Ben’s Blog

As I mentioned, Luke turned two on June 1st. We had a birthday party for him here at our new house the previous Saturday. We had his party at my parent’s house in Belmont last year, but we wanted our Oxford friends to be able to come this year, so we had it here.

It was a Wiggles-themed party. (More on them later.) We had pizza, cake, and ice cream. (All the major food groups.) I think everyone had a good time.

The pictures I took at the party can be found here. I think I got some good ones. I hope you’ll take a minute to look at them. I wish I had thought to use my flash. It would have taken care of some of those dark shadows. You’ll notice a new playset in the pictures. I’ll do a separate post about it soon.

Liam will turn one on August 19th. We have absolutely no idea what kind of party we’ll have for him. He loves the Wiggles too, but we don’t want to be redundant.

I’ve been promising an update on Luke and Liam for a while now. Here goes:

Luke turned two years old on June 1st, and Liam will be 10 months old on the 19th. They are definitely big buddies. Yesterday afternoon Luke drove Liam around in his jeep for at least twenty minutes. Luke can get a little rough with Liam sometimes. The problem is that Liam thinks it’s funny, which means Luke doesn’t listen very well when we tell him to stop. He occasionally makes Liam cry, but it’s pretty rare. Liam favorite thing is to steal Luke’s pacifier. He thinks that’s hilarious, and so does Luke.

Luke is still tall for his age. He loves to run around and is getting skinny and muscular. He gets into everything like any two year-old. While his motor skills are ahead of schedule, his verbal skills are a little behind. We’re not too concerned, but we’re definitely keeping an eye on it. He picks up new words virtually every day, and can say a few short phrases. We’re hoping for more phrases soon. Some of his favorite words are: mommy, daddy, eat, yum, TV, DVDs, candy, “tar” (guitar), dog, and book. He can say a lot more, those are just the words he uses very regularly.

Liam just recently started crawling. It’s still the “army-style” crawl, where he’s mostly on his stomach, not up on his hands and knees. He pulls up on things occasionally, but it’s not a regular occurrence. He started saying “momma” a couple of weeks ago. He’s a very good little baby. The only time he seems to get upset is when he’s teething. He has four teeth and is working on a few more.

Luke still has a pacifier, though he uses it less than he used to. Our plan is to get them both off their pacifiers as soon as we get Liam off the bottle. There’s no use trying to take Luke’s pacifier away if Liam still has his.

Luke is definitely a “momma’s boy.” Under normal circumstances Cassie is the only person that can get him to sleep. If Cassie isn’t there when he wakes up, bad things happen. When Liam was born, Luke was already well-attached to Cassie, so I often got to deal with Liam. As a result, he is definitely a daddy’s boy. When I come home for lunch or after work I get a big grin (complete with dimples) and lots of arm flailing. Luckily, since he’s at home with Cassie all day, he isn’t quite as exclusive as Luke.

Naps are getting to be interesting. Luke is down to one a day, usually an hour and a half starting around 2:30pm. Yesterday, probably because our traveling has thrown his schedule off, he completely skipped his nap and went to bed early. Liam still takes three to four naps a day. He is getting to where it’s much harder to get him to sleep. Often, Luke will keep Liam awake or vice-versa. Lately, Cassie resorts to driving the boys around to get Liam and/or Luke to sleep at least once a day, usually more.

Yesterday Luke and Liam had a joint pediatrician’s appointment. He said both of them were doing great. He’s a little concerned about Liam’s continued spitting up, but said he’s growing well in spite of it. He’s on special (expensive) formula and Prevacid, but still spits up four or five times a day. Our pediatrician is going to speak to his partners and get back with us about a course of treatment. He wants us to hold off on moving him over to milk for now.

This post ended up being much longer than I meant for it to. I’ll try to post shorter, more frequent updates in the future, but it seems like I’ve said that before.

Wow, I just realized it’s been three weeks since I posted. I knew it had been a while, but had no idea it had been that long. I guess you could say we’ve been busy. We’ve gotten a lot done at the new house, but a lot remains to be done. Luke is having his birthday party at the house next Saturday, so a few projects need to be finished by then.

The painters finished refinishing our kitchen and bathroom cabinets. They look nice, and their price was very reasonable. Let me know if you need a recommendation for a good painter in Oxford. The week without cabinet doors was rough. Luke makes a sport of getting into things he’s not supposed to. While we had the doors off we took the opportunity to replace all the hardware with satin nickel. It looks quite nice. I’m about halfway done installing all the cabinet locks.

The garage is not quite as junky as it was, but it still has a long way to go too. We’re relatively close to being able to put a single car in our two car garage.

We bought the boys a playset yesterday, and my dad is coming Saturday to help me put it together. That should be interesting.

In a previous post I mentioned that DSL wouldn’t be available in our neighborhood until October and that I had to get cable Internet for the time being. Well…I was talking to my next-door neighbor the other day and he inquired as to when my coax was going to get buried. One thing led to another and he mentioned that he had DSL. The AT&T box for our cul-de-sac sits between our houses. Upon further questioning he tells me he’s had it for at least three years.

I called AT&T the next day and they said “Why yes, DSL is available in your neighborhood!” I asked, “Why was it not available two weeks ago and why did they tell me it wouldn’t be available until October?” “Well, Mr. Pharr, they must have finished installing it sooner than expected.” Riiiight. I didn’t pursue it any further. I’m just happy to be getting twice the speed for $20 less per month.

This morning before work I fertilized my lawn. The back yard looks okay, but the front and side yards look pretty rough. I’m hoping the fertilizer will help.

Well, we got completely moved in on Saturday, but we’re still unpacking boxes, and probably will be for some time.

The near daily trips to Home Depot have yet to end. Actually, this evening we mixed it up and went to Lowe’s in Batesville.

We didn’t put the child locks on the cabinets and drawers right away because we knew our painter would be starting on them soon. Luke’s been making up for lost time by dragging everything out of the cabinets. Today things got worse because the painter actually started refinishing the cabinets and the cabinet doors are at his shop.

Cassie and the boys have been spending a lot of time in the new backyard this week. Right now all they have are a couple of riding toys, their play wheelbarrow, and their imagination. That works for the most part, but we do plan on getting them a playset soon. Swings, a slide, and that sort of thing.

The cable installer was supposed to come last Friday afternoon to get us setup for Internet. About 4pm they called to confirm my appointment for the following afternoon. Hmmm…someone got the date wrong, and I don’t think it was me. Then, instead of showing up in the afternoon (1-5pm), he showed up around 11am, just as we were trying to unload a trailer load of stuff. He left after telling me everything was working. I usually hover and chat with the technicians, but I was busy unloading.

A couple of hours later I got a break and came to check on the Internet. It wasn’t working. It was Tuesday before I could get them back out here. On Tuesday the tech (a different one) discovered I needed a new cable run from the box at the street. That’s right, they’re going to have to dig up my yard. Did I mention I was switching to DSL in October when it becomes available?

Tomorrow (Friday) we do last minute cleaning and repairs and some minimal moving. Saturday is the big move. I’m ready to get it over with. The last couple of times we’ve moved I’ve paid a local mover to do it for us. This time I’ve called in the family. Cassie’s folks arrived tonight, my folks are coming in the morning, and my brother is coming on Saturday. My grandmother is coming tomorrow to watch the boys.

Earlier this week I called AT&T to setup the DSL install. They set it up all right, for October. South Oaks doesn’t have DSL yet. I’m going to have to deal with cable internet for a few more months. That’s not a big deal, but it’s $20 more expensive than DSL that’s twice as fast. Also, it occurred to me today that if the house hasn’t been on cable before, they’ll have to dig a trench through my lawn. Nice.

Cassie’s mentioned that she’ll be a little sad about leaving this place. Both the boys were born while we were living here.

We closed on our new house on Wednesday. I am now officially a homeowner. Or a mortgagor at least. :)

Painting commenced Thursday morning. Nearly everything is now painted, thanks to lots of help from my parents. We still need to paint the small entryway from the garage and a little touching up here and there. We chose some bold colors. Cassie blames seven years of renting. I’ll try to post some pictures soon.

No one said home ownership was cheap. We still have to get the kitchen cabinets refinished and buy a washer and dryer, a lawnmower, and a grass trimmer (a weedeater to most of you :). That doesn’t even begin to count all the small stuff.

For instance, Cassie insisted on a new faucet and light fixture in the kitchen. And by the way, while we’re getting the kitchen cabinets refinished we might as well replace all the hardware. We looked at tables for the breakfast nook Saturday in Tupelo. That will be our first new furniture purchase. New living room furniture and a dining room table aren’t too far behind.

For the past several years whenever Cassie wanted to replace something, I would say, “Just wait until we buy a house.” I can’t put her off anymore.

We’ll spend this week cleaning, making small repairs and upgrades, and packing. We move on Saturday.

This afternoon we took our new kite for a spin out at Lamar Park. Our kite is a 54″ delta, which is supposed to be easy to launch without a lot of wind. We got it up on our second try, which was better than I expected. We got it up 100 to 150′ before the Sun went behind the clouds and it started getting cold. It took several minutes to reel it back in. No pictures this time, but I’ll try to get some next time.

Luke enjoyed it, but I have no doubt I enjoyed it more than him. I haven’t flown a kite in years, and it was a lot of fun. In fact, a lot of this kid stuff is fun. I look forward to Luke building something besides towers with his Legos. Is he too young for model rockets? :)

I’m way behind with my “Luke and Liam Updates.” In the future I plan on making more shorter posts. When I try to do a big post every week or so, they just don’t happen. I’ll try to do a little catching up soon.