14 Months

Philip is 14 months old!  I think the best way to describe Philip's month is "much ado about nothing."  Yes, he is in the toddler tantrum stage.  I told Andy that I really need to work on my reaction to his tantrums because I find it so hard not to smile or laugh when I see this sweet little face...

...especially when I know that he is throwing an all-out crying/scream-fest because I did something as small as closing the dishwasher door. 

He loves playing in the refrigerator and dishwasher.

We've had lots of happy times too, starting with our first family vacation to the beach.

Philip was taking a few steps at a time at that point, but still preferred crawling as his major mode of transportation.  In the weeks following, he has grown by leaps and bounds and now walks most of the time.

He is learning a lot of new "hand tricks."  He can clap and wave.  He also folds his hands when we say grace before meals - so sweet!

He loves his play tent and aquarium, his newest toys from his great aunt and uncle. 

Herbie is having fun with them too!

He is experimenting with talking more and has developed what I call a "robot voice" that he likes to use sometimes.  I haven't heard any distinguishable words, although it really did seem like he was trying to imitate me saying banana the other day.  Perhaps that will be his first word after Mama and Dada.

A typical boy, he loves having his feet smelled and being told how stinky they are. Of course, they aren't really, but this usually cracks him up and can diffuse a temper tantrum pretty quickly. 

Lots of cute pics this month:

Both Herbie and Philip got scared by a big thunderstorm that came out of nowhere one day.  Luckily we were all safe together!

Watermelon eating:

Daddy shared his sno cone with Philip at the Labor Day Festival:

All gone?

Taking out all the wipes from the package...

 

...and trying to put them all back in again.

Losing his britches this weekend:

Go Dawgs!

Like What We've Done with the Place?

The current state of our basement:

We had our first adventure in homeownership last week.  Our area had massive storms for one week straight.  I just heard that the Weather Channel is calling what hit our area a once-in-a-millenium storm.  Great. 

We found out after Hurricane Irene  that we had a leak in the sliding glass door of our basement family room.  We were in the midst of getting recommendations for contractors when the next tropical storm came through.  Around 11:00 pm last Wednesday night, it all came to a head as our basement got flooded.  A huge thundestorm came through and Andy went to check out the sliding glass door area.  We definitely had issues and he had set up an intricate contraption to catch the leaking rain.  Then he went into our laundry room and found that one of our window wells was filling up like a fish tank.  He went out in the midst of thunder and lightening to bail it out.  It started filling up quickly again and he headed back out to bail water.  By that time, this was happening: 

As if that weren't bad enough, the window soon broke and water rushed in.  Our laundry room had about an inch of water in some places and it quickly leaked into the bathroom hallway, and edges of the family room.  We also found that the window in the family room was leaking.  A water bubble got trapped under the paint and made its way from the ceiling all the way to the floor. 

We called a flood damage company, but since it was still raining hard and water was getting in, they said it would do no good for them to come out yet.  We were up most of the night moving all of our valuables upstairs.  The next day, the flood company came out to rip up the carpets and set up dryers and a dehumdifier.  Last weekend they came to cut out the bottom 12 inches of drywall and all the molding.  They also dropped off Big Bertha, a huge dehumidifier. 

Andy thinks this linoleum in the hallway is awesome. I disagree - it is going!

When they told us all the walls had to come out, we were literally expecting to go downstairs to see no walls in the basement, so it was almost a pleasant surprise to find that they only cut out the bottom foot of drywall.

Oh and while they were checking out the damage, they found some pre-existing mold which is not covered by insurance.  Right now, we are still waiting on an insurance agent to come out for an inspection before we can move forward with repairing the damages.  We are praying that they will be covering most of this!  Today the flood company is supposed to come out for an inspection and hopefully they will find that we are sufficiently dried out so they can remove the dehumidifiers. 

What an adventure, and there is much more ahead!

Beach Trip, Baby!

Happiness is...

Each year, we take a family trip to a beach in South Carolina.  This year there was a smaller group because most of our nieces and nephews were already back to school.  Nonetheless, we had a great time with my parents, Andy's parents, and other family. 

It's island time!

On the first day, Philip started crawling right for the ocean, but after we let him get his feet wet, he steered clear of it.  He spent hours playing in the sand though. 

Philip kept his "staff" busy making sand castles and bringing him endless buckets of water to play in.

He loved getting his hands washed with his watering can.

The timing of our vacation was perfect.  We missed both the earthquake and Hurricane Irene!  We did have one rainy day and some pretty big waves as the hurricane passed us. 

My very talented Mom made him this outfit.

It's all good with Grandma. 

It's even better to have both Grandma's in the same house!

Andy and Philip with Andy's Aunt, Dad, and brother

Same people, plus Andy's Mom, Aunt and Uncle

Andy's aunt is from Boise, and UGA played Boise State this past weekend. There was lots of talk about the game all week, so I had to put Philip in his jersey on Aunt Mim's last day. 

No comment on the results of the game...

Philip got a play tent from his great aunt for his birthday. 

He had a great time playing in it all week. 

Herbie is now enjoying it as well!

First taste of ice cream

A few more cute ones:

 Last time out on the sand (there used to be stairs here)

Let's get a move on, Dad!

On our way home, we stopped at Andy's brother's house. 

Philip had fun playing the piano with his Uncle Danny.

We had a wonderful trip and are so thankful to have the opportunity to go on vacation with our family each year.  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

13 Months

Philip has taken very well to being one year old.  He is developing by leaps and bounds as usual.

The big news is that he started walking this month.  He usually only takes a handful of steps at one time, but he is definitely improving each day.  All of his walking and crawling is leading to him slimming down.  Boo hoo!  It is sad to see his little belly and thighs thinning out. He used to have no problems holding up his pajama bottoms, but now I notice him losing his pants quite often!

He is becoming a very organized little boy.  A favorite activity is to pick up objects, place them somewhere new, return them to their original location, then repeat.  This is actually a great stage as he tends to clean up after himself!

Herbie is having a good time with his little buddy.  He baits him along, then runs out of reach when Philip crawls after him.  He is very gentle with Philip and understanding if he gets his hair or tail pulled, or even if he gets tackled occasionally!  One new development in Herbie's world is that he finally got up the courage to jump over the baby gate.  When I first ordered the gates, I didn't even think about the fact that the cat may not be able to get through them.  Afterwards I happened upon these gates and thought they were hilarious!

Philip finally got his eighth tooth this month.  We've been waiting on it for a couple months.  Every time he had a bad day, or slept poorly at night, I would tell Andy that I thought the new tooth was coming in.  So after lots of failed predictions, on the day his tooth finally broke, I didn't even bother to check his mouth until the evening, even though he was being exceptionally cranky.  Poor baby must have been in lots of pain to be so cranky! 

He started sleeping through the night, but that all changed towards the end of the month when we started doing some traveling and he got a tooth.  I'm hoping he will go back to blissfully sleeping through the night again soon!

He is starting to share things now, especially food.  One unfortunate new skill is that he started throwing his food.  Now I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, but this did start just after a certain food-throwing little girl visited my house. 

I thought we nipped it in the bud the first week, but after a brief period of peace, the food-throwing has returned this week.

My little guy is turning into a climber.  This is not necessarily a good thing!  At least he is keeping me on my toes.  It has been another exciting month for us!

Fun Week

Andy and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary last week.  Time has flown by so fast, I can't believe it has already been nine years!  It was Restaurant Week in Baltimore, so we went out to a nice meal downtown and then caught the tail end of a jazz concert in a local park.  After we got home we decided to watch one show on TV and then promptly fell to sleep on the couch at 10:00.  It felt great the next day!  I got an extra 1.5 hours of sleep that night.  If only I could discipline myself to go to sleep so early every night. 

I got together for lunch with a great group of girls and their little ones. I started meeting these girls online and in person about three years ago as we were all trying to build our families.  Each of these ladies has had a beautiful story unfold in their lives over the last couple years. It was great to meet up and see everyone with their babies!  We keep praying for our blogger friends who are still waiting on their miracles.

Over the weekend we went up to Pennsylvania for the baptism of our friend's newest baby.  We met our friends in college and they moved up to PA a few years ago.  We haven't had a chance to go up to visit them in a couple years, so it was great to get together again.  Another couple from college came down with their kids as well.  Philip had a blast playing with all the kids.  It was a great trip, but it went by way too quickly.

Philip's new buddies

I've been going to a Mom's exercise group the past couple weeks getting ready for an upcoming trip to the beach.  I also just joined our local Mom's Club and look forward to getting involved in that group.  I'm still working three hours a day which can be tough, but I think I'll be cutting my hours back soon.  Andy has cut about 90 pages from his dissertation so far and is preparing for a big meeting at work this week.  His brother is coming up for a conference and will be staying with us.  Looks like it will be another busy week!

Dissertation Update!

This just in...Andy turned in the last chapter and conclusion of his dissertation last week!  Alleluia!  The first draft of his dissertation was 650 pages and included approximately 2,000 footnotes.  Now the fun begins.  He is starting to revise all of his previous chapters and he needs to cut about 200 pages.  He also needs to coordinate the bibliography which he estimates will be about 50 pages in itself! We are both very excited! 

He started going back through his first and longest chapter this week. Now that he sees the dissertation as a whole, he is finding it easy to make a lot of big cuts.  So far I think he has lost about 50 pages.  Andy has been coming home from working on the dissertation happy and energized.  It is great!

So what is next in the process?  After he makes revisions to all of his previous chapters (seven in total), he needs to get the second draft approved by his director.  Then it will go off to two readers who also must approve it.  That is followed by the big dissertation defense.  Afterwards the work isn't quite over.  He will still have to make any last minute changes recommended by his committee, be sure it is all formatted perfectly, and deposit the final document.  Then we will be free!  It looks very likely that he will graduate in May 2012 - big party to follow!

My hard-working husband (and cute baby).

After putting in a full day at work, he hangs out with me and Philip until P's bedtime. 

Then he turns on his computer and works on his dissertation into the wee hours of the night. 

He wakes up before me, goes to bed after me, and absolutely amazes me!