Seth is 8 months old!

Seth turned 8 months old last week. This sure seems like it's been a long month ...

Seth likes to eat until he decides he's done, and then, just like Andrew he purses his lips and shakes his head no, no, no. Pretty cute. He eats cereal and orange vegetables, will tolerate a couple bites of meat, likes fruit okay. His favorite food - CURRY. He LOVES Japanese curry and his whole body shakes with excitement when I feed it to him. He really like any real food I put through the baby food mill. But with curry, you can not feed it to him fast enough and he cries while you grind up more. He has finally got the hang of his sippy cup and loves to drink water. He also wants to try to feed himself and loves hanging on to a spoon.

Seth's vocab is expanding. He still says "Hi" or "Hey" on a regular basis to everyone. He said "Mama" for awhile, though now he says "Dada" referring to both me and Katsu. He is also babbling a lot, especially when he wakes up in the morning or from naps.

Seth is on the move. He was inching himself along like an inch worm. Now, it's in between that and an army crawl. Just this last week, he has gotten a lot faster and can get to where he wants. And so he is really starting to get into things - pulling books off the shelf, pulling out DVDs, and his favorite - going towards the nearest cord and trying to chew on it before we pull him away. He is starting to get up on his hands and knees some, so maybe he will do a real crawl in the next month. He is also pulling up now and maybe starting to think about cruising.

Seth has been sleeping really awfully this month. He is teething, but the teeth are moving at a glacial pace (or slower) and are still not in. But he cries out in pain a lot during sleep and is now waking up like every 2 hours at night - it is driving me nuts!!! Halfway through I just give in to the exhaustion and sleep with him on the futon and so I wake up every morning just cognizant that he is crawling all over me and the floor. I hope these teeth come in soon! He also likes to resist sleeping. He will just sit and his crib and talk and talk. When I try to bounce him to sleep, he will arch his back, try to climb up my body, and screech. And then I put him back into his crib and he is instantly asleep - weird.

Seth is really into toys. He loves chewing on Andrew's matchbox cars and has an uncanny ability to find them anywhere. He also loves Andrew's toy bugs.

Seth loves to smile and giggle and laugh. He loves music and can shake a shaker along to the beat, not too badly. He is starting to enjoy reading more and likes to crawl into my lap and read. He loves being outside and looking at the trees, but is not fond of the cold. He really likes story time and will pay attention to the book for about half the time. He loves to look out the window and wait for Daddy or Mommy to come home.

That's about it.

Our New Place, part 2

Don't you love how I have SO many pictures of a small place! Voyeurism (or egoism) at its best. Now you can really imagine what it is like to be us!

Our hallway:




Our main bathroom (with our new snazzy shower curtain and our old but classic bath wall learning):




Our bedroom before futons (with the lovely air mattress):



Our bedroom after futons (but our closet with futons - pretty crowded):





Our tiny master bath:



The boys bedroom before futon (so crowded):




The boys' bedroom after futon (more play space!):



Welcome to our home!

Our New Place

So, I took these pictures a long time ago (right after we moved), but have been really lazy to put them up. Katsu got a new camera for a graduation present from us and I didn't feel like trying to get pictures off of it. It wasn't hard, I was just lazy.

And without further ado .... our 900 sq. ft (or so) apartment.

Front door:



Front window (this place gets GREAT light!):




Living Room wall closest to boys room:



Living room wall with our brand new entertainment center from Ikea (bought as soon as we got the moving truck):



Our small dining area:




Our kitchen with great light:



TO BE CONTINUED ...

Funny thing - teething

Seth has been working on his bottom two teeth for a little while and they still haven't popped out yet. But last night and today have been particularly bad. We tried to explain to Andrew why Seth is crying more.

So, today, I heard some noise downstairs and said to Andrew, "Maybe it's the mail man. Go look out the window". And Andrew said, "yeah, maybe he is bringing Seth's teeth."

Andrew is 33 months old

Well, I'm getting behind on this ... life seems really busy since we have moved. Trying to figure out the new place, all the places to go and things to get done, addresses to change, etc. And add to that the taxes to file, the estimated taxes to figure out for next year (withheld taxes are so much easier ... we are getting nothing withheld in 2010), the Olympics to watch, a European trip to plan, babysitters to interview, preschools to tour and decide on, a new car to buy .... yikes, no wonder I am getting a little stressed.

Anyways, back to Andrew. This move has been really hard on him. He tells me how much he misses Jonas every day. Poor kid. Many times, he says he wants to go back to our old house or drive on the highway to visit Jonas. He asks about his little friends and if they will be at church all the time. I never thought it would be this hard at just 2.5 yrs old. Poor kid.

That said, he is acting up something terrible. First, he won't take naps. Like, it's basically a fight to try to get him to nap for over an hour, and still no nap. Even when I strap him in the stroller inside and stroll him around. It's too cold and too much snow to take the boys outside for long. So, he is overtired. And half the time he falls asleep in the evening as we go to pick up Katsu from work. Boy, will I be glad when he can get his Metro pass. I have to have an in depth conversation with him, like interactive where he is counting cars, to keep him from falling asleep. He does like having a "rest" during the day when Seth is taking a nap. He wants to go lay on a futon in our room and then read stories. But he doesn't sleep - he is just so excited to read the books. Mostly he wants to read every single Curious George book every day. And we have every original one, and those books are LONG.

So, besides the sleep thing, he is acting out horribly. Biting (seriously ... at this age), screaming, head-butting, hitting, taking toys, throwing, throwing food, spitting, spitting out food, setting off the car alarm, destroying things, slamming on the door with heavy objects, maniacal laughing, laughing and screaming while running through the room that Seth is sleeping in, slamming doors, pushing, etc. etc. etc. I am basically at my breaking point by 4 pm every day. Yikes! I understand why he is acting this way, but still, no fun for anyone.

We, as of this week, are back to potty training after our Japanese & moving hiatus. Andrew had a few hiccups, but is doing really well. He had 0 accidents today, goes without being reminded, and even uses the potty some times when he still has a pull up on (like from running errands). I am very proud of him. The first day was challenging because he just peed straight on the floor every time. I kind of lost it one time (I feel bad about that), but since then he has done really well.

Andrew wants to go somewhere EVERY day. He wants to go to story time every day - we go a couple times a week (we now belong to two library systems here, plus Borders and B&N, which are both within a mile, have them as well). He also wants to go to the science center (he loved the structures exhibit) and the zoo every day. We went to the zoo finally last week and even though it was 27 degrees (too cold in my mind to go to the zoo), he loved it! Half the zoo was blocked off because the paths were very icy. Andrew was very disappointed that he couldn't see the elephants and reminds me that he wants to see them every day. Both he and Seth were totally enamored with the monkeys.

Andrew really wants to make new friends. He keeps telling me we need to go to places so he can meet new friends. I am not that great at making new friends myself, but now I feel prodded to make friends for him, so I am trying ...

We switched out Andrew's car bed for a futon. The car bed just didn't work as well as we hoped, mostly because the plastic frame gets really really cold. We think that contributes to Andrew waking up a lot. He actually has been sleeping quite a bit better since we got a futon. Plus, he has a lot more space in his room when we put the futon away in the closet during the day.

Andrew is such a talker and a conversationalist. I guess he told the nursery leaders he was 2 and a half and 2 months. Where he got that from, I have no idea. Funny boy. He also said a prayer in nursery. I was shocked because he has 0 interest in praying at home (not even repeating what we say, most of the time). But he has the best memory. Every time I open a pop top can, he says "Be careful mom".

Andrew has all kind of eating issues now. He spits out food multiple times a day. He basically refuses to drink water and wants to switch out cups multiple times a meal because it "tastes bad". But - get this - he now loves milk! And drinks it with every meal and with some snacks!!! We are going through milk 2-3x as fast as before. I am so glad because I was always kind of concerned about his calcium intake.

He loves letters. Just as long as I am not trying to teach him anything. He loves to sing his ABC song and is also trying to learn a song I heard once for the Japanese letters. He is still trying out all the Japanese words that he learned from Izumi and will correctly identify books as Japanese (or not - he doesn't really know that is called English, I think). It is so cute to hear him pronounce Japanese things because he copies it exactly and so it really sounds Japanese. I was surprised, but he even remembers Izumi's cat's name and will tell me about her "pet".

Well, hopefully we'll get Andrew some friends, a babysitter he likes, a preschool to go to in the fall, and it warms up so we can finally see the elephants and he will be much happier. We still love our cutie pie.

And someday we'll post some pictures ..............

We are now in St Louis

We moved. And we survived. And in truth, it wasn't too bad. The drive was uneventful, with both boys sleeping part of the time, the cat only crying quietly for a couple hours (and more or less silent the rest of the time), and only 2 relatively stops along the way. We definitely made it within 10 hours. I was a little worried because Andrew was acting pretty sick and so we took him to the doctor the day before and he had an ear infection, so he had medication for that. But he was good.

Unpacking has gone pretty well so far. A friend from Ann Arbor who lives in St Louis now helped unpack the truck, along with my dad. We got it all done by around noon on Sunday. And since then, we have been unpacking (well, and building our new entertainment center we bought from Ikea right before moving).

And running errands of course. Today was pretty productive. This afternoon, we walked and 1) got drivers licenses, 2) got library cards, and 3) opened a bank account. I LOVE being able to walk places. We also can walk to the park, the Galleria mall, and are within 5 minutes drive to almost every chain restaurant and store you can think of. Kind of crazy. We can walk to the Cheesecake Factory and P.F. Changs. You can also see the Metrolink train from our house (which Katsu will take to work).

Our ward seems nice, even though we haven't been. Both the bishop and the elders quorum president called, a member who lives in the neighborhood came over and brought us advice and cookies, and the missionaries dropped by today to get to know us and also to see if we need any help. I think we'll like the ward. And get this - the temple is also in our ward boundaries ... we sure live in a conveinent place. I think the temple must be closer than I suspected.

Our apartment is nice. It's been fun trying to figure out how to fit all our stuff in. Moving to a smaller apartment can be kind of a challenge, but I think we are figuring it out. The location makes it all worth it. We really like it though. I'll post pictures soon. We are also experimenting with the boys together in one room. We'll keep you posted on that.

Other news ... hmmm, Seth is either teething, sick, or going totally ballistic from all the changes. Most of the time he is fine and normal; the rest of the time, he just cries and cries. Andrew thinks he needs a nap everyday at 4 pm when he totally crashes. He slept sitting upright on a booster seat at the Olive Garden yesterday - for the entire dinner.

We bought plane tickets to the Netherlands today. I don't even want to look at how much it cost (YIKES!) or even think about jet lag (yikes!), but I think it will be fine.

Pictures soon. (And yes, we unpacked our books before our clothes ... sigh ... how did we get so many books!).