The Luckiest No Matter What!

With all of my extreme planning, I could have never anticipated the crazy ice storm that hit Lansing on Saturday/Sunday December 21st and 22nd.  On Sunday, the boys and I were minding our own business.  Josh was at Meijer picking up groceries and other items needed for baking and cooking for Christmas.  My parent's had lost power the night before in Okemos and the fact that we hadn't lost it yet made me confident we wouldn't.  All of a sudden, at approximately 8:30am, out went the lights.  Josh was on his way home with all of our food.  Super.  We tried to go about Sunday as normal as we could.  I figured maybe that power would be out for a few hours and then we'd be good.  This ice storm couldn't have been THAT bad, I thought, Josh was out driving around the morning after and the roads seemed fine.  By the time the boys got done with their afternoon nap, around 3pm, we knew we needed a plan.  Our house had dropped almost ten ...

So I was given this assignment from my teaching partner on facebook (Thanks Katie!). I posted it here since I'm not very good at keeping things short :) 1.) Being pregnant has been the most honorable thing I've ever done.  Having been on the other side of this --> longing, hoping, and trying everything to be pregnant, I think I have a special appreciation for it that not everyone can fully understand. 2.) Despite how honored, grateful, and joyful I felt about being pregnant, I'm not very "good" at it. If you've read anything I've ever wrote, I am a paranoid, anxious, worried, terrified, crazy pregnant lady.  That stems not only from what I have been through in my infertility journey, but also because I am a control freak and a worrier anyway.  There are so many things you have no control over when you're pregnant and that drove me to the brink of insanity... a lot :) Josh and I could pretty much count on me completely unraveling every couple of ...

The time between six and seven months has seemed to turn my infants into real people.  As I think about them one month ago, at six months, I have completely different boys!  Things We Learned About Nolan Gerard: First and foremost I have to mention that Nolan is a crawler!  I know many of you watched the video I posted on facebook, but I feel compelled to share the story nonetheless :)  It all started on Thanksgiving...my boys are notorious to making holidays and other special days about themselves (a post for another time).  As we were getting ready to take the boys to Josh's parents so we could run the Turkeyman Trot 5K, Nolan started his milestones for that weekend by going from being on his belly, to sitting.  That seemed like a big enough deal to us right there!  On that Saturday, we were playing with the boys in the basement and Josh and I watched before our very eyes, as Nolan army crawled from one spot on the floor to one of our bookshelve...

Sunday November 17th, the weather was crazy!  It was in the upper 60s with a lot of rain, thunder, lightning, chance of tornadoes, and very very high winds.  We had a normal Sunday, which included a visit to my parent's house for dinner.  When we returned home, after dodging (both successfully and unsuccessfully) fallen branches, limbs, and whole trees on our way home, we surveyed our house to make sure everything was fine.  All seemed well until I opened up the curtains to our deck.  There, hanging all over the place, were pieces of my favorite tree.  Josh went out with a flashlight to see if maybe some branches fell or if it was worse.  He found out it was indeed worse.  The tree trunk was split and the tree was completely destroyed.  We were thankful it didn't hit the house, thankful we had power (because many around us didn't), and thankful there was no other damage.  However, tears still rolled down my cheek as I mourned...

I continue to be in amazement of how little time I waste now-a-days.  Today is an example of what I could consider to be a typical, normal Saturday for our family.  Here's a window into all that was accomplished by just me (Josh could fill an entire other list) before 10am (in no particular order): woke up changed two diapers put Nolan into his second, and then his third outfit of the day fed babies ate breakfast played with babies went to school to clean, work, catch up, email, make copies, etc for an hour drove to school and back made a phone call wrapped birthday presents changed twice (into running clothes, into clothes for the day) ran a 5k stretched showered painted my toe nails watched a bit of TV wrote this blog AHHHH Saturdays...

My darling boys are a 1/2 year old!  Are you serious?!?! What we Learned About Nolan Gerard: Nolan had discovered a new friend in his life this month: Primrose the cat.  My boys and Prim have mostly avoided each other and stayed out of each other's way over the last six months, but Nolan is starting to notice and he likes what he's seeing.  Now, if he catches Prim walk into the room, he smiles real big and usually calls out to her in a loud yell and kicks his feet. He will follow her with his eyes and sometimes his body, and will reach for her to "pet" aka grab her.  Prim has also noticed him, they have stare downs, but Prim continues to keep her distance while at the same time being nearish to him.  This has been very cute for Josh and me to watch since we know there will come a day in the very near future where both my boys will be so into her.  Nolan has two teeth coming in right now. One came through the surface about a week ago and the other is j...

The time was 12:30am.  We were all sleeping in the Hundt household after a lovely evening of some yummy food, a disgusting Tiger's loss, and some playtime followed by bath time and bedtime.  Josh and I awoke to a strange beeping noise coming from one of the Angel Care Monitors.  It was a noise we'd never heard before.  We panic every time we hear a beep from there because it could be telling us that one of our children isn't moving/breathing so this noise got the very same reaction.  We were bolt upright in a matter of seconds.  Josh went in to the twins' bedroom to check things out.  Both boys were fine!  However, Nolan's nursery monitor had a red light on it, a light we'd never seen.  Josh fiddled, faddled, screwed and unscrewed, turned on and turned off to no avail.  Something was wrong with that thing and we didn't know what.  It was my turn to investigate.  How hard could this be? I thought to myself.  I had pu...

Things we Learned About Nolan Gerard: My baby Nolan really struggled with sleep this month, but I think we learned that he may not need much sleep to function normally.  One the nights where he would be up half or most of the night I would worry about what his next day would be like.  Wouldn't he be exhausted?  Wouldn't he be cranky beyond repair?  Wouldn't he be desperate to be held?  We came to find out that all these answers were no. He would be his regular self whether he slept all night long or not at all.  During these sleep struggles though, some things about Nolan were reconfirmed.  Nolan gets scared easily.  Nolan loves to snuggle.  Nolan does not like change.  Nolan likes to be a part of any action that's happening around him.  In other Nolan news, he is much more mobile this month.  Tummy time has turned from being something my boys hate to do into something they elect to do themselves.  Nolan can lift hims...