In our new home

Well, we've finally made it. Yesterday afternoon we received the keys to our new apartment. It is much nicer than we expected! All the appliances seem newer and there is lots of closet space. We have 1 1/2 bathrooms, and there is a play area in front of our apartment with swings, a sand box, and lots of grass. There seem to be quite a few kids living nearby, and a lot of them seem to be close to Ellie's age. Ellie keeps begging to play outside! The temperature isn't too bad, especially at night.

Our stuff from the moving company isn't here yet, but at least we have somewhere to stay. Grandma Hoffman lent us a blow-up bed and some silverware, so at least we can eat and sleep :) I'll update more as I have time!

Does anyone still read this?

So sorry to everyone that I haven't written in a long, long time. We've been pretty busy with traveling, packing, and just entertaining two kids.

We're on our way to Wisconsin! I am currently sitting on the couch of our (really nice) hotel room in Albuquerque, day one of our drive. It went really well today, with two stops along the way. Both places we stopped at were great fun for Ellie; a rest area with grass to run around in and a fountain to splash in, and a McDonalds with the best kids area I've ever seen. Instead of it being a boring day in the car, I think Ellie actually enjoyed today. She even was able to swim at our hotel before going to bed. I don't think Rowan had as much fun, as he slept all day :) Hopefully the next couple of days will be just as good.

The most exciting news is that the Porters (Zane and Tara) are adding a baby girl to their family. My first niece!

My toddler is keeping me awake at night!

So, Rowan is sleeping well. I really hope he keeps this schedule; it's a great one! He is awake for 2 long stretches during the day, usually about 3 hours long. The other times he is sleeping, about 2 3-hour chunks in the afternoon/evening (with a feeding in between). Then he goes to sleep at night, anytime between 8 and 10pm, and sleeps for a good stretch, usually around 6 hours. He wakes up for a feeding, then sleeps again til about 7:30am. It's great! The only problem: Ellie hasn't been sleeping well. She's been waking up at least twice each night, so in between the two of them, I'm not getting the sleep I should be. She slept through last night though, so hopefully her restlessness is going away.

This time around I have a couple of new baby-gadgets that have been awesome. Thanks to Mindy for both of them! I love the Boppy pillow that she lent me (and oddly, so do a couple of my family members). It's not only great for nursing, but for propping up Rowan, using as a lower-back pillow, and using as a nap pillow (for myself). The other gadget is a swaddle blanket. Rowan sleeps great with it!

At his last dr appt on Monday, Rowan weighed 9 lb. 15 oz. Since he lost weight the first week, that means he gained 20 ounces in 10 days. That's double what most babies gain! No wonder he's already growing out of his 0-3 month clothes. Ellie has a check-up near the end of the month; it will be interesting to see how much she weighs. Her hair sure is getting long! If only I could convince Jason to let her get a haircut :)

We're planning on moving to Wisconsin near the beginning/middle of August. Instead of the last weekend in July, as we've told some people, we'll be going to Tucson the first weekend of August. The moving company will load up our stuff there, and then we'll begin our week-long drive to WI. (We're taking our time). We'll see how our newborn and toddler travel together!

One week old

Rowan is one week old today, so I thought I would update everyone on our family. We are settling in now, and Jason and I have a good nighttime routine worked out. I go to bed around 10pm until Rowan needs to be fed again, and sometimes I'm able to go back to bed. Jason usually stays with him 'til around 2am, and then I take over and sleep in the living room. Rowan has slept for 5 hours straight for the past two nights, so I've actually been able to sleep! He's also had a lot more awake time; for the first couple of days he slept constantly, now he is awake for an hour or two at a time.

Ellie loves her baby brother and doesn't show any jealousy yet. We'll see how she is once we leave all the family, and she doesn't get quite so much attention. She likes to hold him and give him hugs and kisses. She's also having fun with her cousin Bryson. Ellie hasn't had to share her toys before, so she is learning how. Luckily Bryson is so easy-going that he doesn't mind if Ellie snatches her favorites back from him.

Jason found some guys to play basketball with down near the lake, so he was able to have some fun this weekend. We'll probably be up in Kingman some this week to visit family; that will be fun for us.

Announcing...

Our baby boy is finally here! The labor and delivery was super-quick; by the time the nurses realized I was really in labor, he was just about coming out. The doctor barely arrived there in time to catch him! Here's the big guy:



Rowan Joshua Tatum, 9lbs even, 21 inches long.

June 25, 2007 3:50 am


Ellie loves her little brother; she loves to hold him and touch him. She is a little scared of his crying, but I know she'll get used to that soon!


Jason won the baby poll, by a lot. I guess he had that father's intuition.

Long-awaited update

Sorry it's been so long since my last blog; we haven't had much internet access since we've returned. Now that Jason's back (safe and sound), we have our laptop which picks up a wireless signal (most of the time) from our nearby church.

Not much going on here. I'm still pregnant :), and we've done a little bit of traveling. Ellie and I spent a week in Tucson visiting friends and took a quick trip up to Kingman to see some of Jason's family. Ellie sure loved playing with Uncle Jordan! She's also loving having family galore to shower her with attention. We have grandparents, great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and lots of aunts all in town to entertain her. I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable all of the time now, so I think my traveling days are over until after this baby comes. We finally have health insurance here now, so the baby can come any day now (please!). Everything looks good at my doctor appointments, and my doctor seems to be very supportive of natural deliveries, which is something Jason and I really want.

We'll let you know when we have more news, but for now we are just hanging out and preparing for the baby to come.

We're baaack!

Just wanted to let everyone know that Ellie and I are back in Arizona! The flight was long, but really not too bad. Ellie was great and I was as comfortable as I could be. We just got in a day or two ago and we're still dealing with jetlag, but hopefully we should get back to normal soon. Thanks to all of you who were praying for us!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers out there! Especially to our mothers, who we will be seeing very soon!

Ellie's second year montage

Here is Ellie's second year! Don't buy a dvd of this from the company, if you want one, I can make you one of this and her first year. Just let me know!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We have a drought!

It seems that the water system for our house has been tampered with, and we now have no water. For some reason it is not connecting to our place. So, we came home from the Dead Sea with no water in our pipes. We've been given a temporary solution, a hose from a source outside, but needless to say, it is not very convenient. Added to this, I forgot to put our water bottle outside last week, so now we've run out of drinking water too. Crazy! Luckily the delivery men come tomorrow for the drinking water. Who knows when our other water will be fixed.

I forgot to mention that we were in two extremely minor fender-benders last week in taxis. The bumps were less even than going over a speed bump. But it was kind of crazy with them happening within a day of each other. Then yesterday I totally fell outside. I landed on my knees, extremely hard, but nothing else was hurt. I was holding Ellie, so luckily my neighbor was able to keep me from falling on my face or squishing Ellie (or the baby). All I have are bruised and scraped-up knees. Can you tell that God has been protecting us lately? :)

Update on the binky situation: Ellie had a rough time falling asleep that night (she even threw up from crying too much), but her nap the next day was ok. She finally put one of the other binkies in her mouth. When we went to the store that afternoon, we found some really cheap pacifiers (3 for $1.50) that she has accepted as a substitute. So, we should be fine now! Thank goodness.

We're back from the Dead...

The Dead Sea that is. It was a fun trip; we were able to see a lot of things. On Friday we took a minibus up to Madaba, a town about 45 minutes away from Amman. After checking into a hotel and taking a nap (well, Ellie slept while Jason and I watched 2 episodes from 24), we walked around the town of Madaba. It is a Christian town, known for it's many historical mosaics. Then we went back to the hotel for the night, where we swam briefly in the freezing swimming pool before settling in for the night.

Today we rented a taxi (and driver) to take us to Mt. Nebo (where Moses stood to view the promised land), Bethany (where Jesus is believed to have been baptized), and the Dead Sea. It was all fun and interesting, and a lot of walking (more than I thought). Ellie was exhausted by the time we got to the Dead Sea, so she only lasted a couple of minutes in the salty water before having a breakdown. She slept on the bus ride back home.

We had one casualty on our trip. During the scramble off the bus in Amman, we lost the one "good" binky that we had left. She used one in her mouth, and two in her hands as she slept, but now the one for her mouth is gone. She refuses to use the others in her mouth (they are bigger and made out of latex, not silicone), so now she is having a hard time going to sleep. She's been in bed for an hour now, with no sleep in sight. The biggest problem is that without that "cork" in her mouth, she is babbling like crazy. Some could say that this could be the opportunity to wean her from her pacifiers, but we don't want to! Not to mention that we would not pick this time to try to wean her anyways, too many changes going on right now. Hopefully we can find a suitable substitute at a store tomorrow. Where's Walmart when you need it?

Introducing...Ellie, the 2 year old!

Happy birthday Ellie! She had a great/busy day today. This morning we had a mommy & me class at the local bookstore. I made rice krispy treats to share with her friends for her birthday. Then, after her nap, we went to a place called the Fun Factory. It looks like a daycare; it has outdoor play equipment and sand, an indoor playground and trampoline, an art room, a toddler room, and a kitchen where they cook simple things together. Ellie had a blast painting and then cooking and decorating pancakes (and then eating of course). Then she played outside in the sand. After dinner, we had a birthday cake. Here are some pictures of her fun day:

Her beautiful smile:

Dancing at mommy & me class:

Painting at the Fun Factory:

Making pancakes:

Blowing out the birthday candles with Daddy:

Happy Birthday Jason!

Today Jason is 25, a quarter-century! We celebrated with blueberry pancakes this morning, and then a trip to the mall tonight. We went to the mall mainly to eat dinner at a favorite pizza place, and then brought dessert home. Definitely not the most exciting birthday ever, but I'm hoping it was a good day.

Okay, we are definitely going to the Dead Sea next weekend. Especially since it is the next-to-last weekend that Ellie and I will be here!

31 week belly pics

Here it is; the big belly. Actually, comparing it to my last picture 9 weeks ago, it doesn't look too much bigger. I guess I just popped pretty early. Nine more weeks to go til baby brother gets here!

Opinions, please!

We went grocery shopping today, because we were in desperate need of food. The little store on our street that we use for necessities during the week was closed for some reason this week, so we have been out of bread for a while. Our bread doesn’t last long, since it’s all freshly baked in Amman, not stocked with preservatives like in the states. I guess that’s one thing we’ll miss :) Guess what we found at the grocery store?? Generic Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Captain Crunch w/berries! It sounds weird to be so excited about, but American cereal is one thing I’ve really missed while here. There are some things available, but who wants to buy Special K with berries for $7 a box? There is an Egyptian brand of cereal that we usually buy that is about $1.50 a box, but it’s not as good as American. I have bran flakes just about every morning (with a spoonful of sugar of course). This cereal we found was only about $3 a box, so not too bad at all.

Last night we treated ourselves to an expensive, but delicious dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Houston’s, which is similar to…Chili’s, I guess. Ooh, the nachos we ordered as an appetizer were sooo good. The meal, which would have been around $20 in the states, was more like $35 here, but we needed that extra boost to make it until we come home.

Ok, I have a dilemma that I would love opinions about. Ellie has been waking up dry during naptime for a couple weeks now, and the last 5 nights her diapers have been completely dry in the morning! I'm afraid to let her go without a diaper though, because if she did wet the bed, it would be a huge hassle to try to clean her foam mattress. Here are my options (that I see anyway):

- use a new diaper every day
- reuse the diapers if they are dry (I do reuse them after nap for that night). One idea that I saw recently was to put her in undies and then a diaper, that way the diaper is clean and I just wash the undies
- let her go without a diaper

Using a diaper a day isn't too expensive, but it seems senseless to throw away a dry diaper. What do you think we should do?

Fluff stuff

I've ordered my first cloth diapers! I'm going with the cheaper route for the first couple of months, when he'll need his diaper changed so often. There are cloth diapers out there that are exactly like disposables as far as ease, but they are a bit more expensive. We'll be using prefolds/fitteds and covers, so two pieces instead of just the all-in-one diaper. But believe me, it looks sooo easy. And, they are so cute! All I have left is to buy some prefolds, at least for now. (I know a lot of people have no clue about the terminology I'm using, but I'm too excited not to share).

5 weeks to go

Happy Easter everyone! Ellie had a blast hunting down easter eggs, although it took her a good while to find the first egg and realize that she was supposed to pick it up. It was pretty funny watching her look everywhere but directly at the egg.

I've tried out a few new recipes lately. One that was super good was a recipe for chocolate chip peanut butter oatmeal cookies. They were soooo yummy. The best cookies I've ever had are Autumn's mom's chocolate chip peanut butter cookies, but these come in a close second. Then I tried cheese fondue (I've been craving the cheese fondue from Barley Brothers in Havasu). This was not such a success. It tasted fine (actually Jason loved it) but it was more like melted cheese than fondue. This may be because I did not use a fondue pot, so it cooled off and hardened. Tonight I used a new recipe for chicken enchiladas, and they were very easy and good. Not the best, but pretty good. I think my time here has helped me become more confident in my cooking skills, since I need to be inventive in my substitutions and cooking methods. No more strictly following the recipe for me! (All the above recipes are available if you click on the name of the foods.)

I went to the doctor today. The baby is still a perfect size for his age and everything looks good. I, however, have a urinary tract infection and low iron. Both of these results were surprising, since I have had no symptoms of a UTI and I eat plenty of iron-rich foods. My best guess is that I am not getting enough vitamin C to help absorb the iron. So, we walked over to the pharmacy this afternoon to get all my medications. The antibiotic I have is really weird; it's little granules that I put in a cup of water. The granules fizz up and I have to drink it (three times a day). Hopefully this is the last of my weird pregnancy symptoms!

Video of Ellie

Here is a video of Ellie that I took today. She's pretending to open birthday presents; it's really cute!

New friends

Guess what Ellie and I did today?? We went to a toddler Mommy & Me class! The classes just started up at the bookstore we visit. It was sooo much fun! And Ellie was much more interactive than I thought she would be. She was fairly shy, but she never cried and she even ran off by herself sometimes. The class is for kids ages 1 1/2 - 4, but most kids were about 2. We sang songs, read a couple books, did a craft, ate a snack, and then had playtime. This is not a free service; it's actually pretty pricey, but it's worth the interaction that Ellie gets. We'll go once a week until we leave :)

I can't believe Ellie will be turning 2 in less than a month! We're tentatively planning on a birthday party in Lake Havasu after we get back, even though it will be a couple weeks past her birthday. We really want all our friends and family to come, especially since it may be the first time in almost a year that we have seen you! Jason probably won't be there :( but Ellie and I would love to see everyone. We don't have an exact day and time yet, but I'll be sure to post it here when we do.

We haven't gone to the Dead Sea yet, but hopefully soon. I'll be sure to post about it.

Potty-training

Ellie is fully potty-trained! She hasn't had an accident in quite a while (well, besides last week when she peed her pants downtown). She also wakes up dry after naps. This morning she was dancing around as I was getting her cereal (she's going through a phase where she eats the cereal dry and drinks milk out of a cup). Finally she said, "Have to go potty!" Boy oh boy did she pee for a long time! And...her diaper was completely dry! We're so excited! Our only problem now is using toilets when out and about, because for the most part, there aren't any! If there are bathrooms, it is usually a hole in the ground, and Ellie won't go in those. I don't blame her! So, if we go out for an extended period of time, then we'll still be using diapers. Oh, it will be so nice to not have two children in diapers!

Speaking of diapers, we have decided (well, I did and Jason is fine with it) to use cloth diapers with our new baby. We'll still use disposables we already have some, nothing against them, but we don't plan on buying any. There are several different reasons why we have chosen use this method, but a big one is simply cost.

We're thinking about going to the Dead Sea soon. It's so hit and miss with weather right now though. Some days it will get up to 70, now it's back to the 50's. I guess we'll just have to pick a weekend and go, hoping that it's warm enough!