that his last name was like surprise but without the R. Now, I can never remember if his name had the r in it or if the event has an r in it. I have to spell check it every time.

The real surprise is that I heard a very special something on Friday afternoon. A heartbeat :) It belongs to Baby Blacker #3 :) Congratulations to us! It - I think it's a he - is due May 10th which was Zac's due date.

We'll have 3 kids under the age of three. Zac and Katie are about a year apart. Katie and the new one will be about 2 years apart. We're progressing.

 

 

This kid Love his "talking cereal" SOOOOO much! The talking is the crackling.

 

 

 

 

Blog Splatter

My little sister, Abi, sent me a text a couple of weeks ago that stated, "Dude last blog post! June 11!!!!". When I asked her what that meant she said that was the last time I had posted. This is how I'm always reminded to update our family blog :) You should know that I do think about blogging. I have a note app on my phone and have filled to capacity three notes with things I want to share on this blog. So, without further ado, and to appease my sister - though it's been a little while since her text - here are my 'blogging notes'.

 

I started doing freezer meals and love it very much.

 

Zac started saying, "I funny." while doing silly things about 3 months ago. He still does this and many other funny things like saying, "I a monkey." while terroizing the couch in his room. His language has been exploding recently. He's a chatter box

He loves doing puzzles and when he was first learning to do them I had to help him. I would say, "not quite" when he had the right piece close to the right area but couldn't quite get it. Once he started to do the puzzles more independently, I noticed that if he hadn't gotten the piece in the right place or needed to turn it around he would say, "Not quite." So cute and funny.

Zac took about 3 or 4 months to say thank you. When we first started teaching him to say thank you, he was about 13 months. He picked it up right away and said thank you without prompting for a half and week and then he stopped. He would throw tantrums when we tried to get him to say thank you. It was horrible. More than a year from that point, he really started to understand manners. Humorously, instead of saying thank you, he would say, "You're welcome." whenever we prompted him to say thank you. Then he started doing it without prompting. I'd hand him a snack and he'd spout, "You're welcome." It was so funny and frustrating. Now he generally says thank you but sometimes says you're welcome instead.

Zac thinks it's funny to hit and kick and bite. Especially when you are changing his diaper.

If Kate is napping after Zac gets up from his nap, he gets concerned and asks where Katie is.

Zac sleeps in a pack n play cause he will not stay in his toddler bed.

He wears footie p.j.s with the feet cut off backwards to bed everynight because if he poops in the night he puts his hands in it. The backwards footie pajamas are the only way we've found that works for him.

Zac has to have his Grammy blanket put on him every night before he'll go to sleep. This happens at nap time too.

Nathan was playing with the kids in their bedroom and he laid on the floor with his head on a couch cushion that was off of the couch. Zac sat on top of him and started trying to put Nathan to sleep. He stroked his face and kept saying, "Shhhhh."

 

 

 

 

Zac is a very loving little kid. Whenever someone around him is hurt, he comforts them by hugging, stroking their face, giving kisses and saying, "Okay, Okay, Okay." He also does this to Nathan and me as an apology when he gets in trouble. It's hard to stay mad at him when he does this.

 

 

Both kids LOVE to give hugs and kisses, though Zac is more affectionate than Kate. He loves to show love and comfort people.

 

Katie's ability to speak has increased exponentially since Zac has started talking more. She says but is not limited to:

-mama

-daddy

- please (sign language also)

-thank you (sign language also)

-more in sign language

-eat in sign language

-food

-cheese

-snack

- sky

-airplane

-car

-various animal names and their noises

-book

-movie

-bunny; her very, most favorite thing in the world

-diko

-dog

-kitty

-bird

-bike

-water

-baby

It's crazy to think that when Zac was 15 months old he would barely say Mom, Dad, Diko and please. She started walking just before she turned one.

Kate is a buys body.

She hoards toys and then forgets about them the next minute.

She is such a girl! My sister, Hannah, came to visit in July. When we picked her up from the airport, I told her that Katie was such a girl and she gave a look like, yeah right, Lizi. A couple days later and she was telling me that Katie is such a girl.

Kate screams soooo much. It's taught Zac to scream. They were both aptly punished. Since then, whenever Katie screams, Zac tells her, "No scream, Katie!"

Our kids nap in different rooms and if Katie wakes up first, she goes to Zac's door and screams and knocks until he wakes up and I get him out. Luckily, she has recently toned this down and just gets really, really excited when we get Zac up.

Kate is a horrible teether. She teethes for 4-6 weeks on one tooth and then it takes another 2 weeks for it to cute through. And she is grumpy about it the whole time. Once when she was teething and about 14 months olds, she was up in the night and Nathan was rocking her in the rocking chair and she asked for a movie. It was the first time she had ever shown interested in movies. Ever.

Katie loves to put the lids on the toy bins; or anything else that has a lid that is off.

She loves sitting in boxes (Like the old Dorff cats, Pounce and Moe).

Katie is extremely attached to stuffed animal bunny. It has a string thing you can pull and it plays the Rock a Bye Baby music. We were so proud when she learned how to pull the string for herself.

She eats more than Nathan everyday. She is seriously a bottomless pit. Everyone who is around her for a full day is amazed at her ability and need to eat everything.

 

 

 

 

 

Both of the kids LOVE Skyping with family. They particularly love seeing the dogs that my sisters play with in D.C. My sister's hide the dogs from the camera and then quickly move them into view and out again. Both of my kids exclaim, "Dog!" when this happens and smile really big.

 

One of my greatest joys in life is talking to my mom. She is one of my very bestest friends. I love talking about life and problems and joys and points of view. I love that she doesn't always try to solve my problems. She comforts me and listens and says, "Man this stinks." but in a much more mature way. It's nice to have someone sit with you through the hard times, not trying to fix you, just letting you be you. Also, funny thing about 'mature'. I say "ma-chure", my mama says, "ma-tour". Sometime when I was younger she told me that i would only really be ma-tour when I pronounced the word that way, that ma-tour way :) She was only partially joking I'm sure.

When I'm old I want to be the kind of woman who goes around helping everyone. I want to help out and support moms. I don't think that there is enough recognition about how hard it is to be a stay at home mom and how much support you need from friends and neighbors. When you don't get that support, you build walls to protect yourself and that ends up being very lonely. I realized that if I want to help everyone when I'm old I have to start now.

Some days I'm quite confident that I'm a good mother and that our kids will turn out well adjusted and normal. Some days I'm sure the only thing they're going to learn is what they watch on TV.

 

Have I ever mentioned how much Nathan and I love our bed? We aren't thrilled to go anywhere, even hotels, because we know we won't sleep nearly as well there as we do in our bed. Whenever we're traveling home from a trip, you can be assured that we mention how excited we are to sleep in our bed again several times.

 

I really think it's important to be most passionate about my husband and kids. I enjoy being passionate about lots of things and am highly opinionated, but I've learned that I should never be more passionate about a project - even if the finished product is for my kids to play with - than I am about my family.

 

I'm a fairly insecure person about who I was when I was younger. Whenever I see people from high school I quickly look away. I realized that I'm worried that they won't know who I am and it would be awkward for me to say hi. I think it's ironic that I'm very secure in who I am now, but being around people from a time period when I wasn't secure reminds me to be insecure again.

 

We went to Utah in June. I ran a half marathon and we particiapted in events surrounding on of my roommates weddings and saw most of my old roommates. That was amazing. I love them.

 

Maybe I'll blog again soon or maybe it'll keep until one of my family members reminds me to blog. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

The wonders of my life!

We came home from lunch in the park today and it was nap time. I changed the kids diapers and picked up Katie to put her to bed first. I sang her a song and Zac walked pasted us to thier bedroom. I prayed with Kate and went to find out what mischief my 2 year old was causing. But it wasn't mischief, he had put himself in bed for his nap. It was the sweetest thing to walk into their room and see him pulling his blankets over his little body while clutching his trains and sippy cup.

We usually fight each other a bit when it's nap time, so, today was a wonderful, makes everything worth it, moment.

Doctor Socks!

So, this is actually my first blog post EVER, but Lizi told me that I had to write about a rather fun experience that I had this morning at the bus stop, so here I am.

I frequently take the bus to work so that I can have some nice quite time to read and relax which has been wonderful. One of the bus stops I wait at on my to work is at Central and Yale. For those of you familiar with Albuquerque, you will know that this particular location is the Mecca of homeless people, druggies and a ton of other rather interesting characters. On this occasion though I was heading to work rather early in the morning and so it was mostly only the normal people. The sun was just peaking over the tops of the shops and I sat down to read my book and enjoy the few minutes until my bus came when the woman a few feet away starts to talk to me. You must know though, that this woman was shorter and rather more plump than normal and very black (not in any kind of racist way, but just so that you understand that she had a very classic black moma voice). Here goes our conversation.

Lady: Scuse me sir, are you a doctor?
Me: No, I'm sorry. I'm not. (At this point I begin wondering why she would think that I am a doctor and what crazy health concern (because of the part of town of course) she is going to ask me about next.
Lady: I just saw yours shoes and socks and they doctor socks! They look just like doctor socks!
Me: (This is where I start smiling and just laughing a little.) Well, I am applying to medical school.
Lady: Oh, you'll get in (again this is all in a very black mama voice).
Me: (I'm thinking to myself; Why? Because I have doctor shoes and socks?)
Lady: You just look the part already! You'll get in...

There was a little more after that, but this lady at the bus stop sure made my morning. It was very comforting too, because now I know that all I have to do to get into medical school is wear "doctor socks!"

-Nathan

Camping!

Tonight there was a solar eclipse and Nathan and I saw it through a pin hole projector which we made ourselves. It was really exciting to run up the street to quickly view the eclipse.

We went camping this weekend. Nathan and I love camping and we've found that our children do too. This post, like many others, will be described mostly in pictures.

I found this piece of wood that was mostly broken, but the middle cord was still holding it together. It was cool.

Who falls asleep in a hammock on their stomach? Shantae.

Zac LOVED helping us find firewood. We're really trying to teach him how to help us with things and let him know that we need his help. It's working. He wants to do everything. Or maybe it's just that he's in a stage where he wants to do whatever we're doing.

Yes, we let our children eat dirt. 

We all slept horribly. Zac and Kate simply wouldn't sleep. In the morning when Zac woke up, my wonderful husband took care of our constantly screaming son. The only way he got zac to eat breakfast was by going on a nature walk and then quickly shoving his breakfast in his face and quickly backing off again. When breakfast was over, the only way he would stay happy was by going on a drive  ad then by rolling the car windows up and own repeatedly. He really liked to plaster his  face against the window as it moved up and down.

 Nathan asked Zac to smile for the picture. Zac frowned. When he told Zac to frown, Zac smiled.

 Zac's playing with his truck here.

Shantae, Nathan's little sister, graduated from high school on Monday. It was super exciting that we got to go. Shantae is going up to BYU this summer and I'm super sad because we are really good friends. I'm excited for her to go to college but, man, will I miss her.

The chairs were stayed folded up unless you were heavy enough to hold the down. Zac was not heavy enough. He was so distressed about his seat trying to eat him.

Shantae kindly came over the other day to help us clean our carpets and couches. We got a nice matching set of couches from our neighbos who moved away (not the Christensens). Best part: they were free! Worst part: they needed cleaned. Also, Diko was sick for a couple of days and threw up on the couches. He also had diarrhea all over our front room many times. So, carpet cleaning was a must. Have I mentioned that Zac loves his "Tay-Tay" - Shantae's nickname cause Zac can't say her full name?  

Our neighbors, the Christensens, moved on Friday. It was sad. Their kids, Lexi and Avery, and Zac and Katie love playing together. It's so sad that Zac can't play with "Wedi" - how he says Lexi - anymore. We'll really miss not being able to borrow cooking ingredients, have someone to quickly watch our kids, have someone listen to our baby monitor while we go out on a date, and have adult converstaion through out the day. We're really going to miss our friends. :(

And this was the best picture we could get of the kids together.

This is a picture of the women in my book club. Not that it's actually my book club...

 

May 12th was National Train Day and oh, boy, does Zac love his "choo choos". So, we went to the local railrunner station for the celebration. We saw model trains, got train coloring books and explored the train cars. Zac LOVED it. He always wants to play with choo choos.