Too Cute...

Adon, on his hands and knees, looked at the full dog food bowl this evening and shook his head no. Also, Adon took about 8 or 10 steps today!

In other news, it's been pretty warm, and our air conditioner isn't working. I've been trying to stay cool the best I can, but I definitely don't remember being this hot when I was pregnant with Adon. I just keep reminding myself that my mom was pregnant through the whole summer without air with Jamie (and my dad slept through it in the heat of the day). I know we need a new air conditioner, but several people have mentioned it just might need some freon. However, I don't want to pay for a service call for someone to tell me we need a new unit and there's nothing they can do. If anyone knows someone willing to come out and look at it, please let us know. We don't mind to pay for the freon or work on it, but don't want to waste money for them to tell us that nothing can be done.

Only 5 more weeks until D-Day! People from church usually bring meals for a couple of weeks after a baby is born. However, I'm compiling a list of meals to make and freeze in the next 5 weeks for those still groggy weeks after Baby arrives. So far, I've got:

• Lasagna (one 13x9 pan will make 4 meals for us)
• Broccoli/Rice/Cheese/Chicken Casserole (makes at least 2 meals for us)
• Brown Bag Burritos (2 meals)
• Ham & Cheddar Calzones (1 meal)
• BBQ Chicken Pizza (1 meal)
  

I've made up 4 pizza crusts (using fresh herbs picked from my garden!!) and frozen them to use for pizza/calzones. Anyone have any good ideas for meals that freeze well?

I'm also working really hard to keep our groceries as inexpensive as possible to allow enough money for these extra meals. This week...I only spent $60 for two weeks worth of groceries plus enough food almost 10 freezer meals! Thank you, Jesus! Now, I need a cool day to cook/bake these meals without sweating to death!

Adon's First Steps

Adon has taken one or two steps here and there, but he's up to about 3 steps with some motivation (i.e. Mommy or a cookie!). This is just in time for the arrival of the new baby. I've been praying that he would be walking by the time Baby was born. I couldn't imagine trying to carry two around. I can barely carry Adon anymore, because my hips disappeared with my ever-growing belly. Here are a couple of short videos of the excitement! You'll have to turn your head sideways for the first one...I couldn't figure out how to rotate it.






Way to go, Adon! We're so proud of you!

Free Pictures, Today Only

I just got 25 free pics from Shutterfly.com for a Mother's Day promotion using the promo code PRINTS. Today is the last day you can use it, so hurry and get your free pics!

I used mine to order the rest of the pics I needed for Adon's baby book and ordered some others I'll put into a photo album. I'd really like to be up-to-date on Adon's baby book before Baby #2 arrives...6 weeks to go!

Adon thinks all handheld items with buttons are phones and holds them up to his head. It's extra cute because he puts it behind his ear.

Our First Week of Cloth Diapering

After my cloth diaper class last week, I attended the cloth diaper garage sale at Cotton Babies. I got a couple of things, but not nearly what I had hoped for. I bought the other cloth diapers and accessories I would need for Adon, including a sprayer for our toilet. The sprayer was J's request, and I got a good deal on a dented package. I then registered for all the smaller stuff for Baby along with some cloth wipes. Total spent...less than $190! Currently, for Adon's generic diapers, this is about a year's worth of diapers. However, if we had to use Pampers for Baby (as we did for Adon), this is less than 5 months worth of diapers. Plus, we can use them for a number of babies!!

I washed (and re-washed) the diapers to prepare them for use, got all of the accessories in order, and started our adventure the next day (last Sunday). We've experimented with a couple of kinds of diaper covers and have settled on the ones that work the best for Adon. We also had a small leak with the sprayer, but J fixed that right away. We've had no blow outs and most amazingly, no soaked sheets in the morning! This has made it all worth while, just in itself. I don't have to rush into Adon's room in the morning and change him right away out of fear that he peed through and soaked his sheets. I've also heard from other parents at the diaper store that they switched to cloth diapers, and the poopy blow-outs stopped. While we haven't had one with Adon in a while, before he ate table food, they were a daily occurrence. I'll be so glad to not have to worry about them with Baby. The only downside has been the extra bulk over cloth diapers. We just bought a bunch of 12-month summer clothes for Adon that are now snug with the extra bulk. We were able to exchange some of them, but it won't be a problem going forward since we'll know to plan for the bulk.

Even with traveling and extra laundry, it has been really easy. Cloth diapers today are definitely not what I remember my mom using. We have successfully completed our first week without a single disposable!! I would definitely encourage any mom to consider switching. They're barely more work than disposables and oh, so much cheaper!!

Mini Vacation

Anytime we get to rest and someone plays with Adon while I rest is considered a vacation!! However, I forgot my camera, so we have no pictures. J has settled into his new two-week rotation at work. Every other week he gets 7 days off in a row. The first day of this break was spent in Springfield, IL with Caleb (J's best friend) and his parents. It was nice to catch up and relax. Mrs. Kietzman was so generous and gave us a gift card to Smokey Bones for lunch that day!

Thursday night, April met us in Springfield and we drove to Bloomington to visit J's family. Friday morning, we visited with J's great aunt, Aunt Retta (short for Henrietta). She recently had a stroke and J hasn't seen her in about 5 years. It was the first time Adon and I got to meet her. That afternoon, we got to see our friend Miracle from Peoria. She brought her three kids and it was the first time we got to meet 5-month old Janie! Talk about adorable! Adon did great with her! We've been trying to teach him "gentle" in preparation for Baby's arrival, and it was so exciting when he gentle stroked Janie's face! This was a major accomplishment since about a month or two ago he smacked another baby in the face! Friday night, we had dinner with the Kings (J's sister's family) and J's dad and stepmom. It was so good! Later that night, J started Return of the King, the third Lord of the Rings movie. I've never seen the Lord of the Rings movies before, so we watched the first and second ones in J's previous 7-day break. Unfortunately, we didn't start the 4 hour movie until about 11 pm! I made it about an hour and a half before J told me to go to bed. He told me he couldn't hear the movie, because I was snoring. :o) Gotta love an honest man!

Saturday morning, Tara cut and highlighted my hair and waxed my eyebrows. I felt so pampered!!! I think the last time my hair was even trimmed was maybe October, and maybe a year since I last had it highlighted! What a treat! Thanks, Tara!! Aunt T also cut Adon's hair and showed me how to cut it to look like a little boy's haircut instead of a military kid! April spent some time with her family before heading back to St. Louis. We had a lovely nap in the afternoon and dinner at J's dad's house. Back at Mom's we watched (I really tried to stay awake!) the last Bull's basketball game on TV.

This morning, was perfectly wonderful! We had breakfast before Grandpa drove down from Toluca. Then, we sat on the porch just shooting the breeze and enjoying the delightful weather! Adon did NOT enjoy being in the grass! He was on all fours and quickly stuck his butt in the air to get his knees and legs off the grass. Then he picked up one foot to get as much out of the grass as possible. All that was holding him up were his two hands and one foot! He was so cute as he squawked in discontent. Even a wagon full of toys couldn't distract him from the pokey grass. We had a HUGE lunch of chicken and dumplings! We're letting lunch settle before dessert and a (hopefully) light dinner. J and Grandpa (or Happy, as the great-grandkids call him) are watching the Cubs game. It's so nice to just relax!

Tomorrow, we're going back to Springfield and then back to St. Louis. We'll enjoy a couple of days at home before J's next long stretch at work.

On a side note, we've been working hard to get Adon to have an afternoon quiet time. He's done extremely well with it while we've been away from home. I was really worried we'd have to start all over again when we got back home. Also, cloth diapers are a cinch! More on that later.

Kids Say...

"I wish Adon was my brother, too. He's so cute!"
-Ashlin King, age 7 (Adon's cousin)