10 Things....Monday?

Yes, I know, it's supposed to be 10 things Tuesday or Thursday. Whatever. Today we have "10 things I'm looking forward to in our new tiny apartment (in no particular order)".

1. Faster internet. Our current house is old, therefore the wiring cannot handle fast speeds of internet. Or something. I'm obviously not the I.T. genius in this family.
2. Less to clean. Which would I rather clean, 2000 sq. feet or 900? Tough call.
3. No snow removal. Yay!
4. No lawn maintenance. All that mowing and watering is a pain.
5. No shoveling snow off the car. Sure we have a garage, but it's way in the back by the alley and the door looks like it might fall apart if you look at it funny. We won't have a garage in the new place, but we will have a handy little carport.
6. A master bathroom. I no longer will have to step on toys in the shower.
7. The ability to open the blinds and not look directly into the neighbor's house.
8. No neighbors who have loud parties in their backyard complete with a live band and people smoking items of questionable legality.
9. A toilet that flushes properly without having to hold down the handle for 5 minutes.
10. A swimming pool and hot tub!

Tune in next week for "10 things I miss about the old place".

The Saga Continues...

The food saga that is. We finally decided to take Lydia into the doctor this morning. She's still not eating well. She's done ok on the soy in terms of digestion, but every time she eats she screams like she's in pain. It's really not fun because it takes forever for her to eat enough to not feel hungry, but it's not enough to be full so she ends up hungry again in about an hour. Which leaves me little time for much else, and of course it gets really frustrating having a little baby who cries and not being able to do anything about it. So, I put my handy google skillz to work to try and figure out what the problem could be. The possibility I came up with is that she has acid reflux, which had never occurred to me because she doesn't ever spit up. It turns out that there is what they call "silent reflux" where the food comes back up, but not all the way. So the acid from her stomach is burning her throat and stuff, making it painful to swallow. We took her in this morning, and the doctor seems to think that's what it is, but wants to try a couple of things before putting her on a prescription medicine. He suggested we try a hypo-allergenic formula (to rule out allergies or digestion issues) and to add a bit of rice cereal to it to make it harder to come back up. The bad news is that this formula is about $25 a can. She goes through about 3 cans a week. That's $300 a month! Thankfully, he gave us some sample cans to try for the next week to see if it works. If so, then that's what we'll do. If not, then we'll have to go back in and get a prescription. So, it looks like we'll either be visiting the WIC office because we can't afford the formula, or the Medicaid office because we'll no longer have insurance to pay for the prescriptions. Or both.

Poor as Dirt

Yep, that's us. We used to just be "low income", now we're poor as dirt. For those of you who don't know, our church...you know...the one Daniel works at...recently let everyone know that due to various reasons they would have to lay off some people. Well, Daniel was one of those people. Kind of. His hours have been reduced to 20 per week, so we've lost half our income and our health insurance. Bummer, eh? Oddly, we don't see it that way. Well, except for the whole health insurance thing, but we're on our way to being a socialist country anyway so we won't have to worry about that soon. But seriously, we've been talking and praying for a while about our future, specifically, what Daniel wanted as a career. Now this has come up and provided us a way to get a decent amount of income and still give Daniel time to pursue other things. At this point it's looking like he'll be doing web design, which he's done in the past but has never had the time to make a living out of it. The nice thing is, with our whole moving thing we'll be able to cut down our expenses enough to where we'll only be short about $150/month. It will be difficult and money will be tight, but I think we can do it. And as I mentioned earlier, we'll be saving money over the next couple of months so we'll have that to cover the extra $150 each month. And really, we're not above using the food room at the church occasionally. As well, I am looking at making some stuff to sell on Etsy, might as well use up all this yarn I have! These hats are one of the things I'm thinking of:

My Grandma and I are also talking about making some camera straps. They're all the rage. I'll let you guys know when I have my store set up so you can all order tons of stuff ;) Christmas is just around the corner!

As for Kelsi's school, Daniel talked to them and they said the 30% discount we've been getting for being in full time ministry will remain for the rest of the year. Yay! They also said they will do everything they can to work with us to make sure she can come next year as well. They're awesome like that.

As for me, I'm getting pretty excited about it. My husband will be home 4 days a week! Obviously he'll be working at home so it won't be all fun and games, but he'll be home!

So, that's our life now. We're not worried about our future because we know God is sovereign and has things under His control...which is much better than having us in control!

Conversations with MZ: The Hospital

MZ crashes on the kitchen floor, hurts himself and comes crying to me for comfort.

Me: Think you're ok now?

MZ: *nods*

Me: You'll survive?

MZ: *nods*

Me: Do we need to take you to the hospital?

MZ: No, I'm not in your tummy!

We're Moving!

Not far, don't worry ;) We started looking into moving this past summer once we started paying for K-Lou's school, but we couldn't find anything for rent within our price range, and we can't afford to buy. Plus I was pregnant, which is never a fun time to move. So we decided to wait until spring. Well, we were driving down one of the main streets here in town (it runs north and south and starts with an "R"...) and saw an apartment complex with a big banner out front advertising first month free. So we started talking about it. Here are the benefits (as we see it anyway!)

Money

We will be saving about $150/month on rent. This is not a whole lot when you consider we are moving from a 2000+ sq. feet house with a yard to an apartment that is just under 900 sq. feet. But it helps. The real savings will be in electricity and gas. The house we are in right now is old, it's been totally remodeled and updated on the inside, but that doesn't help much with insulation. Last winter out bill was at least 4 times more than normal, and that's even with putting those fancy curtains up on all the windows and keeping the temp at only 67. Then there's gas. We only have one car and Daniel works a ways away. He's been taking the bus, but I still have to drive him the bus stop and pick him up, which uses a bit of gas. This place has a bus stop that is really close to the entrance. We plan on staying there for a year or two and save up some of the money we're saving to put towards a down payment on our own place some day.

Downsizing

Ok, I know most of you probably won't see this a benefit, but we do! This place is too big for us and we've acquired to many things to fill it. We want a smaller place and fewer possessions...and less for me to clean ;)

Location

As I said before, it's closer to a bus stop. Plus it's closer to other places we go often, like our families and grocery stores and so on. It's also right next to a park and close to the community center.

Other stuff

There is a pool, hot tub and playground at the apartment complex. That will definitely help keep the kiddos occupied this summer!

So, there you have it...that's why we're moving! We're moving in on Dec. 1, so we have a lot of work ahead of us!

Playtime

So far today Little Miss has been a happy little girl. Yesterday however, she was not. With as bad as she was yesterday with her new formula, we decided not to wait and see if she'd adjust, but to go ahead and try soy. So we switched her to an organic brand of soy formula. Funny thing is it costs $5 less than the Enfamil Gentle Ease. I still am not a fan of her being on soy, but Daniel and I decided we'd rather her be on an organic soy than some of the science experiments that are out there claiming to be baby formula. We do plan on trying to slowly introduce dairy formula when she gets a bit older. So, she's been on this soy stuff since last night and she's been such a happy baby so far! So she's been catching up on her playtime:

Those little wrist things are supposed to be there to help them find their hands and learn how too control them, right? She thinks they're there to chew on. She doesn't seem to use her hands much, but she certainly knows how to get them to her mouth!

She also really likes her little mirror and enjoys looking at herself. But really, she's so cute, how could she not?

Speaking of toys, do the makers of bouncy seats not test them out first? How is she supposed to play with a toy thats laying on her face?

5th Time's a Charm?

Little Miss is now officially on her 5th brand of formula. None have worked for her yet, and it's getting rather frustrating. She's now on Enfamil which also happens to be the most expensive brand of formula! Thankfully, the last kind of formula we purchased at Fred Meyer and they were nice enough to give us a buy one get one free coupon for Enfamil. We set it aside just in case...and of course it turned we needed it =) Hopefully this formula works, since our next step would be going to a soy based formula, which I'd rather not do. The nice thing about Enfamil though is there are coupons everywhere. At Fred Meyer they have a little basket by the door where people can leave coupons they don't need and take those they do, so I searched through and found a couple of Enfamil coupons. Score! I'd really rather not have to take out a loan just to feed this little girl ;) Although it might be worth it to keep this little girl from being fussy...and to no longer have smelly, grey poop.

K-Lou's Wishlist

For those of you who've asked, here is K-Lou's birthday wishlist:

• Silly Bandz
• Pillow Pets
• Jewlery
• Hats
• Amazon gift cards
• iTunes gift cards
• Games

The Silly Bandz and Pillow Pets are also at stores like Target, Fred Meyer and Walmart.

Conversations With MZ - "Nuthin"

Daniel: Ahhhhhhh!

MZ: What? Why did you yell?

Daniel: Falling stuff. What else do I yell about?

MZ: Nuthin'. Nuthin' but the blood of Jesus.

Harvest Festival

We were total slackers this year and didn't get the kids costumes until the day before! Well, all except Little Miss, we got hers months ago from the thrift store for only $.50 =) This year the kiddos decided to be pirates, and convinced Daniel and I to be pirates too. MZ thought he was pretty cool stuff.

K Lou called herself "The Navigator". I'm not sure that's going to strike much fear into the other pirates.

Little Miss got a lot of attention, not because of her flower costume, but because she was carrying all the weapons.

By the end of the night she had MZ's and Daniel's as well.

K Lou got to play fun games like throwing stuff into a potty chair.

MZ at least got to throw stuff into little glass jars.

And the highlight of the night was playing the the bouncy castles. Waiting in line for that thing made me really appreciate how well behaved my kids are. It also made me wonder why some parents even pretend that they're in charge.

Little Miss of course slept through the whole thing.

This picture just made me laugh, I think he was irritated about getting his picture taken again.

2 Month Update

Is it 2 months when she hits 8 weeks, or was it two months on Oct. 31? Either way I'm late ;) I keep trying to get a picture of this little stinker smiling, but she's not cooperating. Whenever she sees the camera, she does this:

So then I move the camera out of sight and try to pull it out in time to get snap a picture while she's smiling and I get this:

So I'm giving up.

She had her two month checkup yesterday and is doing great. She's in the 90th percentile in height, 95th for weight and her head is in the 80th percentile. So she's still huge! I had to pack up all her 0-3 month clothes yesterday and pull out the 3-6...it was kind of sad.

The recommended vaccine schedule would have had her getting a round of shots yesterday, but we've chosen to wait until she's older. They must be getting more people choosing to not vaccinate or delay vaccines these days because the nurse asked if we were going to be getting her shots today and when we told her no, she gave us a form to sign that basically said we understand the risk and will not sue them. Lovely.

It's amazing how much this little girl has changed in the last two months! She still has great muscle strength and is holding herself up really well.

She's smiling a ton (except when I have the camera!) and is doing a little bit of "talking". She loves to sit and watch her big brother play, which is great for me because it gives me a bit of time to get stuff done.