Visiting Wheaton

Just so people know, we'll be in Wheaton from April 1 to April 14. We'll be pretty busy, so we won't be able to drive out anywhere, but if anyone is up for visiting us, we'd love to see you!

Meet-and-Greet Monday: Playing Dress-up

I'm actually posting this on Monday this week! Here are the photos of Jeremiah's first "dress-up" play:

It started when Jeremiah decided to put on my sandals and purse, walk to the door, and tell me, "Byebye!" I realized then that he may enjoy playing "dress-up".

So we went and found random clothes: t-shirt of mommy's, shirt of daddy's, Mommy's hat, necklace, and bracelet.

I love this face!Next we added some mittens and shoes to the outfit:

He really liked the mittens.

And finally mommy joined in! (Yes I'm aware I look quite scary- my smile looks almost evil.)

And here are some pics of Jeremiah using the potty (except that he didn't go). When I told him he could bring a book, I didn't realize that he would choose A BOOK. He could barely hold it on his lap!

Check out more Meet-and-Greet at The Natural Mommy!

Meet-and-Greet....Wednesday? and other ramblings

So, I'm a little late. I kept meaning to post, but life got in the way. I'm not sure where each day's been going, but they've been flying by. One thing I've been working on is compiling Jeremiah-friendly airplane activities. I used some ideas from a few books, and some of my own.

The list includes, but is not limited to:

• photo book (cut out photos of us, family, Jeremiah, taped them on construction paper, and laminated them as a photo book for Jeremiah to look at)
• crayons and coloring book
• sticker books (book with stickers and pages to put the stickers on and take them off again)
• puzzle (we found a small, flat puzzle to bring with few pieces)
• small toys (baby, soft ball)
• small calculator (he loves playing with calculators!)
• sandpaper and yarn to stick on and make designs
• finger puppet
• tissue toss (toss a tissue into the air, let the air nozzle push it back down)
• shape matching (I laminated a paper with colored shapes on it, and laminated matching shapes. Then I put velcro on the shapes so he can match them)
• books
• food!

We'll see how much we can fit. All of the above things are very compact and easy to pack. The goal is to keep him busy! We also have a list of games we can play with him.

Ok, and now for the pics. Meet Jeremiah's babies. He's entered the phase of wanting to sleep with his babies. Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's two, and sometimes it's the huge blue care-a-bear. We try to rotate through so he won't become too attached to one and insist we take it everywhere. I "made" a bed for his babies. I took a box, put some fabric in it, and then laid a pillow and blanket in there. He likes putting his babies to "nigh-nigh."

Jeremiah and his baby

Trying to sit with the babies on the chair

Snuggling

His head ended up where his feet were

Waking up from nap time

We leave for the States in one week from today!

Random things for today

Ok, so here are some random things in nice, bullet format:

• I've been working today on uploading pictures to snapfish. I realized that we have no prints since Jeremiah was a few weeks old! Hmmm... time to update the baby book. And wow do we have a lot of pictures to sort through!
• Apparently Jeremiah wanted me to exercise today. He pulled out my fitmama prenatal workout DVD case, opened it, took out the case, popped open the CD drive and was trying to figure out how to put the DVD inside when I interrupted him. And we don't even watch that many movies!
• Rainy day= craziness. Boy gets hyper; dog gets hyper; and vice versa. We've been letting the dog inside when we're home. He didn't want to go out at all because of the rain. They both had to spend some time in time-out.
• I just realized that I haven't updated my menu in a long, long time! Don't worry, we have eaten since New Years! I'll try to update it for next week, because I'm sure you're all wanting to know what we're eating. ;)
• We just paid off Daniel's grad school loan! Yay! We have some money left in our savings account. When that runs out, it's time to go back to the States (we have a little set aside for moving back to the States and don't want to touch that until then). Someday it will be nice to be able to save instead of drain savings, and we'll have to take that into account as we decide how much longer to stay here (I think we'll probably be here at least another 2 years). But, with no life insurance and no savings building, we can't be here much longer than that without making some changes. But I'm not worried, it's in God's hands. If we can't start building up savings in a few years, we'll probably take that as a sign that it's time to go back "home". We do have a little bit put away for way in the future in mutual funds, but it's not worth much right now, especially with how the stock market is currently; so we're not touching that until we're old. :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Jeremiah would like to wish all a Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We celebrated with home-corned beef that we later boiled and roasted, a big pot of veggies cooked in the beef broth, soda bread, and green jello.

Don't worry, I took seconds. And thirds...

Meet-and-Greet Monday

Meet my plants:

Vine Roses

Front yard bushes

Backyard

To view all the pictures of our plants, check out the slide show below:

And of course, we can't leave out some pics of Jeremiah. On Saturday we took another family bike ride. This is what happens when Jeremiah tries to put on his own helmet. Next he tried attacking me with mine (sorry, no pic of that). He also apparently knew which shoes I should wear.

For more meet-and-greet, check out Beth's page!

Spirit Week

This past week at JCS was spirit week. Each day the students dressed up based on a certain theme (sports, career day, twin day, whacky day, and JCS colors). Daniel had to be creative while still looking "professional" or at least being able to look professional in 1 minute. For sports day he wore a white sox shirt, and had a dress shirt to put on if he needed. For career day he dressed as a "secret service" agent with a dress coat, blues brothers tie, sunglasses, and ear-piece. Twin day he dressed normally, and for "whacky" day he wore dress clothes in a "whacky" manner. Friday they closed the office for field day.

Jeremiah and I visited Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. I enjoyed seeing the kids running around having fun. Thursday afternoon the preschoolers wanted to play with Jeremiah. He enjoyed it, but was eventually overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, Daniel forgot the camera all but one day, so I only have one picture of him:

Daniel wearing his pink-striped short-sleeved collared shirt along with a green-plaid-ish, long-sleeved shirt.

1st graders doing their cheer

Jeremiah with the big 3 yr. olds (after a little too much attention)

More than Just Pregnancy?

I had another one of those days on Sunday. It was similar to two weeks ago, when I couldn't keep anything down, except that it only lasted 1 day. And then Monday I was wiped out. Yesterday I felt good; I went on a walk with Jeremiah, did some preggie stretches, laundry, made dinner, etc. And then I was weak again today. I figured it was just really bad morning sickness. But I'm in my second trimester and "shouldn't" be this bad, nor was I anywhere near this bad anytime during my pregnancy with Jeremiah. Then again, many people have bad preggie symptoms, and each pregnancy is different.
But then today I ran across a few notes I'd written before I was pregnant (when I was trying to keep track of how I felt) and remembered the strange symptoms I experienced during the three months before getting pregnant. I even went to the doctor and had blood tests taken (which of course came back normal).
Here were my symptoms that came and went throughout the months:

• dizzy
• weak
• nauseous
• extremely thirsty

So remembering that makes me worried that there's something besides pregnancy agrivating my pregnancy symptoms.
Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

Our little talker

I've been meaning to put this up for a while. I recently sat down and wrote out the words Jeremiah says. He's increased dramatically in speaking lately, as I'm sure is normal for his age. So, for interested grandparents (and others who want to know) here is a list of his current words. He may have more, but it sometimes takes me a few days to figure out what he's saying. (Although I really don't think his "OwahOwahyeow" has any meaning). And keep in mind he speaks with a "toddler accent."
And now, in no particular order, except for the order I thought of them:
Cheese
Gracias
Libro (book)
baby
hot
no
Iah (Jeremiah)
Pee (Pie for "foot" in Spanish, not for the dessert)
sticker
pan ("bread" in Spanish)
mas (more)
ball
pow-pow (Dominicans use it for no touch)
uh-oh
"Bee" (for cleaning hands or turning off the light. I'm still really confused on this one)
Ya (finished)
Chiste (dog's name)
Chai (Cat's name)
Mama
Dada
woof
mow (for mewo)
neigh
bye-bye
Hola
Hi
Agua (water)
Pee-pee
Poo-poo (says this occasionally)
A-men (with a clear break between the two syllables; comes out "Ah-mm")
ta-ta (we use it for no touch)
nigh-nigh
mano (hand; says it like "meemo")
lave (wash)
undies
His favorite words are "agua" and "Chiste." And he says "Chiste" whenever he hurts himself as if he's blaming the dog. He's also repeating us a lot, which is really cute. I don't know how many words he's "supposed" to have in his vocabulary, but I'm not worried; I know he's progressing and it may take more time with the two languages.

Meet-and-Greet Monday

It's been awhile, but I'm finally participating again in Meet-and-Greet Monday!

Enjoying a a beautiful sunny day in our backyard
(Daniel picked a huge flower for me and put it in my hair. Awwww...)

Our silly little boy

And he knows he's cute!

That's it for now. Check out the pics from our family bike trip here.

Visit The Natural Mommy for more Meet-and-Greet!