Tough Start

We had a tough start to Kaleb's first day with Gunnie, but he ended up being just fine. Given the relatively stressful situation I left work a little early and the three of us went to the beach. I really love being at the beach in the late afternoon/early evening, the light is great and it usually isn't hot. Anyway I have attached several photos from the beach.

This weekend we will be heading out to Cape Cod and staying with Cara and Jeff at a house they have rnted in East Brewster. Oddly enough its my first time out on "the Cape". I am excited although I don't know the best way to handle the traffic.

Keeg

Hot Weather Returns

The cool and dry weather of the middle of last week was officially replaced with classic summer weather. Apparently there was even a record high temperature at Logan Airport yesterday of 96 degrees. It was hot in Merrimac, but not too bad. We did go up to my mom's house and went swimming, but it was a little toasty to be refreshing (ninety two degrees). We spent the rest of the day laying around and watching a bit of tv. The house stays very cool in the hot weather so the fact that we don't have AC downstairs isn't really an issue.

Today I got outside early and cleaned up the back of the right side of the yard and now the yard work, at least the cleaning up, is nearly complete. I opened up a ton of new space and now we just have to decide what to do with it. My initial thoughts are to plant some grass seed, but we may end up putting in some sort of a vegetable garden for next year. Either way the mess that had been there is gone, it was just a bunch of dried up old weed stalks and a rotting arbor that collapsed long ago. The grapes over there are crazy they have grown up the apple tree and up towards the willow tree, some of them are at least twenty feet off the ground. We really need to figure out what we are going to do with them, since they seem a little bit out of control.

Kaleb has been handling the heat fairly well, but it has made him extra tired. He has really been downing solids very well and moved on to pears this past week. I have been working with him on his standing.

Finally, tomorrow is the first test of Kaleb spending the day at my mom's house without Jennifer or I there. Jennifer has a class all day at school and I have to be at work. Luckily I don't have to leave for work until 9:30 so he will only have to last six hours. So far whenever we leave him there he just cries the whole time, its going to be a long day for all involved, but hopefully we can get him to understand that we will be coming back.

I'll keep you all posted on how it goes tomorrow.
Keeg

Kaleb's Six Month Party

This past weekend we had a little get together to celebrate Kaleb's six month birthday and our housewarming. We had a ton of people here and did some cooking on our new grill (thanks to the in-laws). Everbody seemed to have a good time although they all left before we actually got to eat the cake Jennifer made. It worked out pretty well for us though since we had an entire cake to enjoy over the last couple of days.



Since Jen's parents were stayed with us we were able to cut down a bunch of trees. The yard is really coming along. I finally got a start on the back and right side of the yard. I can't believe how good it looks, it should be done just in time for autumn :P


Kaleb is doing better than ever, he is now eating solid foods such as oatmeal cereal, peaches, bananas and apple sauce. Tonight it was really cute because he was really excited about eating. Jennifer would move the spoon towards his mouth and he would open it right up and do his pit bull impression as the spoon approached. He was downing the food like crazy. He also kind of took a bottle this morning, which is some major progress. We went over my mom's house for a little while and left Kaleb there and as is typical for him lately he cried like crazy. It is certainly going to be interesting in a couple of weeks when Jennifer goes back to school.

The other big news was with the house. The roofers finished our new roof in just a couple days. It looks really great and we are really excited about having that huge task behind us. Now we need to focus on the wet basement and getting it dried out.

Thats the update for now.

New Mower

I know I have been bad about doing entries, but you have to understand I am now a homeowner and need to do lots of yard work. Speaking of which, over the weekend we went out and bought a new lawn mower. It is one of the manual one's, as in it doesn't use gas or electric. I know people probably think I am crazy, but for the size yard we have I think it is good enough, plus it is good for the environment. We ended up buying it after my mom refused to buy us one although she said she would get us a gas powered one if we wanted it. The other important bit of yard work I did this weekend was cleaning the gutters. They had been pretty bad and hadn't been cleaned in so long that there were five inch maple tree seedlings growing in them. I quickly used my new ladder (thanks dad) to clean them out and now I am just waiting for a rainstorm to see if they work.


Kaleb has been doing very well. We are still struggling to get him to eat out of a bottle and he will have about three spoonfuls of food before he starts whining. While the food hasn't been going well, Jennifer has done a great job of getting him into a nice bed time routine. It is sometimes a bit of a struggle, but seems to be getting easier every night. He has been very vocal lately and is constantly yelling or talking to himself. He gets more personality by the day.

This weekend we are having a house warming/six month birthday party. It should be fun and also good to have some friends and family over to our new house.

Keeg

Another Milestone

Yesterday Kaleb was standing up in my lap and so I took a chance in stood him up next to the foot stool for the chair and he stood there for a good two minutes. His legs stayed strong and didn't buckle.

Keeg

Long Time No Post

My apologies for the huge delay between entries. It has been a very hectic over the last week between moving, closing, moving and work stuff. So last weekend I ended up driving back and forth between Amesbury and Somerville about six times, on the bright side we got most of our stuff moved. On Monday night we had the walk-through of the new house, which went well. However, near the end of the walk-through we got a call saying the mortgage company was having trouble verifying Jennifer's employment and the closing was postponed from 9AM to 1PM. We tried our best to keep things on schedule by calling Jennifer's HR worker, but the mortgage company needed to talk to them at their work number. The next morning things were find and we went through the entire closing and received the keys. The catch was that it was getting late in the day and they weren't sure if they could get the house "On The Record", but the attorney gave us the keys and let us go. Now the seller also closed on a place earlier in the day and couldn't move in until we were "On The Record". Anyway we started moving in when we got a call at 3:45 saying the closing still wasn't "On The Record" and almost had to move our stuff back out. At the very last minute everything worked out though and we were able to continue the move.

Since then we have really settled in and it feels like we have lived here for years. Jennifer has done a wonderful job of unpacking and we are pretty much all moved in at this point with the exception of some crates of clothes on the back porch. I have been hard at work in the yard. Yesterday and today I spent a good eight hours total lopping, sawing and raking. You can really see the difference in the front corner of the yard where I have really cleared out a bunch of stuff and it is really coming along.

Now for the update you have all been waiting for, Kaleb. He has handled the move relatively well except for his sleeping habits. Before we left he would go to sleep without too much difficulty, but since we have been here it has been a real struggle. Tonight has worked out the best, but it didn't come easy. The other problem is that we are so tired and don't have the energy to battle with him so we have been letting him sleep in our bed. Developmentally he reached a new milestone by rolling over. He has only done it once, but we were quite proud of him when he did it.

Okay I am tired it is time for bed now.

Keeg