The comings and goings of the fab four


In Memoriam
July 26, 2007, 8:18 pm
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Sue Hoying passed away this morning. Please keep their family in your prayers.

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Latest bribe
July 25, 2007, 2:23 pm
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If you go #2 in the potty, the cat will give you a piece of candy.

This one is actually motivating her. Today. Will let you know if it’s still working tomorrow. Feel free to steal this idea, Pez dispensers are $.94 at WalMart. This is the cheapest bribe yet.

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July 23, 2007, 5:20 pm
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We had a nice weekend – hope you did too!

On Friday, I decided to take Miles in to see the doctor. He has not slept well for about two weeks, and I needed to make sure that he was not ill in any way. I was a little worried about asthma, but the doctor seemed to think that his reflux medicine might have stopped working for him. So she gave us a new prescription. I need to get it filled ASAP – he has been spitting up mass quantities for the last few days, all over the carpet. And now that we’ve started solids, the spitup is a little more difficult to deal with.

Saturday, Daddy and Miles hung out together while Lydia and I tried out the Little Gym. There were only 3 kids in the class, so there was lots of one on one time with the teacher. She LOVED it. They sang and jumped and played on the gymnastics equipment, all of her favorite things. We signed up for the rest of the summer session, and I paid the $40 joining fee so hopefully we’ll be able to get someone in a class for the Fall. Saturday afternoon we unpacked and did things around the house. We are pretty much finished unpacking boxes, we just need to do a few piddly things, like hang pictures.

Sunday morning we got up and went to the beach down in Ponte Vedra. It was craaaazy! There are many famous golfers (like Vijay Singh and David Duval) that have houses at PVB, and you could tell that famous people lived there – holy cow! If you ever get bored, google map it, and see what I’m talking about. We came home for the afternoon, and had some good family time.

Miles is eating lots of good solids now. I tried making his food yesterday for the first time. He didn’t like the carrots alone, but he LOVED them with bananas. He will eat just about anything mixed with bananas. I even mixed green peas with bananas, and he ate them. I’m going to try to start making his food instead of buying it. We’ll see. This is his “I’m done” face – he shoves himself into the back of the highchair and closes his mouth *very tightly*.

Lydia is still using the potty more often than not. We’ve had a few accidents in the last few days, but have made MAJOR headway in the #2 department. So that’s happy and good news.

Miles is completely mobile now – he scoots everywhere. And gets into everything. He is going to be a total mess, I can already tell. His chewtoys of choice are pens and cords. And he likes to chew on a little Mickey Mouse toy. Still no teeth.

This week we’re so excited because our friend Andrea from Dallas is meeting her family in St. Simons Island, and she has invited us to come along too! We can’t wait to see her and her sister Monique, and to meet the rest of her family! Yay! And speaking of fun family events at the beach, we decided yesterday to spend Thanksgiving at the beach with my family. I am so excited to be close enough to travel for holidays.
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July 23, 2007, 5:20 pm
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We had a nice weekend – hope you did too!

On Friday, I decided to take Miles in to see the doctor. He has not slept well for about two weeks, and I needed to make sure that he was not ill in any way. I was a little worried about asthma, but the doctor seemed to think that his reflux medicine might have stopped working for him. So she gave us a new prescription. I need to get it filled ASAP – he has been spitting up mass quantities for the last few days, all over the carpet. And now that we’ve started solids, the spitup is a little more difficult to deal with.

Saturday, Daddy and Miles hung out together while Lydia and I tried out the Little Gym. There were only 3 kids in the class, so there was lots of one on one time with the teacher. She LOVED it. They sang and jumped and played on the gymnastics equipment, all of her favorite things. We signed up for the rest of the summer session, and I paid the $40 joining fee so hopefully we’ll be able to get someone in a class for the Fall. Saturday afternoon we unpacked and did things around the house. We are pretty much finished unpacking boxes, we just need to do a few piddly things, like hang pictures.

Sunday morning we got up and went to the beach down in Ponte Vedra. It was craaaazy! There are many famous golfers (like Vijay Singh and David Duval) that have houses at PVB, and you could tell that famous people lived there – holy cow! If you ever get bored, google map it, and see what I’m talking about. We came home for the afternoon, and had some good family time.

Miles is eating lots of good solids now. I tried making his food yesterday for the first time. He didn’t like the carrots alone, but he LOVED them with bananas. He will eat just about anything mixed with bananas. I even mixed green peas with bananas, and he ate them. I’m going to try to start making his food instead of buying it. We’ll see. This is his “I’m done” face – he shoves himself into the back of the highchair and closes his mouth *very tightly*.

Lydia is still using the potty more often than not. We’ve had a few accidents in the last few days, but have made MAJOR headway in the #2 department. So that’s happy and good news.

Miles is completely mobile now – he scoots everywhere. And gets into everything. He is going to be a total mess, I can already tell. His chewtoys of choice are pens and cords. And he likes to chew on a little Mickey Mouse toy. Still no teeth.

This week we’re so excited because our friend Andrea from Dallas is meeting her family in St. Simons Island, and she has invited us to come along too! We can’t wait to see her and her sister Monique, and to meet the rest of her family! Yay! And speaking of fun family events at the beach, we decided yesterday to spend Thanksgiving at the beach with my family. I am so excited to be close enough to travel for holidays.
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July 23, 2007, 5:20 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized



We had a nice weekend – hope you did too!

On Friday, I decided to take Miles in to see the doctor. He has not slept well for about two weeks, and I needed to make sure that he was not ill in any way. I was a little worried about asthma, but the doctor seemed to think that his reflux medicine might have stopped working for him. So she gave us a new prescription. I need to get it filled ASAP – he has been spitting up mass quantities for the last few days, all over the carpet. And now that we’ve started solids, the spitup is a little more difficult to deal with.

Saturday, Daddy and Miles hung out together while Lydia and I tried out the Little Gym. There were only 3 kids in the class, so there was lots of one on one time with the teacher. She LOVED it. They sang and jumped and played on the gymnastics equipment, all of her favorite things. We signed up for the rest of the summer session, and I paid the $40 joining fee so hopefully we’ll be able to get someone in a class for the Fall. Saturday afternoon we unpacked and did things around the house. We are pretty much finished unpacking boxes, we just need to do a few piddly things, like hang pictures.

Sunday morning we got up and went to the beach down in Ponte Vedra. It was craaaazy! There are many famous golfers (like Vijay Singh and David Duval) that have houses at PVB, and you could tell that famous people lived there – holy cow! If you ever get bored, google map it, and see what I’m talking about. We came home for the afternoon, and had some good family time.

Miles is eating lots of good solids now. I tried making his food yesterday for the first time. He didn’t like the carrots alone, but he LOVED them with bananas. He will eat just about anything mixed with bananas. I even mixed green peas with bananas, and he ate them. I’m going to try to start making his food instead of buying it. We’ll see. This is his “I’m done” face – he shoves himself into the back of the highchair and closes his mouth *very tightly*.

Lydia is still using the potty more often than not. We’ve had a few accidents in the last few days, but have made MAJOR headway in the #2 department. So that’s happy and good news.

Miles is completely mobile now – he scoots everywhere. And gets into everything. He is going to be a total mess, I can already tell. His chewtoys of choice are pens and cords. And he likes to chew on a little Mickey Mouse toy. Still no teeth.

This week we’re so excited because our friend Andrea from Dallas is meeting her family in St. Simons Island, and she has invited us to come along too! We can’t wait to see her and her sister Monique, and to meet the rest of her family! Yay! And speaking of fun family events at the beach, we decided yesterday to spend Thanksgiving at the beach with my family. I am so excited to be close enough to travel for holidays.
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Old friends are the best friends
July 21, 2007, 12:31 am
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This one’s for you Mandy.

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6 month comparison
July 21, 2007, 12:28 am
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Miles is a few weeks over 6 months, so here’s the comparison of my two darlings at this age.

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I need to keep this in mind
July 19, 2007, 11:36 pm
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I truly believe that God has been close the last few days. Miles has NOT been sleeping well the last week or two, basically since his 6 month checkup and shots. I have been at my wits end, and have been trying to figure out what to do. I just checked the blog of a woman who I bought diapers from a few months ago, and thought this posting was so beautiful, and absolutely what I needed to read right now.

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A misha masha
July 17, 2007, 12:57 am
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There are so many things that I keep wanting to write down so I don’t forget (and these will probably be terribly boring to most of you, they’re more for me than for everyone else)…

When we went to the lake with our church friends, we were starting to work on potty training. We told Lydia that everyone at the lake peed on the potty, and if she peed on the potty, she would join the “Big Girls Potty Club”. Well, Lydia is now almost fully in the BGPC, she is still working on the #2 part, but I told her she’s in the club. And she remembered what it was, and still thought it was great.

She has been terrorizing the dog. To the point that she goes to time out for it. She also terrorizes her brother. She puts both the dog and the brother in head locks – something about their necks are very appealing to her. I started to seriously worry about her, and wonder if she had some sort of deviant tendencies, but I talked to my friend Mandy, and she said that Dylan does the same thing to her brother. My mom said she thinks that Lydia is trying to exert power over someone, and the dog and the baby are the most vulnerable parties. So I don’t like it, we’re working on it. If anyone has any good ideas for dealing with it, let me know.

Prancer’s vision has been declining steadily for the last few years. I would say he’s about 98% blind at this point. However, he has figured out that the pickets in our fence are wide enough for him to get through, and he has been running for the fence whenever he gets a chance. His new nickname is gator bait (they found a gator in one of the lakes in our neighborhood).

Lydia is singing up a storm now, and she loves the song “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. She can sing the first verse and the chorus. She makes up songs all the time now, too. I sing to her all the time, and we make up lots and lots and lots of songs, so she has started making up songs too. Very funny. She loves the song Old McDonald, because it can go on and on and ON (seemingly FOREVER to a tired momma) – her favorite version goes something like this:

Old McDonald had a farm – e-i-e-i-o
Old McFarmy had a Lydia, e-i-e-i-o
With a (insert animal sound of choice here) there, here a (sound), here a (sound), everywhere a (sound sound)…

And a story I probably shouldn’t publicly post, but will anyway. We visited Jacksonville Beach last Sunday – and it was much more of a diverse beach than we usually go to. I would have to say by the evening, we were the racial minority. So Lydia has been working on her colors lately, and we are constantly pointing colors out, and asking her what color such and such is. So she and mom were out at the water, and she saw a man, and she said, “he’s black”. Totally innocent, but totally one of those crazy things kids say.

We visited a church this weekend, it was okay, we probably won’t go back. We have the feeling that it will be a little more difficult to find a church fit here…

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Ya’ll missed us, right?
July 15, 2007, 12:42 am
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We’re baaack! After a nice healthy wait, we finally have Internet, TV and phone. Hallelujiah.

Of course I had so many things racing through my head, I had to just do a posting in word and I will paste it below. It has the down and dirty of the move, and it is LONG.

So, so much has happened. I keep thinking of things that I need to write down. Since I have no internet access, I am writing this in Word, and will transfer it to the blog when we FINALLY get the Internet up and going, hopefully this weekend.

On June 29th, my college roommate, Stephanie, got married in Charlotte. I was supposed to drive down with the kids on Wednesday night, and go to the bridal luncheon on Thursday, but I was absolutely exhausted from the sickness, and I had absolutely no milk stored up for Marie and Bob to feed Miles, since I had been so dehydrated. I decided to wait until Friday to drive down to Charlotte. That Wednesday was also the day the moving truck came to pick up all of our things in Texas. The initial plan was that the movers would arrive, pack up the truck, and then Robert would clean the house and steam the carpets. He would go to bed on the air mattress with a set of sheets he’d leave out, and then leave around 5am to drive to Atlanta on Thurs. morning, and arrive in Charlotte for Steph’s wedding on Friday midday. The movers called him on Tuesday night saying that they would be there between 10-12:00 on Wednesday, with he made it sound like they would be there by 10 at the latest. To make a long story short, they showed up at 3:30pm, and left at 2:30am, leaving Robert to clean and steam the carpets at that time. Additionally, they only had two guys working – the other two didn’t show up. Robert ended up cleaning and steaming in the middle of the night, and then decided just to leave then instead of trying to sleep. He was fine (I was worried about him!), and took a power nap or two at some rest stops. He told me, “that’s what they’re for after all!”. Typical.

We had a great time at Steph’s wedding, Lydia and Miles hung out with Mimi and B-Pop and I got to see Stephanie, Cara, Krissy and Lauren, and Jay, briefly. We had a wonderful time. Robert was a trooper as the only spouse from our group – Jay had to leave to hang out with their little man. Robert loves the girls though, I think he had fun.

We came back to Raleigh for Miles’s baptism at Christ the King on Sunday. We had lots of special friends and family that attended, and my friend Sara also brought her little guy, Seth. He and Lydia got to play in the nursery, she had absolutely no interest in going to church. Sara and I have been wanting to get these two together for a while. Maybe we’ll have another chance to see them soon.

We (finally) got to see Hope, Andy and Savannah on July 4th. Kristen, Kyle and Caleb also came over and we had a little cookout. Everyone had to leave early since they have kids, but it probably worked out better that way because we were able to get ready for the great Southern migration the next day.

We left on the 5th (Thursday) for Florida, with everything and everyone crammed into the car and explorer. It took us about 8 hours to get down here, but it was a fairly decent ride, considering. We took a few breaks at rest stops, and the kids really did well. We were excited to get everything moved into the house on Friday. Mom was coming down on Friday night to watch the kids while we unpacked. However, our fair driver (you know, the one that showed up late) had other plans. Robert called him on Friday morning and he was in Alabama, and said that he was, “almost certain he can make it there by Monday”. WHAT!? Robert really lost it, and went up the chain of command. The guy ended up getting here around 7:30 on Monday (Robert’s first day of work…), and we are expecting some sort of monetary compensation. Additionally, when they estimated our move, they charged us 110% of what they expected our total weight/cost to be. Let’s just say they missed it, and we got a bill for $700 above the 110% charge they had already put on our credit card. They missed the weight by 3,000 pounds. Yes, 3,000 pounds. So I would have to say, NEVER use Armstrong Relocation for your move. The entire experience was awful. Luckily, our couch was not in two pieces when we got here, and the only thing broken was a champagne glass. So that is the one positive.

So we were here all weekend with my mom and with no furniture. By the grace of GOD, a woman in the office of our neighborhood was kind enough to loan us two pillows, some towels, and some sheets and blankets. We had just the one set of sheets for all of us, so Lydia had a blanket and a sheet, and we had a sheet and a blanket and Robert’s pillow. Mom wouldn’t have had anything if the lady hadn’t loaned us anything. It was such a wonderful and amazing blessing, and it was really inspiring how kind she was to complete strangers. On Saturday we decided to drive out and check out the beach – it was great, we decided to come back on Sunday. Since Robert had to go to work on Monday, and he had no iron or any of the other creature comforts that make getting ready for work possible without losing your mind, we decided to get a hotel room for him for the night, and use it as a home base when we were at the beach. It worked out really well, and we had a lovely time. I really think we’re going to love living near the beach.

Since the furniture arrived, we’ve been doing a lot of unpacking and organizing. Robert worked late on Monday and ended up playing golf with the girl he is replacing, who is in his program, and with a few other people on Tuesday. Mom also left on Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning, Robert’s car wouldn’t start. It turned out to be a dead battery, but he had to deal with that on Wednesday evening (and the kids and I had to drive out to take him to work and to pick him up that day).

Miles had his 6 month appointment on Monday (he’s now 50th percentile for height, weight and head circumference) – and has been crying ever since. I was really about to lose my mind yesterday. Not to mention the night before he had been up every hour (literally), Lydia had gotten up 3 times, and the dog had gotten up twice with an *upset stomach* which required cleanup, and a miserable trip to the grocery store yesterday for additional supplies. So this week has been rough. HOWEVER, we LOVE it here. It is so beautiful, and we adore our neighborhood. So everyone please plan your trips now! It is an easy drive from NC, and the flight is pretty cheap. We’ll have Internet tomorrow (Saturday), so I am sure next week we’ll be doing lots of fun things. So that will be good.

I told you it was long….
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