Owen Caleb

Owen Caleb joined us at 3:17am on Tuesday, April 26th. Labor lasted about 6 hours and Owen, like Lillian, was born in the water.

We are adjusting pretty well,  Lilly is taking to him fairly well. I will write out the birth story soon enough.

ice

Lilly likes ice cubes, she comes running every time I open the freezer, makes a beeline for ice cubes, picks one out, licks it and puts it on the counter. Last night, however, it got stuck. I froze, no pun intended, got a glass of water to pour on her lip, then decided I needed at least one photo. Snapped this picture and off came the ice cube.

Nail Trimming

Sounds like a thrilling subject right? Well apparentaly when you are 18 months old and are not the one who is being trimmed, it's quite entertaining.

Last night Mike decided we needed to trim Hamiltons nails. He's WAY (and by that I mean 6-8 months) over due. We've put this off because he's not exactly cooperative but with the new flooring in he clicks like you wouldn't believe and it drives us both crazy. So we get out the needed supples, trimmers and the box, yes BOX, of treats and get to business. Hamilton, like his female owner, likes to eat. So Mike trims and I feed him pieces of treats. Well this was the first time Lillian had seen this done and no sooner had we started but she gets into the box and starts handing him entire treats, at that rate we'd go through the box with the front two paws. So I move over break the treats into pieces and hand them to her and she takes over feeding him, giggling and laughing and grinnging the entire time. She certainly isn't afraid of a few pointy dog teeth.

As we were doing this I told Mike the story of Bailey (our family's yellow lab growing up) and my little brother. Bailey was always very good about getting her nails trimmed until Isaac got a hold of the trimmers and decided to do it himself. I'm assuming he was 4-5 maybe. Well you can imagine things didn't go so well and after that it took 2-3 people and handfuls of treats to get the job done. So in case you were thinking about this Mom, the clippers are up high where Lillian can't get them. 

New Floors!

We have wanted wood floors (well laminate really) since we moved in here a year ago. Yes I know people ask about why we are redoing the floor when it's only a year old. So besides the fact that we really dislike carpet here's why: Take two adults, a baby, a dog and a cat and a very wet, snowy muddy year add that to basically living in one room of this house plus the fact that the carpet is white and you get...dirty stained icky looking carpet. Circumstances were such that we had the cash to buy the flooring and I'm blessed with  a very very handy husband. (thanks to my in-laws for that) Now I have very baby/animal (mess) friendly floors.
Lilly is having a great time pushing things around and I'm loving the easy clean up and how much "glowier" (thanks Audrey) my house looks. Pure happiness!

The beginning...

I should have take pictures of all the stains but oh well. The other problem is that when you come in the garage door there is no place to remove shoes so you walk from there which is to the right in this photo across the carpet to the front door right before the hall way. I don't think you need to know how stained the floor was right there. Ick!

Boring beige, beige and more beige. Really my couches are green but you can't tell here.

Lilly loves to climb.

Pulling up tack strips, I got to pull lots of staples. 

Looks like a very serious conversation going on here. 

Hard at work

Ta da! Isn't it lovely? Working on putting the trim up today. 

So so so much better. Thanks to my husband for all his hard work!

Lilly's knitting box

Lillian really likes to play with my knitting box. Every time I sit down to knit Lilly usually ends up in trouble for opening the box and pulling things out. Yarn is very tempting, I know, I'm obsessed, but little hands make a mess of it very quickly. So this morning I get the ingenious idea to give her her own box with some scrap yarn and needles that I don't use. She was entertained by this for about 20 minutes, pretty good for an 18 month old. We'll see how it goes when I tell her to get her yarn. Maybe it will actually work.