Charles turns one!

I'm a little behind on documenting our big events. I think this is due to using any and all spare time for unpacking, organizing, cleaning, and working on the house. Well, today is Sunday and we are resting from our busy house labors. Max is sleeping and Charlie is sitting on the floor behind me frantically waving a mini Armenian flag and squealing with delight...that being said, let's see if I can get this all written.

We celebrated Charlie's birthday two weeks ago. We decided to throw a little party at our house. In preparation for the party, I was hoping that the walls would be painted and we could remove the paper covering our hardwood floors. That didn't happen but it turned out to be a good party anyway.

We weren't sure who to invite either. We wanted to have lots of other kids here but also, seeing as our family is all close, we felt they all ( at least the grand parents and great grandparents) needed an invite as well. We ended up making it a family only party and all of Charlie's cousins and second cousins could come. We ended up having a very full house, and a fun party!

We played a little game where the guests had to put his pictures in order. There is one from each month of his life. (Thanks Megan, I totally stole this from you)

Before the food was set out. I forget to take one after it was all set out.
We had banana pumpkin bread, meat balls, juice, fruits and veggies, black bottom cupcakes and an area to decorate your own cupcake with neon frosting!

The Fish pinata Max and I slaved over, We were pretty proud of it. 

Instead of hitting the pinata with a bat, I swung  Charlie so he could kick it. He loved it. 

Grace got some good hits. 

August too!

Gwenevere's turn

Brayden showed us how it was done.

Uncle Dan and Uncle Justin finished it off for us!

Totally uninterested in his neon blue cupcake

He finally pinched a little frosting.

Then turned it upside down to eat it!

He got spoiled with tons of toys 

I just love this picture of Grace!

Another Party guest. Our contractor has a dog named Gwenevere so we thought it would by fun for my niece Gwenevere to meet the dog. She loves dogs and has tons of stuffed animals named Gwenevere.  She seemed a little
nervous by this huge dog but her little sister, Grace loved it!

I guess that's all the party pictures. We felt pleased with the party even though our house was unfurnished and unpainted. Charlie had a great time playing with everyone.

And now I have a one year old. So here are some one-year-old stats.

Charlie is 24 lbs 9 oz and 31.5 inches tall (90% for height and 75% for weight) 

He hasn't started walking yet but took a couple steps about 10 days ago. and will sometimes stand on his own.

Charlie has been dancing a ton. He likes to bounce and wave his arms. 

He has recently become a little bit cuddly. He has always been a little wiggle worm but now he gives long hugs while patting us on the back. He will also give us tons of kisses on the lips. I just love this so much.

He squeals with delight most of the time when he see other kids in the grocery store. He also gets incredibly giddy when he sees his cousins August and Andrew. 

His laugh has become more infectious and hearty. I love it. 

He has been sleeping through the night. (I won't elaborate, I don't want to jinx it again) 

He got two more teeth for his birthday bringing the total to 5 with a couple more close behind. 

He is eating pretty much everything we give him. He's not too picky at all. He loves pomegranates, blueberries, lucky charms, turkey, peas, chicken, meatloaf, and so much more. He's recently been able to eat whatever we're eating so that makes things a bit easier.

He got his first haircut but is going to need one again soon.

He gets really excited when he figures things out. For example...how to turn on and off a light switch. how to turn on his noisy toys, how to use his musical instruments properly so they make the most possible noise etc.  

That's all I can think of and I think Charlie is done being patient with me, so there you have it. I think we are going to go decorate our Christmas tree now.

    

Halloween

We kinda rushed right through Halloween. With the move and planning for Charlie's birthday, I never really took time to prepare costumes for us. We did take the time to carve pumpkins for Family Home Evening though.

Uncle Jay joined our Family night and helped carve Charlie's pumpkin!

He was happy playing with the pumpkins. 

the flash startled him. 

So, then comes Halloween! The night before I decided to get crafty! I turned one of Charlie's yellow shirts inside out and added a black electrical tape zigzag! YEAH! Pinterest that! I was pretty proud that people could actually tell he was Charlie brown!

We took him to visit his grandparents and great grandparents. Which lucky for us, all live in the same city! Except for the great grandma that lives right by us in Portland! We weren't able to visit all of them because we got a bit of a late start so we apologize to those that we missed. We had a fun time and Max and I enjoyed Charlie's candy!

Sleeping Jinx

I have a problem of being too honest, this makes it so Max can never let practical jokes too far because I will always give away the joke. Whoops! That being said, I must make a public correction because I don't want to look back in history and believe something I wrote on my blog to be truth when in actuality, it's not so true anymore. 2 posts ago I was writing about the miracle of my baby sleeping through the night. It all was true up to that evening I was writing that post. Since the post, I must have jinxed it because that very night he woke up several times and many nights since. I couldn't live my life having my blog audience of 3 thinking that my baby sleeps through the night when he actually doesn't. Whew, I feel good that I finally have that off my chest.

Anyway, the odd thing about this is that for about a week or so, Charlie would only wake up when it was my night to get up with him and he would sleep through Max's nights. I have no idea why. How does he know? It has nothing to do with me being more alert to his crying at night because he wasn't even fussing on Max's night.
Charlie can go all night without eating but to replace his feeding he decided he would poop. So we have to go and take care of him instead of letting him cry himself back to sleep. He has done this for many nights.
This last weekend, Charlie had a fever for a couple of days and started waking up every night, even on Max's nights. The fever is gone now but for the last two nights he has awoken 2+ times, we think because of the pain from his top front tooth coming in. What is going on with this child? We're hoping after this tooth pops through, which can be any minute, things will go back to normal and we can get him to sleep through the night. Any advice out there? What can I do so my baby doesn't poop in the middle of the night? Am I feeding him too late at night? FYI, I'm asking for advice so I will not be annoyed if you leave advice in the comments!

The move in!

We are happy to announce that we are here sitting in our new house! We moved in two weeks ago and sadly are still camping a bit, but work is getting done and our home is becoming more homey! Especially since the walls are now insulated...it's warm and toasty! 

Here are some pictures of the finished floor.

Our guest room for our visitors!

we found tons of paint colors when we sanded down the cupboards. 

Check out the fancy new tile. 

Once we moved in, it started looking a lot messier so I haven't been taking as many pictures. As soon as we can officially schedule the texturing painter man to come we can start dreaming of new paint on the walls. That should be pretty soon. Once the walls are painted we can bring the rest of our stuff over and start to settle in a bit better. In the meantime, we are working on the kitchen cupboards so we can eventually use them and have a completely functional kitchen. We aer loving it here even though we are camping a bit. I love being in the forest. when we wake up it feels like we are in a greenhouse, because of all the windows upstairs.

My baby sleeps!

This is an "in case you were wondering" post. Most may find it boring, some may find it informative, but my main reason in writing this is so I don't make the same mistakes in the future if some other babies choose to join our family.

The Problem:

Charlie would wake up at least once per night usually between the hours of 2am and 5am. He would be screaming and desperate for a bottle. We would change his diaper as he would chug down 7 ounces and drift off to dreamland once we set him in his bed. He would then continue to sleep until 7 or 8, or sometimes 9!

The History:

Charlie had been sleeping through some long stretches, I dare say through the night, starting around 4 months and was doing great until he hit six months. I read in books that his new found mobility was cause for frequent wakings. I found this true as we would wake up after rolling on his stomach and forget to get onto his back, then, a couple months later he would stand up in his exhausted state and forget how to get back down and be comfortable.
When he was around 8 months Charlie was sleeping in our room for a period of time. We knew he should be able to go all night without drinking a bottle. When he woke up in the night and was stuck standing we would just put him back down and give him his binky and blanket. He would only sleep for an hour at most when I did this, and after him waking up 3+ times, I finally gave him the bottle. I was exhausted and Max had to work in the morning so this is just what I did. He started waking up less when we fed him at night so we just adjusted to a middle of the night feeding.
We arrived back in Oregon and Max started taking his baby night shift again. We rotate nights but I took on the full responsibility while in California so Max could get the rest he needed for work. Max did not want this nightly feeding to continue because it really was/is exhausting. He encouraged me to pick up some books from the library. I finally browsed the baby sections and found tons of baby sleep books. I  grabbed one I had never heard of before. The book gave an example of a baby that was exactly like Charlie's situation so we decided to try the same plan that the example baby did.

The Plan:
Every other night, when Charlie woke up for his feeding we would decrease his feeding by an ounce. We started at 7 ounces so the next two nights we would give him 6 ounces and so on until he got to 2 ounces, then we could just skip the feeding altogether and hope that his body would not be depending on this middle-of-the-night meal. If he woke up a second time before 7am we would not feed him. I really worried that he would scream and scream because he was hungry, I knew he would not starve but still, I'm a mom and I want my baby's needs to be met.

The Results/Miracle

After two nights of drinking 6 ounces, (and still sleeping the rest of the night) he started sleeping through the entire night. This was completely unexpected. I was mentally preparing myself for hours of hungry screaming. He had only slept through the  night 2-3 times in the last 5ish months. This was outrageous. We started the plan on October 12th and it was supposed to at least take ten days for his body to get used to less food during the night and more during the day but since October 14th he has only awoken during the night once. (actually it was twice in one night) He had already been doing so well that I didn't feed him the two ounces that were scheduled for that night.
Moral of the story: We had a miracle, or maybe we should have tried this earlier.

Pumpkin Patch

Something we love about having our little boy is that we get to experience childhood again through events like, going to the park, swimming, rolling in the grass, swinging, wrestling on the floor etc. It's so fun to remember how much fun we had as children and how much Charlie loves these things as a young child. This makes a lot more sense in my head and I'm having a hard time with words...oh well. 

One of those events was our trip to the pumpkin patch...it was new and exciting again because we got to share our experience with our little Charlie.  

We also invited some friends that were brand new to Oregon and had never been to a pumpkin patch. We wanted to give them the full rainy, muddy, Oregon-y pumpkin experience. 

All dressed up in our Pumpkin gear and off to the Pumpkin patch!

Charlie liked the turkey

And the turkey liked Charlie...it came right up to him. 

My cute fellas on the hay ride

Charlie and Jothem checking out the pumpkins

My favorite picture from the trip!

I spy a little guy!

The Hinckley family. 

Charlie was more fascinated with the hole than looking at the camera.

The rain started near the end and came on hard and cold. We hope our friends didn't mind!  We were all ready to go home and drink some hot cocoa in the end.

FYI I did this whole blog post in under 10 minutes...I'm getting good. 

House update: Part 1

NOTE: I have been working on this post for weeks but I keep wanting to take more updated pictures to put on it. I can't keep up with how fast they are working over there. 

Progress is being made at the house and we are excited to hopefully move in soon. 

The hard wood floors should be done someday soon if the flooring people would get themselves together and show up a little more often. Once the floors are done we can add insulation to the walls, texture the walls and ceiling, paint and move in.I mostly just want Charlie's room and the kitchen cupboards painted before we move in, then we will move minimal stuff while we finish painting and then move the rest.

Some projects that have been completed are:
Chimney removal and patching the roof
Installing an over the stove microwave with vent.
Installing counter-tops
Covering the upstairs ceiling with drywall
Lots of electrical work, including a new panel
Lots of plumbing, including replacing some really nasty corroded pipes behind the dishwasher
Deck painting/sealing
Appliance cleaning
Installing a garbage disposal
Installing a new kitchen faucet


And I'm sure there was a whole bunch of other stuff done that I don't know about.

So lets do some before and After Pictures...just like on the design shows
(Just remember, this is only Update 1, I will need to add more after the painting is completed)
  

Living Room piano area BEFORE

Living Room piano area with the floor almost done. 

Utility sink before

Utility Sink After

Kitchen BEFORE (notice the nasty floor and interesting counter tops

Kitchen IN PROGRESS Notice the floor, counter tops, sink faucet, over stove microwave,  (That back door is new too!) and the oven was removed for cleaning but will be put back in shortly. 

Charlie's room before drywall on the ceiling and pipes

Charlie's room after drywall

Charlie's room with the floor almost done. 

The floor before the final coat, I think it will look amazing!

Installed drywall and a light over the stairs

Max had to wear this "bunny suit" to climb under the house for some electrical work...

He's so brave, there were huge spiders under there. 

First coat of sealant on the deck

The acoustics in the empty house are great, Max was singing Ave Maria and Charlie was falling asleep (He didn't really fall asleep)

We put our hand prints in the cement so a little piece of us would be with the house always.
It was then covered by boards 

It's a little messy, we were new with the whole "wet cement" thing. 

And this is how we get work done at the house...if anyone wants to come play with our sweet boy while we work...we wouldn't refuse!

(I probably shouldn't say anyone...I'm sure there are a couple people we would refuse, for safety purposes)

Well, that's it for now! We hope to be moving in soon!