No tubes!

We took Westin to an ENT yesterday in San Antonio. Fortunately, he did not recommend tubes right now. He said that because he's only had one ear infection this summer that he'd like to just wait and see if he gets more infections this fall and winter. We were very happy with that news!

Lately I've been catching small glimpses of the buddies that Westin and Camden will become. Just this morning the two of them were laughing out loud at each other. I think Westin was amusing Camden, and Camden was amusing Westin! It was a precious moment. And then.... just one minute later I caught a glimpse of the battles that lie ahead as well. Westin had given Camden a little toy to play with, and then decided a moment later that he wanted it back. Camden had a death grip on it and wasn't giving it up, and Westin got quite huffy! It cracked me up that little 5 month old Camden is already giving his big brother a run for his money! Gotta love it.

Tubes?

I had to take Westin to the doctor this morning (both kids went, which is always interesting trying to keep 2 children occupied while we wait for the doc to come in the room... but I digress). We suspected yet another ear infection. Poor guy has been tugging and scratching his ears. He scratched his right ear so much that he drew blood! And... we were right. "Terrible" infections in both ears, said the doc. Again. For the 5th or 6th time since December (I've lost count now....). Apparently the "ear infection season" is from October to May, so the fact that it's August and he is still getting them is indicative that he may need some extra help with those ears. The doc gave us a few recommendations for pediatric ENTs, and we'll be headed to see them very soon. We're fairly certain he'll have to have tubes put in his ears. I know this really isn't a big deal, but still.... it's surgery! And as my RN husband reminds me, any time you're dealing with anesthesia and surgery, there are risks. I'll be glad for our little man to feel better and stop getting these pesky ear infections, but I'm not thrilled that he has to have minor surgery to relieve the infections.

I'm so grateful that he's healthy other than this. It could be so much worse. And if the tubes will help, then I guess bring it on! We'll know more in the next couple of weeks.

Thank You Uncle Sam

There were some very attractive tax credits for home buyers over the past year and a half or so, and The Hansens took full advantage. Late last year, The Homebuyer Tax Credit was extended and expanded to also include "repeat" home buyers who met certain criteria. One of the criteria was that you had to have owned a home for at least 5 consecutive years out of the past 8 years. And fortunately for us, we owned our home in NC for a little over 5 and a half years! The maximum credit for repeat buyers was $6,500, and the law stated that you had to be under contract for a house by April 30th, 2010, and close on the home by June 30th, 2010 (although the June date has since been extended to September 2010 because of the bog-down with loans being underwritten in a timely manner).

When the expanded tax credit was announced late last fall, Jeremy and I had just signed a 9 month lease on a rental house. Our lease was set to expire July 31st, 2010. The lease expiration put us beyond the expiration for the tax credit, so this put us in a bit of a pickle: Do we go ahead and buy a home and just know that we'd have to pay a month or two in rent for a home we were no longer living in (at $1375 a month, that would be giving up a good chunk of cash!)? Or do we wait until our lease expired and then buy a home at that point, and forego the tax credit of $6,500?

Fortunately there was a happy ending for all. We talked to the property management company that handled our lease, and they were able to negotiate with our landlord to amend our rental contract to get out of it by the end of April and pay no penalties! (It didn't hurt that the property management company was also the realtor we used for the purchase of our house, so they certainly had a financial interest in helping us get out of the lease.)

I had already filed our 2009 tax returns long before we closed on the house in April, so my options were to wait and claim the credit on my 2010 returns, or to amend my 2009 tax returns. I chose the latter... I'm all about instant gratification when it comes to money owed to me! You cannot file an amended return electronically, so I mailed it in at the beginning of June, and we got a nice fat check in the mail a couple of weeks ago!

The money is already earmarked for several things. A portion of it will go towards installing granite counter tops in our kitchen (I'm in the process of researching what company we want to use for the installation). YAY! Another portion will go towards paying our $2,000 deductible for our homeowner's insurance claim from the hail storm back in May that damaged our roof. BOO. And the rest will go in savings. YAY!

So the question that many economists and pundits are asking is.... did the tax credit get us off the fence and into a home? My answer is - we still would have purchased a home, but it might not have been so soon. So, simply put: the tax credit got us into a house sooner, but didn't otherwise influence us. Is that considered a success by the economists' and pundits' standards? Who knows. In the end, we have 6500 smackers and we're in a home we love. Thank you Uncle Sam.

Boys

Camden just had his 4 month "well check" appointment, and he's a healthy boy.

He's still a good bit smaller than Westin was at the same age. Here are there stats:

4 months old:

Westin

18 lbs 2 oz (96th percentile)

26 inches long (85th percentile)

Camden

16 lbs 3 oz (67th percentile)

24 and 3/4 inches long (32nd percentile)

I'm so glad I've got two happy, healthy, growing boys.

Spotlight on Westin

Westin is 19 months old. It's pretty amazing that he's already on his way to being 2. Where does the time go?

I really feel like he's on the cusp of exploding verbally, and it produces a very weird reaction in me. He is SO funny with the way he jibber-jabbers in his own little Westin language. He is an extremely verbal little boy and so social. I wish I could capture on video how funny he is when he walks around the house having a conversation with himself and with us. Unfortunately, every time I break out the video camera, he becomes fascinated with the camera and shuts down the talking. Just in the past two weeks, he has started saying more words and phrases that are true English. And this is where the weird reaction from me comes in: part of me is so excited for him to talk so that we can all understand each other (and to know that he is developing normally), but another part of me doesn't want that to happen because we will NEVER get back the precious jibberish that he currently speaks. It's like the end of an era, and it makes me both happy and sad. Odd, isn't it? It's like I'm already grieving the loss of my little toddler that is turning into a little boy before my very eyes. I'm such a sap!

Westin is both a bull and a teddy bear - and sometimes both in the same minute! He has been nicknamed "Bruiser" by some friends here, because he's such a stocky boy that plows his way through a playground. And yet, he can be sweeter than sugar too. He is so precious with Camden. For the most part, he really gets that Camden is to be treated gently, and he loves to hug and kiss him. There is an indescribable joy that Jeremy and I experience when the 4 of us are playing together and Westin loves on Camden. Again, I wish I could capture this on video, but it never seems to work out (for the aforementioned fascination with the camera).

He is very much into mimicking these days. For example, he'll occasionally shake his finger and say "no no" to various things, and we have wondered where in the world he learned to shake his finger like that! Well, come to find out... I caught myself doing it recently! Case solved. We must be very careful what we do around him!

Westin LOVES music. If some kind of song comes on the tv, he drops whatever he is doing and stands in front of the tv and shakes his booty. Literally. It's awesome. Or - he'll just stand there, mesmerized. I can't wait to see how that develops as he grows.

My little man also has a crazy strong throwing arm! Seriously, I'm not trying to toot my own son's horn, but toot toot! The boy can throw. We are often shocked at the accuracy and distance when he throws a ball (or a toy, or a stuffed animal, or a sippy cup.... but mostly balls!). Now, put a golf club in his hand (which we have done... we have a little plastic toddler set) and, well, he's not so gifted. :-) The club ends up getting banged on anything and everything that he comes in contact with. But let's get back to the throwing: he's a natural!

Westin is a great sleeper, and he has begun to get in his crib, look at me, wave and say "night night mama", and them promptly go to sleep. We feel very blessed in this way! He sleeps for 11 or 12 hours at night and then takes about 3 hours worth of naps during the day. You can DEFINITELY tell when he has not gotten enough sleep (cranky, crying, irritable, etc.).

He's a social boy, like his mama, and as my father has said, "a stranger is simply a friend I haven't met yet". In general, he loves people and doesn't like being alone. It's a wonderful quality, but makes for some very long days when all he wants to do is to play with me! I look forward to Camden getting older so the two of them can entertain each other.

I'm sure my husband would add a lot to this post regarding Westin's personality, but unfortunately he's not around right now. We love our little boy so much, and he makes us laugh so much (and also frustrates the snot out of us too!).

What a journey this parenting thing is!

New Roof

On May 15th, 2010 we had a rather intense hail storm here in Fredericksburg. It wasn't huge hail, maybe dime to nickel sized, but it was powerful. We watched it pour down, and Westin was quite intrigued by that weird icy stuff that was falling from the sky!

Here are some pictures:



Unfortunately, that "fun" little hail storm damaged our roof. In the days and weeks that followed the storm, the roofing vultures descended on our neighborhood. If I had a dollar for every flyer that found its way to our doorstep and every roofer that rang our doorbell (always during the boys' naptimes, of course!) I'd be on my way to being a wealthy woman (or to at least buying myself a nice meal).

So... we're in the midst of our first ever homeowner's insurance claim, and we've only owned the home for 2 months! The bummer is that our deductible is $2,000 (very standard in Texas to have the deductible be 1% of the replacement cost coverage). The nice part is that we'll get a brand new roof, AND if we choose a certain energy-efficient kind, we can get a tax credit up to $1500.

It's still early in the process, so I don't yet know how much our insurance company is going to give us. Once we get that figure, we'll start shopping around for the best deal with a local, reputable roofer.

Here's our house (pre-storm). We'll see how this all turns out!

More blogging, please

I was recently told that I don't blog enough. I readily agreed, but it was also nice to hear that someone actually WANTS to read what I write! So... I'm determined to blog more. Not only for friends and family to keep up with us, but also because this serves as a journal/diary of sorts, and years from now I'd like to remember what we were up to during these foggy baby-raising years!

I got busted a couple of nights ago. It was around 7:15pm, and we were winding Westin down for bed. The tv is often on in the evenings, and it's almost always tuned to Nick Jr. Westin has this bad habbit of pushing the power, channel, and volume buttons on our tv. It drives us crazy. Well... on this night Westin did his normal thing, and he turned the tv off. I impulsively shouted "Westin - turn that back on! Mommy was watching that!!!" Um... the tv show was The Backyardigans, a cute cartoon on Nick Jr. And I really and truly was into it! Busted.

Hello... is this thing on???

I won't even begin to make excuses for why this blog has been silent for 3 months. I blog in my head all the time, mentally writing posts that I'd like to publish. But somehow that never translates into actually sitting down to do it. Such is life these days!

We welcomed Camden Daly Hansen into the world on March 12, 2010 at 12:47am. He was 7 lbs, 5 oz and 19.5 inches long. My labor lasted only 5.5 hours long, and I had to push for just a few minutes. It was a completely different experience the second time around! Everything was faster and easier. I am grateful!

Camden is a joy. He is a very mellow baby and rarely cries unless he's hungry or uncomfortable. He loves to snuggle and has no problem being passed around from person to person to sleep in the next willing arms!

Big brother Westin is doing great, and loves to kiss and hug Camden(and sometimes smother him in the process!). In general, he is very sweet and "mostly" tender towards him. I won't lie, though... there have been a few sippy cups intentionally aimed Camden's way. But for the grand majority of the time, he seems to really like his little bro. It has been an easier transition for him than we thought it would be.

Here's our family!

PARENTING.....

..... is hard.

Rewarding, refining, joyful (mostly), and SO worth it. But still, HARD.

I'm just saying.

Okay, that's all.

:-)

The baby in my....

Yesterday I went to a MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) play-date at one of those "bounce-houses". It's a big warehouse-type place with a bunch of inflatables that kids can jump on and play in. Fortunately they had a special 3-and-under section so Westin could play without getting crushed by older kids. He had an absolute blast.

So... there were these twin 3-year old girls there. And they were cute as could be. But let me tell you, they were b-o-s-s-y. You'd have thought they were Westin's mother. They watched him like a hawk and kept trying to tell me what he could and couldn't do ("He can't play with that... it's for big kids." Not true. "He can't touch that." Not true either.) It cracked me up, but at the same time, I was thinking WOW... this stuff starts early!

Little girls in particular, once they really notice that I'm pregnant, get instantly fascinated. One of the twins just wanted to talk about it a lot and asked all kinds of questions, including what the baby's name was, etc. I really don't think a little boy would have been so interested. So I had a rather lengthy conversation with a 3 year old about "the baby in my boobies". Yep, that's what she kept saying. A little confused, clearly, but I didn't have the heart to correct her because she was so earnest in her little demeanor.

Nice. In just 9 more weeks I can finally get that baby out of my boobies!

Hello 2010

Hard to believe it's a new decade.... and that we're into double-digits in the new millennium.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year's! We enjoyed having my parents stay with us over Christmas, and I also got to see my sister Jennie and her family the day after Christmas. Westin was a lot of fun this year. Quite different than last Christmas, when we were adjusting to being brand new parents and were so sleep deprived yet so happy. This year we weren't quite a sleep deprived, but just as happy!

In fact, here is a picture from last year's Christmas and this year's:



















Westin loved opening presents, and he loved playing with what he got. Here are a few more shots of our Christmas morning. You'll notice that our Christmas tree is on top of an end table... this was Jeremy's idea and was the perfect solution to keep our busy little boy away from ornaments and from tearing down the tree. Jeremy secured the whole thing, including the tree skirt, so that if Westin tugged on anything it wouldn't budge! Good work, honey.