walking, school and aloe

Hola. Its my dad's 50th birthday today! Happy Birthday dad. We are going over there tomorrow...

Spencer has been working new hours and we both really like it. He will be switching to 2nd shift soon-ish though & well have to change our schedule a little. But Im looking forward to 2nd shift, I think it'll work for us. 

Harper is walking all over :) 

Its funny because I know when Alikah was learning she would hold both arms out to the sides to balance and take it very very slow. She gradually sped up and went farther distances.
Harper though, he thought about this whole walking thing A LOT in advance. The week or two that he would take 2 steps then drop he was always so concentrated. Its like he was taking his time and figuring it all out in his head before he attempted it. So now that hes decided hes got it? Instantly a little pro. 

He walks so confidently. Over this toy? Sure. While drinking my bottle? Easy. 

I love seeing him out of the corner of my eye just walking around. Im definitely not used to it yet. Hes such a big dude. 

Weve been saying this for months but we are going to look into preschools for Alikah. She wants to go to school. She wants to meet friends. Originally I only wanted her gone one day a week, and Id still prefer that but Heather said that might change after Boden's born and I think shes right. 

I know Alikah will absolutely love it, but I will really miss her. I probably need to get used to that though haha. 

chalk toes

On Monday Harper has his 1 year old check-up and I have a midwife appointment, so Ill probably do my next pregnancy update then :)

Ill leave you with this...Ive mentioned on here before that I have OCD, but just like in real life I very rarely talk about it. Truthfully, it fucking sucks. Im not going to go into details, but the other day I was obsessing over something and the end result is a chemical burn across my neck. Thankfully, it has gotten much better.

Wanna see? Dont worry I wont show you the worst of it. This is last night & from a webcam, so its the worst quality/least gross. It doesnt hurt, but the itch is like torture. Aloe + ibuprofen help but I cant wait for it to be fully healed. 

It also helps when Alikah watches me clean it and then goes, "You should put some aloe on that."

Spencer suggested we take the kids to Dairy Queen for supper (they have a play place) so I might have to go out in public with my neck wrapped. Im so dumb.

rock diving

Today we walked to the park and I went prepared with a blanket, toys and some food. 

We set up a little picnic area a ways away from the actual park.

Alikah ran off to play and I sat with Harp.

Eventually I tried to put him in the swings again but he is so un-phased by them! Couldnt care less. See?

So I thought, "Ahhh forget it, lets see what he does!" and set him down in the pebbles.

I have mentioned the kid loves swimming.

Well, he loved these rocks so much he decided to try and swim in them. 

In case you think I am kidding:

He didnt even try to eat any until like...3 minutes later!

It was worth it even though I spent the rest of our time there chasing him because all he wanted to do was crawl back to the amazing rocks :)

*Side-note: We went to the park because we all wanted to go outside, 

but Stabler killed a squirrel in our yard and I didnt feel like moving it.....

the past week and TVs

Wednesday August 17th - Theres a little park a mile and a half up the road from us and I took a walk with the kids there to play. No ones ever there and its small enough for Alikah to be able to do everything herself. Usually she wont slide alone but she goes down all 3 slides by herself there. I think its partly because shes not feeling pressured to hurry up or anything by other kids, she can just take her time. She likes to find broken pieces of asphalt and put them down the slides lol.After Spencer got home we all went to the library. We got a LOT of books and two Spongebob DVDs, of course.

Thursday August 18th - I had my "6 week" follow up doctors appointment. Nothing special...I stopped taking my citalopram a couple weeks ago and she wants me to start taking it again but I dont think Im going to. We talked a lot about Harpers gas though and she showed me how to do belly massages and stuff. I asked her about switching to soy and she said to try it but if we dont notice it making any difference to switch right back to regular.After the appointment we went to my parents to swim. Alikah was a grump. We came home to nap and we played outside with all the neighbor kids later.

Friday August 19th - We didnt do much. Went on a couple walks. My mom called though and told us Marnie had a TV and stand she needed to get rid of and that if we brought them a case of beer we could take it. Super weird timing because Spencer had just said the day before that we were finally going to get one on Monday. But we decided well take both - we dont really have room in this apartment and can only get cable in one room but once we move Itll definitely be nice to have more than one!

Saturday August 20th - I got ridiculously tired after taking my meds in the morning. Usually that doesnt happen so I think it was them + my lack of sleep lately. I passed out with Harper until like 1 PM and then we all got ready and went to the little park again. We brought Alikah's soccer ball so her and Spencer kicked that around for awhile and Alikah climbed up the "rock wall" all by herself...and then again and again and again...After the park we went to pick up the TV from Marnie. We borrowed my moms SUV & dolly cart to bring it home. It is a monster of a freakin TV. Our stairs have 3 steps, then they turn and come the rest of the way up. Well the TV wouldnt fit up the first 3 on the dolly so we had to carry that fucker up those. But then once we got it up there, we couldnt fit the dolly on the landing with it to get it the rest of the way up and theres no way in hell I would have been able to carry it the rest of the way up, so here is our TV:Awesome! So after an hour of trying we brought my moms car back and then left pretty quick. We were going to a bonfire/cook out at Anthony's (Spencers friend from work) and the whole TV deal had already made us later than we wanted to be. We had some hot dogs, some beer (well I had Sparks), Alikah had fun playing soccer and tangling up the ladder ball strings, and once it got darker we watched Napoleon Dynamite - Anthony has a projection screen on the side of his garage which was just really cool. Anthony met his girlfriend Val on match.com and Ive gotten to hear all about it since the beginning so I was excited to finally get to meet her too :)

Sunday August 21st - Harper's two months old! (I have an draft saved - his appointment is tomorrow so I want to wait to find out his length/weight before I publish it.) We all slept until 10:00!! Alikah must have been exhausted. I woke up first and I was like holy crap is it seriously 10?? And then Spencer got up and was like "Alikahs not awake?!" Haha. We were lazy. Spencer took the kids to the grocery store while I showered. I even got to shave my legs...exciting. After Alikah's nap we headed over to Aram, Derek and Lee's (Spencer's friends) house for Derek's birthday get together. They have horse-shoes so Alikah played in the "sandbox" a lot and ran around with Spencer, Derek and Derek's girlfriend Danielle. Aram made burgers and Alikah almost ate a whole one! She very very rarely eats meat so its always surprising when she does. Harper was crabby so I was dealing with him most of the time. We left around 8:30.

Today Brandons coming home with Spencer after work so they can finally get the TV inside and then were going to get the new one tomorrow. Honestly I have no idea where were even going to put the monster TV for now. Its going in our bedroom somewhere but no really sure where....and then the tiny TV we have been using is moving to Alikah's room. They wont have cable but we figure at least she'll be able to watch movies and I can hook up my Playstation to the one in our room.

No weight changes. I'm at a stand still. BUT Spencer is getting me a gym membership and then a couple days a week when he gets home he said he'll watch the kids so I can go. Ive been wanting one for awhile so Im really excited!

55 degrees

The snow is melting so the woodchips and grass were muddy, but we had fun.
I found another park about 5 minutes from us but this one was closer to Spencer's work and we stopped there during his lunch break afterwards.