Just Checking In...

Just wanted to post and let everyone know that I'm doing ok. Physically I'm ok - still a little pain, but not bad at all. Emotionally - it will just take time. I have plans to start counseling soon, so I'm hoping that will help. We celebrated Peter's birthday yesterday, so I have pictures to post soon for that as well.

Please keep praying for us.

Baby Hazen

Baby Hazen was delivered at 17 weeks this morning at 10:35am. We were able to come home around 4:30 this afternoon. Please keep our family in your prayers as we continue to process this.

To our family and friends - thank you so much for all that you have done for us over the past few days to help us during this time. You are amazing, and we love you very much.

A Boy and His Dog

Peter and Homer have always had a love-hate relationship. Peter LOVES Homer most of the time, but Homer doesn't always interpret Peter's actions toward him as love. That makes Homer a bit snippy, and then Peter decides he really doesn't want him around.

A few days ago, a new level of friendship between the two of them was reached. For the first time ever, they both shared the same pillow. It was such a sweet picture of the love between a boy and his dog. :)

A Lesson Learned

Danielle is now mobile. She's not crawling yet, but she gets around. She scoots around on her tummy, and she turns herself around in circles when she's sitting. She also half-crawls, half-scoots as she's trying to get to something that she wants on the floor. She is sooooo close to crawling - I bet she has it down in a couple of weeks!

So Peter must have left an orange highlighter out on the floor the other day. He also must have left it open. Danielle must have found it. If you look closely enough, you can see lovely orange marks on the legs of her sleeper. She looks mighty proud of her first art project!!

Note to self: Do not leave ANYTHING on the floor that Danielle shouldn't have!!!

Tropical Storm Hermine

You may not know this about me, but I absolutely love following the weather. Meeting our local weatherman would be the equivalent of meeting a movie star in my book. When we had cable, I would watch the weather channel for hours on end. Peter knows that we turn on the news to watch the weather. I diligently followed the track of Hurricane Earl as it headed toward the east coast. Fiona was next, and next came Tropical Storm Gaston. Another tropical wave was close behind but still closer to Africa than the US.


Um, so where in the world did Tropical Storm Hermine come from? I didn't even get to follow its formation. It wasn't there one day, and it was bearing down on the Texas/Mexico border the next day. Then, here in Austin, in the middle of Texas, we are hit with a tropical storm. It has been raining for almost 24 hours. I have enjoyed all of the weather coverage of the storm. The weatherman keeps interrupting America's Got Talent to show the current radar and talk about flooding. Now this is interesting television!!


Apparently Peter doesn't get the same enjoyment from watching the weather as I do. He was getting antsy this afternoon, so I let him go out on the porch. He stood close to the front door for a little bit, but I could tell he was itching to get out into the rain. Since we had not seen any lightening, I told him that he could go out and play in the rain. He was sooooo excited!!! We don't have gutters on our house, so the rain falls pretty heavily off the roof right in front of the door. He kept running through it, laughing the entire time. He wanted me to run in the rain with him, but I was trying to distract an exhausted Danielle from remembering it was bedtime. I didn't want to make matters worse by getting her all cold and wet. Peter played until Daddy got home from work. Then it took major convincing to get him inside for dinner. He had a blast!

To Tropical Storm Hermine -

Thanks for the excitement with the weather coverage, and thanks for giving my son an enjoyable afternoon. :)

Look Mommy! I made a "P"!!!

I've been debating lately when to start "preschool" with Peter. With my work schedule, I can't put him in a traditional preschool program. At this point, my plan is to do preschool-type activities with him at home. Although he's picked up on some basic letter recognition and math skills, I haven't really done anything formal with him. Peter's birthday is at the end of September, so he misses the cut-off for starting school by less than a month. If I start preschool with him now, he still has three more years before starting kindergarten. Quite a few of the kids that will be in his class just recently turned 2. Anyway, it's just been a debate I've been having with myself lately - start preschool now or wait another year.

Until today.

The debate ended today.

Danielle and I were sitting on the floor when Peter came to show us this.

Peter: Look Mommy! I made a "P"!

Mommy: (honestly not really expecting to see the letter P) Let me see. Wow! You really wrote a "P"! Good job Peter!!

Peter: Now I'll make a "T".

At that point, he went off and "wrote" some more. It wasn't really legible to me, but he said he wrote his name.

Um, so I'll be starting preschool with him in October. We'll spend 26 weeks focusing on all of the letters of the alphabet. I better get started finding letter activities. :)