¾ of a year

I can hardly believe it; this little guy is getting so big before our eyes.

Already 9 months, how did that happen? Recently I've enjoyed some good snuggle time with him as I rock him to sleep at night, because I know my rocking chair days with him are limited.

But he's becoming such a fun and sweet baby. He's constantly on the go and we've officially entered the curiosity stage. I love watching his eyes light up when he's discovered that a drawer opens or that he can reach something. But man is it exhausting.


Micah's been cruising around the furniture like a pro and can get around surprisingly well doing that. I think this is his preferred mode of transportation right now, but he can crawl pretty fast too. This past month he also figured out how to stand independently. I know walking is coming quickly.

Again he was a super traveler. Thankfully he slept through most of our flight there and back home. He certainly didn't enjoy all that waiting at the airport and was ready to be set free in a space he could crawl around in.


His sleep habits were again random this month, but right before he hit 9 months he gave me a couple of nights of continuous sleep.



Micah's favorite toys have been a play skillet and a rubber spatula this past month. Peek-a-Boo still ranks right up there with one of the best. Games. ever.


 He's a little extrovert we think, he loves people, especially when he is the center of attention.



Although he still prefers his mama, and loves to crawl over and grab my legs any time I enter a room.

His big brother figured out how to pick him up, so that's been a bit frustrating for our little Micah, as it never comes at a time when he actually wants to be picked up.


Lastly he's weighing in at 21.6 #s this month and is 30 inches long.

I'm So thankful for this sweet boy!

Indoor Pool

I completely stole this idea from other apartment dwelling friends around the world. Calvin is in love with his indoor pool and our kitchen balcony is just the perfect amount of space for a little pool. Thanks for your inspiration friends.

Micah wasn't sure what to think of the water at first.  His big brother did his best to comfort him.

It's added some fun to our days recently. Unfortunately it hasn't been too warm this summer so our pool time has been limited, but I'm not complaining about our lack of warm days this summer.

The Good and the Bad

Love these faces.



 He clearly isn't a big fan of peas.


But he loves Cheerios.

He's slightly obsessed.




 It's all he wants to eat now.

He's pretty tight lipped when it comes to baby food these days.

I guess I should look to introduce a local alternative because I have a feeling he's going to devour our hand delivered cheerios pretty quickly. Thanks mom and dad. He loves them.

Two weeks by the Sea

We had a fabulous trip. We learned a ton and were so refreshed.

We were ready to come home and dive back in, with a LOT more focus and a plan.
It feels great.

We were so thankful to be in such a beautiful place for 2 weeks.

Sometimes I miss beautiful places. Where we live has a different sort of beauty. Sometimes it's harder to find, but it's here too.
I'm talking about places with green grass, that's cut with a lawn mower, not with a sythe or a weed eater.
Places that look nice on the outside and not just on the inside. I loved jogging around this little summer home neighborhood in the evenings. Everyone was out eating on their patios. One day I even saw a bunch of women shaking mulberries out of a tree. Jogging felt like a lot less work there.

Of course the pool was great. It was filled with salt water. It was strange how easily you floated.

Turns out Calvin's part fish.

Although he wanted nothing to do with learning how to properly swim. He declared he already knew how.
He wore two floaties most of the time. The boy wanted to wear them everywhere. We drew the line on that one.

Calvin loved school. He's still singing all his songs and talking about all his friends.

Our room had a balcony that looked right out to the Sea.

Since we had work to do each night Marvin and I enjoyed our evenings listening to the waves crashing into the shore. Sometimes even spotting some dolphins.

Being amazed at the colors of each sunset.

Stunning.

I'm a beach girl at heart living near the mountains.

But I'm okay with that.

But I do want to go back. 

Sometime.

Picnicking in the foothills

 

Marvin found a great picnic spot just outside of town on the edge of the forest. So we decided to give it a go and squeeze in a picnic while it wasn't too hot.

We had some great wind, and Calvin enjoyed using his kite. Although I think the adults loved it more than he did. Micah enjoyed figuring out the grass.

The weather was great until it rained.

Which happened to be right as Marvin got the fire started. So he got soaked while cooking the food.

We were so thankful we brought our tent and set it up. It worked perfectly to keep us dry and was the perfect place to set up our table and eat free from the rain.

Calvin was itching to go outside and the second the rain stopped he was off.

We wore out our kiddos and they all fell asleep so we put them in their car seats while we enjoyed some time by the fire. 

Unfortunately it was pretty cool and none of us were really prepared for cold. We only had one blanket and my nursing apron. So the fire felt really good.

We're thankful we were able to squeeze in this little outing. It looks like it will be a while before we can do this again with our friends. They welcomed another little girl to their family this week.

Ahhh Rescue Pack, coming to the rescue

We had a near tragedy last month. Calvin used the money he earned to purchase a pair of binoculars outside the polyclinic. It was love at first sight and helped him forget about the blood that was just taken.

Unfortunately they are the second rate china type of toy.

You see we don't get the good china toys here we get those ones that won't pass inspection in the states.

They are guaranteed to fall apart the next day. Sure enough they did and every possible piece fell apart, thankfully this toy was an exception and repairable.

Despite our fixes the lenses kept falling out. His favorite thing to do with his "potting cope" is to perch himself at the balcony window and greet all his friends and neighbors.

Well low and behold after countless warnings. He tipped his beloved binoculars out the window and a lens fell off onto the roof of the entrance.

He was an emotional mess. Hysterical would be a better word.

I called Marvin.

Calm was restored.

With the help of the van and a broom he now has binoculars with two lenses instead of one.

Dads are awesome.

They're also good a preventing future tears with just a tiny bit of super glue.

Not my imagination

As a mom of two boys, some things just become the norm. Like their activity level. Both are very active and go and go and go, until they sleep and both boys are also very active sleepers, meaning they move a lot during the night.


 
The past two weeks we've been blessed to have a sweet group of people from the States take care of our boys while we could attend some meetings. I think everyone in their group has told us at least once, "Wow you have two active boys."

 
I'm so thankful that it's not just my imagination.

 
But I can't imagine my life with out them.

Just the Start

Calvin's found that his little brother shares in his passion too. I cannot imagine what these two will come up in the years to come with a simple rope.

Confession of a 30 year old

Marvin and I have had 2 dates since last July.......two. One of those was sort of unplanned. While we were in the capitol city we needed to pick up some new books for our teacher, so my parents watched the boys while we went in search for this book store together. We realized on our way it was the first time we'd been out without the boys since Micah was born. Guess it's time beef up those stats.

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I entered into a new decade, I'm officially a 30 something! The fun of my birthday this year was that we were able to celebrate in one of our favorite cities, yippee! Due to the start of our meetings we celebrated a day early. Thankfully some sweet friends were also in town for these meetings and staying just down the street from us and they gladly watched our boys while we headed to a restaurant we'd always wanted to go to, hence date #2.

It was so much fun to eat, without multi tasking, in such a pretty and quaint setting while enjoying some amazing food. 

We even ran into a few friends at this restaurant while we were eating, one of whom was moving back to the states the day after my birthday. That was such a gift from the Lord, and so wonderful to get to see her before she left.

Earlier in the day we enjoyed a play date with some sweet friends at one of our favorite parks in town. 

Then we took a boat ride across the Bosporus to pick up a few requests and some coffee to take back. My sweet husband let me pick out yet another Turkish plate for my birthday. (I may have a slight obsession.)

This new decade is off to a great start. I'm so thankful for the blessings.

Take Off

Here are Micah's new moves in his airplane.  Pretty sure he's almost outgrown it.

gr8t

 

 
 
What a busy month we've had with this little man.

This month Micah's figured out how to sit up from being on his belly.

2 days later he started crawling

5 days after that he pulled himself up to a stand

Now he's cruising furniture and even letting go for a few seconds at a time, often times falling, sometimes not.

His bottom two teeth are in.

His sleep patterns have been RANDOM, he's slept through the night and woken up 3 times a night in the same week. It's been strange. At this point I'm ready for him to only wake up one time a night, most night's it's twice.

We've heard new sounds from his mouth, some great motor boat sounds to the ear piercing screech.

He's loving food, and is a much better fan of oatmeal than rice cereal. He's loves pumpkin. He's also had a chocolate cookie this month too, thanks to his nanny, I'm learning that these things aren't a big deal.

For a while I was convinced he was saying mama, but hasn't done it in a week.

He's stayed at 21 #s this past month but grew a bit to 28.34 inches.

I love that little smile of his and his ability to soften up all those we meet.

Here’s the Deal

In case you are wondering things have been a bit better in the behavior department. Our nanny came the Monday after my post of exhaustion and said, "What did you do?" To which I responded, "PRAYED."

We started a new little system which seems to be working great and he understand the concept of earning privileges and how behavior directly has a hand in that, so we're running with it. We've also made sure we've been intentional to spend some quality time with him and do fun things together, which has helped.  But quite honestly praying has been the key, both with himand apart.



His latest thing has been asking, "What's the deal?" Meaning what are my options. He often creates his own deals. It's pretty funny. Sometimes it's not, but most of the time it is.



I couldn't love this kid more.



A few things that he's done that have made me smile recently:

He hasn't been able to watch many shows recently (we feel it directly correlates with his behavior. With that said I rarely say no to him wanting to do an exercise DVD. (It's been so helpful during these days when it seems to rain 5/7 days a week.) So most days I hear from his 3 year old little voice, "Mommy can I do Total Body Time crunch today or maybe I want to do Cardio, Cardio, Cardio?" It cracks me up every time.



We pulled down the 200 games box and I'm pretty sure Calvin could make that into 2,000 games. Most of his games have very fluid rules, so it makes for a pretty interesting game. They also have very interesting names to them.

He's been glued to the balcony window recently and he's quite the greeter, he's very good at telling our neighbors hello when he sees them. In the last few weeks someone moved the soccer field to a more accessible place, rather than in middle of tall weeds, to the edge of the weeds where they can actually cut it. The kids have loved it and Calvin has enjoyed playing with a few friends. One of the kids' names is pronounced sue-lee-mon, this is what I hear from the kitchen last night, "Silly Man, Silly Man, Sillyyyyyyyyyy Mannnnnnnnnn." What a goof, but way to try. Yesterday we had to run to the little store by our building to buy some bread and he saw him and told me he had to go say hello. He ran right up to him said hi and shook his hand. It made this mama very proud.



The other day we meet a couple of new ladies and one of them touched his head, which everyone here does and Calvin very much dislikes. After they left he said, "Mama, that lady touched my head and I didn't yell at her." Progress folks, progress!



I also love the random I love yous I receive during the day. Today I was hanging up laundry and Calvin came in the room and said, "I love you Mommy", then went back to playing blocks.