10 Months

We are actually well past Oliver's 10 month birthday but we had a couple of kinks to deal with.

Kink #1: His first ear infection.  We have been very lucky to make it this far without one but as most of you know, ear infections are no time to be doing photo shoots.

Kink #2: As you can see our trusty friend the lion, Rasputin, is not pictured.  Rasputin went missing during the move.  We filed a missing persons report (after 24 hours of course) and I am happy to say Rasputin has been located.  However, we were not able to track his cell phone records in time to locate him for this photo shoot so Bennett the Giraffe had to sit in.

We have made a complete turnaround from this:

We call this our Gary Busey look

I am happy to report that all of us at House of Rekers are now feeling much better and looking more like this:

Oliver has had a lot going on this month.  He has been seeing a lot of his friend Greta lately which has been great.  This is Greta:

Look at how stylish she is in her mixed prints!

Both Greta and her mom are fabulous.  We have been so blessed to find a group of friends that we get together with on a regular basis and bring some sanity to our days that are normally filled with dirty diapers, making messes and finding sharp objects that haven't been properly baby-proofed.  Greta and Oliver have been teaching each other a lot. Oliver is trying to teach Greta how to crawl and Greta is teaching Oliver how to make pterodactyl noises. I'm not going to say that they are an exclusive couple but they have been seen hobnobbing around town together.  The paparazzi snapped these pictures of them at Fair Oaks Dairy Farm a couple of weeks ago on their trip back from Chicago.  Fortunately they didn't capture on film the Clampett style unloading of the car when it was decided to make an impromptu stop at the farm.  The wind was wildly blowing, random toys were falling out of the car, strollers were caught on seatbelt straps, a binky was almost left in the parking lot and there may or may not have been some curse words spewed out.  All in all we'll still call it a successful trip.  We did get to see a baby cow being born after all!

Oliver has also been spotted going to Greta's house and they were seen together at the Edinburgh Outlet Mall shopping for swim attire for their trips to the pool this summer.

The adventures continue this week, we are preparing for Oliver's first airplane ride.  On Thursday we are flying to Minneapolis to visit Desi and Kiley.  I am driving to Chicago and flying from there so that Edie can help out with what is sure to be a chaotic adventure.  I'm hoping that we make it through TSA smoothly and that we timed our flight appropriately, at Oliver's bedtime. I'm sure we will have many stories to tell when we get back so stay tuned for those. For now here are some more pictures of our growing little man for you to enjoy. Happy Tuesday!

A New Place to Call Home

Oh, so much to share.  It's been weeks since I've been able to move thoughts from brain to blog.  In the past month we have sold a house, bought a house, moved into said house and began a myriad of home renovations both DIY and contractor led.  It has been an exciting and stressful time and all the while I've tried to maintain some sense of normalcy amid the sound of nail guns and contractors yelling to one another to "shut off the main water" as a pipe burst out of the wall and soaked one of our spare bathrooms.  Luckily the pipe burst before the renovation of that room was complete so no big worry there, it has been fixed and we have moved on.

Buying and moving into this house has been quite the story but I won't bore you with the long drawn out version. Basically it goes something like this:  We really weren't planning on moving so quickly but it was one of those cases where the stars all aligned and everything seemed to fall perfectly into place, so much so that every now and again Corey and I would look at each other and say, "when is this going to go wrong, this is too good to be true". A few months back, before Christmas to be exact we decided that we would like to think about moving into a bigger space.  Not much was wrong with our current house, we really liked it actually but when Baby O came into the mix a house that was already filled to the brim seemed to bulging at the seams and we were starting to feel more cramped by the day.  This isn't to say that a family can't make it in a small space, people do it all the time but we were aching for a basement and for more trees and something that felt more like ours, not just a stopping point along the way.  So we would research online, never really finding that house that made us excited and we would drive around on Sundays with Ollie strapped in his car seat snoozing.  Then one day we took a left turn on a road we had passed many times but never given a second thought to and we discovered a small neighborhood half a mile from our house that we didn't even know existed.  We saw a house that made us both say, "yea, I could see us pulling into this driveway every day for the next decade" and so we called the Realtor and saw it the next day.  When we walked in we had to look past the outdated fixtures and the forest green trim and make it a blank slate.  As they say on HG TV, it had good bones and we could both see that.  So we put in a low ball offer that we eventually negotiated and could still be happy about, we listed our house and sold it in a week and we sat back and said to ourselves "holy crap are we really doing this?".  We knew it was going to be a lot of work but we were up for the challenge.  I engrossed myself in Pinterest and came up with a plan for paint colors and got a little giddy planning out my new kitchen and Corey mulled over budgets and plans and contractor bids and now here we sit in our almost completed renovation.  We still have many walls to paint and our counter tops don't arrive for another two weeks but the contractors will be done this week and we couldn't be happier with our new home. I will share before and after pictures in blog posts to come.

This past Thursday would have been my mom's 59th birthday.  It's also a year to the day since it was confirmed that she had stage IV pancreatic cancer that had spread to her liver. We are quickly approaching the anniversary of her passing. A year later and it still feels like the rug has been pulled out from beneath all of us.  We go about our business day to day, it still seems unreal that she's not here with us.  I still get the urge to pick up the phone and call her to tell her about something funny or cute that Oliver has done and it still feels like a punch to the gut when seconds later I come to the realization of her absence. I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to that.

About a year before my mom passed she had in a way started a new life.  She was an empty nester.  All of us girls had moved out and our sister Karley had also been moved out,  as on her own as she ever can be.  She lives in a small house with a couple of other girls that also have special needs.  My mom had spent the majority of her adult life caring for others.  Caring for 5 girls was no small task and she did a fantastic job.When she found herself in an empty nest she started doing more for herself.  She was working a job that she loved at Mariposa Farms.  She sorted and packed culinary herbs and I have never seen her so happy in a job before.  She was meeting friends and she loved the people she worked with.  They would go out for birthdays and other special occasions at Casa Margarita, a Mexican restaurant in Grinnell.  My sisters and I would joke that she didn't have much time for us anymore because it seemed every time we would call her she was always doing something.  Every so often her response was "well I can't really talk now I'm at Casa with the girls".  We would feign that our feelings were hurt but in all honesty we were so happy that she was taking time for herself and really enjoying her time.

As we tackle these firsts without her; first birthdays, the first anniversary of her death, first holidays without her, we do so with as much grace as we can.  We try our hardest to honor her memory and the legacy that she left behind.  We hug each other a little tighter and try even harder to enjoy the time we have together.

We toast her birthday with a margarita glass raised in her honor, we spend time with our sisters crying but also laughing.

Her most adamant request on her death bed is that she never wanted us to lose our sense of humor.  We have tried our hardest not to and I hope that when she is looking down on us she is overcome with a sense of accomplishment and pride at how we have honored her.

Nueve (Nine)

Hi, I'm 9 months old.

Friday Oliver turned nine months old.  I carried him for nine months and with all the anticipation that comes with carrying a baby it seemed to drag on and on.  This last nine months has gone by in a flash. From the first smiles, to rolling, to crawling, to pulling up to standing and everything in between, what a roller coaster it has been.  I've said it before and I'll say it again this kid amazes the crap out of me.  Once again here is Oliver in a nutshell. Some things remain the same, other things are new. Regardless these are the things that I hope I can burn into some back portion of my brain, never to be forgotten.

-He has a little dimple in his nose that only shows up when he's smiling really big.
-Loves to pull Kleenexes from the box and then tear said Kleenexes into tiny bits. I'm certain when he can talk he'll blame it on the dog.
-Likes to throw balls, and anything that resembles a ball, like last nights peas.
-Has figured out how to feed the dog. (See above pea throwing)
-Favorite foods are pears, bananas, sweet potatoes and black beans. I season the beans with my southwest seasoning and the kid can throw back some black beans, he obviously has his mom's more spicy palate and not his dad's wimpy  mild palate.
-Loves teasing the dog with a sock. I'm fairly certain they can communicate with each other because they had a pretty rowdy game going the other day and Lola, who is notorious for taking it to the next level when playing stayed miraculously cautious.
-Loves digging in purses, diaper bags and anything else that could possess worldly treasures like pens and shiny objects.
-Dances like nobody's business, especially to the Spanish version of the ABC's and 123's on his Leap Frog table.
-Is so proud to stand unassisted for a few seconds at a time.
-Rather enjoys being the loudest thing in the room. This involves competing with the dog barking, the vacuum cleaner and the hair dryer among other things.

Happy Birthday baby! We love you!

We had a little reign of terror this evening.  I fear this is a sign of things to come. It started with a five minute nap in the car on the way home from the hardware store. Here is the progression, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves.

Needless to say I embraced bedtime this evening.  So now that our little monkey is resting safely in his bed it's time for this momma to deflate.  Good night all!