ryanandbernadette.com

Ryan is working late tonight getting ready for a major test tomorrow so it was up to me to get everyone else fed and off to bed. And I’m done a half an hour earlier than we usually are when we do it together. I’m not entirely sure how that happened! I actually made dinner tonight, from scratch, which hasn’t happened a lot since Isaac was born. And it was really good! (sorry Ryan!) I fed both boys, gave them both a bath, which was really interesting doing both at the same time since Ryan usually does both baths only one at a time, got pjs on, teeth brushed, stories read, songs sung, and kids in bed. And now it’s time for me! Maybe it was because I was rushing a lot since it normally takes a long time. Anyway, it was kind of nice getting done early but I would not want to do this every night by myself! I have a feeling it would not go so well if I had to do it much more than once. Thank God for husbands, mine in particular!

We have replaced a lot in our house, now we’ve even replaced the kitchen sink.  Faucet.  Not the actual sink, though that is slated to be replaced sometime in the future.  We have replaced the linoleum in both upstairs bathrooms with ceramic tile and the linoleum in the laundry room/half bath with natural stone slate tile.  Just FYI, ceramic is easier to work with, fewer cracks and crevices and more even overall.  We’ve refinished the kitchen floor, which will have to be done again once the boys are a little older and I can figure out how to keep our stool from scratching it up like crazy.  We’ve replaced carpet in the living room and dining room (seriously, who in their right mind would put carpet in a dining room?!  That’s just as dumb as putting it in a bathroom!) with a nice hardwood floor and slate entryway.  We paid someone else to replace it in the entire upstairs.  We’re not that silly.  We’ve repainted every room in the house, some of them more than once.  We’ve finished the basement.  Probably the shortest sentence on here that took the longest amount of time.  That was quite the process!  I learned framing, and Ryan did most of the rest.  My excuse?  Being pregnant with Ethan.  Though I did still help a lot!  We’ve ripped out dangerously thorny bushes, stupidly placed trees, countless trellises (the previous owner must have had a thing for them), a very poorly done porch and extra concrete, and resurfaced the remaining porch and sidewalk.  In short, we’ve spent a lot of time (and a LOT of money!) on our house.  And maybe one day we’ll be done…  We bought 5 tons of rocks today to finish up some of our landscaping.  We started months ago, last April in fact, when Isaac was born, with building a wall for a raised garden.  Then we progressed to laying what seemed like miles of landscaping cloth to prevent weeds from growing under the rocks (Colorado soil can’t grow grass well, but it sure can grow weeds!)  and installing the kid-safe plastic lawn edging.  Another FYI, I’ve sewn up way too many dog paws to ever allow metal lawn edging near my yard – it may start cheap but doctor bills add up fast!  In the meantime, Ryan replaced three fence posts and a few slats he broke while replacing said posts.   And we were finally able to get the rocks.  Five tons is really a lot when it’s in your driveway!  We managed to move a lot of it today, but there’s still a lot left to move tomorrow.  Or Monday.  So maybe one day we’ll be done with all this.  Until we add bushes next year.  Oh, and there’s still the kitchen sink…

I did just publish pictures from our Light the Night walk.  We had some website problems that Ryan had to resolve first, sorry!

We participated in the Light the Night walk in Boulder this evening, it was the first time I’ve really done anything like it so it was a new experience. We had a good time, in spite of the very dreary cold weather. We got to carry lighted balloons and go on a walk around campus. I’ve never really seen much of CU’s campus so that was interesting too. Our team had a great showing and raised over $1200! I am very excited about that. A big thank you to those of you who donated! I’m still getting used to my new camera so downloading pictures is taking a little longer than I’m used to, but hopefully I will be able to post some pictures tomorrow. There were quite a few people there, I’m sure there probably would have been more if it hadn’t been only 50 degrees outside, some who had cancer, some who were survivors, and some walking in memory of someone who hadn’t survived. There were different colored balloons – gold for people who didn’t make it, white for people that did, and red for all the rest of us. They had really cool battery packs attached to the “strings” which were wire and made the balloons light up. I was just glad I got to hold our sign and Ryan did all the stroller pushing, especially when we came to a not so well placed staircase. We were all happy to be there and hope that the money we raised can help find the cure for blood cancers!

We are walking to support fundraising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society this coming Saturday night, please visit http://pages.lightthenight.org/rm/Flatiron09/BMelton if you would like to help us raise money for this very worthy cause.
We are walking in support of our young friend Pierce, who is doing well in his battle against cancer but still has a way to go.
Our little friend Ellie is doing well and recovering from her brain surgery, praise God!
Keep praying for both of these little ones and pray that our little ones never have to face anything like the others have.

When your baby is only 6 weeks old, your biggest concerns should be if they are eating enough and when is the next time you’ll be able to sleep through the night. Not will they live through the night or have irreversible brain damage if they do. This is the situation some friends of mine are facing with their sweet baby girl right now. She is in Children’s Hospital with a brain aneurysm and they face some very tough decisions about her treatment. Please be in serious prayer for their family.
I have known a few children with life-threatening diseases, some of them are still with us and some aren’t. I pray that the ones that are stay with us for a very long time. It does make you put your problems with your own kids in perspective. It also makes me hold mine a little tighter, laugh with them a little longer, and cherish them a little more. I’ve decided over the past week that I’m really not ready for Ethan to be potty trained yet. Those changes during the day force both of us to take a little time with just each other for a few minutes. Ethan gets some tickles, I get some giggles, and we both get a little one on one time. I’m not quite ready to give that up yet. He’s growing up fast enough already.

So the boys each had a checkup yesterday and their next set of vaccines. Ethan is now 35″ tall and weighs 28# (no wonder he’s so heavy!) and in the 66th percentile for height and 50th for weight. Isaac is now 25 1/2″ tall and 11# 15 oz. and in the 90th percentile for height and only the 10th for weight. His weight hasn’t been keeping up with his height (for comparison, at this point Ethan was 27 1/2″ and 17# 4 oz) so please pray that we can get some weight on him. We plan on starting solid foods either tonight or tomorrow so that should help. I really have no idea how we’ve ended up with tall boys, I can only imagine it won’t be that way forever. I also took Ethan’s bedrails off of his bed today, pray that he’s able to stay in without them. They were starting to drive me crazy and he’s been sleeping in the middle of the bed for a while now so I thought we’d give it a shot. Let’s see, what else is new, Ethan has a ton of words now, well and truly in the hundreds. He’s started talking in almost sentences, knows most of his shapes, some letters, still thinks everything is either green or yellow though he throws red in for good measure once in a while, still loves his cars, won’t let me stack more than two blocks on top of each other before knocking them over, and helped me put away a bunch of the laundry this morning. Isaac can roll over both ways, though he prefers to lay on his side, can pull his paci out of his mouth but can’t quite get it back in yet, loves to blow raspberries, and uses his feet to get things closer to his hands so they can go into his mouth. They are both adorable, frustrating (the 2 year old more than the 4 month old), and my sweet beautiful little boys.