Darr Family Blog

Weekly Happenings: Most of the week was average, with the exception of Monday. Since Monday was President’s Day, Paul and Joseph both had the day off. It was also Dollar Days at the rodeo, which has been in town the last few weeks. We decided to go and have some fun. We walked around the different exhibits and had fun absorbing the sights that are “the rodeo”. This year was a bit more fun for Joseph because he was big enough to go on some of the rides in the carnival area by himself. He was pretty excited about that. Oh, and on Tuesday, we got to see some friends of the family (Mike and Debbie Emmett) who were in town (Debbie was attending a school psychologist convention in town). We met up at Bobby J’s for dinner and had a great time visiting.

The Weekly Weather: On Monday night we had a crazy thunderstorm which actually generated several small tornadoes (luckily none near us). I don’t believe there were any injuries, but there was a bit of damage done to some parts of town. Other than that, it’s been downright hot on some days. We even had one day where it was 91 degrees. Crazy to think that this is happening in February. It kind of makes me worried about what summer is going to be like. :/ We had a brief respite yesterday, with a cooler day, but it’s supposed to warm right back up again.

What Paul’s Been Up To: Work, school, Scouts…it seems like it’s rinse and repeat for him. I suppose that’s adulthood. 🙂 We really enjoyed having him home on Monday and getting to have a fun family day. He also makes sure to dedicate part of each day to doing stuff with Joseph so that Joseph still gets “Daddy time”. The past few weeks, Joseph has been going with Paul to Scouts, which has been fun for him.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mainly taking care of the kids (still getting used to putting an “s” at the end of that word). Really not that much different in my life this week, either.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: I took her in for her two month check-up (that seriously came up fast). She is 22 and 1/4 inches long and a solid 12 pounds. She had to get some immunizations, which she took like a champ, only crying during the shots themselves. A few hours later, however, she woke up from a nap just screaming. I got some Tylenol into her (because I could tell the crying was pain-related), but it took a while for it to take effect. Poor girl! After sleeping A LOT and another dose of Tylenol, she seems to have returned to her normal, happy self.

This Week in Pictures:

 

Weekly Happenings: This past week was pretty average. It did contain Valentines’ Day, but since we’re sort of home-bodies right now, we didn’t do much on the actual day. There was one day that Paul could tell Joseph needed to get some energy out, so we loaded everyone up and went to the park. It was right before I needed to feed Abigail, so I brought a bottle/bib/burp cloth with us and changed her right before we left. I was a bit apprehensive about feeding her there (the only place I’ve fed her other than home so far is church), but it went fine. Paul took Friday off since he had a camp out over the weekend. That enabled him to still sort of have a “Saturday” (in other words, a day where he could spend part of the day with us and the other part with his homework/work around the house). Since he did that, after he walked Joseph to school (I stayed home with a sleeping Abigail), he, Abigail, and I went to lunch. It’s been a while since we’ve been anywhere without Joseph…I almost didn’t know what to do since I wasn’t needing to help him out with food and such, haha.

The Weekly Weather: A little bit of this, a little bit of that…typical South Texas weather, I suppose. It’s sort of funny. The cloudy/rainy days have been warm and the clear, sunny days have been cold. That’s sort of opposite of what my brain says it ought to be like. We did have one kind of crazy thunderstorm (that Joseph miraculously slept through). There was one especially loud clap of thunder immediately after a lightning strike, so I knew it had to be close. I assumed it hit the radio tower that is in our neighborhood. The next morning, I found out it actually hit a house on the other side of our neighborhood. 🙁 The family is okay, but they are staying in a hotel while their house gets repaired. People in the neighborhood are collecting donations and whatnot to help them out.

What Paul’s Been Up To: His typical week of work and school with a camp out thrown in. I’m glad I got him the foam mattress for the bench in his office for Christmas because he was able to take it to the camp out (it was in the back yard of one of the other leaders whose house is on a really large lot, so he has a HUGE backyard) and sleep rather comfortably, I assume (I haven’t asked him about that…I probably should ask him how it went). He surprised me the day before Valentines’ with some roses. I think I’ll keep him. 😉

What Sarah’s Been Up To: My typical week of shuttling the kids around. Not much else to add, actually.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He enjoyed the Valentines’ Day party at school, giving and getting Valentines’ and whatnot. He also did something pretty cute for me. When Paul had gotten the roses for me, apparently he had also gotten a heart-shaped box of chocolates for Joseph to give me on Valentines’ Day itself. Joseph told me he was going to make a treasure hunt with a surprise at the end for me. I figured it would be a toy of his or something and that he just wanted to do the treasure hunt for fun, since he had seen Daniel Tiger (a PBS show) do one that morning. He made notes for me to follow, which led me to the box of chocolates hidden in his closet. It was a fun surprise, for sure!

What Abigail’s Been Up To: We switched her from her zip-up swaddlers to larger ones (that have these sort of wings that you wrap around her once you put her in the sleep sack itself). She seems happier with more room, though in just the last day or so she has started to fight the swaddle a bit (probably since she can actually wriggle her hands out of the new sleep sacks a bit easier…the zip up ones only had the opening at the neck, so she couldn’t really get her arm up that high. Last night I still made her stay swaddled, but after her early morning feeding (did I mention she slept from about 9:30 to 5:00?! First time, which was divine!) I left her arms free and just wrapped the wings around her body. She seemed to fall back asleep fine, but when Paul went to check on her as she was fussing a bit around 7ish, he said she was practically doing windmills with her arms…almost as if she didn’t know what to do with her arms out and she wasn’t sure how to stop. I’m not sure I’ll leave them free tonight. I guess I’ll see if she fights it hard-core again or not. Oh, and a fun thing: I stood in front of a mirror with her to see what she would do (since she’s focusing on single objects more). She looked a bit confused at what she was seeing (I’m guessing: “How can Momma be holding me AND be over there? And who is that baby she’s holding?!). 😉 Then, when I was putting her car seat in the car one day, I could tell she focused on something in her “rear view mirror” (the mirror that’s on the headrest of the seat her car seat occupies which is there so I can see her from MY rear view mirror). She then popped out a huge grin. I looked to see if I could see what she was grinning at (I thought, perhaps, that she had seen herself and smiled) and could tell that she was looking at the reflection of me. 🙂 Cute girl! Oh, and another funny story: As I was holding her up to my shoulder to burp her after a meal one day, she pulled her head back so she could see me, gave me a huge grin, and then promptly burped (luckily it was a dry one) in my face. She then smiled at me again. I think she’ll be able to hold her own with her older brother just fine. 😉

This Week in Pictures:

 

Weekly Happenings: This blog post is being written a little later in the day than I normally do because when I went to write it earlier, I discovered that someone accessed my blog and did all sorts of nonsense (a post telling me that I’d been hacked, random links for medication inserted into different posts, etc.). I was irate and worried, trying to figure out how on Earth we were going to fix it (thinking about editing each post to remove the links just hurt my brain). Luckily, Paul had backed it up fairly recently, so with some work, he was able to restore everything. Yeesh. Some people irritate me…at any rate, here’s my blog post for the week. This past week was relatively laid back. We didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary. I’m okay with that, since I’m still trying to find my groove with handling two kids during the day (Paul is a huge help in the evenings and overnight).

The Weekly Weather: Hot! For February, that is. There have been days where it’s been over 80 degrees, even. Though, we did have one or two random cooler days (in the 50s and 60s) thrown in (it wouldn’t be Texas if we didn’t, ha).

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been busy with his regular stuff. He also has helped Joseph get some practice in with his new bike. Oh, and he’s started on a small home improvement project: making a can sorter for all the canned goods we have in the pantry which makes it easier for us to cycle through the cans (we like to keep a lot on hand for food storage purposes, but we don’t want them going bad, so we make sure to cycle them through). I’ll post pictures of it when he’s all done. 🙂

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mainly shuttling both kids around, getting stuff done during the week. I had forgotten how exhausting the “newborn” stage is. Luckily, I have a great support system. As I mentioned before, Paul has been a huge help and so has Joseph (he willingly is on “binky patrol”, which means making sure Abigail has her binky if she’s upset in the car or swing and he also throws away dirty diapers without complaint).

What Joseph’s Been Up To: School, homework, and playing around the house (and doting on his baby sister). He enjoys practicing riding his bike riding and having Pokémon battles with Paul.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s starting to coo a little bit here and there. She’s also started fighting sleep during parts of the day. Luckily she isn’t at the point where she makes herself overtired and crazy cranky. She’s a pretty chill baby, actually.

This Week in Pictures: I’ve found that my phone doesn’t get pulled out as often to snap pictures, haha. I did get a few, though (and Paul got a great one of Joseph on his bike).