Ah, February. It's been a month full of....
Valentine's Morning. The boys were thrilled to find chocolates at their seats and some home made valentine's.
Ira coloring a valentine from Grandma Quinn.
A party with our Ypsi friends.
Ira was very enthusiastic about his pre-school party as well, along with a little girl named Abigail who's been giving him lots of attention. :)
It's also been a month of repairs, service opportunities, babies, and snow. Lots and lots of snow.
This is what our house has looked like most of the Winter. Our little tree is disappearing.
Ant and the boys made a couple of really fancy snow caves.
Eliot: We got his hearing tested and all seems fine. His speech is relatively behind, but the day after we got him tested he started experimenting with new words. We're not too worried, but it would be really convenient if he could communicate more effectively. He generally seems to be having fun with life, and his little sense of humor keeps us all laughing.
Eliot found the laundry pile and put on Dad's "exercise unders" on all by himself. He was pretty proud.
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This is one of the church playdate activities I organized. The firefighters came to the church and let the kids check out their Engine. Ira was too cold, so he was chilling inside. Eliot was loving it!
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Ira: As long as he gets enough sleep, he does alright. This month hasn't been light on the emotional melt-downs. But he's been more affectionate which is fun. He's just so fun to hug and kiss, when he lets me.
Typically younger siblings want to imitate their older siblings, but Ira wants to do everything like Eliot...
especially if it gives him an excuse to do things like, spread blueberries all over his face.
The boys are still obsessed with boxes. Ira wanted to sleep in one, but this was as close as he got.
Anthony: Still keeping busy with work, and making time to play with the fam. This month we've had to get our fireplace fixed, dishwasher fixed (still under warranty!), our garage fixed (annoyingly expensive), and then our garage fixed again. Anthony decided to do fix the garage door opener himself, which saved us a few hundred dollars. Such a handy guy to have around. :)
Sharon: We've started a new session of birth classes, and only have 3 couples this time. They're a fun group, and it feels less crammed in our family room than the 5 couples we had last session. Our last group of students are having their babies and it's been exciting, and pretty dramatic to see how things pan out. So far they've had two c-sections, both of which were after about 2 days in the hospital, and the 3rd was an induced labor due to pre-eclampsia and then 40 hours of labor! I wish all of my students could have ideal births, but it looks like they're all effectively applying the knowledge they've been gaining as well as they can in the circumstances permitted.
We are also excited to welcome a new nephew to the family! Anthony's sister just gave birth to cute little Pete a few days. And yes, this is a different sibling and a different baby than last month. :)
It was an honor for me to be a semi-doula for one of my couples and friends. I was there for about 9 hours before I had to come back home and teach. I never thought I'd love it so much! The spontaneity of being a doula doesn't fit into our lifestyle very well right now, but maybe I'll do it more when the kids get older, or here and there if people ask me to.
We've had lots of other opportunities to serve lately, assisting in Ira's preschool, teaching with the missionaries, helping stranded drivers, babysitting friends' kids, driving neighbor kids to school who missed the bus, a night of helping out at the homeless shelter, taking meals to families with new babies, etc. We're always looking for opportunities to help people out, and February has definitely presented those opportunities. When it rains it pours. Oh, how I'd love it to be warm enough outside for real rain! Anyway we're feeling very blessed.
Happy March everyone!
