Home Sweet Home

We have now been in our new house for almost 3 months and I am finally getting pictures and our address posted! A few weeks ago we finally got the garage finished and we can park both cars in the garage-waaahhoo! Tim put up shelves and lots of hooks to hold my thousand and one strollers and our many bikes and other garden/lawn tools and such. Now that that is done I finally feel like we are all moved in. Big sigh of relief! We all (even the dog, Wilson!) are loving our house! It is so nice to have so much space as compared to our cramped apartment. And it is even nicer not to have to yell at Brady to walk lightly as to not disturb the grouchy lady downstairs. This house has 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a loft upstairs. We have a fenced in backyard so we can let Wilson out whenever he wants and he can run around, and when Brady gets too rambunctious I send him outside too! It is wonderful! And not to mention we are about 15 minutes away from my parents, so the boys get to see Mimi and Pa Pa very often which has been great as well.

Our new address is:

131 Palma Noce

San Antonio, TX 78253

No, we did not get a mini-van! Tim's mom was here visiting when I took this picture and that is her van. :)

Our patio that we had poured soon after we moved in. The patio furniture was my mother's day present-Thanks boys!

Our house was built on a sheet of limestone, so digging into the ground wasn't really a possibility. Tim built this raised garden for me and it has just flourished! I planted zucchini (which is in the back left corner and has completely taken over), cucumbers (they are right in front of the zucchini and are coming in a close 2nd to taking over, tomatoes, carrots, green beans, bell peppers, basil, parsley and cilantro.

I was able to designate a Grayson cupboard where we keep all our Tupperware, sippy cups and plastic bowls and plates. His new favorite thing to do is to get in the cupboard and clear out the contents and suck on each and every one of the sippy cups!

What's up mom?!

Here is the loft/playroom. Tim put these shelves up for me for all their toys-it looks like toys-r-us doesn't it?!

Here is the other side of the loft. The 2 doors that you can see are the boys bedrooms.

We have a baby gate at the top of the stairs, so sometimes I will close all the other doors and let both boys play up there while I'm busy doing other stuff downstairs. Well this particular day, I went up to check on them and this is what I found. They cleared all the shelves and had piled all their toys around them. They were pleased as punch with themselves! The little turkeys!

Bittersweet

When we got back from our Mexico trip Tim and I started trying to get pregnant again. Yay! We got pregnant with both the boys on the first try, so we figured this time would be pretty easy again. And wouldn't ya know, this time around did not disappoint. We tried and we got pregnant! We were super excited, but something felt a little off. I had a lot of cramping from the get go which I didn't have with the other two pregnancies. I didn't have any bleeding, so the nurse at my orientation appointment last Tuesday said everything was probably fine. But sadly on Saturday, during Grayson's birthday party, I started bleeding. Fortunately my parents and Tim's mom were there so we left the boys with them and Tim and I headed out to the ER. They took blood to test my hcg (Pregnancy hormone) levels and did an ultrasound. My hcg levels were still elevated at 1470, but in pregnancy they like to see that number between 1500-3000 then it should increase daily as the pregnancy progresses. So my low number suggested something was wrong but wasn't conclusive because they didn't have prior hcg level to compare it to. But when they did the ultrasound they didn't see a fetus and at 6 1/2 weeks we should have been able to see the baby. So they sent me home and said I needed to come back on Monday morning for a blood draw to test my hcg levels. And sure enough on Monday morning my hcg levels had dropped down to 147. The Dr determined that it was a miscarriage. We aren't sure why it happened and there is no way of knowing. These things sometimes just happen. All the Dr's and my family have repeatedly told me it wasn't my fault and there wasn't anything that I did that caused this. And I know this. I have read enough books on pregnancy and I know that a miscarriage is a possibility with every pregnancy. But it doesn't make it any easier. It still doesn't keep me from saying it's not fair. Why did it have to happen to us?! My brain knows that the pregnancy terminated itself because something was wrong, but I can't help but think why didn't this baby want me? The only way I keep coming up with to describe this whole situation is, this sucks! All the way around. Not only does it suck emotionally, but it hurts physically. This sucks. And this is one of those things that people don't talk about it, but is statistically pretty common, and that's why I'm writing about it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has gone through this. And the way I see it, when we try again and have a successful pregnancy it will be that much sweeter and that much more exciting. We'll take a few months off then try again. Please say a prayer for the little one that didn't make it.

Happy Birthday Grayson!

It's hard to believe that Grayson is a year old! It seems like just yesterday that I was walking into the hospital with water trickling down my leg making my flip flops squeak and Brady saying, "Mommy, you're dripping!". It has been a wonderful year and every day Grayson does something to make me smile. He went to the doctor for his 12 month well baby on his birthday, May 13th and checked out just fine and had to get 4 shots and a finger stick. Poor baby! He weighed in at 19 lbs 13 oz putting him in the 8th percentile, and is 29 3/4 inches tall putting him in the 42nd percentile and his head is 46.2 cm putting him in the 42nd percentile as well. I was really surprised at where he was weight wise! The Dr wasn't concerned though. She said he doesn't look underweight and is eating well, so this is just how he will be-tall and skinny just like brother. He has hit all but one milestone which is using 1 or 2 words specifically. The milestones that he has reached are:

• follows one step commands
• plays peek-a-boo
• shakes his head no
• imitates speech sounds like da, ma and makes a car driving sound while playing with his cars-such a boy already!
• picks up small objects with index finger and thumb
• uses a sippy cup only-he is completely off the bottle!
• he is on whole milk and not formula anymore
• and most notably is WALKING!!!!! He is walking everywhere now and is going up and down the stairs. He took his first real stroll across the family room on April 20th (11 months).

For his birthday his Nana came down to visit from Kansas and we had a couple parties and cakes for him. We did a small celebration on his birthday day which was Thursday. I made him a cupcake and we sang happy birthday and he had his first bite of cake and frosting. Then on Saturday we had his party, which went horribly awry (more on that to come), and was then continued on Sunday which is when he opened presents and had his Winnie the Pooh cake. We also went and had his 1 year old pictures taken which I had made him a little cake to eat for the pictures. So, needless to say between Thursday and Sunday the kid had so much cake he was beginning to think he got cake at every meal! And Grayson thoroughly enjoyed all of his cakes. He was really cute about it too. He was very slow and deliberate about eating it. He would dip his fingers in the frosting and lick them and was perfectly content eating it that way, so we had to help him get into his cake a bit. But once he got into it, he ate that cake right up! Good celebrating!

Homemade cake by Momma. This is the same cake I made for Brady's 1st birthday.

One of his favorite things to do right now is to try and kneel or stand on top of his fire truck. He works so hard at it and gets so excited when he finally gets on top.

Our little walker!

Birthday Boy!

Texas Bluebonnets

San Antonio has had a pretty wet spring, so the bluebonnets were just beautiful this year! The bluebonnet is the state flower and pops up in random open fields or on the side of the highway. We found a great big field of them and went out and took pictures-along with the rest of San Antonio! If you live in Texas, it is a requirement to have your picture taken surrounded by bluebonnets. Haha! The flowers were beautiful, but getting the boys to cooperate was not! To get both of them to smile and look the same direction at the same time was like herding cats! Brady decided he didn't want to smile at the camera on this particular day and we couldn't keep the bluebonnets out of Graysons mouth! But in the end out of about 300 pictures, we got 5 good shots. Exhausting!

Happy Easter!

We had a lovely Easter at home. We went to the Easter vigil on Saturday night, and surprisingly the boys did very well! Mass started at 7 pm and it was about 3 hours long, so we were a bit nervous about how the boys would handle it. Then in the morning I think (this is horrible I can't remember!) we went for a bike ride, then we had a lovely dinner at my parents house. And of course we did an Easter Egg hunt for the boys. While Brady ran around the yard hunting for his eggs, we sat Grayson in the middle of the yard and put an egg in front of him for him to find. He spied it, picked it up and immediately went to put it in his mouth as he does everything right now. And that was the end of his hunt. He was pretty entertained with the whole thing. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the boys in their new duds. They were super cute though-I had them matching again with little ties and everything. Too cute!

Got all my eggs!

Oooo, here's another one!

Happy Easter eggs!

Look at all these eggs!

Graysons Easter egg hunt.

Grasyon was cracking me up here! Tim was stirring up his baby food and he was just on the edge of his seat so intensely watching.

T-Ball Days

Brady started his first season of t-ball in April. It is a non-competitive team for 3 & 4 year olds. All teams are coached by a parent and all the other parents help out as well during practices and games. They don't count runs or outs and each team goes through their batting order then they switch. It is super cute! Brady is loving it! The day of his first practice I'm not sure who was more excited, Brady or his daddy! I called the coach and asked what Brady needed and he said he needed a glove and some cleats. So I thought I would run over to Target and get just that. Well this particular day Tim got off work a little early and I asked if he wanted to stop at Target with us. He suggested we go over to Dick's sporting goods because they would have a better selection. I thought, sure ok, you're probably right. Had I known what this trip was going to hold I wouldn't have invited Tim along! :) So we go in and Tim dissects the gloves for a good 15 minutes. Then he says he needs pants. Ok, fine. So I get a pair that are elastic waist banded for easy on and off. That would have been great, but then Tim says he has to have a belt-so much for easy on and off! Then we go over towards the sliding shorts-these apparently are so that you don't scrape up your leg when you slide into a base-I say, I'm not sure he's gonna do much sliding honey, he's only 3. Then he insists on this specific pair that has none other than a protective cup! I say really?! But he insists! We stand there and debate about this for a good 10 minutes. Finally I give in and say fine, I've gotta get home to get supper ready, so whatever will get us out of here. So then we go over to the cleats and uneventfully get a lovely pair of under armor cleats for a mere $24.99! Good gracious! Ok, good lets go. But no, Tim says oh yeah, he needs some baseballs and goes over "quickly" to get some. He finally emerges again with not only baseballs, but baseball socks and he just had to have a 3/4 sleeve baseball shirt. So finally $130 later Brady is ready for his first day of t-ball practice. But if you looked at him, you would have thought he was on his way to the major league try outs! But the funniest part was this cup. So he's out on the field practicing fielding the ball, but while he waits his turn he is adjusting his cup every chance he got! Lucky for him I got a great picture which of course I included in this blog down below. It was hilarious! Thank goodness after that practice Tim decided that maybe the cup was a bit over kill. Hmmm.....ya think?! Gotta love Dads and sons and their sports!

Gimme 5! Good play!

Dad helping him to stay focused during the game.

Tuff Stuff is their team name.

In the field at his first game.

Fielding the ball, getting some pointers from dad.

Adjusting his cup! Too funny!

He did a really good job hitting the ball-he would just forget to run.

Getting dressed for his first t-ball practice.