Happy Birthday Max!!

Max climbs in the cupboard at our old house.

Wow! What a year this has been. My favorite phrase, already repeated at least 20 times since yesterday is, "This time last year I was _______________." So..... this time last year Max was 5 1/2 hours old and we were ecstatic and in disbelief that Max was finally here. He is such a blessing.

We are having a small (is 17 people small??) birthday party for him at 5 p.m. today at our new house. We are all moved in and most of the boxes have been unpacked and is feels very homey. We love it!

Party report coming soon........

If We Are The Body

A couple of weeks ago in church the youth performed this song and it really spoke to me. I had never heard it before. There's nothing like hearing the under-10 set speak truth to the grown-ups. I don't know if it'll speak to you or not, but if you have a minute, give it a listen. I know so many people who are turned off by church and it's a shame that some of us who call ourselves Christians have been the reason for that. We tend to forget what we're supposed to be about as the body of Christ and all too easily turn into a "club" for those who fit our mold.

**For some reason my link isn't working - go to YouTube and look for If We Are The Body by Casting Crowns if you'd like to hear it. Will try to fix this later. : ) **

Happy Anniversary To Us!

We're back! Maybe you didn't know we were gone. We just got back from a whirlwind 27 hour getaway for our 3rd anniversary. We went to 4 wineries and then to the Mimslyn Inn in Luray, courtesy of Matt's parents. I think they knew how much we needed a little getaway. Nana (Matt's mom) arrived Monday and hasn't stopped going since arriving. She's been playing with and caring for Max AND packing up practically our whole house while he naps. We move one week from today and most people thought we were insane for going on vacation at this point, but I don't think it could have been timed any better.

If I get time, I'll post more about the wineries and hotel, but until then, here is a slideshow of our trip. Long story short, we LOVED Linden Vinyards, were bummed at the deterioration of Oasis (the site of one of our most romantic dates ever when we first started dating and now it's embroiled in a bitter family fued that is having a really negative effect on the winery) and we had some time to remember why we married each other in the first place. Life gets so busy sometimes that it's easy to let the day to day stresses take priority over everything else.

The hotel was very grand and Matt tells me he wants to write a review of it for the blog, so you'll have to wait for that.

Enjoy the slideshow and I hope to post more soon!

We're Moving!

We got final approval for the new house and we'll be moving on August 21st! I'm so excited and also a bit daunted as I'm realizing what all this entails. Actually, I'm doing my best to remain in denial because I will surely have a nervous breakdown if I think about the fact that we're moving in two weeks AND I am having Max's birthday party at the new house two days later. Thankfully it will just be immediate family so I know they won't hold it against me if the place isn't ready. In fact, I know they'll help me finish unpacking so that's good! Here is a picture of the house and a link to interior pictures.

Sweet Boy

I think he's eating some clover here. The child eats anything and everything. I could definitely place if there were an Olympic event involving jumping from a seated position clear across a room or yard to prevent something from making it into Max's mouth. If I don't make it to him before it gets into his mouth it's pretty much a lost cause. I pray that it's nothing poisonous or sharp and I know I'll see it on "the other side"! You might suggest that I just clean more thoroughly or not sit more than 6 inches away from him to prevent this, but this little guy has super-vision as well as a pincer-grasp that would make Mr. Miagi jealous (remember him catching the fly with chopsticks in Karate Kid?) We all have our gifts, I guess.


A few more:

Why Would a Realtor Rent??

As I alluded to in my last post, many people express surprise when they hear that we currently rent our house and are planning on renting again. Those that don't outright ask "why?" are sometimes secretly wondering and, I think maybe, just maybe they think it means we must not be very good Realtors if we "can't afford to buy". The truth is we could definately buy something right now, but there are many other things to consider other than just whether we can afford it right now. So here is some info on why renting is sometimes the best choice - maybe it will help you or someone you know in trying to decide whether to rent or buy sometime soon.

Why renting is better for us:
1.) First and foremost, with our constant involvement in real estate and tracking the market locally and nationally it is our opinion that next summer/fall would be a better time for us to buy - more house for even lower prices! Since we can wait, we will. We anticipate home prices will fall at least another 10%, but we don't have a crystal ball so we could be wrong! Some people HAVE to buy now and now is still an excellent time to buy, but next year looks to be even better. Since we don't have a house to sell, we don't have to worry about the value of our house plummeting even more in the next year.
2.) Matt's job - the UMC has an itinerant system, meaning they can move their pastors whenever they want to, usually in the late spring. We don't think Matt will be moved next year, but we don't know for sure.
3.) Buying can be a great investment, but you should usually plan on either living there for 5-7 years minimum or be able to and interested in renting it out if the market won't support selling the home at that time. Markets such as the one we saw from about 2002-2005 when you could buy a place and sell it the next week for thousands more are extremely rare. The 5-7 year timeline is a better guideline, though also not foolproof.
4.) When you buy a house you are responsible for sometimes costly upkeep such as replacing the AC system, roof and appliances. Personally, it's been a load off my mind to not have to worry about that in the last year and a half having a new baby and going to one income.
5.) Between us, Matt and I have owned 6 homes (8 residences if you include the duplexes) and been landlords for 4 of them. It has been a great experience for us and we lucked out with our timing, thankfully, but we are comfortable kicking back and being tenants for at least one more year.

So that's pretty much it for why we are choosing to rent for another year. I hope this provides some insight to any of you who are making the choice to move any time soon. Feel free to e-mail me for more specifics if you have any questions! ** Shameful Plug Alert!! (Hey, my baby has to eat - okay?!!!!) **By the way, I do still have my real estate license and I still work part-time with my dad. If you need any real estate help, let us know. I've been doing real estate since 2001 and my dad has been in real estate since he retired from the Air Force 20 years ago. I can't believe it's been that long. We've seen all kinds of markets, so don't worry - things WILL get better with the current housing market. At this point, I mostly give referrals to my dad and I help with the clerical things, but I still show the ocassional house and write the ocassional offer or rental application. I'm willing to be more invloved for friends, so keep us in mind!!

Mi Vida Loca!

I keep trying to find time and inspiration to write a new post, but things are a bit nuts around here right now. In the last week and a half we've decided that we should move to Manassas to be closer to Matt's church. Since then we have been praying and talking and driving the neighborhoods we're interested in and looking at several houses. These are the times it's great that both of us are licensed Realtors. We are able to check the system ourselves, look at houses whenever we want to and write offers and rental applications without waiting around for someone else. We have an application in on a nice end-unit townhouse in Manassas that's a 4-6 minute drive from Matt's church. We should hear in a couple days if we get it or not. Regardless of if we're accepted, we've put in our 30 days notice on our current home, so we will be homeless as of August 31st unless we find something. Good times!*

On top of that, Max had his worst night of sleep since he was a newborn last night. He was awake from 11 p.m. til after 4 a.m. What made it extra fun was the routine we developed over those 5 hours - 1.) Max cries pitifully and in pain, from what I can't tell 2.) Mommy goes in to rock him, nurse him, etc., 3.) Max calms down and falls asleep 4.) Mommy puts him in crib, goes to guest room next to nursery and begins to fall asleep for 5-10 minutes 5.) Max wakes up and cries pitifully and in pain again 6. ) Lather, rinse, repeat for 5 hours. I was really perplexed about what the matter was as I have never seen him like that for that length of time. He was also rubbing his head a lot, so I thought maybe he had a headache or that he had another ear infection. We went to the drs. this morning and we learned that his molars are arriving!

So that's the latest with us. I will try to post some new pics soon!

* For those who may be wondering why Realtors would rent instead of buy, we are thinking of buying next year once prices come down even more. Anyone else who'd like to discuss the market, shoot me an e-mail. It's a favorite topic around here.*

FunTimes

We're back from our first summer vacation since we got married! We had a great time - we first drove 5 hours to Weston, WV for Joseph & Amanda's wedding. It was so much fun staying at the same hotel as my whole family (the Allen side), the Hewletts and Mike & Rossana (friends from church). This was also our first night away from Max. Matt's parents came down to our house and took Max with them back to Pennsylvania where we met up with them the next day. I had a bit of separation anxiety, especially when Max reached over to me and said, "Mama" very clearly for the first time ever just before we left! It ended up being good that he wasn't at the reception as there wasn't much room for him to crawl around so he would've been miserable.

Sunday we stopped at Cooper's Rock on our way to PA and stayed with Matt's parents for the week. We always enjoy our time there. It's a great little resort! Matt's mom always asks what we want to eat and has all our favorite foods on hand. We got to swim and relax by the pool and enjoy many adult beverages as well as take a few field trips. I loved the tour at Hope Acres Dairy Farm and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys factory tours or seeing behind the scenes. We even got a delicious scoop of ice cream at the end. We also visited the Shoe House - an adorable little house shaped like a shoe. Check out my pics to see more of the story behind this unique place.

Once we returned, I got to experience the other highlight of my summer - a get-together with all my best friends I grew up with in church and their kids, spouses AND parents! It was such a special time of reconnecting with lots of laughter.

It was so refreshing to get away and have more than two or three days to catch our breath and enjoy the wonderful family and friends we have.

A Boy and His Panda - A Love Story

I'm a Lucky Aunt!

How cute are Mabel & Weston? Josh took these pictures last week and I just had to share them. The one of Weston looks like he's straight out of The Little Rascals and Mabel's crazy side is evident in the next one. No matter how much they beat each other up, tackle each other and make each other cry it's obvious they love each other a lot!!

Indiana Trip

Happy Fourth of July!

Crazy boy!

My Grandma/Max's Great Grandma, me & Max

Max got his own seat for part of the flight home

We Survived!

Thanks for the prayers! We survived two plane trips and 4 days of a messed up schedule and now we're back home. Max didn't sleep at all on either flight, but he remained entertained by the books, toys and,most especially, the food that I brought along. On Wednesday he was awake from 4:45 a.m. until about 1 p.m. without a nap. I believe he got about 5 minutes of shut eye in there somewhere. He made friends with a little girl at the airport and they crawled all over the place and chased a ball and tried to eat disgusting things off the floor together (twist ties, half of a banana, ants...) He LOVED all the attention and activity at my Grandma's house and seems to be suffering from a new type of ADD - the kind where there are not enough people paying attention to you at home.

I was curious as to how Max would respond to his first experience with fireworks. We went to a park in Beech Grove and waited until about 10 p.m. for the show to start. He sat on my lap, started shaking a little and looked confused and scared, then immediately wanted to nurse and then fell asleep while nursing for the whole show. He even slept as I carried him most of the way back to my Grandma's house. I felt bad about keeping him up so late, but it was fun to go down to the park and see some of my Grandma's friends and hang out with my cousins and aunt and uncles.

In other news, Max is currently the king of TemperTantrumLand, but I think it's because he's getting ready to walk as well as getting some more teeth. I keep wondering if it's just that he's very advanced and is going through the terrible two's at 10 months old : ) . Anyone else have experience with this?? It's very frustrating and I hope it passes soon.

Thanks again for the prayers. I hope to post some pictures from the trip in the next couple days.

Off to Indy!!

Say a prayer for me tomorrow (7/2) at 9 a.m. and Saturday (7/5) at 11 a.m. Max and I are flying to Indianapolis to see my Grandma, cousins, aunts, uncles, 2nd cousins, etc. on my dad's side. We are flying with my dad and brother. We flew there when he was 8 weeks old and it was a piece of cake since he wasn't mobile. Ten months old is a completely different story! I am wondering how I'm going to keep him on my lap the whole time given his new penchant for what I have termed his, "gymnastics dismount" or maybe it should be the landing. When he doesn't want to be held he straightens his whole body and throws his arms straight up in the air so as to render him unholdable and to force the holder to put him on the ground and get in all manner of trouble - it looks a bit like an Olympic gymnast finishing a vault or coming off the balance beam.

So anyway, I don't have high hopes for a relaxing flight on either leg of the trip, I only hope that I do not become one of "those people" with the crying baby. I got prescription ear numbing drops for Max's ears since he is still getting over an infection and the doctor thought these might help any pain from the remaining fluid. I'm thinking that they might be better used by offering them to passengers if things go as I expect.

Wish me luck!

Book Recommendation

Reclaiming Childhood
Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society
By William Crain

This is one of the many books I am currently reading and I highly recommend it even though I'm only about 1/4 of the way through. Having taught in the public school system for eight years, I became very aware of the lack of time and resources for teachers to be creative. There is so much pressure to have kids perform on standardized tests(some of it is good, but much of it isn't) that teachers are just trying to do the best they can to fly through all the material they are expected to cover in the limited time they have.

The pressure to perform and to prepare kids for adulthood doesn't start when kids go off to school. When I was pregnant, I was amazed by all the so-called "brain boosting" products available for purchase and use during pregnancy. Some of the items I remember seeing were head phones that you could put on your belly to pipe in classical music and foreign languages to complete courses, in what I'm not sure, to play for your child. Then when the baby gets here, you can use flash cards, videos, and yes, even sign language to give your child an IQ boost.

I love this book because it shows that children are natural explorers, dramatists, artists, poets and linguists. All we need to do is follow their lead and let them be children. How often do you see kids in your neighborhood playing outside today? I have several friends who teach elementary school who say that watching the kids on the playground is downright sad because the kids don't know how to play with each other. It is summer vacation and it's not uncommon for me to not see any kids out playing on a given day. They're so used to sitting in front of the TV and playing video games that going outside is not a joy, it's a chore. Add to that the fear that many parents have today of their children being abducted and you get a generation of children who are missing out on all the fun and opportunities for creativity that being outdoors affords.

If you have had a nagging feeling that babies and kids don't need all the commercialized products out there to boost their IQ's, that their brains can be challenged by being given safe opportunities to explore and create, check out this book and pass it along to a friend!

10 Months!

Wow! It's hard to believe Max will be 10 months old tomorrow. I swear time is flying even faster in the last few months than it was before. It's a bit risky for me to post an update on him at this moment because he barely slept last night for some unknown reason, which means I am not the most well-rested or happiest camper on the block today!

Max continues to be on the move every waking minute, which is a great workout for me. He loves to climb steps and can make it up two flights in no time at all. He has no idea how to get back down yet, but we're working on it. He is babbling a lot, but so far he isn't saying any words consistently. Last week I pointed to a light and said, "Can you say 'light'?" and he showed me the word using sign language AND actually said "ight!" I nearly fell over! However, he has yet to repeat that word since then. He makes a lot of "mmmmmammmmaammmma" sounds but I don't know if he is saying "mama" or not. Usually he is trying to show me he wants to nurse when he does that rather than get my attention for other things.

I thought maybe he was starting to wean himself from nursing a couple weeks ago, but now he must be going through a growth spurt. Whenever I hold him or carry him, he starts climbing up my side and trying to get in the nursing position.

He is eating pretty much anything I eat, but I try to make sure he doesn't eat junk food. He eats "super porridge" in the morning for breakfast - a mix of frozen food cubes. It usually consists of kale, brown rice, a vitamin A food cube (usually sweet potato), avocado, and a legume (kidney beans this week) into that I mix powdered kelp, flax oil and his daily vitamins. Yummmmmmm! It's actually not that bad. I feel like if he eats that for breakfast he's gotten most of his nutrients for the day so I can relax a bit. He eats things like cheese and fruit for snack and plain yogurt mixed with fruit or breakfast leftovers for lunch and then more yogurt for dinner, or bite sized versions of what we're eating such as chicken and veggies. I should eat as healthy as he does!!

I am still trying to find the time to baby proof. He gets into everything and eats everything he finds on the ground, be it food, dirt, paper, etc. Speaking of paper - this child has probably consumed and entire tree worth of paper. I try to make sure to keep it away from him, but he's drawn to it with some kind of strange magnetism. Maybe I'm not giving him enough fiber??

He loves people and it's fun taking him out to restaurants right now because he enjoys watching all the action going on as well as the looking at the decorations and light fixtures.

He has started dancing when he hears music sometimes, which is super cute. He also loves it when we get on the floor and chase him, then catch him and tickle him.

He's not walking yet, but he can cruise all over the place and he's stood unassisted for several seconds at a time. It won't be long now, so I'd better make time to get the gates up and the drawer latches in place.

He loves books and will sit in my lap while I read 5-6 books to him. He gets a bit annoyed when I won't let him eat the pages though! One of his books has a picture of a panda in it and that seems to be his favorite animal at the moment. It must have something to do with the black/white contrast. He LOVES pandas!

So everything is humming right along here in Max-land. It's hard to believe just two months from now we'll be blowing out the candles on his first birthday cake!

If you'd like to see more pictures, click on the title to this post. Have a happy Sunday everyone.

P.S. Check out his adorable new jammies!!

Happy Father's Day!

Update

No more pink eyes! I don't know if the ears are getting better or not, but Max is taking his antibiotics, so we'll go back for a check up in a week or so and find out how they're doing.

We made it to the wedding Saturday and Max seemed to feel fine. The reception was outdoors and it was HOT and super humid, so we weren't able to stay very long.

Hope you all had a Happy Father's Day! We went to church and heard Daddy preach and then had a birthday/Father's Day dinner with Grandpa Allen since Daddy had to go to Annual Conference in Roanoke right after church (he will be gone until Wednesday night) - bummer to have that on Matt's first Father's Day, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do! I'm stealing the idea for my next post from The Other Max Arthur's Blog. Hope you don't mind WCMA!!!

Quick Update

Hi! Just a quick update - Max has pink eye in both eyes (I guess that means he has pink eyes???) as well as a double ear infection. I didn't know about the ear infection, he hasn't been showing any signs. I took him in to have him seen for the pink eye(s) and because he had a fever last night and today. Now he's on his second round of antibiotics in less than a month, which I wish didn't have to be the case. He looks absolutely pitiful, but his energy seems to be pretty good. Hope this clears up in time for the wedding we're going to Saturday. I also hope he didn't give it to Mabel & Weston since they hung out together this morning. Mabel is the flower girl in the wedding Saturday!!! I'd hate for her to get this. She is really looking forward to wearing her "wedding dress".

Nothing Says Love Like 70 Lbs. of Sweet Potatoes

My sweet husband was the beneficiary of some unexpected good fortune yesterday! He helped haul several thousand pounds of sweet potatoes from one local church to his church for their food pantry and, knowing that Max loves SP's and that they had much more than the food pantry could use, he brought a few home for us. By "a few" I mean around 50-70 lbs. Feast your eyes upon my photo essay and try not to get too jealous. By the way, I am accepting any and all sweet potato recipes as I have but a few weeks to use this bounty. Post recipes in the comment section or send them to my e-mail: sarahallen22@hotmail.com

Some of the loot:

Carcasses of the first batch of roasted potatoes, ready for pureeing:

Carcass of my blender after pureeing about 10 lbs of potatoes:
Sweet Potato & Pear pureed food cubes ready to go into the freezer:
My first batch of sweet potato puree today - this looks to be about 2-3 years worth: The happy recipient of most of the goods - yum, yum, can't wait to dig in! Be sure to check back next week to see a new and improved Max Arthur - now available in orange!

A Day At The Beach

Max went to the beach at Lake Montclair for the first time Sunday. It's a 108 acre lake in our community with several beaches. We met Cousins Mabel and Weston and Aunt Katie and Uncle Nevin there. I hadn't planned on having Max get in the water, so he didn't have a bathing suit or swim diaper on. Once he dipped his toes in, there was no stopping him. He's a water baby!



Actually, he WAS at the beach once before about 8.5 months ago, but he didn't enjoy it as much back then!