One step at a time...

We're making progress- literally- one step at a time. Here's a picture of the step! We've been working on our family room remodel for more than four months now, since before David was born. Somehow getting the last ten percent of a project finished takes more time than the first ninety percent. This weekend, we replaced the tread on one step. Only four more to go, and we'll officially have real stairs again.
The blame for our slow progress lies squarely with David here. I get exactly nothing done during the day, because he has decided that he does not like to take naps. It's hard to get him to sleep for more than twenty minutes during the day, and I spend his waking hours either nursing him or trying to keep him otherwise entertained. This leaves only Matt to deal with most of the home improvements, while I am stuck making goofy faces for the baby and catching up on my cable TV watching.

Here's a snapshot of our life if ever there was one. Stacks of mail, misplaced toys, school papers, empty chee-toh bags, random origami creations, paperwork to fill out for the orthodontist, markers with the caps left off, books Paul borrowed from a friend, remnants from the last two meals the kids ate, etc....... we're very busy during the day, and nobody ever puts anything away! And to think that table was completely cleared off when I went to bed last night.

Even the dog contributes to the constant mess-making. We have a box that we keep all her balls, bones, and toys in that she dumps out several times every day. We also figured out why she has been so messy eating her food lately. I noticed a month or so ago that Purina re-formulated the food we feed Fly, but didn't think anything of it until the other day. That's when Matt pointed out that Fly had been picking all of the "dark brown" flavor food nuggets out of her bowl and eating those first, coming back to eat the "tan" flavor nuggets later (much the same way the kids eat all the marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms first, before eating the cereal bits). In the process of rooting around for the dark brown nuggets, she spills out half the tan nuggets on to the floor and in to her water dish. I find it amusing that a dog who eats apple cores, rocks, mulch, and cat poop has a flavor preference when it come to dog food.

Stayin' Alive

We're all still here and still kickin'. As happens some times, we've been very busy with lots of things that are just not very interesting. David is still getting cuter by the day. He is also getting to be very demanding during the day. He still sleeps great at night (knock on wood), but refuses to take naps of any reasonable length during the day. This means I have to spend far too much time amusing him, rocking him, feeding him, and otherwise trying to keep him happy. More on David later.
We have been eating far, far too many donuts, even by my standards. A few weeks ago Matt and the boys took a road trip to Erie, Pennsylvania to bring home (my absolute undying favorite) Krispy Kreme donuts. My heart was broken when our local Krispy Kreme went belly up, and I died a thousand deaths when the Buffalo location closed its doors. My noble husband and young sons ventured forth in the pre-dawn hours to make the five-hour round trip to procure four dozen (!!!) of these most delectable glazed puffs of sugary jelly-filled goodness. Four dozen donuts did not last as long as you might think...
Since we can't drive out of state every Saturday just to fetch donuts, we've been trying out some other local donut shops of good reputation. These gems are from Donuts Delite; they were, indeed, delightful. I loooooove donuts. The donut shop is the poor man's French patisserie; a symbol of all that is right with this country.
Fueled by all that donut-power, we spent this past weekend filling up our new book shelves with our old books. Book organization has been a chronic problem for us. We've spent quite a bit of time this past year moving around and re-organizing our book collection. I've come to the conclusion that our books must come to life at night by the light of the moon, and walk themselves all around to the far corners of the house, falling where they lie when the sun rises again each day. That's the only possible explanation as to why I find at least forty books a day in odd places throughout the house, no matter how much time I spend picking them up and putting them back where they belong.
Back to David. He woke up from one of his very short naps yesterday with a massively full diaper. Now, baby boys have a special affinity for peeing in the few brief moments while their diaper is off. Usually it hits the wall, or often as not, me. While I was cleaning him up from his little diaper blow-out, David managed to pee right into his own face. You can imagine how startled he was, which he quickly followed with outrage, because of course he didn't realize that he had done this to himself. As payback for laughing at him, he decided to pitch a major screaming fit at me while I had all six kids shopping at Target this morning. When I picked him up out of his carseat, he spit up a huge quantity of chunky white milk all over me, him, and the floor. Of course, all I had to clean up with was a few kleenexes from the bottom of my purse. And of course, he quit screaming and went peacefully to sleep just as we had finished checking out and were walking out of the store. Stinker.

School Dazed

Normally, we do school work more or less year-round. I've found over the years that children who have too much free time get bored, and children who are bored find trouble. This year, because of the timing of baby David being born, we ended up taking off most of June and July. This week we are picking up the books again! It takes a week or two of ramping up for everyone (me included) to get back into the swing of things. I'm still waiting for a book or two to show up in the mailbox as well.
Besides school, life in general is ramping back up after time off for the new baby. We've had contractors drifting in and out of the house as we plan for an addition off the dining room. Mixed in with all the school books have been books on kitchens and cabinetry for our next big DIY project for after the addition gets finished. I've been making doctor, dentist, and orthodontist appointments for all the kids. We now have appointments every week from now till the end of October! It takes a lot of man-hours to clean all those teeth!

Smile!

I've finally been able to get David to smile for the camera!
More accurately, I managed to sneak up and snap some picture while he was busy smiling at someone else. Whenever I try to elicit a smile while pointing the camera at his face, he just stares back at me with a quizzical expression.
Here, he was busy listening to Naomi sing him a little song she made up (something about his head being full of potatoes and carrots) that he found to be highly amusing. Luck for me the camera was close by, and I was able to swoop in undetected and get some happy smiling baby pictures before the moment passed.

Team Becker All Stars

After a delayed start to the Dog Ball summer season, Team Becker is off and running.

Fly makes the first catch!

The outfielders are looking strong this year.

The fans are going wild! Wild, I tell ya. Where's a vuvuzela when you need one?

Big Daddy kicks it home.

The team cools down after another big win!