Book Worm

Saturday afternoon, Nosy snuggled up with Daddy to show off some of his newly acquired reading skills.  Just for the fun of it.  Not only is Noah reading g.r.e.a.t., but he even actually enjoys it...a little. That's progress, Baby!  And it does this Mama's/Teacher's heart oh-so-much good.

You know what else does my heart so much good?  Observing this Daddy-Son moment from afar.



Big Bro jumps in to hear the end of the story.

Frozen

One of our favorite celebrations to welcome Spring is the consumption of the first popsicles of the season.  After several afternoons that required short sleeves, we unanimously declared that it was time: bring on the popsicles!  We dug around in the freezer and, at the very back, found a few ice encrusted, sad, little popsicles.  They would do just fine!  Mama grabbed the camera, O gathered up the pops and we headed out to the porch...only to be hit by gale force, chilly winds.  We were not to be discouraged though!  No way!  We dashed back in for coats and pushed through the chill. 

Poor Jones's eyes are watering from the freezing cold wind, but he's happy!  He licked up every bit of his pop!

Snooze

This pretty Baby is still such a great napper!  At 20 months old, he takes a 3 hour morning nap and a 2 hour late afternoon nap.  Yes, he wakes up at the crack of dawn (5:45am), but we are not willing to alter his schedule quite yet.  The Biggies and I get the majority of our harder school subjects done while Tiny saws logs all morning.  He wakes up happy, hungry for lunch and ready for some play time.  By the time he's ready to go back down, the Boys are ready to hit the books to finish up school and then have play time with Mommy.  I am loving our schedule right now!

I snapped this picture at 10:30pm.  I was checking Noah's sugar when I noticed a strange glow coming out from under Jonah's door.  In my tired delirium, I had left Jonesy's light a-blazing when I had put him to bed hours earlier.  Sweet Boy lay right down and went to sleep without complaint.

Flurries

After last year's freaky snowstorms, two little boys at our house had high hopes of sledding and snowmen again this winter.  As the season neared an end with nary a flurry-sighting, those dreams were quickly fading.  But, what's that??  Snow flurries in the forecast?  We all waited with bated breath.  The night got late with out any sign of snow.  We tucked sleepy, disappointed Boys into bed.  Around 10:00, my Mom texted me with some happy news: SNOW!!  I rushed into the Boys' bedroom.  O was just drifting off to sleep.  He was ecstatic when I whispered the happy news to him!  He bounded out of the top bunk, ready to head outside.  He was dancing around on the driveway, catching flurries on his tongue in no time!

Noah, on the other hand...The boy sleeps like a rock!  Probably because he has to sleep through 3-5 finger pokes a night.  I finally coaxed him out of sleep, bundled him up and carried him outside.  After a quick glance at the flurries, he decided he really needed his shoes on.  He ran back inside, never to be heard from again.  I found him tucked back in bed fast asleep.  He had no recollection of the whole thing the next morning.

O and I played in the very few flurries that were still falling until exhaustion set in and we headed to bed.  Sadly, that was our only snowfall for the winter of 2011/2012. At least we got pictures to remember it by!

Progress Report

This picture makes me happy.  Three pairs of boots all lined up on the mud cabinet, just waiting to go puddle-jumping.  Some of which we gleefully did last week, once the sun came out. 

Man, I love these boys!

Since it has been soooo long since I've really blogged, I thought I'd start out with an over-all up-date. 

School:

It is going GREAT right now!  We had a hard start to 2012, what with the house flooding and being under construction until the middle of January.  Both Boys went through a very resistant phase at the same time, and Jones was trying to give up his morning nap.  It made for some very rough, long, frustrating, un-productive days.  I am so very thankful for my homeschool support group.  These girls offer me grace and encouragement just when I need it most.  And sure enough, we made some adjustments, Jonesy started napping again, Mommy stopped being so up-tight and rigid...and learning is once again fun!  We are all having a blast right now.

Playing one of our favorite math games: Flash Card Hunt

House:

Praise the Lord, the house is 100% fixed from the flood and everything is working great.  We are so happy to be all settled.  The only major area left to furnish is the school room.  I am working on assembling a huge desk for us to work at, which will be wonderful...if I ever get it done!  We feel so overwhelmingly blessed to be living in this beautiful house in such a family-centered neighborhood.

Diabetes:

Nosy had about 10 days of blissful blood sugars in the middle of January.  He was in range more than he was out of range.  It was a.maz.ing!  Jeremy and I were sleeping 3 hour stretches.  We felt like a huge weight was lifted off our shoulders.  Noah was feeling so great all the time.  We were thrilled to think that maybe 5 years old was the "age of stabilization" for us.  And then the 10 days were over and his sugars have been not so great since, but at least we had those 10 days.  We have hope that maybe one day the good stretch will last 2 weeks, and then a month, and then maybe even longer...

Jeremy Halpin, CPA!!!!!!!!

Sometime during my sabbatical from blogging, Jeremy finished all 4 CPA exams (passed them all on his first try!) and completed all his official paperwork.  He is now a certified CPA!! We are SO proud of him!!!

God has been so very good to us.  We are content and happy and blessed beyond measure.

Quick Up-date

An actual blog post?  Surely not!  I'm pretty sure no one even checks my blog anymore.  With good reason.  It's been awhile.  Here's a quick up-date on each of the Boys, with good intentions to make blogging a part of my week again.

 On January 4th, Owen lost his very first tooth.  He was so brave and excited!  More on that story soon.



Nosy learned to read!  We have been working and working on making sense out of those pesky letters.  He has known all the phonetical sounds forever, but when it came to sounding out a word, he was truly lost.  And then one day, it just clicked!  Bob Books are now our friends!

This picture is Jonesy to a tee. He is joyful and fast and energetic and playful and never meets a stranger.  He chats and jibber-jabbers and babbles all day long.  He is opinionated and daring and an absolute mess.  He is Jonah, and he's so unlike any child I've ever parented before.  He's giving me a run for my money, and I wouldn't change a thing about him.

So, more stories to come soon.  House stories.  School stories.  Birthday and Christmas stories.  Hopefully I can stay on top of this!

Progression of a House

Probably the only benefit of back-blogging is that you often get the whole story all at once instead of a bit at a time.  Such is the case with our new home.  They broke ground in September.  Now it is almost Thanksgiving, and we are scheduled to move in in 11 days.  Whoo-hoo!!  We can not wait!

 Framing

 Sheetrock

 My amazing kitchen over-looking the living room

 The Big Boys' Room

 They are so excited to have an up-stairs. 

 Brick

 Stone

 All done.  They bricked the whole house in 3 days.  These guys are crazy-hard workers!

 Next up: hard woods.

 We get to keep the left-over stone, so we tucked it away in the garage.

 One of my favorite parts of the house: the mud cabinet.

 Kitchen cabinets

 Pretty ceiling in the school room and master bedroom.

 Boys' Room again.

 Living room.  There are very dirty hardwoods under all that mess.

 Window seat in the playroom upstairs

 I am so excited about all this STORAGE!!

Kitchen almost done.

This house is so much more than we could ever have asked for or imagined.  The way the doors opened for us to get this amazing house for such an awesome deal, we know it was a gift from the Lord.  We are commited to use it for His glory and His purposes.  We are so excited to get started on this new chapter of our lives!



World Diabetes Day

What a stinky day to have cause to recognize.  Diabetes and I are not friends.  In fact, I H.A.T.E. Type I diabetes with my whole heart and soul.  I have good reason.  Diabetes runs our lives.  I struggle minute to minute to be an adequate pancreas for Nosy...and mostly I fail big time. The pressure and guilt I feel on a daily basis are enormous and suffocating.  I cry a lot and want to rip my hair out or scream at the tops of my lungs in frustration.  Jeremy and I try and try and pray and think and worry and make changes to attempt to keep Noah's small body in balance so that he can feel good and play and have energy and, well, live.  His sugars have been so unstable recently.  They swing from over 600 to the 30's in a given day sometimes, usually for no reason that Jeremy and I can pinpoint.  We are not stupid people and we follow all the rules and check and double and triple check all the appropriate calculations, but still we fail.  And Noah ends up hyper or lethargic or with a tummy ache and diarrhea or almost at the passing out point or with blood as thick as molasses that has no way to carry oxygen to all his important parts.  All because we can't control this awful disease. It has gotten to the point that we check Noah every 1.5-2 hours all night long.  And thanks to my recent awareness of Dead in Bed Syndrome, every. single. time I enter his bedroom, I brace myself, prepare myself for the absolute worst.  I hold my breath and pray, pray, pray in my heart of hearts until I see him take a deep, reassuring breath.  He's okay.  At least until the next check, he's okay.   He's alive.  And God forbid he over-sleep in the morning.  I can be found in almost an all-out panic.  Recent studies show that 1 in 20 Type I Diabetics die of low blood sugar.  When I heard that, I was physically sick for a week.  1 in 20?!  How can that possibly be?  So heap on some extra stress and pressure and bottles full of tears for my boy and all those other D-mamas and daddies that struggle like we do.  All I can do is TRUST the Lord my God with Nosy's life.  He has been so faithful.  He gives and takes away.  And I am so thankful.  But still I brace myself.

This ad ran in the New York Times and The Washington Post a couple of weeks ago to help raise awareness for Type I Diabetes.  There is encouraging research being done on an artificial pancreas.  If you'd consider signing a petition to help speed things up in the testing through the FDA, here is a link.  We would all appreciate it so very much. 

Sporting our blue, the color of diabetes, on World Diabetes Day.

Praying for a cure.

Fall at the Arbo

Even before the first hint of Fall is in the air, the pumpkins arrive by the truckload at the Dallas Arboretum.  After an especially stressful week, the Boys and I decided a spontaneous excursion was just what we needed.  We drove by Sonic to pick up some yummy lunch (because greasy food helps ease stress too, you know!) and headed to the Arbo to see the pumpkins.  We had so much fun strolling around!

Strong Man!  Jones tried to lift all the impossibly huge pumpkins.  Check out his great form.  Lift from the legs!

 It's the pumpkin patch, Boys!  Indulge me for just a couple of quick shots?  I know it's absolute torture.

 Pausing to catch his breath after one of our many hay bale maze races.  Mommy even won a few!

Nosy is the proud owner of Caveman, one of the joys of the Sonic kids' meal.  Nosy gave him the grand Arbo tour.  Caveman seemed to enjoy himself, although he did leave covered in hay.

Straw anyone?

If you know me, you know these are just the first of zillions of Arbo pics for the season.  We love it out there and I just can't not take pics every. single. time.  Poor kids.  I wouldn't have this problem if they weren't so darn cute!

Hideout

Tent-making in our new pad, with our very limited resources.

Sometimes I miss my stuff.  My stuff that is all in boxes piled around our house.  But actually, most of the time, we don't miss our stuff at all.  It has been fun having fewer choices and getting creative with what we do have.  The Boys have only asked for their toys once.  All they have to play with is their Legos, a few McDonald's toys we've accumulated since the move, one football and a couple of Hot Wheels.  It feels good to live much more simply.  Even though I purged big time before the move, I have big plans to get rid of even more stuff once we move again.

And I know you all (if anyone even still reads this!) are super jealous of our sweet linoleum!

Holding On

You can hold my hand forever, Little One.  I treasure these days.

"Bird"

Jones is surely a genius.  Our other babies did not utter a word until way after the age of two.  Jones already (15months) has a vocabulary that consists of "mama," "ba(ll) ba(ll) ba(ll)," "mmmmm" (for his mimi).  See?  A genius, no doubt. Today he started signing "bird" and it is so super cute!  He gets really excited when we understand what he is signing.  He can also sign milk, more, airplane (he's only done that once...but it still counts!), eat, all done.  I wish I knew more signs to teach him, but for now, it's so fun having a tiny guy that can communicate some of what is going on in his tiny genius brain.

Busy

So very, very busy.  Having fun and working hard and living life.  And although I haven't been blogging any at all, I do have hundreds of pictures that I will one day post.  One day...

For  now, a couple of pictures of just how big and handsome all my guys are.  We had a great time exploring a new park near our new (temporary) house today.

Sadly, the Smartie I was tempting him towards me with is visible in his cheek.  gasp!  Shame on Mommy for giving a baby Smarties.

(Is anyone else having trouble with picture quality on blogger?  These pics are crystal clear and beautiful in Photoshop, but appear grainy and awful when I upload them.)