Family Update...

Addie's Sleep: After giving in to letting Addie cry it out, we have a better sleeper on our hands. Two nights were pretty rough, the third a bit better. Now the last few nights, she's woken only a couple of times and cried for a few minutes and gets herself back to sleep.

Addie growing up: Addie is signing for More, All-Done, Bye-Bye, So Big, Patty Cake and Milk. She's been wearing 12 mos. clothes for some time now. She is still a good eater and we've started to introduce formula to her here and there. I'm looking at giving up the pumping at work and continue to nurse for morning and night feedings. Her new favorite snack are puffs! She has also put it into second gear this weekend and is buzzing around the house at much greater speeds. We've had to install a couple of baby gates to keep her out of the kitchen and away from the stairs.

Jackson: This kid is a hoot! He makes us laugh quite often and just about as often we pull out our hair. He is still on the smaller side, wearing just 2Ts mostly. He adores his baby sister though still torments her, teases her and plays far too rough with her. Right now he is very much into using the outside hose to put out fires (accidently spraying anyone near, including poor Addie), pretending to go on treasure hunts and looking out for bad pirates, and flying around the house like Buzz Lightyear. We took him to see Toy Story 3 in the theater and watched Toy Story 2 on television last week.

The boat: Ron bought a boat. I don't know much about boats. I say this all with a big question mark over my head: it's an open bow, maybe 16 foot?, speedboat of sorts. We took the boat out on the lake on Friday with some success and some failure. First, Addie is not a fan of the life jacket = Addie cried for most of the trip. Second, Jackson's life jacket works = Jackson was picking up rocks along the shore, getting deeper and deeper and not listening to his mom. He toppled over and couldn't touch. Ron jumped off the front of the boat and pulled him up. Jackson was pretty scared and hopefully will be better at listening around the water. Now when retelling the story he says his lifejacket saved him from ending up on the bottom of the sea.

Ron: Ron had been spending a lot of time in the garage working on a project. The project being a cremation remains box for his dad's ashes when he passes away. The thought being that this box would stay in the family and would hold remains for visitations and until they can be spread. Let me just say that I am IMPRESSED with Ron's abilities. The box is beautiful. A lot of time went into researching and perfecting this box and it shows!

Sara: I am in the last week of my Services Marketing class and writing my final paper. Next week I'll start up again with two more classes. I have been keeping myself very busy between school work and my family. One enjoyable thing that I've added to my schedule is walks with my friend Libby. In order to get some exercise in, Libby has been meeting at my house at 8:00 and after my last feeding with Addie, we take off for our 40 minute walk. It's great! I enjoy spending time with my friend and because we don't take it easy I come back feeling like I've really done my body good. I've also taken on some work as a photographer! I've done two baby shoots and a graduation shoot on the calendar!