Our Mac Pac: March 2012

Landon's baby cousin

Landon is going to have a new cousin! Uncle Chris and Auntie Kathryn are expecting! His new cousin should be arriving early October. This is very exciting news as we've been talking about this day for many years now. Shani could not wait for the time that our kids would grow up playing together. Now the time has arrived. She was almost as excited to find out about them expecting as she was with Landon...almost :-) We can't wait for this new addition to enter our family! Congratulations Uncle Chris and Auntie Kathryn and thank you for making us an Aunt and Uncle again.

Landon has really taken off with the walking. Although he will crawl still, he prefers to walk. He's been making his way around the house pretty well. Last week he started being able to stand on his own from the middle of the room. He's still a little straight legged but he's starting to get some bend in the knees. Unfortunately for Landon (great for Cali), it has been raining a lot this past week so we haven't been able to go outside much. It'd be fun seeing him walk around the park instead of crawl. We'll get back out there soon!

Lately Landon's been super sweet and giving kisses. At times it's the wide-mouthed slobbery kiss, but he'll also give the sweet little peck too. So adorable! For the first time last Sunday, Landon went into the church nursery. We were very relieved that his number didn't get called. We didn't think that it would since he loves playing with other kids and essentially goes to anyone, but you never know. It was nice to not have any distractions during church for the first time in quite awhile. We actually got to sit next to each other the whole service instead of Shani spending a chunk of time in the mommy and baby room (cry room) until Landon fell asleep. Another way our little boy is growing up. The only "difficult" part was when we were checking him in they asked if he had any food allergies to put on his name tag. We had a hard time trying to figure out what to say but said no, however we didn't want him having any snacks. The guy seemed confused and really wanted to make sure if there were any allergies that we put it on there. Finally John just said Shani was a little crazy on food things and we didn't want him eating snacks. He just smiled and said he'd figure out what to write on there. Our poor, neglected boy. No nasty, artificially colored, bad for you gold fish for Landon :-( Don't worry everyone, we'll figure out a compromise one day, but until we do, the boy only gets real, whole food!

Anyway, enjoy the pictures from the past couple weeks. Happy Spring!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Playing with rice at Nonni and Papa's

Giving Auntie Kat kisses

Landon playing with Maycie (maybe he'd like a sister??)

Landon and Colton

Pulling weeds with Daddy

Claire and Landon

Landon loves his puzzle

In the last month there have been so many changes around our home. Although change can be tough, we've welcomed many of the new developments.

Where do we begin? Probably the easiest is with the one that's changed our lives the most...Landon. Our growing boy took his first steps a couple weeks ago and is now attempting to make his way around on foot. He still prefers crawling because he's quite quick on all fours. At most, he's probably done about 10 consecutive steps before falling, but he usually stays around 4-5 steps. He definitely has the drunken mummy walk currently which is just the cutest thing! We occasionally try to make him walk to us in order to pick him up which turns into a game of him falling into our arms. Cute, but definitely not helping his balance. It sure makes him look like such a big boy now that he's taking those steps. Thankfully, we both were there to see his first ones which was very exciting.

Landon's weighing in a hair over 22 lbs and we are pretty sure he's grown in length too but we haven't measured him lately. He continues to learn more sign language "words," but he still isn't speaking much (but plenty of babbling and screeching). Shani gets a little worried, but others reassure her that he still is by no means behind. Some new signs he's picked up in the last week are: please, bath, kitty, windy, and we think the sign for changing. Thankfully Landon's been staying pretty healthy lately (knock on wood) which has been really nice. The only unfortunate thing is he hasn't recovered his sleep patterns since he was sick last. What a joy to be around during the day and a horror at night. We'll get there, hopefully before baby #2 decides to join us. NO, there isn't one yet, but we'd like there to be in the somewhat near future. At this rate, however, we may go from not sleeping with one and into not sleeping with another. Let's pray that isn't the case. Don't worry, we have lots of time still.

Let's go onto John now. John was offered a job in the Forensic Department at the hospital. This was something we were hoping for, but were a little unsure would happen. They were only taking a few people and doing it over time. With John's special training in this department they've asked him to join them. We are very excited for this promotion. Shani is especially happy as there should be less nights where John gets stuck at work dealing with a patient crisis (John is happy about this too!). He is also happy that he doesn't have to be "behind the fence" as much either. We are so excited for him! But as is true with most things state-related, he'll believe it once he is assigned his new office. There are a lot of state financial crisis related layoffs happening right now as well...so John got a "surplus" employee notice (i.e., pink slip) last week as well. Don't worry, however, because they send these letters to three times the number of people they expect to lose their jobs. We think he'll be OK, but we won't know for sure until June or July.

As for Shani, her change has been a little tougher. Although we know how blessed we've been to have Landon in the office with her, the time has come that he's outgrown the space. Landon is now home with Nonni a couple afternoons and with a sitter a couple mornings. This has been quite the change for her and for Landon. Thankfully she can make her own schedule, so she is able to have Monday mornings, Tuesday afternoons, and all day Thursday home with him. This is a blessing that she can work this schedule so she can be with him a lot, but it's still a tough transition. The especially hard part was finding someone we trusted to watch Landon. God answered prayers and opened up an opportunity that we didn't really know existed. A sweet, caring, mature gal named Michelle who is currently in a MFT program will be caring for Landon. This is a huge relief for us to find someone so great to watch Landon.

There are probably more changes, but it's crazy how quickly we are onto the next thing and forget the little ones. Anyway, most of the time change is hard, but usually always good. We just have to learn the new way!