Happy Birthday Joey!

Our little man turns 2 today. We are celebrating with family and a few neighborhood friends. This morning I re-read my post from his first birthday and have many of the same feelings I had a year ago. No one can ever tell you how much becoming a parent will change your life. And we're sure glad it did. We love Joey more than we could have ever dreamed! We can't wait to see what the next year with him brings us!

Joey has certainly entered the "terrible twos" and we have those hours every afternoon when I don't know how we'll make it to bedtime but I wouldn't trade it ford anything! Joey is crazy about his Daddy and Grandpas especially. He loves airplanes, cars and trucks. He enjoys Handy Manny and Sesame Street and has a special love for Elmo. His vocabulary is QUITE extensive and he is to the point where he mimics what he hears so we've learned to be a little more careful (Daniel doesn't really care for a 2 year old running around calling him "Babe"!). We are working on color recognition and with LOTS of repetition are slowly getting there. Joey has been sleeping (quite well) in a big boy bed for about two months now. He still gets to have a binky while he sleeps but we've weened down to binkys only then. We have not started to potty train him and don't plan to until after Baby arrives. He's very interested and could probably start now but frankly I'd rather just wait.

Happy Birthday sweet boy. Your Daddy and I couldn't have been blessed with a better first son! You are a perfect blend of both of us (thankfully you got your Daddy's ability to laugh a lot!) and we are so blessed to be your parents!

Stinky, hungry, and in labor

Two years ago today my blood pressures were unreal and Dr. M told me to go out the door, down the hallway to the left, through the double doors, and sign in with L&D.

The beginning of the story is funny. Really. See, I had been visiting Dr. M for blood pressure checks (ie: waiting to be induced) every day for what seemed like an eternity. Daniel would come home on his "lunch" (I use that term loosely) break, drive me the 20-25 across town to the OB office/hospital, have my BP checked (only to find out it was still in an acceptable range), then drive me back home and go back to work. (I was on bed rest and not driving by this point). Before we'd leave every day I'd make sure to shower, eat, and put my bag in the car.

Well...not on the 28th. I skipped my morning shower (remember all I was allowed to do was lay on the couch and sit in the car to go to the Dr.'s office so it's not like I had been doing much) and had a bagel for breakfast. I was going to wait until we got home to eat lunch. I didn't even put my bag in the car. For some reason my measly little brain thought, "Why would today be any different than any other day? We're just going to turn back around and go home." WRONG!!!!!!!!!! The rest is history. I went at LEAST 36 hours (I'm not totally sure how long it really was) before I was allowed anything to eat and even then I was on a liquid diet. I went for 4 days without showering (you can think it....EWWWWW!). Daniel had to either go home or send someone home for my bag after Joey was born. It was a mess. Moral of the story???? Shower and eat daily. :o)

Re 'mem 'mem

So maybe I'm nesting or maybe it's because we're having family over this weekend for Joey's birthday but today I was inspired to clean off my desk. Let's just say this chore was LONG overdue (I found junk mail from Easter!). I have no idea how, but somehow this made it to my desk.

It was taken at the camp banquet one year after Daniel and started dating. If we'd only known then that six years later we'd be waiting for Baby #2...

I love this guy. More than I did then (and at the time I thought I loved him a LOT). It's amazing what marriage and kiddos will do for your love life. I love him more every day. I mean, who else can make me laugh when I'm so upset that I've broken down to tears or so angry I want to scream (even if I REALLY don't want to laugh...I just want to be mad! LOL)? I can't wait to see where we are when I come across this picture again six years from now...

Wordless Wednesday

Oops!

So apparently the header on my blog has read "Navitaging" and not NaviGATing Toddlerhood since I changed it however many months ago. Why didn't anyone tell me?!?!?!?! Please tell me that, like me, you just didn't notice! lol Thankfully, it's now fixed!

Thanks mom!

Wordless Wednesday

Baby Thumper 23week sonogram

I thought she/he deserved her/his own post. So without further adieu...

Wordless Wednesday

Help! I need somebody

First if you're visiting my blog for the first time, HOWDY! Welcome! :0)

OK Moms, I'm asking for your help. We have a problem here. A serious one. It's out of control and I'm not quite sure what to do. I have a problem. A toy storage problem.

You see my sweet little boy has more toys than he know what to do with (as most kids do I'm guessing). If it's big and easy to find, he'll play with it. But we run into a problem when he gets one of these big toys out (ie Fisher Price Little People sets) and can't find all the small pieces that have fallen into the "black hole" (lol Mom) at the bottom of the toy box.

With Joey's birthday VERY quickly approaching (do any of you other moms cry on your children's birthdays? why does time go at warp speed once you become a mom?) I plan on cleaning out his toy box in the next few weeks. You know the drill. Throw away anything broken or torn, box up the stuff that he doesn't play with anymore, give some of it away, etc. But we still have things we'd like to keep. We've become quite fond of Little People type sets and actually just inherited two more this morning (thanks Jenii!). I need to find a way to store all of those little pieces together so they are easy to find and don't get lost. This is where YOU come in. So far the only idea I've come up with it to baggie them up with a picture of the larger toy (ie airplane, barn) on the front of the bag so Joey can tell which baggie of small pieces go with which larger toy. But I don't know how to store the baggies. Bookshelf? Storage bins? Anything that's thrifty and easily (but not TOO easily) accessible to a 2 year old will work for me. And it doesn't have to involve storage bags. How do you store toys at your house?

So PLEASE, leave me your ideas and suggestions. I'm open to anything. Thanks so much for your help!!! :o)