A Little Late

Happy Birthday to my husband and the father of my little boy! Here's to another year of love, joy, and fun! What adventures we will have!

Saying it Better than I Could

We have known about some unfortunate news in my family for a couple of weeks now, and I have debated about whether I should blog about it. It's not a fun thing to tell your friends, but I have come to learn that it is good to feel the support and prayers of as many people as possible during these hard times.

As it happens, my brother wrote about it on his blog, better than I could. You can read it here. What my brother failed to mention, though, is that this is the 2nd time my father has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, the first time being 4 1/2 years ago and a different kind of cancer entirely. After a long struggle with treatments my father was miraculously healed the first time around, and we have been daily thankful for my dad's prolonged life these past few years.

Speaking of my brother, for those blogging friends of mine that haven't discovered his blog, My Wife Rules (I know that some of you have!), you should become a regular reader of this! It is a beautiful blog where my brother pays wonderful tributes to his wife and womanhood in general.

Easter

Yesterday we had my parents over for Easter dinner (my other siblings had plans with their other extended families). Nothing says Easter like lasagna! (I'm kidding. It's what I felt like making.) We also had a delicious salad, breadsticks, and chocolate fondue with fruit for dessert!

Jared loves his Grandma and Papa. Unfortunately, he wasn't too keen on getting his picture taken with them.

Jared the Model

My friend Jessica's mom, Sondra, is a photographer, and she asked me if she could take Jared's picture for some advertising. She did a wonderful job, and she was so extremely patient with Jared's short attention span. You can view Sondra's blog and website here and here. Meanwhile, here are some of Jared's photos.

I Spoke Too Soon

Last night Jared barfed for the first time. Real, grown-up barf, not just baby spit-up. It took me an hour to clean everything up (give Jared a bath, rinse out clothes and sheets, put in a load of laundry), and his room STILL stinks. Not to mention that after two shampoos, Jared's hair STILL stinks. (P.S. On top of the barf, he had a major blowout as well. See yesterday's post.)

My friend Katie commented to me that she would rather clean up poopy pajamas every morning than clean up barf. I agree whole-heartedly.

Diaper Debate

I've just had it! About five days ago I told Alan that Jared had had the "worst" blowout ever when I changed his diaper in the morning. Today's blowout topped even that, by a HUGE margin. There's nothing grosser than having poop smeared all over his tummy and back and legs, not to mention the fact that it gets on his arms and head when I remove his jammies and onesie.

When Jared was first born, I had all kinds of diaper brands to try out, thanks to the baby shower I had with my extended family. We decided that we liked Target brand diapers the best (well, the best for the price we wanted to pay). Then when Jared started sleeping 12 hours through the night around 6 months old, we decided to use Huggies as his night-time diaper, since they were even better. We have continued to use Target diapers during the day and Huggies at night.

My question for my mommy blogger friends is if there is even a better option for night time use. Jared does NOT need a bigger size diaper yet (he is size 5), so that's not the issue. I have always thought that Huggies were the best you could get, but maybe there are special night diapers out there that I do not know about. Help!

House Hunting

Sorry about the lack of blogging.

I have spent a couple of hours every day for the last couple of weeks looking at houses online. Today for the first time I went and looked at some with my realtor. (We have the best realtor ever!) There were several that would need some work (new carpet, sheetrock fixed, etc.). But there is one that is BEAUTIFUL. I really, really liked it, and there isn't anything that needs to be fixed up! (Well, not visibly.) We are going to go look at it again tomorrow morning, so that Alan can see it. Wish us luck!

(image from http://www.sanclementehomesearch.com)