Look what I made!

These are to hang on the wall in Rowan's room, and they match his room theme. I painted them all by hand! I did look at someone else's painted letters online to get an idea of what patterns to use, but I drew and painted them all myself. Now I have the motivation to get his room put together :)

Rowan started sucking his thumb. We'll see if it sticks, because Ellie sucked her thumb for a couple of weeks, but then dropped it. However, Ellie used pacifiers and Rowan doesn't. So, we'll see. He is still sleeping well. He usually sleeps about a 10 hour stretch, eats, and then sleeps for a couple more hours. A couple nights ago he slept for 12 hours straight! I swear this boy is turning out to be just like Bryson (sleeps well, super-mellow, sucks his thumb). Maybe Tara's baby girl will be just like Ellie.

Ellie is so stinkin' smart. The things she says just amaze me. Yesterday she was saying "juice, juice" over and over. Then she came up to me and says "Juice starts with J." We work with her on what sounds letters make and how words are spelled, but we never told her that one, she figured it out on her own. She'll be reading before she's 3; I just know it! The thing is, learning is fun for her. Oh, she's also very tricky. This is a conversation we had recently:

Ellie: I'm going to have trail mix when we get home

Me: Ooh, that sounds yummy

Ellie: I will share with you mommy

Me: Thanks Ellie! Will you give me a white chocolate chip?

Ellie: I won't. But you can have a raisin!

Me: Gee, thanks Ellie.

Ellie: Mommy, I will give you TWO raisins!

She's so nice to share the healthy part and keep the yummy part to herself.

Video

I just watched this video on a friend's myspace page, and it made me get all teary! I wanted to share with all of you.

My 100th post!

First of all, I would like to make a public apology for not being good at keeping in touch with people. I'm horrible at emails and phone calls, and I don't even blog as often as I should. So, sorry to everyone!

Rowan had his 2 month check-up yesterday. It was a couple weeks late with us moving and getting new insurance. Oh, by the way, we get great insurance with Jason being a graduate "employee." It's only thirty-something dollars a month for all four of us, and just about everything is free! So, the doctor billed Rowan as perfectly healthy - 12 1/2 lbs, 24 1/2 inches long. He's just about average in weight and head circumference, but above average in length. I thought he was above average chunky, but I guess not! Although he does wear 6-9 month clothes now. He still sleeps a good part of the day, and can usually only stay awake for about 1 1/2 hours at a time. And a 8-10 hour stretch at night, a quick feeding, and then another 3 hours or so! Boy, if we could be guaranteed that future babies would be as happy as Rowan and sleep as well, we might have a couple more!

Now Ellie, well I guess you could say she is a two-year-old. She definitely has her defiant moments, and it's getting worse with the influence of her new playmate. The two-year-old that I watch has quite the attitude, and Ellie is starting to imitate. I'm hoping that it's just a phase, but for now we are working on "talking nicely" around the house. I'm sick of hearing "Stop it mommy, I don't want to do that!" But 80% of the time, she is as sweet as can be. "Oh, thank you Daddy for making me these cheerios!" And no more shyness around strangers! She is quite outgoing with all of our neighbors. Whenever anyone asks her what her name is, she never says "Ellie," she always says "Elizabeth." I have no idea why, because we never call her Elizabeth. But it works, because everyone understands Elizabeth, but hardly anyone understands when she says Ellie.

Jason has had 2 weeks of classes so far and he likes them. His at-school schedule is great, being at the university for only about 6 hours total, since one of his classes is on-line. So he is here about half of the time I watch the other girls, which is good because the 3-month-old girl is not too keen on being away from mommy! There is a great bike path he takes that goes from our apartments, along the lake, to the university. Jason also found a group on campus that meets on Saturdays to practice Arabic, and our apartment community center has basketball on Sundays.

We have attended the same church for the past two weeks, and so far we like it. We put both kids in the nursery (yes, even Rowan *sniff*) and they seem to like it. The first time we went, Ellie walked right into her classroom, turned around and said, "Mommy, you're coming right back, right?" and when I said yes, she happily went off to play. Amazing!

Oh goodness, I have to go to bed! Rowan stays up late and Ellie wakes up early, which is not a good combination for me. If Rowan was our only, I could sleep in until 9 or 10, but Ellie likes to wake up with the sun.

Craigslist - our new favorite store

Snowsuit for Rowan - $5

Snowsuit for Ellie $5

Down jacket for Jason - $20

TV and stand (attached) - $50


Bike for Jason - $20

Newer bagless vacuum - $15

Bumbo seat for Rowan - $20

We are never moving again!

I am so sorry to disappoint all of you who are waiting for us to come back to Arizona. After everything we've been through and all the money we've spent getting our stuff here, we are staying right here in this apartment forever! Yes, our stuff finally came yesterday. I'll spare you all the details, but in short we had to rent a truck and haul everything into our apartment ourselves. This wasn't completely the fault of the moving company, but partly due to construction on the streets near our house. It was either move it ourselves, or pay them $500 extra to do it. After being fed up with the money and time it was taking, we refused to pay them more.

This decision was almost a disaster. What were we thinking? How were Jason and I going to move all our stuff into our apartment, and watch our kids at the same time? It worked alright at first; Rowan was asleep and Ellie was watching a movie. But really, I'm not very strong. Jason and I moved 4 huge boxes together and by the fourth one, my arms were giving out already. But...nice neighbors to the rescue! One woman sent her husband to help us, at the perfect time because Rowan woke up. One neighbor offered to watch Ellie. In no time, there were 3 other guys helping Jason unload the truck. To top it all off, the original couple invited us to dinner at their place after the truck was empty! We had a great time with them; they have two girls, ages 2 and 1.

Our stuff is finally here!! We are so extremely excited. I finally was able to rock Rowan to sleep this morning instead of walking him. And, we have things to sit on!

Well, we probably will move again. But this time we are selling/giving away all our furniture and just buying more when we get to the new place. We'll probably buy it from craigslist :)

Rowan "talking"

Rowan "talking"

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I have a job!

Well, it didn't take long, and I found a great job for me. When school starts, I will be watching the 2 girls that I posted about before. Since they are close in age with our kids, I'm hoping that they will be great friends. Both of the girls are sweet, although the oldest has a little teenager attitude sometimes. It's so hard not to laugh!

The temperature is coming back up, even thought it's still rainy, so don't worry about our kids being cold. Hey, I can always put them in their snowsuits! The church we visited on Sunday was okay; the service was pretty dull, but the people were super nice. One man even offered us an extra microwave that he had, and he delivered it to our house yesterday! I wish their services were better, but we'll check out more churches.

I keep forgetting to tell Tara to make her jealous - I can get cheese curds (squeeky cheese) with my WIC checks!

No moving truck yet :(

Well, no stuff for us yet. It's uncomfortable to be sitting on the floor all the time, but at least we all have beds of some sort. We bought a toaster oven since we threw out our old one, so we at least have something to cook with. It's amazing what all you can cook in a toaster oven! We've made burgers, biscuits, bratwurst, and corn on the cob, just to name a few examples. Our poor kids though. The high today was 61 degrees and it was raining all day. It still is actually. And none of us have warm clothes. The only kind of warm clothes the kids have are their pajamas, so that's what they wore when we went to the bank today. I'm pretty sure I was the only person with a tank top on when I went to the grocery store. And of course our umbrella is packed in our stuff. Hopefully we'll get to Walmart soon to buy another one, because it's supposed to rain until Thursday or Friday.

I've discovered craigslist.com! For those of you who haven't, it is a website where you can find stuff for sale in your own city, so you can go pick it up instead of having it shipped to you. We're picking up 2 snowsuits tomorrow, one for each kid. And they are only $5 each! I also found a potential new job on the website. Monday we are meeting a family in need of childcare while the wife teaching at the university. It would be about 12 hours a week, and they have 2 girls who are almost exactly the same age as our kids. Apparently the almost 3-year-old girl is quite a chatterbox, so it will be fun to see her together with our own little chatterbox! They also have a 3-month-old daughter. They would come to our apartment, so if the two babies are both fussy at once, Jason will be here most of the time to take Rowan. It's practically the perfect job for me! Hopefully it works out.

I've found a church for us to check out tomorrow morning. If we don't like it, then Jason can pick the next one :)

Just a quick hello from Rowan

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?