Family Visits and Hole in the Ceiling

I've neglected my blog recently. ooops. It's been a fun month and a fun/interesting month to start the new year!

The year started out great with my parents and youngest sister visiting. I also had lots of cousins, aunts and uncles visiting as well.

It had been about 8 months since I saw my parents and a year and a half since they saw Sydney but affection for them came easy to Sydney and Jonas!

During their visit, I was driving home at night and saw there was something in the road, at least I thought I saw something. Before I knew it, I was running over it and it instantly popped my two left tires. I began swerving and it was hard to get the vehicle off the road and to a stop as I was going 60 mph when I hit what we later discovered was a tire hubcap. My older sister came and was able to take my kids home and my mom and grandpa stayed with me while I waited for the tow truck. As soon as I got off the phone to call my parents and let them know what happened, I said a prayer of gratitude because I knew we were protected. There could have been other cars on the road while I was swerving uncontrollably making the situation much worse but as it was, no one was injured.

The damage turned out to be more than just two flat tires. The bumper had to be replaced and the actual wheels on the left side, too. I am grateful for insurance. It took 2 and a half weeks for the repairs to be completed. But we have our car back now and I couldn't be more thrilled.

We got a nasty electric bill in December so we decided to finally do something about adding more insulation in the attic. My cousin's husband James came to help Brian as they rented a blower and blew more insulation in our attic. I must have jinxed them as I was talking to James before they started and explained that my husband was like Tim Taylor and he needed to be the Al. I didn't want any ER visits that day. Well, we didn't have an ER-worthy incident but we did get this nice hole:

As a loving, caring and sweet wife my first thought SHOULD have been concern and gratitude that Brian DID NOT fall through this hole. But instead I was shocked and mumbled some kind of death threat. But, we'll get this fixed soon. I'm mostly annoyed that it's probably not going to look seamless and as wonderful as it did before. And yes, I am grateful Brian did not fall through.

Jonas had his 15-month check-up and all is looking great! He is 24 lbs 10.7 oz (around the 75% percentile), 30.5 inches (around the 25% percentile), and his head was 18.8 in (75% percentile). He and Sydney were both so great during the visit the doctor said I had sweet children :) I should let them hang out at his house sometime. But seriously, they are pretty sweet and I think they get along really well.

Jonas is just a ball of energy! He babbles a lot and a lot of words have that "bah" sound! "Outisde?" "Bah!" "Bath?" "Bah!" But really he sounds out a lot of words. I had fun a few weeks ago when I was telling him "You rock" and he replied with what really sounded like "I Rock". Still haven't been able to get a clear video of that though. He climbs on everything: the couch, the changing table (he can climb to the top), climbs into the bath tub, etc. He tries to put his shoes on his feet. He turns book pages with ease (board books), and he loves giving hugs. He gives "kisses" but they mostly involve sucking on your skin. He's made a few marks with a crayon on paper and loves to dance! Brian and I have an XBOX Kinect that can follow some simple voice commands. Jonas tries to say "XBOX" when we say that and also, the Kinect follows your body movement and to trigger that, you wave your hand back and forth. Jonas will stand in front of the Kinect and wave his arms to try to wake up the Kinect. Techno-baby!

We had a little scare with Jonas when earlier this month he got several fire ant bites while playing in my grandmother's backyard. He had at least 20 on his hand. I quickly got him inside and stripped him. We poured vinegar on the bites and rubbed some painkiller cream on his hands. He really took it like a champ the entire time. I gave him Benadryl for several days to make sure he didn't have a reaction. I'm so glad he didn't.

Sydney is loving being a Sunbeam and does pretty well about staying in her seat. She is eager to learn and we are trying to master the shapes, colors, and some letters of the alphabet. She knows "s" (has known that one for months), "j" (J for Jonas!), "b" and she knows the letter "m" is what "mom" starts with but she is still working on saying it's name. She can mostly count to 20 and when she takes her time she can count 10 objects. We've also been practicing cutting paper. I watched a friend's 3-month old a couple of times in the last few weeks and Sydney has been all ga-ga over him and very helpful with fetching burp cloths, etc. It's really sweet to see. She is also becoming very skilled at navigating her way around Brian's I-Phone! Sydney also had her first dental visit this month! She did such a super job and opened up nice and wide for the dentist. And got a clean bill of health for her teeth! Super!

I took my second mid-term for my Independent Study math course and it is such a relief to have that part past me. I studied every day for 2 weeks. It will be a while before I found out how I did but I feel it went well. I still have one more unit and the final to complete and need to get it done by April 2nd so as not to pay for the extension. After this course, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I feel like my only option is to pay out-of-pocket for this pre-requisite courses  to get into my grad program of choice but with our house we don't have the money for me to do that. I need to do some soul-searching and really contemplate where I want to go with this and what I need to do.

And some additional videos for your viewing pleasure.