wordless | independence day

back from there

We are back from the great land of michigan after a two week vacation/deputation visit. It was a really good time to remember what's good about the west coast (of the mitten) and get our fill of high humidity, sunlight, soft evenings, pretty sunsets, and cows. Thank you to everyone who came out to the open house. It was great to see so many people come out for hot dogs and look at the baby. A couple of special folks that we saw:

My uncle and aunt from the far north came down to coo over tobo:



Finally got tobo and Ch together.


We also were so pleased to see uwee's mom and dad as well as far flung friends from kzoo and St. Joe who made the trip. It was a great time.

Paul and I did go to the Beyond Beijing conference in Byron Center the next day, which as an amazing testimony for the work that is going on in China. I hope to say more about that in our prayer letter if I ever can finish it before August. We also caught dinner with a old friends in their new house and we got a chance to catch up with the IV staff worker at Kzoo just before we left. Oh, and we did get out sans tobo, but only for an hour or so due to exhaustion. All in all it was a good trip, but we are ready to be home.

Two weeks in baby time is crazy long, so Tobo has developed a number of new skills while we were away. Tobo can now:
- roll over. In his sleep. Which is most exciting
- one -hand grab toys
- teethe (which means drool)
- sleep in his crib with the light out
- grab at your plate at the table
- grab your finger and chew on it (see teething)
- do baby situps (with help from momma)
- found his feet. (didn't do anything else with them but tried to bend over to get them)
- has probably put on another .5 lb to make him 13 lbs

We tried a little smashed banana today, a lot of it got pushed back out, so I think we'll wait a bit and try again in a week or two. No rush. Really the teething is what's got his attention these days. He's sleeping more consistantly (9pm bed \ up at 1:30a to eat \ up at 4:30a to eat \ up between 6:30 and 7am for the day) and we're at least not up ever single hour of the night. Some of that is we've started to put him to sleep on a blanket on our bed, then when he's floppy we move him and the blanket to the crib. It worked really well until he started rolling in his sleep. So, now he's on a very thin blanket that we tuck in to the mattress once we move him. I think we made the mistake of putting to sleep in arms just to have him wake up when we put him down. But he's so much more alert and aware than he was. I think he will find our place boring now since there is no one here but us.

Paul and I are are glad to be home. It was a welcomed break, but we came home to yet another qwest dsl box on our steps. We now have 6 modems that need to be shipped back. We also came home to clean carpets and many dead spiders. Hopefully we won't have to have the pest control back until fall. I think the spiders are really a summer thing around here.

Today, I think we are doing laundry and may hang some pictures up. I'm certainly taking the day off, not sure if Paul is going to go in or not. Oh, and banana boy will most definitely be getting a bath today.

Lots of photos over at:

From Cute Things M...

cabin pictures!

Not much to say, just thought I'd highlight a few snaps from our big weekend out. I didn't say this last post, but as people in michigan go camping, people in colorado go "up to the cabin". We don't know whose cabin it is, but we're going there. Someone always has a relative/boss/friend with one which is up and can be gone to.



hanging out after a walk in the sling



pretty pretty evergreen



look how big he's gotten!



hanging out on mom's shoulder



mom writes martian dog's dialog



do we look alike?



sleepy baby



asleep before the fire place



cute baby shoes

From Cute Things M...

5 minutes later...

that's for babies

We spent Father's Day weekend up at the OMF cabin this weekend, a much needed holiday from everything. Dad (as we now call him) got a chance to hang out with Tobo and *not* be stressed out, which i think the little boy loved (!) to get that time. After watching them play, I began to realize that I've really been keeping tobo to a newborn/infant routine (sleep/eat/sleep/eat) and he's really read for something more challenging. A few exciting developments:
- tobo is actually pretty good at sitting at the moment. He wants to sit up. He wants to look around. No more of this baby laying around stuff.
- we mentioned the fist
- he actually got kind of interested in a toy this weekend, kinda. (We call it Martian Puppy) He had a great game of knocking him down with his fist.
- He loves having you play with his feet and Paul started having him play a game called "launch" where we hold his feet and he tries to turn over.
- he turned over on his belly a few times but with help. He's really close to doing it himself.
- the rash of d00m(tm) has finally left his bum. Though I doubt we will go anywhere without a yeast cream until he's potty trained, just in case.
- he went on his longest car ride ever (1 hour!) And complained most of the way because the sun was often in his eyes. We've installed sun screen now in the back window which seems to make it much easier
- he was up as high as he has ever been, at 7,220 ft.

He's also getting a lot bigger. I'll try and get a weigh in tonight, but he's officially too long in the torso for 0-3mths clothing as is his head diameter too big to get comfortable in 0-3's anymore. I just spent the last 30 minutes packing up all the footie pj's and getting out and washing the 6-9mth stuff. It's only a matter of time. It's also getting to be warmer here so we need to get away from fleece things and think about oneies for sleeping. My little boy ain't so little anymore. I'm sad to see the little baby stuff go, but the cool little boy stuff is coming up. Mixed feelings on this one.

I also have a confession to make. While we were at the cabin we tried out disposables again...and Tobo slept through the night. So, unless we can find someone who can trouble shoot or pocket diapers, we're going to start doing disposables at night. We're talking the difference of 1 diaper vs usually 3 diaper changes a night. We all need the sleep more than we need to protect the environment. I'm still doing prefolds in the day, and plan to do so as he gets bigger, but yeah. I make a sad face about having to give up on my latest hobby - stripping mineral deposits from diapers. :(

I also had tobo put himself to sleep at the cabin. We were up in the morning playing and at some point he just laid down. I laid down next to him to do a little face time cuddling and at some point he just looked at me and then turned over and went to sleep as if to say, "You relax mother. Get a cup of coffee. I'm going to nap here for a bit, but I'll play with you in a little while." Such a big kid now. We're also talking about changing our sleeping arrangement this week, so tobo gets ready to not be right next to our bed while we're traveling. (same room though) I'm just too aware of him at night, so I'm jumping up to trouble shoot at every little noise. I just don't believe that he's just making noise in his sleep. So, for our sanity, we're thinking of unhooking the bassinet-side car and just use it as a stand alone. He's still fits in it, but we've probably only got a month or two left before he will be too big for it.

Also started digging around to find out what we need to do to travel with tobo in June. Apparently not much, unless the airline decides to get a bee in its bonnet. This trip we are lucky, we got our tickets before the crazy bag-charging thing. Christmas we won't be as lucky. Talked with the priest-in-charge this afternoon and had a lovely conversation about the baptism. I am looking forward to it. Obviously I need to figure out what the boy's going to wear now that he's grown out of all his most likely outfits.

This week is insane. Lots of stuff at work (being candidate course) a meeting with our church to talk about omf more, friends from out of town coming through on Thursday, possible sighting of our bro-in-law as he passes through town to a funeral, planning meeting with our accountability partner for our partnership development, possibly scheduled meeting with carseat expert to explain our car seat to us with out the base and, um spiders. We had a bunch of spiders move in while we were away. They all showed up at the midnight feeding, which was um...shocking. I ended up waking up Paul to deal with them, tobo in arms because as i said we where in the middle of a feeding when these things came running across the carpet. Ack! hopefully we got them all, but it was just not a cool way to end the evening.

I'll try to post pictures soon.

weekend trip

Well we are back down from the mountian with some photos to boot:

Evergreen 6/24/07 4:58 PM

It was great as always. This is the cabin that is owned by OMF and staffers can rent for a minimal fee + some clean up work when you leave. They have done a fabulous job of cleaning it up and redecorating since we were there last. We've got it around paul's birthday too, but the rest of the weekends are full up. It is a very popular place these days. Made me start thinking about decorating our place..whenever we get it. I came to terms that I will probably make a lot of mistakes when painting/decorating and that's ok. We also talked a bit about having space for a raised garden where we can do veggies and such. So much depends on what we buy, but it was fun to talk about it none the less.

Mostly we sat around and read, which is really common when we go up there. go for a walk, sit on a rock, listen to the birds, it's very peaceful. I always end up reading about WWII up there for some reason. Last time was Thread of Grace, this trip was Maus I&II. We also watched 2 parts of Band of Brothers. All of these are very good, but sometimes hard to watch/read.

The only part that sucks is getting down/up the driveway (dirt road with 8% grade) and having to drive in denver traffic on the way home.

Now I'm off to find something for dinner and maybe veg out a bit more before the week starts.