What a great year it has been. Of course the best thing that has happened to us in 2013 is the arrival of Robert James to our family on February 26, 2013. What a sweetheart. He is such an easy baby although his delivery was not.
He arrived four days after his due date and was delivered by Cesarian (but only after I labored NATURALLY with him for a good 14 hours). What a stinker! Now that he is here, he is wonderful and we are just completely smitten with him.
Here we all are as a new family. Look at that proud daddy. If you haven't had the pleasure of meeting our newest addition, he really is the cutest little ham ever. He certainly has made our family feel complete.
Robert is currently 9 months old. He weighs 16 lbs 6 ounces and has a mouth full of teeth (9 to be exact). He is no longer interested in baby food and only wants to eat what we are eating. He started crawling just a couple weeks ago and is starting to pull himself up while holding onto the couch, a table, or chairs. We think he'll be walking in the next month or so. He says "ma ma" but he says it "mamamamamamamama"....hey, I'm still counting that is a win! :)
Robert's favorite person in the whole world is his big brother, Johnathan. Robert laughs and smiles at everything Johnathan does. We've really enjoyed watching their relationship development and we're hopeful they will always be best of friends.
Speaking of Johnathan, he started full day Kindergarten this year at Maryland Avenue Montessori. The picture above is his first day of kindergarten. He is wearing his favorite shirt: a friendly rollie pollie named Alice Mae Jr (I can't make this stuff up people).
He has transitioned well from half days to full days and really enjoys camp activities after school. He is currently learning how to read and can read some words and simple stories. He is also learning cursive, can you believe it? Cursive!
Here he is reading to Corbu, him and Corbu are seperated at the hip.
He seems to enjoy school, although, he does enjoy his days off much better. He'll get there! He talks a lot about science and currently says he wants to be a dentist when he grows up. He is certainly not the shy kid he was just a year ago. Now we can't get him to keep quiet! We're enjoying his sense of humor and love him to pieces.
With the addition of Robert to our family, our house suddenly felt a tad too small. Nate has been working really hard (with his dad's help) to get our basement finished to give us a family room (and eventually another bathroom). Most of you have never even seen our basement, I never let people down there and if you were privileged enough to be down there, you were sworn to secrecy as to what you saw...........JUNK. CRAP. GARBAGE. All the "stuff" we don't need/use but can't part with for one reason or another.
This is the same space as the picture above it! I can't hardly believe it! It isn't finished yet, Nate still needs to work on the ceiling and the windows and the baseboards but it is finished enough that we have moved our television down there and have been using (and enjoying) our new living space. Robert has also benefited from this change as well. He started sleeping through the night as soon as we moved him into his own room. What a lucky mommy and daddy!
As far as me, well, I've been busy being a mommy. In addition to that, I was honored to be the co-maid of honor at my sister Katie's wedding this past summer. The day was really quite perfect. Now, I'm not one for big formal weddings (hence why we skipped town and got married in Key West 9 years ago) but Jake and Katie's wedding was really nice. I was super nervous about my speech at the reception but I got several compliments so I think it went well. She was a lovely bride (the groom was ok too). :)
I also had two unexpected surgeries this past year. The first being the Cesarian to deliver Robert (which overall was pretty easy peasy) and the second was an emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder. Ugh, the gallbladder, what a useless human organ. I had two gallbladder attacks during my pregnancy and only one (or two, my memory is a little fuzzy) after pregnancy but that last attack was a whopper. It started at my sister's bridal shower (no biggie, I was only the hostess!), after a few hours of the pain progressing, Nate drove me from Fond du Lac back to Milwaukee and literally dropped me off at the doors of the ER while he drove home to take care of the boys.
While he got them all settled and got the neighbors to come over to watch the boys, I was already x-rayed, drugged, and scheduled for surgery first thing the next morning.Unfortunately I developed pancreatitis so my routine surgery turned into a week ordeal at the hospital.
I'm still crafting (as you can see from your holiday card) and holding card classes in my house. I'm also still sewing. Those skills get better and better each time I break out my machine. I still enjoy gardening and cooking, however, those boys sure have cut down on my free time to enjoy my hobbies. Really, I'm trying to enjoy our nights as hectic as they can sometimes be because I know all this wonderful family time will not last forever. Nate and I will be driving them off to college before we know it.
Here we both are at our neighbor's annual holiday party. I'll speak for him (we do that now that we have been married so long) and say we are still happily married. I think Nate keeps getting more handsome with age. He's a great dad too! I'm POSITIVE he feels the same way about me (because I said so).
Well, that's the summary our family life in 2013. We're hoping 2014 is just as great (if not better) and hope you and your family are making as many happy memories as ours has this past year. Merry Christmas and happy holidays from our family to yours!
Love,
Nathan, Ericka, Johnathan (5), and Robert (9 months)
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