Sorry about the ginormo-pictures last time, not sure what happened. Anyway, picking back up. After a great Christmas in PA with the inlaws Seth, William, and I packed up the car and drove off into the first snow of the year for us... and promptly returned to Dad's house 3 miles later. We'd been nervous about the slick conditions heading out, but figured we'd beat the incoming storm and be fine once on the road and out from the shadow of the mountain they live on. Unfortunately, three miles down the road we crested the top of a hill... and saw flares set up along the road around a car. Going downhill on ice, we managed to avoid the first stopped car but couldn't stop properly- and there at the bottom of the hill a truck had rolled and had a cop car sitting behind them with the lights flashing. We were going pretty slow, under 10 miles an hour but on that hill there was no way we were going to get past them safely. Especially not with oncoming traffic. We wound up spinning into the embankment on our side of the road instead. It was scary, especially with William in the car but he didn't make a peep, just sat there chillin'. We've minor cosmetic damage on the bumper, but didn't get stuck and managed to turn around and get back to Dad's house without further incident.
So January! It's flown by and William just keeps getting cuter every day. I keep thinking he's going to start walking any day now, but he teases me with almost taking a step and then deciding it's too much work and crawling towards whatever I'm using as a lure. He gets so exited about everything it's a lot of fun. I smile and he gets this huge toothy grin. I giggle and he cracks up entirely. Being a mom is so much fun sometimes. He's doing better sleeping too and will often sleep through the night completely about 25% of the time and get up only once for a diaper change about 50% of the time. He likes exploring new foods too. Oatmeal is not his favorite unless it's flavored with cinnamon or fruit or something. Even then if we take our eyes off him he'll often spit out a bite into his hand so we can figure out what it was we gave him. It's a messy process more often than not.
The roughest part this month so far is that our furnace has conked out on us. When the maintenance guy came in earlier this year to fix our pilot light he warned us that it could go out at any time but we were really hoping to make it all the way through the winter. :( We could get it repaired but it's about 20 years old and rather inefficient. One part breaks and another one will go soon thereafter sort of thing. So we're working on getting replacement estimates and will hopefully get it done soon. In the meantime we've got a bunch of space heaters. They don't do much to warm up the main living areas of the house (our huge wall-sized window in the living room doesn't help) so William and I have mostly been playing in his nursery during the day. It's small enough that the space heater gets it nice and toasty warm and it's actually baby proof so William can run around to his heart's content without the baby octagon foiling his plot to chew on the TV wires. Still. I'll be grateful once we have a warm house again. One of the options we're looking into is a geothermal system actually. They're apparently extremely efficient and it'd remove our gas bill completely and possibly cut our electric bill too by taking over water heating. Only problem is initial installation costs tend to be higher than a regular furnace. We're still waiting on the quotes, but online research said it runs the gamut from $7K to $30K depending on environment and company. If it's closer to the $7K it could be a good choice for us. There are a lot of tax incentives and grants for putting one in as well, which can help mitigate the cost.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Christmas! Where has the time gone?
January's gotten away from me so I'll try to backtrack a bit.
Christmas!
Merry belated Christmas everyone! It was William's First Christmas this year and we went up to Seth's parents house for the holidays. Our original plan was to go up to my Dad's this year since it's been a while since we've done Christmas up north, but with Congress not doing their jobs properly we've been battening the hatches for federal furloughs hitting us and trying not to spend more than absolutely necessary. It's the end of January now and do we know how the furlough is going to affect us? Of course not.
Anyways, going up to PA was nice! We had a great drive up there and William was overjoyed to play with Grandma and Papa and Royce. And the dogs. After getting used to the barking, William was as curious as ever though the dogs were a bit unsure what to make of him. Emmett kept getting scared of him, but Rosie did alright and would come say hi to him.
William was also absolutely enthralled by the Christmas lights everywhere. They were his favorite thing to grab off the wall in the basement play room, and the tree was preeeetty interesting too.
His favorite part of the holiday was probably playing with Grandma though.
Though Dad got in on the action sometimes too.
William did a great job opening presents on Christmas morning too! The first one was especially interesting...
Though of course it was the box he wanted to play with.
He also had the most impressive pile of presents and eventually got squeezed out of the pack and play by all the awesomeness. :) Even a month later though, he still loves them all. The hand puppets never fail to get him giggling his head off, the sqeezey bath toys have become essential to diaper change cooperation, and the dog house and piano are his go-to toys- even if half the time he's dragging them over to the side of his baby octagon to use a stool for his escape attempts.
He also got his first little bike! It's a walker bike and still just a couple inches too tall for him to zoom around, but he has fun riding it when we push for him!
Dad was pretty excited by his brass ash bucket too :) Very stylish.
We missed being able to see everyone else at Christmas. It was pretty quiet since even Seth's other siblings were elsewhere, but it was a wonderful time and exactly what Christmas should be about- family, love, and too many cookies.
Christmas!
Merry belated Christmas everyone! It was William's First Christmas this year and we went up to Seth's parents house for the holidays. Our original plan was to go up to my Dad's this year since it's been a while since we've done Christmas up north, but with Congress not doing their jobs properly we've been battening the hatches for federal furloughs hitting us and trying not to spend more than absolutely necessary. It's the end of January now and do we know how the furlough is going to affect us? Of course not.
Anyways, going up to PA was nice! We had a great drive up there and William was overjoyed to play with Grandma and Papa and Royce. And the dogs. After getting used to the barking, William was as curious as ever though the dogs were a bit unsure what to make of him. Emmett kept getting scared of him, but Rosie did alright and would come say hi to him.
William was also absolutely enthralled by the Christmas lights everywhere. They were his favorite thing to grab off the wall in the basement play room, and the tree was preeeetty interesting too.
His favorite part of the holiday was probably playing with Grandma though.
Though Dad got in on the action sometimes too.
William did a great job opening presents on Christmas morning too! The first one was especially interesting...
Though of course it was the box he wanted to play with.
He also had the most impressive pile of presents and eventually got squeezed out of the pack and play by all the awesomeness. :) Even a month later though, he still loves them all. The hand puppets never fail to get him giggling his head off, the sqeezey bath toys have become essential to diaper change cooperation, and the dog house and piano are his go-to toys- even if half the time he's dragging them over to the side of his baby octagon to use a stool for his escape attempts.
He also got his first little bike! It's a walker bike and still just a couple inches too tall for him to zoom around, but he has fun riding it when we push for him!
Dad was pretty excited by his brass ash bucket too :) Very stylish.
We missed being able to see everyone else at Christmas. It was pretty quiet since even Seth's other siblings were elsewhere, but it was a wonderful time and exactly what Christmas should be about- family, love, and too many cookies.
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