Playing Catch-up...

This has been an incredibly busy summer it seems. So much has happened and is still happening. I guess to start the summer, we went on a vacation in May. We took the boys to Panama City Beach and it was a WONDERFUL trip! I really was not wanting to come back! Then I drove up to NY with the boys and my good friend from Auburn, (Trooper) Dan, to help pack up my mom's house of 20 years so she could move down to TN! Wow! I couldn't believe it really happened. It was very bittersweet since we had tons of memories in that house - good and bad of course, but that's the place I always called home. Fast forward a month or so and my mom is happily settled into her nice neat apartment, with a new car to boot. The woman who once claimed that she was allergic to ice in her drinks and sitting in the sun is now drinking ice water by the pool and can't get enough of it! I'm so happy to see her so happy and of course, it's just wonderful having her here to help with the boys.

Also this summer Caleb turned 1! I made his teddy bear cake and his little teddy smash cake. When it came time he dove right into that teddy... ripping off his head and gobbling up the rest. It was hilarious! He's started walking just a couple weeks after that as his primary mode of movement over crawling. I am so totally in love with the stage he is right now. I love how he is so innocent and curious and he's soaking up information like a sponge. He's sweet and giggles and dances to everything with a rhythm, including the dishwasher! He sleeps on a regular schedule and he eats everything he can get his hands on. I've got such a mommy crush on that little boy!

Speaking of mommy crushes... William is amazing me by the second as well. He's so smart and has an amazing vocabulary. He counts, sings, uses big words like 'hopeless' and his memory is impeccable. He's gotten so tall and he is very athletic! He started going to preschool 2 days a week and it's been a bit of a struggle. Once he's in there and I'm gone for a bit he does ok, but he has real anxiety when I leave him there. It's getting better and I just look forward to the day where he shoos me out the door because he's ready to play with his friends. So as crazy as it seems, my little baby is going to be 3 next week! He's also just started soccer as well. I think it may be a bit soon for him since he doesn't want much to do with being on the field with a bunch of kids listening to another person tell him what to do... but I think he'll get there. If we can get him to just go on the field willingly with his team by the end of the season, I'll be happy!

AJ finished up classes, but I was very wrong on the aspect of his time freeing up. In fact, it's nearly the opposite, although I'm not sure how that's possible. AJ is using his new knowledge combined with his business skills and passion for Halloween to launch a new company called HauntSurveys, a division of HauntConnect. It has gone from just an idea to an actual business in just a few short months and he's launched it for THIS Halloween season! He's been working very hard every day on this concept and working out all the details to have this ready in time. In addition, he received a promotion earlier this year that requires him to travel several days a month. And now with football season back, the man is complete!

With everyone being so busy, that has increased my busy-ness by a lot. This is probably quite typical for moms these days, but I will admit that it's taking me a bit to fully adjust. At the risk of sounding pitiful, I will just leave it at that. To keep my sanity a bit, I have joined a local MOMS club. Why I didn't do it sooner? I'm not quite sure. I love it! We have several playdates a month for the kids and moms to get together and the best part... Mom's Night Out! My jewelry business is going really well. August was amazing and I can only pray that this fall proves to be just as great! I did go to Dallas in July for 4 days for the National Rally for Premier. It was completely inspiring since I knew on paper how great of a company it was, but I had the chance to see it first hand.

And last week, for the first time in 3 years - AJ and I had taken a vacation ALONE! We went to San Francisco for the week of our 5 year anniversary. It was something that we really needed and truly appreciate the opportunity to have gone. We did all the site seeing, wineries, and seafood eating you can imagine. We caught a Giants game and even had some days at the end to just take it easy. I was pretty ansy the last day since I really missed my babies. I nearly ran up the driveway when we got home to hurry up and get my arms around those little munchkins. Thank you Mom again for caring for them for the week. It was an exhausting undertaking, but you did great and we are all the better for it! :-)

I put an album of summer pictures below. There's a ton so if you don't have time to go through the full slide show, you can click on it and it will take you to a website where you can see all the thumbnails. Enjoy!

Chewie

OK, so it's been way too long since I've updated anything on here and I apologize for that. Since it's been about 3 months obviously a lot has happened, but right now I want to just talk about my doggy. Four years ago, on June 17th, 2006, AJ and I adopted a super adorable 7 week old "Collie mix" from the Humane Society. We named him Chewbacca, or Chewie, which became more than just a fitting name. Well he grew up to be an 85+ lb Golden Retriever/Chow mix who fit right in as part of our family. He was our first baby and soon after him came William and Caleb. Chewie was always a loyal and protective dog. He was excitable and unfortunately that excitement had turned into aggression. It has been that way for quite awhile with the worst happening most recently. Chewie had become a threat to our baby boys and even to me. I had spoken with 2 veterinarians and had done everything I could to find Chewie a safe and happy home, but I had no luck. AJ and I had to make an extremely difficult decision this week and Chewie was laid to rest yesterday August 6th, 2010.

This was by far the hardest decision I've ever had to make and although I know it was the right thing to do, I'm incredibly saddened and heartbroken. It's crazy, but my heart literally hurts. There is such an emptiness in our home right now and we just feel as though a big part of us is missing. As crazy as he could be at times, we all loved Chewie very much and we know he loved us too. He was very much a part of our daily life and routine. Some may think it's silly to be so upset over a dog, but those people have clearly never been blessed by having a doggy become part of their family.

AJ had put together a little montage video of our time with Chewie. These are only a fraction of the wonderful memories he gave us that we will always hold in our hearts.

Video of the Boys...

Funny Moments

The following is a random collection of funny moments that have happened with William. Now that he talks so much, he just amazes me with the things that come out of his mouth. Reading this, you may not think it's quite as funny as I do and that's ok. This is another one of those "diary" entries where I want to look back and remember....

* We were eating lunch with the TV on in the background. Someone on TV said something about $100. William said, "100 Dollars... I need some money!" What? you're 2! How do you even know that $100 IS money?

* Driving down a hilly road,the first time we went down a hill William said "Weeeee!" Next hill, "Weeee again!" Third hill, "Weeee Threee!"

* While potty training William was 'exploring' himself, shall we say. I came in and he looked at me and said (in his big man voice) "Whoa! Look at that Beeg (big) one! Thas a big penis!!!" (He's gonna kill me for this one.) (AJ might too)

Meep = sleep
Cabub = Caleb
Maggich = Magic
Mugit = Music
Staggic = static
Washing Sheem = Washing Machine
What yah? = What's that?

* William was throwing quite a large fit and couldn't have something he wanted (I don't remember what it was and it's not relevant anyway.) AJ said "I know, Life's not fair." And in an angry scream William yelled. "Life IS FAIR!!!!" What great insight for a 2 year old!

If I'm forgetting to include any stories that I might have told you about, please comment and let me know. Love to all!

Videos

I'm dedicating this post to my sister (Debbie) and my mother. Here are your videos! Now get off my back!!!!

Hee hee, just kidding. I've been meaning to do it so your nagging was just getting it done faster. Here are a couple of videos for your viewing pleasure. The first one is of William being a soccer stud and Caleb scooting around the house in his pre-crawling days. The second is of Caleb crawling!!! Yay Caleb! And the third is a short video of Caleb's first claps!

Well that sums up my update really, but I'll go ahead and give further detail. Caleb is crawling now! It started about 2 1/2 weeks ago (8 months old.) He'd been getting close for a while, as you'll see in the first video, but hadn't quite made it forward. Well, one day I took to the playroom with my lunch in hand to join Caleb. I put my sandwich on the floor beside me. As soon as Mr. Caleb saw that sandwich, he took off for it! Literally! It was the funniest thing I'd seen. He just crawled his little cute adorable crawl heading straight toward my plate. He had such determination in his eyes. I kept thinking, "The things a man will do for a sandwich!" He's also a clapper now. That was special because it was during breakfast on a saturday so AJ got to see it. He actually saw it first! William is doing great poo pooing in the potty. He has a 3 day in a row success rate, but then has a setback for a day! He's really grasping it good now and although he doesn't like giving up control and fights his way to the potty some days, he's doing so well and is so proud of himself!

Until next time... enjoy the videos!

Big Potty Day!

William pooped on the potty today! The first time with actual intention, not just me throwing him on their hoping to make it in time. He did great and was so proud of himself. I'm so proud of him too!

But, It's been a long week at the potty and I'm too 'pooped' to write anymore. I'll do pictures soon though... promise!

Ok, so I've been pretty bad at keeping up my New Year's Resolution. I've got lots to cover so I'm just going to dive in. Caleb's Baptism was a most wonderful event. However, it was a day late due to the crazy snow storm that TN faced that weekend. To come celebrate the occasion with us were my mom, dad, Debbie, Vance, Lynn, Archer and Chance. It was held in the same church where William was Baptized and Caleb did great! I think he even liked the water being poured on him. That weekend was also my 30th birthday weekend! The snow storm interrupted some plans but we had a nice dinner with family and it was great. My lovely husband had blind-folded me and brought me to a jewelry store. Before he took off my blind-fold, AJ handed me a stack of money and told me to pick out what I wanted. The only stipulation was that it had to be gold since it was my 'Golden' birthday (30 on the 30th.) It was amazing and such a fun time. I picked out a beautiful ring with clear and black diamonds and I love it! Great job hubby!

Well Mr. Caleb is accomplishing so much lately I don't even know where to begin. Oh wait, yes I do... he said "Mama"!!!! He was copying my sounds on Friday and he repeated me perfect! I'm very proud since he said that before 'baba' or 'dada!' I knew he was a mama's boy! He's also very close to crawling. He gets on his tummy every chance he gets and is a pro at going backwards and spinning around. He gets up on his knees and rocks back and forth, so he'll be moving forward any day now. Also, on Sunday he clapped his hands for the first time, deliberately! He was saying his "m" sounds and I got all excited again... and so did he because he just started clapping! It was at breakfast and AJ and William were there to witness it too. Caleb is also sleeping much better at night these days. It's (finally!) a rare night when he wakes up in the middle of the night and now he's sleeping until about 6:30 on a regular basis. Thank you Lord! It was wearing me down... all this getting up in the middle of the night.

William is doing great too! He's the smartest little boy I've ever met. He truly amazes me with the things he says, the words he knows, and his very clever imagination. I'm very proud of the little man that he is becoming! We continue to work on potty training. He's doing good, but we've got a long way to go. He's comfortable peeing in the potty at this point, but just doesn't want to use it every time he needs to go. And he refuses to poop in the potty. I've been using pull-up diapers, but I've now moved to cloth training pants. Hopefully this will be better... I'll keep you posted.

AJ's is just finishing up his second to last class for his MBA... YAY! His grades are incredible and I am so proud of all his hard work... although, I may not show it all the time. I'm glad that he will get to rediscover sleep and I'm happy that we all will have weekends again! Most importantly, the boys will be able to spend more time with Daddy! He also has some new things cooking up at work, but no details yet. He's on fire!

As for little 'ol me... I have taken the plunge and started a jewelry business. I was not wanting to leave my babies and go back to work, but I was desperately needing something to get me out of the house once in a while. This may make me sound like a terrible mother and it's not to take away from the joy and love I feel when being with my boys, but my days were the same with nothing to look forward to and I felt like I was losing myself. Not only that, but we have this new house and I really want to decorate it. I heard about this opportunity and just had to do it. It's super flexible and I can put as much or as little time as I want into it. I've been doing it for a month now and it's going really well so far. (And of course, if anyone is interested in a catalog I'm happy to send you one.)

I think that about sums it up. I'll post pictures in a separate post soon. I just wanted to go ahead and get updated here. Love to all!

Caleb's Baptism Info

Hello,

As promised I am updating this with Caleb's Baptism information. It will be held on January 30th (a most wonderful day!) at 10am here in Nashville. We'd love for all family to be able to attend, but I understand if it's not very feasible. It was kind of last minute, but I didn't want to have to wait until after Lent was over to have him Baptized.

I attached another video of Caleb below. This is the start of a wonderful musician, I think. I'm still trying to get the super funny video to upload, but I may need to edit it a bit. This one is still quite amusing for sure... Enjoy!

Happy 2010!

It's January 9th and I'm updating this so my resolution is semi-successful. 2009 was a very busy and great year for us. The year was happy and sad, fun and stressful. It included career changes, career growth, saying goodbye to our first house and hello to our new house. We brought a new baby into our family just days after losing my grandfather and we had a lot of family visitors travel to come see us. I can only pray that 2010 is a great year for us, but I'll be ok if it's a little less eventful! :-)

Well, in this installment of the Nashville P's I'll be talking about the holidays. In a semi-spontaneous fashion we decided to make the trek to NY to spend it with my family. Potentially the last time all the Bilak's will be together on Christmas for quite a long time - but definitely the last time all of us will be in the house that was our home for 20 years. The ride up was long but pretty uneventful. The boys did wonderfully for the whole trip... granted we drove through the night, but we left at 5pm so they were still up for a while. While there, we just stayed at my mom's house and let the boys get to know their family. It was so great to see William running around that house, greeting everyone and getting to know his Grandpa and uncles, whom he rarely sees. This was a first for Caleb to meet them too and I'm pretty sure he likes them - hee hee! We arrived Christmas Eve morning and were pretty exhausted. Baba and Auntie Debbie hung out with the boys while AJ and I caught up on some sleep. Then it was off to church. William did pretty well. For those of you that attended our wedding, you'll remember that our church is pretty small and there's no nursery area so I was nervous. As I expected, he provided entertainment for the surrounding church-goers, by smiling, waving, and saying adorable things. Caleb was perfect and quite content being held by AJ, Debbie, and myself. After that it was home for our phenomenal Christmas Eve meal. It included all the family plus Jeffrey's girlfriend, and our dear family friends Bernie and Cathy. We had the usual dishes - fish, salad, kutya, pyrohi, and my mom's super yummy homemade rolls. We all felt fat and happy after that meal for sure! After cleanup it was time for our tradition of "procrastinators or whatever other excuse you have this year's" time for gift wrapping. Debbie, mom, and I sat around the table wrapping all our gifts as we do every year at the last minute. I hope that tradition ends this year though, since I'm always so tired I can barely stand to wrap anything. Then comes Christmas morning! It was wonderful to spend Christmas morning with my boys (AJ included in that.) They are my life and to see the look on their faces when they opened the gifts was amazing. Since we were with my family and did all of our traditions for most everything, I wanted to incorporate one of AJ's family traditions for Christmas morning. Instead of openening our gifts all at once, we did each gift one at a time. It was nice and you'll see from the amount of gifts in the photos that it did take quite a while! Again, all my family was there too and it was great to be able to spend a Christmas at home again. I loved being with them! The rest of our stay was very low key, but entertaining. William played with all, I mean ALL, of his toys and the adults played games at night. "Things" was the big hit game this year. I highly recommend it, as we laughed our tails off playing it... especially the first night.

Then it came time to leave. We had great plans to stay the night in Cincinnati in a great hotel downtown, until we were about an hour away and it started snowing snowballs out of the sky. It was a nice little winter storm that Buffalo was getting and our 3 hour drive out of NY turned into an almost 6 hour drive just to get out of NY state! The furthest we made it was to Columbus, OH where we stayed the night. The following morning we were back on the road with much better driving conditions. Although we saw a ton of accidents that day, we were luckily not involved in any of them.

We finally arrived home to a frozen tundra of a house. 'Somebody' thought it a great idea to turn our heat off completely in the dead of winter while we were away so it was a whopping 44 degrees in here. Gizmo was a bit frozen (but ok) and our poor boys had blue lips and shivered for quite some time before finally warming up in time for bed. Our house thawed out and since AJ had a few more days off from work and school we just hung out and relaxed most days. On New Year's Eve, we had our friends Heath and Samantha come over for game night. We had a blast and it was a fun way to ring in the new decade!

Monday came and it was back to business as usual, me home with the boys - seemingly busy all day, but not getting much work accomplished and AJ back to work and school. Caleb had his 6 month doctors checkup on Tuesday of this week. He remains a big boy at 18 lbs 8 oz and 27 1/4 in. tall. He's in the 70 and 75th percentiles for his height/weight. The doctor says he's looking good and appears social and interactive. Although, he didn't get to see the Caleb that I know. He was pretty reserved and unsure of the doctor, but maybe because he remembered that the shots would be coming soon. And they did... 4 of them! My poor baby was so sad and even William appeared concerned when Caleb let out his cries. I assured them both that all was well and we went on our merry way.

The next few weeks has a bit of business in store for us. I'm planning on running the 1/2 marathon here in April and I'm working real hard to carve out training time. It's VERY difficult with two little kids, but I've been able to run on a treadmill at the gym where they have a sitting service (a God send!)(Did I mention that before?) So my challenge is to really get on a good schedule where I can get myself ready for this feat. AJ continues on with school, which has a lot of work for him this month, and Caleb has his follow up eye appointment at the end of this month. I will also be planning Caleb's Baptism over the next few weeks and will keep you posted on the details as I have them. William doesn't have much going on, which is probably a first. Just being a super adorable, wonderful (limit testing - hee hee) little man. OH, actually he'll be doing some serious potty training soon so that's a big step to mention. And finally, the end of this month is my Golden birthday. Yes, on January 30th I'll be..... uh... I can't say it... but you can figure it out. I should not be bothered by it, but I can't help but dread it. This officially means my youth is gone! Even at 29 I could still say I'm in my 20s and at least seem young. 30 just sounds so grown up and I don't feel like I'm old enough. I'm working on changing my attitude on that, but it's a work in progress. I really have no choice though 'cause ready or not, here it comes!

Below is the slideshow from Christmas. I didn't really weed out any similar pictures so you could really get the feel of our time up in NY. Also, I am including a video of Caleb. You HAVE to watch it! It's hilarious... at least to me and AJ. I think you'll enjoy it too! Happy New Year! (ok, so actually the video is not loading, but I'll keep trying so keep checking. Hopefully I can get it up soon.)