Sleeping

Poor girl cried herself to sleep. She was exhausted and I put her in her crib to keep her safe while we were demolishing a wall.



"I'm not tired. I'm not going to take a nap ..."

Photo Catch-up September and October

We have spent the last several months working on renovating our house. Titus has watched almost all of it and has readily picked up on how to do most everything. Above is his version of cutting drywall. The tape measure is underneath his arm. He's cutting with a hacksaw blade.
Below he's wearing his "headset" and sanding with the belt sander. The noise he's protecting his ears from is self-made. The sander is not plugged in.




Auntie Hannah was over and Lily needed nursed. Titus was going to help Hannah with that and was told to leave the baby alone - so off he went. Next thing I know, he's found the grinder I used for a while to grind up food for Isabele. Then he found my old pump. I didn't think that I pumped very much, and I know I haven't in months, but he remembered what it was for and how to use it.


Titus after an evening out at the woods burning up lath from the house. He's just a little dirty.


Isabele, on the other hand, is filthy. Her s'more ended up in her hair, smeared across her forehead and eyebrows and everywhere else on her face, too. I do think she enjoyed it.

Isabele's First Birthday

Little Miss Isabele turned 1 on the 30th of October. We had a party for her at home. Attendees: Titus, Brian, Me, Billa, Auntie Hannah, Uncle Mike, Cousin Lily, Nana, Grandpa and Isaac. We had homemade chicken noodle soup and French bread. Isabele got a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. There was also an Angel Food Cake - for those not wanting Isabele's slightly demolished chocolate cake.

She was enchanted with her cake. I forgot to get candles, so we stuck a match in and then lit the match. It burned just long enough and then fizzled out all on it's own.

She was quite tentative at first, just carefully picking off the pink and teal spots.

The end of her time with the cake - she had chocolate frosting everywhere.

Once again she is clean, if only for a few minutes. I like this expression. She liked the ribbon, but didn't know what she was supposed to do with the paper.

This, That and The Other

Here's the random update from this past week:

Titus no longer calls Micah's girlfriend "Chuma". He can say Kimber. Kind of sad.

Isabele can now walk all the way across a room walking between my legs holding onto my pants with both hands. She'll also walk holding onto both of my hands - or Brian's.

Our house renovation is continuing to progress. We have a new fan in the living room. A new light in the dining room and in the hall way. The new fan and lights look really good! The arches in the dining room are done - Brian did a great job with the plywood forms and then putting the drywall up! Mom's friend Juan is going to mud the arches for us as I just don't feel up to trying to get them to look good.
I have lots more mudding to do - everywhere, but it's getting closer to done every day.
The kids room is back to it's original size and I love it! I think Brian and I are going to get their dresser moved out of the closet tomorrow and maybe I'll get the rods moved around in the closet so there's more room for their clothes.
We also got a new door for the kids room and Brian re-sized an old door from Manaher's (people the live a couple doors down from my parents - they tore down their house and rebuilt and we scavenged quite a few things from them a couple years ago) for our bedroom.

I have all the wallpaper off of the kids new wall, most of the the wallpaper off in the hallway and 1 wall striped in the living room. Brian has 3 wall of bead board off in the diningroom - only one wall to go.

I have about a third of the bricks done on the chimney in the kitchen. Now I'm waiting for the next shipment to arrive at the store and the arches to get mudded.

All in all - a very busy, very productive week!! I think this next week will be a bit slower - Brian's working a lot, and the projects that make the most visual change are pretty much finished. Now it's the tedious stuff - finish mudding the new walls - and the joints between new and old; stripping old wallpaper, choosing and hanging new; a little painting; some curtains; scraping popcorn of ceilings - what a mess; and rearranging the kitchen ... Should be all completed next October, I hope.

Bedtime Conversation with a 2 Year Old

For the past several nights, Titus has had to ask me about "mooses and cowses".
"Mommy, there's no mooses in my room."
"No, there are no moose in your room."
"Mommy, there's no cowses in my room."
"No, there are no cows in your room."
"And Mommy, there's no mooses in the kitchen, and no cowses in the kitchen, and no mooses in the living room and no cowses in the living room."
"That's right, Titus. There are no moose or cows in the house. They live in the woods and barns far away."
"But Mommy, there are a couple mooses at Marrisa and Melayna's house."
"Oh, only a couple?"
"Yeah, there are only 2 mooses at Melayna's house."

At this point I gave up reasoning with him and agreed that there were 2 moose at Melayna's house. I have no idea where he got the notion that he had to make sure that there are no cows or moose in his room or his house. However, he was okay with there being 2 moose at Melayna's house. (I'm pretty sure that there are no moose or cows at the Howett house).

Sleep? Please!!

Isabele is so very different from Titus. All in all, I think this is a good thing - except in the area of sleeping. At 11 months, little Miss Isabele still isn't sleeping all night. Usually she's up at least twice, and 3 or 4 times isn't unheard of. She has been sleeping in a "pack-n-play" size crib since she moved into Titus' room months ago. It fit in the room better than the full size crib, and worked fine in my book. Today, I dug the full size crib out of the basement storage closet and put it together. Then I took the 2 kids and off we went to Wal-Mart for a mattress (Titus is using his crib mattress in his toddler bed that Brian built for him). I have high hopes that maybe Isabele will start sleeping for longer periods at night, though I'm not holding my breath.

The big crib is a little tight in their room, but very soon we will finish all of the rearranging of rooms and walls in the house and they will get another 3 1/2 feet added to their room, so the full size crib will not look so squished.

Marshmallows or Mushrooms

I bought some hot chocolate mix with the mini-marshmallows the other day. I made some for Titus, a treat when Brian brings me a mocha (decaf for Isabele) on his way home from work. Titus has had marshmallows only once or twice, and never in hot chocolate before. He's also had mushrooms once or twice. Neither are a staple in our house. So, he's sitting, quite happy with his hot chocolate at the table with Brian and I, when he says something about mushrooms. Brian asked him what he said and he repeated himself "I want more mushrooms in my hot chocolate." Hmmm. What? Mushrooms in your hot chocolate? Oh, you mean marshmallows in your hot chocolate. "Titus, can you say 'marshmallow'?" "Marshmallow". Okay - well, it's not that he can't say marshmallow, he just has the words a bit mixed up. I thought it was cute and decided not to push to hard to correct him. He'll correct himself soon enough, but until then ... we have mushrooms in the hot chocolate at our house.