The First Six Weeks

Matt has been with us for 6 weeks as of October 16. I think Mike and I are both amazed at how easily he has adjusted to family life and how relatively smooth Tim's transition from only to big brother has been. Once Matt got some sleep after the first few days of not sleeping much at all, he just made himself right at home and it's like he's been here forever. Now that he's home, his personality really started to emerge, too. He is almost always happy (unless he's really over-tired or hungry) and is very vocal. When we visited him at the baby house, he was fairly quiet. Well, not anymore! He can definitely hold his own with Tim in the chatterbox category, and that's really saying something!!! Like Tim, he also loves music so the 2 of them have a great time at Makin' Music class together and singing the songs at home.


Matt enjoys playing the bells at music class.


These rythm sticks sure are yummy!


It's fun to sing and dance with Pop, Tim and Nana.

He was crawling and pulling himself up when we got back to Astana, but he really moves now. It's great fun to watch him try to crawl after Tim and chase him around the house. He's also cruising around the furniture now. He looks like he's probably going to walk before his first birthday. He's a great eater, but will adamantly let you know if he's done eating or his food is too chunky. He has really filled out. He used to have skinny little arms and legs, but now has chubby baby legs and has gotten taller.


Grandmom and Matt getting to know each other

Matt has already been to 3 birthday parties. He's such a great people person that he enjoys all the activity and meeting new people. One of the parties was Tim's 4th birthday. Tim wanted a dinosaur cake and a moonbounce so on September 30 (his birthday, and Mike's too, is the 29th) we had 13 kids here for a dinosaur-moonbounce party.

Dinosaur cake for Tim's 4th birthday.


The birthday boy blows out his candles.

The day started out a bit cloudy, but looked like it might clear up until about an hour before the party when it started to rain. We quickly came up with some indoor activities since we had neglected to come up with a rainy day plan B beforehand, but just as the first guests arrived the rain stopped and the kids were able to enjoy the moonbounce. Tim spent the evening unwrapping gifts and our house looked like Christmas for a week.

Shortly before Tim's birthday, we came across a 4 bedroom house on 1.6 acres in north Wilmington, not far from where we currently live, during one of our Sunday afternoon open house tours. The house is dated, but has been very well-maintained, has a great backyard, only about half cleared and lots of woods that end at train tracks (you can't see them, but you can hear the trains) and is actually in our price range.


The day before Tim's party, we went to see the house with Nana and Pop (Debbie's parents) and it got their seal of approval. We put a bid on the house shortly after that and in a week's time managed to get our house in shape to put on the market, thanks in large part to Nana and Pop schlepping back to DE one week later to help move some stuff to storage and get the last room in the house painted.


http://www.pattersonschwartz.com/search/pdMain.asp?ID=HK15935&category=1&qID=6880768&pageTo=1&section=areaHomes&sortBy=0

This all happened the week before we left on vacation so the first couple of weeks of October were very busy! We really hadn't intended to buy a new house now, maybe in the spring or summer, but definitely not now, but we couldn't pass up the chance at land in Wilmington and still being near highway access, our jobs, and all the convenient access to stores, doctors, and schools that we've gotten used to in our current house. Keep your fingers crossed that we get an offer on our house soon so that we can get our "new house with the railroad tracks" (the big selling point for Tim).

It was an exhausting week getting the house ready so we were definitely ready for vacation when October 14 rolled around. The kids were real troopers while we were so busy that week and we all looked forward to spending more time together on vacation. I'll save pictures and detail of our trip to FL, Matt's first vacation, for another entry since this has gotten rather long.

It's been an amazing first 6 weeks with Matt, both in terms of watching him grow and develop and especially watching Tim and Matt interact together. As much as kids running through the house drives me crazy, I love to watch Matt crawl after Tim at breakneck speed as he tries to chase him around the loop through the dining room, living room and kitchen. The squeals of laughter as our boys chase each other around is a great sound.


Tim shows Matt how to use shaker eggs at music class.

Stay tuned . . . we'll update you on our family developments every 6 or 8 weeks, probably for Matt's first year with us.