08.22.09 7 Months

Anslee,

Your 7th month has come and gone! What a busy and exciting month you have had! At 6 months old you were great at sitting up, but you have come so far from there now. It is your daily pleasure to crawl yourself around the room from one side to the other to get to whatever it is you want. You usually have your eye set on my cup, the television remote control, or my cell phone...despite all the fun toys I have laid out for you.

You are such a little busy body with so much on your mind, and my goodness you even tell us all about it! You have officially said your first word (On August 18th). The most precious sounds I have ever heard, "Ma...Ma...Ma ma ma" Its the beginning sounds of mommy, and I love to hear you babble it over and over as you have been the last few days.

Changing your diaper has become such a challenge for me now! The minute I set you down to clean you up, you are rolled over and sitting up (ever so bravely) on your changing table! What I am thinking? Of course you have places to go and can not be bothered with a diaper change!

Every night when we give you your bath, you turn your self around to face the opposite direction of the tub and try to climb out. Who has time for a bath when you are a 7 month old baby? Not you!

Road trips are out of the question! You have better things to do than sit in the car for more than 10 minutes, and boy do you let us know when you get bored back there! No amount of toys can take your mind off the road either!

You still are such a great sleeper! Two naps a day, usually, at about 1.5-2.5 hours in length and 12 long hours at night! You are a growing girl, so sleep is on the top of your priority list for each day!

You finally are eating up those solid foods that you were not so interested in before! Your favorites seem to be the meat and fruit combination meals, so we are trying all of those out!

A sippy cup is slowly becoming your friend. You are starting to get the hang of it, and we practice each day with it. You will be an expert with a cup in no time at all!

You came into this world weighing 4 lbs 11 oz, and now you are a regular heavyweight at 18.2 lbs!

We took some photos of you this month, and so I am sharing a few of those below!

Mommy loves you baby girl!

Just wanted to share with my blogging community some videos from this past week. Anslee has had a FULL week of milestones, and we actually caught them on camera!

Enjoy!

Home Sweet Home!

Well, it happened! We found a home in Coleman, Texas that we just love! We talked to our Realtor on Saturday morning, gave her an offer on it, and waited for her to get back to us after she visited with the sellers. She called us back with a counter that we accepted, and so the paperwork will begin bright and early Monday morning. We are looking forward to getting closed in October. Tyler will start work in October, the sellers need to get to their new place in October, and we are to be out of apartment in October. I think October will be busy for us! This house was not even on the market, so its going to take a little longer than normal to get things all settled. This is fine with us, as we are willing to wait for the right house, but oh so excited and anxious to get in there too!

I took some photos of this house to share! Here is the tour!

Front


Living Room


Hallway


Guest/hall bathroom (this is the one that has a bathtub)


Bedroom (office for us)


Anslee's Bedroom


Guest Bedroom (old Master)


Old Master Bathroom


Amazing Closet Space in the Old Master bathroom


Master Bedroom


Master Bedroom


Shower in Master Bathroom


Master Bath


Dining/Kitchen


Laundry room




The best part...Anslee's playroom!


The pretty flowers in the back!




This house just seems to be perfect. First of all, its not even on the market, but it is technically sold. Our realtor just happened to know about it, and when we called it seemed to her that it was exactly what we would be looking for. Its a 4 bed/3 full bath home. 1 Living area + a playroom (that has a utility room on the end of it). Its in a super nice neighborhood, and is just a real sweet little country home. Everything is new in it. The water heater is 2 months old, the roof is 2 years old, and the carpet is less than 5 years old. The family who owns it currently did all the updates to it. The kitchen has a wonderful pantry and TONS of cabinet space! (yay for finally getting to use all our wedding gifts now!) We also love that there is a covered back porch, and that there are 10 live oak trees planted on this lot!

Things we will do:
add a privacy fence with a gate first thing
add a door to the laundry room to separate it from the playroom
change closet doors from sliding mirrors to regular doors
paint some rooms!

We are so looking forward to the process, so here is to the Parade of Homes via my blog last stop!

Also! We had photos done of sweet Anslee this past week. I had been wanting to get photos made for so long, but for the sake of money we had not been able to get more than what we could capture on our own camera. My parents sweetly gave us a photo shoot of Anslee and there is a sneak peak of them on the photographers blog

visit: eephotography.squarespace.com

A Twist of Events!

God has been so faithful to our family in the last two months. There is nothing else that can explain the twist of events that have taken place, how we were protected during this time, and how we know this change is the absolute right thing for our family.

This past Friday, we found out that we will not be moving to Waco, Texas. We in fact found out that we will be packing up and moving from Hillsboro, Tx to Coleman, Tx. Those who have been following my blog clearly know that OUR plan was to move to Waco. Tyler and I both had accepted the fact that getting back closer to home (which is Abilene for both of us) was just not going to happen in the next 5 years or so. We had not only accepted that, but we had become very excited about building a life and a home in Waco. We had actually searched homes and put an offer on one that was rejected because someone offered more than us. We then continued our search and put another offer on one that we had fallen in love with, and we ended up rejecting their counter offer back. We knew after they had countered us, that though the house might have been perfect for us, the seller's situation was not. They needed us to pay closing costs, and we needed them too. They had not lived in the house for long enough to really get anything out of it, and we decided not to make their problem OUR problem, so we knew it was not for us.

Through all of this, and looking at well over 30 homes in Waco we did not have the luck we had hoped for. Now we know that the luck we had hoped for was not at all God's plan for us. We protected us from getting committed to Waco when he knew that our hearts desire was to be close to home, and sure enough an opening came just in time! Coleman County needed a new Trooper, due to one of the county Troopers promoting and having to move into his new position in a new county. Tyler saw this just in time and was able to get his transfer moved to Coleman. Coleman is literally 45 minutes from Abilene, and better yet, Tyler's parents reside in Coleman and my parents are in Abilene! We never thought this would happen for us, but again we are amazed at how God's plan always plays our perfectly for our family. We are hardly disappointed by what he always has in HIS plans for us! Especially this time around. We are thrilled to be back closer to family and in an area of Texas that we are very familiar with.

We have enjoyed this past year in Hillsboro, as we have meet some incredible people who have really loved on us very much. We have made friends that will certainly stay in touch with. I have found a great group of women who have all helped me in my "new mommy" episodes...in learning what to do in certain unexpected situations.

A few things we will cherish Hillsboro for:
1. Joining a church for the first time as a Moses Family
2. Dedicating Anslee at FBC Hillsboro
3. Wonderful care during my surprise delivery
4. Excellent Pediatrician care for Anslee
5. Tyler's training.

Tyler was trained by a top notch Trooper who really knows his stuff. Tyler took so much from the 6 months he spent under this Trooper's care while out on the road. I am so thankful that this Trooper was so incredibly "safety first" minded and as then taught Tyler to be as well. He was able to work all kinds of situations on the roads and being on the Interstate including:

wrecks that have ended in fatalities
drugs
dwi's
and even a murder


So now its on to house hunting in a new whole way...in a whole new city! We had entertained the idea of living in Brownwood, while Tyler works out of Coleman, but we really are wanting to make that decision based on what would be best and easiest for Tyler as he works from Coleman.

Stay tuned for house hunting updates again! We will be looking hard this upcoming weekend and are so excited!

Tyler starts October 1st in his new County.

Baby Language of Love!

When Tyler and I found out we were pregnant, one of the first things Tyler said to me was, "DO NOT speak to our baby the way you talk to the dog". He was clearly implying that I baby talk a lot. He said he wanted our child to not have any language handicaps, and so my response was that I would of course not speak to the baby the way I talked to the animals.

Yesterday morning, while drinking a really good cup of coffee I sat down to watch GMA and then the Dallas, Texas version of that show, called Good Morning Texas. GMT had a segment dedicated to the Speech Language Pathology Director talking about speech problems in young children. I was surprised to find that baby talking does NOT hinder a child ability to understand and use language properly during toddler/pre-school/and young school aged children. She actually said that the high pitch tone used to speak to babies captures their attention and they listen a little more intently. They just said to speak real words!

So for all those mom's that had to stop themselves from the baby talk, go right ahead and do it! Its natural to want to talk that way to our kids anyway! I told Tyler that a professional in Speech therapy said it was ok, so there was not much he could say to that!

No shame in speaking that octave higher to all the sweet babies! :)

Side Note: We lowered Anslee's crib mattress about 3 weeks ago, when she started to pull herself up to a sitting position on her own. She has now started to pull herself up to her feet, and so we have now lowered her crib to the very lowest setting. Here is a picture of what I found last night when I heard the most horrible screams about 10 minutes after she had been put down for bed time. Please do not judge us for keeping her in her diaper only. Even with the fan blowing, its really very hot in her room!