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.)

So much has happened...

It's been a long time since my last update - 2 months! Well, it's not because I've been lazy that's for sure. I have about 5 minutes to myself during the day so I must decide how I need to spend that. Unfortunately, it's been spent cleaning or just checking emails, or if I'm lucky - just sitting and trying to destress. I suppose night time should be when I think to update, but by that time of day it really just slips my mind. So my apologies to anyone who's been checking this and waiting for my update (including Uncle Charles, since I've been told you check this often ;-)) My New Year's resolution - get better with updating the blog in a timely fashion!

So, here we go! This will by far be my longest post yet, so maybe grab a cup of coffee first... ha! Since my last post we have moved and settled into our new house! I was sad to leave our old house, but honestly I didn't have too much time to think about it. My memories of that house are of a simpler time. We've just been so busy since we've been here, but it's all good busy. We've been working hard to get settled in the new place, but that took a while. Our closing process was a bit of a nightmare, but we did finally close and made out a little better than expected. Our agents were just as determined and happy to close as we were. We got to the office at 4pm on a Thursday and swore we wouldn't leave without being the rightful owners of the house. Of course, it was still not a smooth process as things were popping up last minute, but while we waited our agents broker went and bought us all a 6 pack of beer to have while we signed the papers... finally! I mention all this because I have pictures included below of how we turned the closing office into a pseudo-daycare. The broker was reading to William on the floor while we signed papers drinking a Blue Moon! It was a good day that was long overdue. The next thing we did after closing was to buy a refrigerator! We had been living out of a cooler and a 2-ft fridge for about 3 weeks. The day the truck pulled up, I nearly had tears in my eyes. It felt like Christmas and I was giddy! I had to laugh at myself for being so excited about a fridge, but when you're living without one for that long and trying not to eat out all the time it proves very difficult. I think the delivery guys thought I was a bit silly too - but I don't care! We have a fridge! So now, we have a house, a fridge, new family room furniture and are settled in for the most part. We have lots of updating and fixing up we'd like to do, but that will come in time. We can finally relax in here now and that's what's important to us.

What next? Then came the housewarming party. It was a combo housewarming - AJ's birthday party which was a surprise to him. His parents along with Debbie (my sister,) Kevin and Steve Gore (our best man at the wedding and his dad) came up to surprise AJ. I was so happy to be able to arrange this since we couldn't really celebrate his birthday on the actual day due to school. I felt terrible (more upset than him I think) since it was 30! That's a big birthday and we had such a low key evening. But the party was a great success! He had no idea what was in store. We had a beautiful poker themed cake for him (delicious too) and friends and family to 'warm our house' and celebrate his birthday.

Now, that about catches us up to date on the big events. Christmas is this week and we made a last minute decision to go to NY for Christmas and spend it with my family. We were reluctant since we had really been looking forward to spending Christmas in our new home with our boys, but this is probably going to be the last Christmas we will all be together for a long time. My mom is expecting to move here next year and it's unlikely that my brothers/dad will be able to come down for all the holidays. It means a lot to her to have us all together for a last Christmas in the house we've been in for 20 years so I'm doing my good daughter duty. I'm expecting that this will bring me good karma and when my boys grow up and have their families, they will come to see me on holidays (wink, wink.) It should be fun though. Well... the drive up, probably not so much, but the time there should be. I understand they've gotten a lot of snow and William will have a blast playing in it. AJ and I will too!

Now the individual updates. William is still the sweetest boy on the planet. He has a great sense of humor and I crack up at him daily. However, he's going through a screaming and hitting the dog phase which has me at my witt's end some days. His vocabulary is strong and he's becoming such an athlete. He was attending a mother's day out program, but he stopped last week since it's too far to drive now and defeats the purpose of me getting some time. It was sad to me because he really loves it there and they love him. He talks about it all them time and when he does something or sings a song he'll say "do THAT school," meaning, I do that in school. It's precious! I had him go through December because they do a great Chrismtas program with the kids. I have pictures below and I will try to post the video I took as well. It was so adorable and I only teared up a little. Caleb is doing wonderful also. He's getting so big! 75/80 percentile for his weight/height. He's giggling a lot now and is so close to sitting up on his own. He's a very touchy feely baby as he loves grabbing for his toys and touching everything. William was like that a little, but never seemed to grab at toys as much... at least at this age. But once he could crawl, watch out! Anyway, back to Caleb. He loves being in his jumper and being held. Those are his favorite things. He's such a cuddle bug with a happy disposition. I'm so blessed to have such happy babies! He's begun eating baby food and is slowly becoming a pro at it. I did have to take him to an opthamologist because he has some eye "hopping" that his ped. noticed. The eye doctor diagnosed that as nystagmus cause by ocular albinism. Basically meaning his eyes hop because he has only slight pigment in his retina. I have since learned there are 2 types of albinism, 1) ocular and 2)oculocutaneous. The latter is the kind you hear of most often with the albinos that have white hair and real pale skin. Luckily Caleb doesn't have that! So the doc said that its a real mild and that he's at the high end of the vision scale, but will need to do more tests to check how it's affecting his vision. He seems to be seeing very well to me (hence the reason I pointed out how much he grabs for toys, etc.) so hopefully it truly is mild. We will know more at the end of January.

AJ is still in school and just finished his most intense class of the program. Although he's thinking January's class is pretty intense too... we'll see. But he only has 4 more classes left! Yay!!!! I can't wait to have my husband back! Being an MBA widow is taking it's toll and I know the kids will be happier when Daddy's around more. And I'm quite sure AJ will be more than happy to have free time once again. He's been working so hard and has gotten an A in every class thus far. I'm truly so proud of him! I've just been doing mommy things. Cooking, cleaning (well - maintaining I should say,) and trying to keep my hair in. I feel so busy, but I can't really tell you what I've been doing.. ha! Is that normal? I will admit that things were more than stressful when we first moved in. The boys were resisting schedules and being out of sorts with the new house. I think we're all on track now and doing ok. I've found time to start sewing again so I'm working on a few special projects then I'll start making some inventory to sell. I've also started running again. At our local rec center they have a sitting service (truly a Godsend) so I've been able to drop the boys off and run a few miles. It has been a HUGE help in regaining sanity and I feel so much better now that I get some exercise. Although, I'm having some serious foot pain that's preventing me from running anymore this week, so hopefully that goes away!

So while I've slacked on updating the blog, I have not slacked in the picture taking department. I have a lot of different shots in the slideshow below... Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!!!!

P.S. I just saw that I had a post in my drafts and never published it when we first moved in. I wrote it on 11/02/09. I put some pictures with that one so see the post below this.

P.P.S It's been over 2 months and William is still calling it "New House."


William is in the front row 3rd from the right. They 'sing' 3 songs.



Go to this link for more pictures from William's Christmas Program.
http://picasaweb.google.com/isabeljohannes/EmmaSChristmasPagentDecember2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCNOxxYKik4j7zQE&feat=email#

"New House"

I put the title in quotes because although we've been living here for a week and a half, William still calls this "new house." It's been one thing after another and we still have not yet closed on our loan for this place. We are 4 days past our contractual closing date (11 days past the date we had planned on closing) and it's really very frustrating for us. We're all moved in and only about 3/4 unpacked. We're waiting to close to finish the rest... you know... just in case. We've been living out of a 2 ft. tall fridge and a big cooler to keep our food cold. We need to buy a standard size fridge, but that's just another thing on hold until we close.

All frustrations aside, we really love this house. It needs new carpet and paint and few maintenance items taken care of, but we love the floor plan and the location. The neighborhood is great and our neighbors seem to be really nice. Everyone has kids, although ours seem to be the youngest. It's pretty far out into the country though. I didn't realize it until I would wake up to the smell of skunk every morning. And the other day, I took the kids to Wendy's for a little quick meal. It was pretty empty in there until about 7 kids and parents walked in. Well the previously empty table right across from me was soon to occupied by a big plastic bag of LIVE crickets!!! Oh yes, that made me lose my appetite rather quickly. Guess I'm more of a city girl than I thought. But nonetheless, we are really enjoying ourselves here and hope that we close and actually own this place soon.

Halloween was fun. We went trick or treating around our street and one other cul-de-sac off ours. That was more than enough for our little ones. William was Mickey Mouse and Caleb was a Hot Dog. They were the cutest ever! On our journey, we met some neighbors who invited us to a little cookout at their place afterwards. It was really nice to be welcomed to the neighborhood like that. Our previous neighborhood never really did that. That wraps up this post since I just updated above and forgot I had this one in the drafts... oops!

Adiós Primera Casa

So it's 1 week and 1 day before our big move. I am supposed to be packing right now, but I couldn't help myself. As I'm walking around this place, no pictures on the walls and packed boxes on the floor, I can't stop thinking about how far we've come. Nearly 4 years ago, we moved into this house as a newlywed couple. We had our kitty Gizmo and 2 spare rooms. The walls were much the same since it took a while for us to hang stuff up. A few months passed by and we added our dog, Chewie, to the mix. His job was to keep life interesting for us and he continues to do a great job of that. Almost 2 years had passed and we no longer had 2 spare rooms. One of those was now to be William's nursery. So we crammed the guest bed and into the office and so began our "family." As William grew, our house seemed to shrink and with less than 2 more years passing, it became smaller. Our guestroom/office was now to be Caleb's nursery ( /office/guestroom.) More toys, baby seats, swings, and highchairs began filling up the house, leaving not much room for anything else. We are fortunate enough to be able to move into a roomier house in a great neighborhood, but that's not to say I won't miss this place. This house became our home and the place where we began our beautiful family. In this house, we became grown-ups with real responsibilities. We've been through career achievements and career changes. This place holds so many wonderful and happy memories. We always said that this was a good 'starter' home, and that it was. It's hard to imagine anyone else living here, since we built this place. We are the original owners and that is something we will always have. I hope the new owners will be as happy as we were here. And although I'm so elated and grateful to be able to move on, I will miss our first home.

Birthday Week

In 1 busy week, William turned 2 and we flew to Houston to celebrate (Uncle) Richard's 21st birthday. William's party was low key, but really fun. Ma Mere (Annette) came up to visit for his birthday and to help me while AJ was in Spain. We also had William's friends Cailin, Hudson, Owen, Addyson, and Makinley over to celebrate with a Mickey Mouse themed party. Samantha made the Mickey Mouse cake and it was beautiful! And tasty! Ok enough about the party - my baby just turned 2!!! How in the heck did that happen??? I am pretty sure I just had his 1st birthday a minute ago! As time flies by, I'm forced to remember his baby days and reminisce, but I am enjoying these days as well. He's the smartest, most polite 2 year old I've ever met in my life (maybe I'm biased, but I don't think so...) His vocabulary has just exploded and he's got an amazing memory already. It's truly amazing to watch William learn new words and what they mean. There's not one word he does not attempt to say - although many times it doesn't sound anything like it. ("Ja Ma Pel Claude" a funny reference for any "Friends" fans reading this) (And I'm sorry to the French speaking readers for butchering the spelling of that.) He has his tantrums, but the seem to be coming less frequently. He's really just an amazing little boy and I am truly blessed to be his mommy... And I can't believe he's 2 now!!!

Later that week, we all flew to Houston. I will say that I was quite scared to travel with both boys, but it was actually (dare I say it) pretty easy. Annette was with us on the way down and I think we were all prepared for the worst. The worst never came so I decided it would happen on our way back home... Once in Houston, we had a great time. William loved hanging out with his cousins and Caleb was able to meet all of his aunts, uncles, and cousins. AJ was so happy to be there with all his family, especially during football season, and I had a great time as well. Richard's 21st was a success! We went to a bar that I don't remember the name of, and after several shots and drinks... well let's just say he seemed to have a good time. It was a short visit and before we knew it, we were back at the airport. Much earlier than we needed to be, but that's ok. I had my bag of tricks for the kids and several ideas to keep William occupied on the plane. Since it was just 2 adults this time I was prepared. Well about 2 seconds after the plane left the ground, they both fell asleep! What?! What about my bag of tricks? What about the toys I brought? I hadn't planned on them sleeping! I had only prepared stuff for the kids, and nothing for myselfto do. We both sat there, kind of bored, but it was nice to have peace and quiet.

And.... Just a short while ago, at 11am this morning, Caleb rolled over!!!! Yay Caleb! He was on his tummy and just a few seconds later said, "I'm done with this tummy time business, I'm rollin' over!" Yep, he really said that too. (hee hee) He's just 3 months old! I thought it might have been a fluke so I put him back on his tummy to see what he'd do. Sure enough, woop, he rolled over again! I have two genius boys! I'm a lucky Mama!

Slideshows are below.

Single Mom For A Week

So here we are on your average Monday, day 3 of being a single mom for a week. The only difference is that most single moms work outside the home and get a change of scenery. I've been home alone with the boys since Saturday morning, while my husband is off "studying" in Barcelona... yes the one in SPAIN! I've heard from him a couple times already and he says it's just beautiful there. I bet! I promise I won't go on about how jealous I am, how much I miss him, or how bored I've been. I also won't go on and on talking about how lonely it is to be here without family or friends around to keep me company.

But, I will say that the boys have been really well behaved (so far) and we've had a lot of fun. William is cracking me up with his new speaking abilities. He repeats EVERYTHING I say and is talking in 2 and 3 word sentences. This morning I sneezed and he said "Bwess you Mama" completely unprompted! So cute! And the other night as we were saying prayers, we were praying for all the babies of friends and family that are in the hospital. We were naming them off and I got to Baby Jake (Cathy and Wirt's baby) and William has just been saying his name ever since. I think he's really excited to have another little cousin and can't wait to meet him. William also took his first big boy shower today. I decided it was the only way I too, could get in a shower so he came along with me. He brought his little foam letters and played with the water. He had a blast and I could tell he felt so grown up! Caleb is growing like a weed and continues to grow in cuteness too! At his Dr visit last week, he weighed 13 lbs 13 oz and is 24" tall at 11 weeks! Big boy! He's so close to laughing and just loves to smile all the time. It's so beautiful and melts my heart when I see that toothless grin and those little eyes light up when he sees me.

Nothing new is going on with the house search. We've decided to hold out on our 1st choice and resubmit another offer as our close date gets closer. We have a #2 house just in case #1 doesn't work out, so I'm just praying they both don't get sold before we get to them. I've finally posted some of my sewn items on Etsy.com. The website to my store is www.bipobaby.etsy.com. I only have two items up right now of things I have in stock and will soon post a listing for special orders. However, if anyone would like something custom made, please just contact me and I can get it done.

Well, just 2 more days until Annette comes up to visit and keep me company! I am very much looking forward to her stay! I'm supposed to be coming up with a list of things for her to do, but I have not done that yet. Maybe AJ can send me a list for her since I'm just not comfortable with giving a list of 'chores' to someone (well besides the "Honey-do List" ha ha.) He has no problem doing that. :-) Well, he comes home on Saturday and the next day we are having Williams 2nd birthday party!!! I can't believe it - I feel like we just did his 1st birthday party! My how time flies!

No pictures this time, but I'll have some up soon. Ciao!

Hmmm... not sure what to call this one.

Good Afternoon! It seems as I'm on a once a month blogging schedule now. Things are just getting busier and busier it seems. The big news for now is that we have a contract on our house!!!!! After our last viewing on Aug. 30th, the buyers wrote an offer and we accepted (after a little countering, of course!) Yay!!! So we've already had the inspection and the appraisal is scheduled for tomorrow. Things are going smoothly so far and we're scheduled to close on Oct. 30th. Well we've been on the hunt for our next home and on Labor Day found the PERFECT house and the first one that AJ and I BOTH love... so much so that we put in an offer! However, the house is bank owned and is not accepting any offers with home to sell contingencies. BUMMER! Even though we mentioned ours has a contract and set to close, they wouldn't take it. We were pretty heartbroken for a day (well not sure if I can speak for AJ on that) but now it's back to the grind. There's still a chance we can get that house, but it's a great house at a great price so we'd be very lucky if it's still on the market once ours closes. I'm just keeping the faith and I know that everything happens for a reason and it will all work out - it's just a stressful process.

William and Caleb are doing great! Caleb is such a happy baby and loves to smile and he's so close to laughing. He's still sleeping great, but getting up at 5:30am to feed every morning. After 10 weeks it's time to nip this in the bud, so we're cracking the whip and training him to sleep longer. Right away it started working with him sleeping 1 hour later the last 2 mornings and I just started 2 nights ago! William's back in school and loves it! He was so excited to go back and barely even notices me leaving now. I'm kind of sad that he won't be able to continue going there once we move. I'm really hoping we can find something near our new house for him. Potty training isn't progressing much. He will go every so often when he tells us, but he's not so excited as he was. I am waiting until we move and things settle down to enforce the potty issue with him. Oh, and he got his first haircut! He was a wild child before and after, but in the chair he was a perfect angel and did great! He looks like such a big boy now!

AJ continues to be busy with more opportunities happening for him with work and school. He just got an invitation to a prestigious Chamber of Commerce dinner from the Dean of his school - so that's pretty neat. He also leaves for Spain next weekend :-( ( I can't make a sad face big enough) However, I am so excited for him that he has this opportunity. It's going to be a great experience and I truly hope he has a great time. (But don't tell him I said that) I'm really going to miss him (not to mention a wee bit jealous) and I know William will be lost without him for a whole week.

And finally, I'll mention that I have been super busy with BiPo orders. It's been a bit hectic with that, but I'm really excited about it. I even have set up a store on Etsy.com. I will be listing more items soon and will post the link to my 'store' when I do. In the meantime, enjoy the slideshows below of a smorgasborg of pictures of William, Caleb, and things I've sewn.