Lachlan - 21 months!

Unfortunately, blogging has become a pain in the butt with our laptop which uses Windows 8...still not sure how the rest of the world is managing to get by using it cause it just plain old SUCKS to the point that I can't do the simplest of things anymore.  I'm not sure if I need to switch to a different blog site that is better compatible or what to do to fix it, but all of these posts take me 10 times longer to do than they should.  Throughout the month, I will just save notes to a draft blog post so that way I don't forget things...then at the end of the month I clean up the wording and add pictures and post it for all to see.  This month I'm just giving up messing with it...for the last 30 minutes I've attempted to modify the text below and it just simply won't let me....my curser just disappears!  So instead you just get my notes in draft form...some which may not even make sense, but oh well!  At least I managed to get some pictures added!

Well, he survived his first full month as a Texan!  I really can't believe how quickly he is approaching 2 years old and wish I could just freeze him at this age a bit longer.



Struggled with daycare dropoffs, but seems to have fun most days.  Has a twin Boom.  Love having camera to check on things and see what he is up to.  Eats like a king there- can't believe the nice food he gets served!

Mornings stress me out a bit and I have it so easy that we have no set schedule since I work from home and really don't need to shower or get ready too much.  He doesn't like most of his new shoes and still wants to wear his old ones that are too small or falling apart, so that is a battle.  Then I have to apply sunscreen and he hates that.  So then we finally get out the door and then is another battle to get him into the car and into his carseat.  It just eats up so much extra time and is frustrating.

Loves to count and picking up on it.  Stacked blocks and clearly counted from 5 to 10.  Loves the ABCs even more.  He will stop dead in his tracks of what he is doing if he hears the ABCs.  He attempts to sing along and definitely knows pieces of it.  He LOVES Elmo still and will sing along to Elmo's World.  He just still loves all music and the action songs.  He really likes ring around the rosie and the mulberry bush, but we try to minimize that since it involves us up and moving around too!

Huge improvement with using silverware.  At daycare he doesn't really have anyone helping him so is forced to figure it out if he wants to eat.  I make sure to use a bib at home cause it slides off the food sometimes, but he gets most in his mouth.  Figured out how to hold the bowl or container with his other hand to help spoon it out.

Has started waking during the nights crying. This is pretty unusual so thought maybe he wasn't feeling well or was just scared being in a new place.  However, it keeps happening about twice/week.  The problem is that even once we go up there, he is wide awake FOREVER and then goes nuts when try to put him back in his crib.  We've laid on the floor up there with him and also next to his crib and he is okay with that...but not ideal way to get sleep when 7 months pregnant or a husband working long hours.  We've tried the PNP in our bedroom, but he wanted none of that.  We've tried bringing him to our bed and he is happy there and not crying, but the problem is that he does not sleep.  We'll give him 1-2 hours and he is still awake, so he just can't lay down and relax with us.

Loves looking for airplanes and birds in the sky. Also loves listening for cars, trucks, and motorcycles...and he can look out his bedroom window to see them.

It's amazing all the stuff he knows and picks up on that we don't even point out or teach him.  I swear every day he amazes me with something he says or knows.  Like he knew that I'm Amy and daddy is Dustin.  He can work a few puzzles he has where the hole does not show the picture of the piece, so he has to figure it out based on the shape and surroundings.

I mad him a lego table and he spends SO much time here building towers and choos-choos.  Most of our blocks have the alphabet on them, so he makes sure to get all the letters facing the correct way.  He gets a little frustrated sometimes when he can't get one on easily or the tower collapses, but he is getting better at working through it.

He is understanding more and more in his books.  He will sometimes read to himself and is my favorite thing to listen to him do.  He is so good at imitating my tone and actions.  I'll be able to pick up on key words throughout the gibberish.  He also loves acting out his books-- he will insist on standing up for Let's Dance Little Pookie so he can do the actions.  For goodnight moon, he has started to point to the objects on the pages as I say them.

Loves walking backwards, doing happy feet, jumping, and flips!

Taken to a monkey at school

Calls pacifier a nurse, started calling us Mommy and Daddy....love it!

Stopped throwing food and even brings his dishes over to the sink

Every time after he sneezes he says Bless You.  Will not say it if someone else sneezes.

Old house tour

 While we do absolutely love our new home, it's still a little sad thinking about the short time we got to spend in the home that we thought we'd be in for a very long time.  We were slowly making progress of getting the rooms decorated and to feel like home, so thought I'd share the pics of how it looked when we left.  (New home tour to come soon!)

You can see back in this post HERE links to our floorplan.

Outside- only change we made was painting the front door dark brown (was a light cream, the same as the siding and garage doors)

View after walking in the front door- had a nice open 2-story foyer.  We loved the wood floors- they were the hand-scraped style, so were rough with imperfections-- great for hiding all the dings when Lachlan threw things.

To the right of the front door were 2 glass doors to go into the office.  It was very bare and minimal!  I added the 3 things on the wall to stage the house, so normally looked even worse

To the left of the front door it opened to a large dining room.  Normally this room was empty and Lachlan would just play with some of his toys in here.  To help stage the house for selling, we borrowed this dining set from our generous friends.

We loved having the master bedroom on the main floor. This was new furniture we bought when moving in and upgraded to a king bed, which I thought I'd never do but now can't imagine not having all that extra space!  This was one of our more put-together or finished rooms that I had worked on.

Master Bath- we liked the size and layout of the bathroom, but never got around to doing anything.  I had in my mind to paint it or really wanted to do something different with this large mirror, but never made it that far!  We did put up some Gila film from Lowes on the window which was a good cheap solution to still let light in, but gave us privacy.

Our tub was huge and jetted, but unfortunately we are not big bath people and it was rarely used.  I think I used it 1 time.  We did use it several times for Lachlan when he was just an infant and laid on a sponge cause was was easy to climb in there to wash him.  The shower was nice sized, but Dustin really wanted a tiled shower and this one was all marble.

Here is the family room- this view would be if you walked into it from the foyer.  We LOVED the giant size and the large windows (although it did get warm when the afternoon sun hit it)!

Another view of the family room- you can see how open our floorplan was with the upstairs here.  It also opened up nicely into the dining room and kitchen area.  Dustin was really bummed the hardwood flooring wasn't in this room, but after having a baby I think he realized how nice the soft carpeting was for all the house you spend on the floor!

Kitchen- LOVED LOVED LOVED it.  There were TONS of cabinet and it was a really nice large space-- I feel like it looks much better in person than what this picture shows.  There was so much granite, beautiful tile backsplash, and under-cabinet lighting.

Another view- got spoiled with the treat of double-ovens...now can never imagine going back to one!  The door by the ovens led to a walk-in pantry that was also huge.

This is where we ate all our meals.  From where the shot was taken, there were sliding patio doors leading to the backyard.  Down the hallway on the left there was the planning desk, half bath, coat closet, laundry, and garage entrance.

Planning desk area, which really was just dumping ground for the mail to pile up.

Crazy enough, this was one of my favorite rooms- the Laundry Room!  The picture doesn't really capture the size and convenience of everything, but I loved having a really large utility sink in there.  Definite must-have with kids!  And then there were so many cabinets and drawers for storage of all our household cleaners, tools, and other random things.  It had a large counter on the left side for folding clothes (or storing junk).  We had a clothesline about that counter which was perfect for letting the cloth diapers dry.

Main Floor Half Bath.  Nothing special about this room- long term I wanted to paint it and do something with the mirror.

Now, let's head upstairs to take a look around....

Loved most of the oil rubbed bronze lighting and fixtures in the place

Lachlan's room was one of the few rooms that I had really put effort into making sure we completed sooner than later.  This was the view walking in the door.

You can see this opens up into the Jack-n-Jill bath setup.

Each bedroom had their own vanity area.

I had just started with a Whale theme in the bathroom and doing a Navy, Aqua, Red color scheme.  I had bought some aqua paint the week we found out we probably would be moving, so held onto it and brought to the new house instead!

Here was the Guest Bedroom.  We pretty much just put our belongings from our old bedroom at the loft into here.

This is a full bath in the hallway that was for the guest bedroom or when we were using the loft/bonus room.

This was our gigantic bonus room where we hung out a lot in the evenings to watch tv/movies and a ton of Lachlan's toys were up here (strategically hidden behind the couch for picture purposes)....but normally looked like a 1.5 year old ruled the place!

Another view-- we loved how it was all open to the family room below.  Lachlan loved dropping balls through the spindles and then one of us throw it back up at him.

And that completes the tour!  Definitely miss things about this place, our new home is very similar and has some features that I even like better...so it has all worked out.  I didn't have a good shot of the backyard, but we never used it to play- it was very sloped and Lachlan just had no interest in being back there.  We only got to use a few times, but we also had a great neighborhood pool that we are definitely missing now with this heat!

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