Long overdue update and Adellyn's 1st Birthday!

Sept - Oct 09

Once again, two months have flown by without an update. I did sit down and start another post a month ago, but I got called away to eat supper…I suppose that is important…anyway, I never got the motivation back to finish it. A lot has happened in the last two months, so much, I don’t know if I can remember it all, but I’ll give it my best. Elliot and I have been trying to clean up the room I had nick-named “the black hole” (stuff goes in and it doesn’t come out). It was supposed to be an office, but it rarely got used as that…especially since I got my laptop. We are turning that room into a playroom for the kids so we can get the toys out of their room and the living room. It is half done and we have moved some toys in there and got the foam puzzle piece floor to make a softer play area. Elliot is going to build some shelving along one wall to store toys and some of the office things that we can’t put anywhere else. Elliot’s free time has been spent mostly on the shop that he and his parents put in at the vineyard. It is a very big Cleary building that will eventually be a wood working shop and, of course, the winery. Elliot and his dad have been putting in the floor and now they are working on the insulation. They are hoping to have the winery part ready by the time the grapes are ready next year. This year’s batch of grapes are fermenting will hopefully be ready for tasting by harvest next year. At the end of September the kids and I went to North Platte to Railfest. Karen, Troy and Sutton joined us and the boys had a lot of fun playing together. In October, we enjoyed the random nice days we had. One of the highlights was Landen got to help Grandpa Becker drill wheat. I’m not sure who had more fun, Landen or Grandpa! We also went to a pumpkin patch near Hastings and the kids really enjoyed that. I think it will be more fun next year when Adellyn can walk. We had a great Halloween…the weather turned out REALLY nice, especially since it snowed two days before. Landen was Thomas the Train (well the engineer, anyway) and Adellyn was a candy corn. I made both costumes this year and I had a lot of fun doing it. We got a lot of complements on both costumes and everyone was most impressed with Thomas! If I would have realized that before the parade was a costume contest, I would try to get there in time…oh well, there is always next year and maybe Landen will actually WEAR the costume I make! So far this month, we have celebrated Adellyn’s first birthday. Her birthday is actually tomorrow (the 11th), but we celebrated on Sunday so that our brothers could come and also since my parents are leaving for South Padre on Thursday. A couple small things we have done that we are going to continue throughout the winter are going to the library and going to MOPS meeting. I have taken the kids to the library a couple of times and Landen enjoys getting a couple of new books for a while…now I just need to work on getting him to not run around the library when we are there…at least it isn’t usually busy, so we don’t bother people. The MOPS meetings are twice a month, so it is a good opportunity for Landen and Adellyn to get to play with other kids and also a good chance for me to talk to other moms. The women at the church where we meet watch the kids for free during our meeting. That is about all that we have done in the last two months. Of course, the kids are doing new things all the time, so here is what is going on with them.

Landen is talking SO much now. We can understand most of what he says and he repeats a lot of what we say…so we have to be more careful about what we say around him! One of my favorite things he says now is, “I wube you too” as we tuck him into bed! He calls my grandma “Grape Anma.” It’s too cute to try to make him say it right! Landen can also ride his trike now! He likes to ride it in circles on the deck and we sometimes ride up and down the sidewalk in front of the house. I can sent him out to the back yard to play by himself now that we have it fenced in and when I look out to check on him, he is usually riding his trike or “cooking” in the kitchen I found on a garage sale. Landen’s latest thing is to make sure people take their shoes off when they come into our house! He has always been good about taking his shoes off when going into a house and now he checks everyone else’s’ shoes. If you still have your shoes on, he’ll grab your foot and say, “help, help…shoe off” or something like that. I have taught Landen how to put his coat on himself. I learned a trick from Elliot’s cousin who has triplets. You lay the coat on the floor and he stands at the hood and puts his hands into the sleeves and flips the coat over his head. He has gotten so good at it that he positions the coat on the floor himself. He sometimes comes to me with his coat on and wants me to zip it so he can go outside!

Adellyn is also talking quite a bit now. She says: good girl, uh-oh, bye-bye, baby, boo, thank you, hi, tickle tickle (while tickling something and laughing), cup, ki’e cat, coo coo, ma ma, and da da and I think I have heard her say “Landen.” Some of those are just repeated after we say it and there are probably some I forgot about. She says good girl all the time. One time she was saying “good girl, good girl…” as she was spreading food all over her high chair tray and onto the floor…I was thinking, ”nooo, you’re not being a good girl right now!” In the last two months Adellyn has been doing a lot to learn how to walk. She is now a pro at cruising around furniture and climbs on top of, over and through any obstacle she can find. She started standing on her own around the beginning of October and used a pillow to get herself from sitting to standing…and I happened to have the camera handy when she did it. After that, she started walking with the help of a toy or us. One afternoon at the end of October we were outside and Elliot said she took a step and fell down. She didn’t try it again until November 2nd. That day she took 2 steps several different times. The third time she did it, she actually stood up on her own from sitting and then took two steps. Four days later, she took 4 steps while Elliot’s parents were babysitting and then the next day she took 9 steps to me. She has been getting pretty excited about it and tries to go faster than she can keep herself balanced! She should be walking pretty well by Christmas! I am also still nursing Adellyn twice a day…in the morning and just before bed. During the day she drinks whole milk from a sippy cup. She actually wouldn’t take a bottle because the milk wouldn’t come out fast enough, so that ended up being an easy transition. I haven’t decided when to stop nursing for good. We both like the cuddle time, so I guess it will depend on when I run out of milk!

Well, that is long enough for now…I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Enjoy the pictures.