Change and Growth

What's new and exciting at our house?  (I've made a couple attempts to sit down and blog, but my son seems to think we should spend our time doing other things :-)

Kyle interviewed for the job with MSU-Northern in Havre last Monday.  He received a call on Tuesday saying that he was hired!  God's brought me a long way and I am very much at peace with this decision.  It pays better, insurance starts immediately, he has holidays off... but the best thing is that it will ultimately give us more time together as a family.  I miss that!  Amazing how much of a blessing unemployment was in those first couple months after Ander was born.  We were able to settle into being a family all together all the time and we love it!  Kyle starts August 11th.

I am spending this week cleaning and packing.  We leave on Saturday for Oklahoma for Dustin and Li's wedding.  I am looking forward to some "down time".  Ander is staying in Montana with Grandma Kim, so I'll get to sleep in for an entire week!  I just finished feeding him a moment ago and found myself already missing him.  It will be hard to be apart.

He is growing and changing so fast!  His smile even seems like it's showing me glimpses of the little boy he's turning into.  Laying down today for what was supposed to be a quiet nap time, he decided to start playing the "kissing game" with mom and was maneuvering around to my face quite skillfully.  Mmm... slobbery kisses. :-)  Pair that with shrill little baby giggles and life can't get much better!  He's doing a scoot/crawl backwards and I'm sure will be figuring out crawling forwards in no time!  This kid seems to be a problem solver like his daddy.  If he can't reach a toy on the toy bar, he pulls the legs of the structure till he's able to reach what he wants.  He seems to be becoming aware of how his shirt goes on and consequently how it comes off... not sure if it was a fluke, but we found him wearing his shirt like a sash one day because he had pulled his little arms out of the sleeves and was onto pulling it off his head!  Amazing to watch him learn!

Thursday we are having our gender revealing ultrasound for baby #2!  We're so excited!  I just hope that baby isn't modest for this one moment in his or her life!  Getting to know the sex of your child really has it's benefits.  Kyle and I thought that we'd be surprised with our first one, but once we were presented the option we decided that it would be a surprise until then, so we might as well find out during the ultrasound!  I've started to become irritated with older people (anyone who has had a child prior to the last 8 years or so) who ask if we know what we're having yet, and then proceed to grumble about how back in their day they didn't get the option and they don't see why we should know.  First of all, ultrasounds are now done regularly for medical reasons.  Second of all, have you tried shopping for gender neutral stuff?!  And last and most importantly, being able to know the gender in the middle of pregnancy adds to the bonding time!  We were able to say with certainty, "He's kicking!"  We have our names picked out and we can start calling the baby by name (though it will be a secret until the birth).  I think that helps siblings get use to the idea of a new family member.  Any kids we have after this one aren't likely to have secret names though, because we want Ander and this baby to be able to call new babies by name (and I have no expectations about small children keeping a secret!).

Anyway, we've started a tradition of having a Gender Party.  We invite our family over and have a cake that is either pink or blue inside depending on what we're having.  The big reveal happens when we cut into it.  Then we watch the ultrasound DVD.  It's a lot of fun and we plan on doing this Friday.  I will likely poll people on Facebook tomorrow to see what everyone thinks we're having.  Do you care to post a guess? :-)