Sadie's New Favorite Word

This is Sadie's new favorite game to play with Rachel.  It literally sounds and looks a lot like this.  Poor mommy keeps trying to get her to try the same thing with "Daddy" but she won't.  Enjoy.

~Tony

Where'd ya go?

I realized this afternoon that it's been a very long time since anything has been posted. It's not that things aren't going on but that fact that I have a hard time sitting down at the computer without Sadie coming in and typing or wanting to sit on my lap and obstructing my view of the computer, or turning the computer off! So, I am writing this in on my laptop while she is sleeping. The good news is, the blog will be updated, the bad news, no pictures or videos since all of that stuff is on our desktop in Sadie's room. I will post some new pictures and videos of her soon!

Things have been pretty busy around here and we are looking at a very busy summer. I know many of you already know but Tony and I will be moving into our first house this summer! We are super excited. It is a little scary though and the process is very overwhelming the first time around. We won't be moving until July and that time can't seem to come fast enough. I am very excited to have a house for many reasons. Sadie will finally have more space to run around in, a backyard to play in (although we need to baby proof that, our house comes with a pool in the backyard so we'll need to get a fence or something), a room to make a mess with her toys, and we'll be able to move our good computer out of her room! This means I'll be able to get so much more done. I have several projects going on and I need a fully functioning computer to complete them. July can't come fast enough, I am very anxious to be out of these apartments.

Tony is done with school and is finding that life at home all day isn't very fun. It's only been two days and he is bored already. We might drive each other crazy this summer!!! lol June will be the longest month. July will be a busy month between moving and hopefully going to Pennsylvania. August we'll be traveling to Utah and Idaho for Jessica's wedding and by the time we get back, it'll be about time to start school again. I guess we'll just go down to the pool everyday to pass the time until July. :-)

I am keeping busy too. I have started a business pursuit and it has kept me pretty busy. I'm not making millions yet but we're almost there...... ;-) I enjoy it though and the company I work with is exceptional.

Sadie is growing like crazy! Her clothes are shrinking so fast on her. It's good that we are moving into a house because her closet can't hold anymore bags of old clothes. I am just glad she isn't any older, otherwise she would insist we need to buy her new clothes since we put away some old ones! I did have to get her some shoes though, her feet have grown quite a bit too. I'm just glad it is summer and she can wear flip flops from Old Navy, cheap way to put shoes on your child's feet!! Don't worry, she doesn't wear these all the time, I'm not ruining her feet! Sadie is starting to talk a lot more. She has several words underneath her belt, such as, mama, dada, banana, duck, toe, eye, teeth, mouth, please, arm, key, back, door, more, up, no, yeah, ball, dog....I'm sure I'm leaving some out. But her speech is coming along though which is great. Sometimes she'll make an attempt at saying Sadie. I also try and get her to say "more please," or "up please." Sometimes she'll do it and sometimes, well she's a toddler, enough said.

We get entertained by her though that is for sure. She can do all the actions to "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and claps along to "Bingo." She is also a little fish and loves the water. Oh, that's another word she says, "pool." Last time we went down, I asked her if she was excited to go the pool, she put her hands over her mouth and giggled all the way down. She is so cute! We got very lucky and blessed with this first child, I hope we are lucky with the next one!

Well, Sadie is awake now so I better wrap this up. I'll post pictures and some videos of her soon for you to enjoy!

Merry Chirstmas and Happy New Year!

Well, here is a late Merry Christmas to everyone but also Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that another year has come and gone. I am sad that the Christmas season is coming to a close, especially since it took me until December 24th to really get in the Christmas spirit. I don't know what my next adventure will be, but whatever it is, I am not doing something that makes me become a Grinch over the holidays and makes me count down the days for the wrong reasons.

Yes, I have quit UPS. My last day was December 23rd. It wasn't until I gave my two weeks that I started receiving massive amounts of compliments about how hard of a worker I was and how good I did my job. All the supervisors kept trying to butter me up so that I would stay and told me that I had a job if I ever needed one. One supervisor told me to make sure I tell my husband how hard I work and that not many people make it in this job. Apparently they have had grown men come in to do this and they quit a break because it's so hard. The guy that works next to me just laughed when the supervisor said this and he said, "tell you husband whatever you want but make sure to tell him it's not worth it." Not that it would have made me stay, but it would have been nice to hear compliments throughout my working period there and not just in the last two weeks. Oh, well, time to move on. I did a little calculation and by the 23rd we were running 36 trucks, each truck had an average of 234 packages daily, so our little center was doing almost 8,500 packages a day! I can't imagine working in a bigger hub.

Tony is now done at Sears and soccer season is in full swing. A few nights before Christmas, Tony had an interesting experience, there was a man arrested at Sears for shop lifting, the sad part is though, he had his four year old son with him! Tony said the boy was sobbing when his dad was arrested and that when Tony left at 11:30 no one had still come to get the little boy. That made me so sad to hear that and so mad at how stupid people are or desperate, maybe a combination of the two. We did learn recently, that this Sears store will not be closing, so it Tony's goes back, it will still be there. He has enjoyed his long break and will be going back on Monday, not too excited about that. Sadie won't like it either, she's been pretty spoiled having both of us around. She has really missed her daddy and I do believe she enjoyed seeing Tony more over the break.

Sadie had a doctor's visit on Tuesday, she is 23.5 lbs and 31.5 inches long. She has dropped from the 90th percentile to the 75th. The doctor wasn't worried though and each time we go in he comments about how good Sadie's eyes look, so we continue to head in the right direction. She had a lot of doctor anxiety though so that made the visit more pleasant. She screamed the whole time, even before we got to the shots! Of course she stopped as soon as she got a sucker.

Sadie's new trick is the act of taking of her clothes, she prefers to be naked and now runs from me when I try to dress her and after I finally do, she loves to take her clothes off. Several times I have gone to get her from a nap, and there is little Sadie, naked with a big smile! She hates clothes so much that she has even figured out how to get out of her fully zipped and footed pajamas without unzipping them! She just crawls out the neck. She definitely keeps us busy. She is turning into a good helper though, now when she empties out drawers or cupboards, she puts the stuff back, not always neatly but at least she is learning. One of her favorite books in the Llama Llama books, Llama Llama misses mama, Llama Llama holiday drama etc, except she can't say her l's so she calls them her mama mama books. It's funny and cute.

Since it was so beautiful today, we took Sadie to the park and for the first 10 minutes she just stood there and watched everyone, she wouldn't move. She was afraid to walk but after she got warmed up, she was all over the place! Putting dirt in her mouth, throwing in on the slide, I guess we know who she didn't take after.

I forgot to mention this in the last blog and it happened a while ago, but we got a possible diagnosis for why Sadie looks so much like me and where the Nystagmus may have come from. The geneticist we have been seeing diagnosed both Sadie and I with Robinow Syndrome. There is a serious kind and not so serious kind, we have the not so serious kind. But this what gives both Sadie and I our wide features, like the nose and forehead and also why the ends of our mouths point up instead of down like most people's. This also accounts for our short toes and fingers. The geneticist also said that she thinks I had a case of Nystagmus when I was little which is where Sadie probably got it since she inherited the Robinow Syndrome from me. She said that Sadie should be perfectly fine since I am sitting here today perfectly fine. So now the mystery is solved as to why Sadie looks like me and why all our children have a 50% chance of looking exactly like me. It is an odd feeling to go 24 years and not know you have a syndrome and then get told you have something you can pass to your kids. Wasn't expecting that that day. The geneticist did try and reassure me though that there is no cause for concern, she said you never would have known there was anything different unless you had come in for the Nystagmus. The only thing we need to watch for is Sadie may be short in stature. Which we don't want so she can play sports!!! :-)

We hope this new year will bring some fun, good, and exciting things for us! We are really hoping to be in a house this year, that is our main goal. We have quickly outgrown the space we are in and we are both exhausted of apartment living and throwing away money on renting. Not to mention the 3 flights of stairs!! Other than that we don't know what this year has in store, but when we get a house you are all welcome to come and visit! We are taking volunteers to come help us move! :-)
We hope you all have a very happy and prosperous new year!

Fell Off the Wagon

Well we kinda fell off of the wagon for a while and haven't bothered to update the blog. Sorry about that. Things have been busy for us. Tony is working two jobs and I am still working early mornings and then spend the rest of my day chasing Sadie and cleaning up her messes. Baby proofing in an apartment doesn't work out very well. Not to mention any time I sit down Sadie thinks that means she can come on over and beg me to read her a book. She doesn't self entertain very well so our house is very messy right now and is driving me bananas.

Sadie had a birthday since our last post. We were very excited to have both grandparents there. It was very fun to have family around. It gets very lonely here sometimes. I can't believe a year has gone by already. It was the fastest year of my life. Sadie is still growing like crazy and is a walking machine now. About a month or more ago, Sadie reacted badly to the MMR vaccine and suffered from a mild case of the measles. She broke out in this awful rash. I thought it was a food allergy at first but no, the measles. I'm glad it wasn't a food allergy though. Sadie was a trooper through it all, a little, well a lot more cranky than usual and wouldn't eat and then had diarrhea, so yes, it was a long week. But everyone is healthy now. Sadie is working on talking but she still pretty much just says "mama." We have a fun game now where I say Sadie, "who is your momma?" and she puts her finger to my chest and says "mama." I love it.

Well, I got a "promotion" at work. One of the workers is being promoted to driver at Christmas and I took over his car. These cars handle about 1,000 packages a day and I load 4 cars now instead of 3. I have only been doing it for 4 days and I am so exhausted, and have multiple bruises. I just wished this promotion came with a pay raise. It is nice not to be with the drivers that complain all the time though. That will help with the mental part of the job. Although, one of the drivers that complained everyday asked me the other day why they have me over here now and I said "I am taking Matt's spot." Then he said, "They always gotta be screwing things up around here." So I guess in the end I was appreciated after all and didn't do that bad of a job. He was just a negative Nate. :-) The peak season is now in full swing and I am going in at 3 am now. We went from loading 24 trucks to loading 32 trucks in a matter of days. It is crazy. I will be so glad when this is all over. It is freezing in the mornings and I bundle up to go to work. You would think that I would get warm doing what I do but not enough to shed too many layers. On Monday it was the coldest day so far, 26 degrees and they didn't turn the heater on! My hands were ice cold and when I went to wash them at break time I ran cold water over them and it felt as if I had put burning hot water on them, that is how frozen they were. Not very fun. Did I mention that I can't wait until this over?

We have finally gotten some rain but we are still far from being out of the drought. I hope we have a very wet fall. Tony is still keeping very busy with both school and working at Sears. Soccer started this last week for him and he has 50 kids. Isn't that a little ridiculous? He doesn't have much help either, they are still working on that. Of course, he is hoping that he will have another good year.

We are hoping that the new year will bring some good, new, and exciting changes for our family. We are especially hoping to have more time to spend together. Tony, although jokingly said but very true, mom needs a few hours away from Sadie and dad needs a few hours with her. Sadie is getting very spoiled with mom time and she misses her daddy. Hopefully over Christmas break they will get to spend some quality time together. I think that is all the updates for now. We love and miss you all so much and are sad we don't get to spend the holidays together.

Sears Link

I forgot to put this in the last blog. Here is a link to the rest of Sadie's pictures we took at Sears if you are interested in seeing them. We have the CD and with that the right's to print them. You can order them from the site, or you can let us know what ones you want. If you want anymore than what we already gave you.

http://www.SearsPhotos.com/ViewSharedAlbum.aspx?ShareID=a82a3db0-66aa-4186-9a23-1bd552ef8ec1

The heat wave is finally over!! Can I get a Hallelujah!!! The only bad thing is that the cold front coming through has cause the tropical storm to take a Northeast turn and miss Texas completely. So we still need lot's of prayers that we get some rain. Fires are happening everywhere and most of Texas is either in a moderate or exceptional drought. We are in an exceptional drought. To top is off, Lake Texoma, the lake that we live by, has been contaiminated with blue algae and is closed. Hopefully things will turn around here soon. At least it won't be 90 when I go to work and 106 or more during the day!!

Why did the armadillo cross the road?

I know all of you will be so pleased to hear this, but I finally saw an armadillo! This may not seem so exciting to you but Tony and I kept seeing them dead along side the road and weren't convinced that they really exsisted alive. Well early one morning, on my way to work of course, I saw something moving across the road, I put my high beams on and there he was. He stopped looked at me, then continued on his way. They sure are ugly. After that, I was watching Steel Magnolias, and when Shelby gets married, the groom's cake is an armadillo with gray frosting and red velvet cake for the center. That thing looked so nasty, probably because of all the ones I see that are dead it just looked to much like road kill!

Well, the big news around here is that after a very long month of swollen gums, diaper rash, crankiness etc. Sadie's top teeth have finally broken through! She has 5 teeth now. She is getting so big. She now pushes her music table around the room and walks behind it. Won't be too long now before she is walking. She absolutely loves books too. She hardly touches her toys anymore. All she wants to do is read. Tony and I pretty much have all her books memorized already. So if any of you are wanting to know what Sadie needs for her birthday, new books!! Or new toys that will give some stimulation. She still plays with the toys that play music and have lights but doesn't touch anything else.

Sadie is adjusting to the babysitter and the new schedule that we are on. I think she has adjusted better than any of us actually. Tony has gone back to school and is still working at Sears. This week was very hard and next week will be worse. This week he worked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Sadie and I didn't see him until Thursday this week and next week, he works Mon, Tues, Wed, Fri, and Sat. So we will only be seeing Tony again really one day next week. So yeah, things are really busy for us and a little crazy. We are hoping this schedule won't be necessary for too much longer but there are no change of plans in the near future. :-(

It is still extremely hot and dry here. The other day at work I got so dehydrated that I got sick. Working like that in 90 degree weather isn't so great. If most of the drivers weren't jerks and complainers I might feel sorry for them! It is amazes me how much they complain. Sometimes I just want to say, you make $100,000 can't you shut up and be happy? One of my drivers finds something to complain about every single day and it is really annoying. It is my goal every day to get out of there before he gets there so I don't have to listen to it. I learned the other day that for partime at UPS, anything over 5 hours in a day is overtime, and for overtime, they pay double! So some days I am making pretty good money and when it picks up for the holidays I'll be doing very well. So I'll try to limit my complaining during that time......

Tony and I went to a baseball game for my birthday and that was a lot of fun. That is what the pictures are of below and we also took Sadie to the zoo. There is a smaller zoo about 30 minutes away that we took her too. She's not quite ready for the larger zoos in Dallas. Well, I think that is all for now. Sadie's birthday is coming up and we are excited for that. We all made it a year!!

A little bit of work, FIFA, and a lot of Sadie!

It's been a while since our last post but things have been busy as we have all been adjusting to a new schedule. I've been working at UPS now for over a month and it is going pretty well. I am getting very strong and not suffering too much from early mornings. We are very understaffed so that makes the job even more exhausting and less desirable to go to every morning but it is a good job to have for our situation so I can't complain.....too much. :-)

Tony has been working at sears and doing well there. If you ever get in a conversation with him he might and try and sell you something so choose your topics wisely!! His most exciting event would be the women's FIFA World Cup match against Brazil. If you didn't watch it, you sure missed out. I don't particulary care to watch soccer but even I'll admit, that was a good game to watch.

Although it was never officially said, we are pretty certain Tony's job is safe for next year. He was in a training session for school and the principal came in a made a comment about the classes he would be teaching next year. We are so happy and grateful. We have 3 jobs among our family in this recession when many don't have even one. So even though I complain about the job, I can't deny it is a huge blessing.

Since we last updated, many of you know we took a vacation to Ocean City, New Jersey. Sadie did a wonderful job traveling again and we all had a lot of fun. We wish that we could be closer to family so there wasn't so much time in between visits, but alas, we are not and probably won't be anytime soon.

Texas is very very hot right now. We have been over 100 everyday for the last week or so and are back in a very bad drought. I know many of you are probably thinking that it is in the 90s where you are so it's not that different, however, 100 degrees in Texas is much warmer than anywhere else I have been. We don't go outside very often and when we do, it is for very short increments. I really miss the summers in Eastern Oregon and Washington, mainly the dry heat!!! When I am at work in the morning it is 85 degrees and 70% percent humidity, in a building that is not air conditioned. Joyous times are had by all. :-)

As for Sadie, a couple of weeks ago she went to the doctor for her 9 month well check up. She is 29 inches long and 21.15 lbs, still in the 90th percentile! The doctor said she is the happiest 9 month old he has ever seen and would take her home if he could. He also said that if he had a sticker for good patient of the day, he would put it on her forehead. Next time we go, will be her 12 month check!! 12 months, 1 year old! I can't believe it. It has gone so fast. Which by the way, we will be having a party and you are all invited!! :-)

Sadie is crawling all over the place now. She follows me from room to room. She gets quite the workout though, when she finally gets into the room I am in, I am done and leave. So once she gets there, she has to turn around and head the other direction. She also insists to eat when I am eating regardless if she just finished a meal. So yesterday I shared my spaghetti with her. She has also tried watermelon, which she likes so we can take her to Hermiston!! (my hometown famous for watermelons for those who don't know.) But she is starting to eat table food, slowing getting the hang of feeding herself.

Speaking of eating, Sadie, hates her bibs. Yesterday during lunch she kept taking it off, I would tell her no, put it back on and she would cry. This continued all through lunch. She is such a character. She tries to crawl through spaces that are too small and constantly gets stuck. She cries and I just laugh, I don't think she appreciates that. She is pulling herself up now and ever so cautiously sits back down. We really enjoy her and she is our entertainment.