August Recap

We made it back from Camp Buffalo Bill in time to go to the Home Depot craft day the next day. This was Pierscen's second activity. He made a pencil holder and chose to paint it bright Home Depot orange. It has yet to get any use... but it's a fun activity none the less.

One of the big changes in August was that we moved Pierscen into a toddler bed! Our friend in the ward gave us their old one. We are super grateful! P was so excited about the bed.

We didn't take down the crib in case we needed it for P again, and we will need it in a few months anyway. Saves some effort.

P piled in all his stuffed animals and hid beneath them. He giggled like crazy at the prospect of sleeping in the "big boy bed."

The first attempt didn't go so well. He kept trying to come out of his room (which was expected.) I was too tired to deal with it, so the first try ended with me putting him back in his crib. He was furious about it, but he fell asleep anyway. That first night went pretty well. he did wake up part way through the night crying pretty hard. I wondered if he had fallen out - but even if he had it's a pretty minimal drop, so I wasn't worried about him getting hurt. I went into the room to investigate. The room was extremely dark (where was the nightlight?) and I found myself groping my way around the room trying to locate him. I found him behind the headboard. In the picture below you can see that it was pulled away from the wall a bit. I held him for a while until he was back asleep. I left baffled, but amused. I have no idea how he ended up back there. The next morning I asked him to see if he could fit under the bed, which we learned he can't fit. So he didn't climb under the bed and fall asleep. There is a chance he fell asleep behind the headboard and woke up confused, but I think more than likely, he woke up and had no idea where he was and wandered into the corner. It's sad, but pretty funny. Since then he has done great. Sure, we still have days where he tries to get out of his room, but he has done really well in the bed. The only weird thing about it is that he has chosen to sleep with his pillow at the feet end. I think he must not love the railing. I am so grateful to have that transition out of the way! I was dreading it, but he did well. And it will make things with the new baby much easier.

August was filled with great play dates with his pal Jackson. Aren't these two so stinking cute?

Jackson is going to be Spiderman for Halloween and he let P try on his costume. He thought it was hilarious and it was almost impossible to get a picture of him because he wouldn't stop running around.

I don't remember the exact circumstances of the picture below other than the fact that he came home extremely tired and curled up on the floor. He used his life jacket as a blanket. He didn't actually fall asleep, but it was pretty funny.

I celebrated my birthday at the beginning of August. My b-day fell on a Sunday this year, so we weren't able to "do" much, but it was still a great day. I actually forgot it was my birthday until Ryan and Pierscen started whispering secretively to each other and disappeared downstairs. They came back with a delicious surprise: Ice Cream Cake!

I'm still not sure how I didn't see it in the freezer downstairs, as they had purchased it several days before my birthday. Dumb luck I guess! I was very surprised and very happy. What a delicious breakfast!

Surprisingly, Pierscen wasn't too keen on eating just ice cream for breakfast, so he insisted on cereal too. Psh. What's with that? Haha.

And here are your 22 week pictures...

We had a couple big projects during the month. The first one was creating a new fence for the side of the house. We had been using the old fence - which fell over shortly after we moved in because it wasn't secured to anything besides the house with a few screws - on its side until we could build a new one. Well, the time finally arrived. For this section - I give Ryan all the credit.

We wanted to do things right, so Ryan dug several holes to put in metal posts. And I mean several because we kept running into issues with each one. It took a while, and a LOT of effort on Ryan's part, to get two useful holes. Once done, we finally got the posts in. We are using reclaimed oil pipe instead of the shiny posts you normally see because A. It's cheaper and B. It's much tougher.

Pierscen spent most of his time cruising around on his scooter telling us, "Bye! I'm going to work!" (Ryan rides his bike to work most days, so this was Pierscen's equivalent.) I spent most of my time following him around and making sure that he didn't actually try to make it to Ryan's work. I helped Ryan out when it came to putting the fence slats up, getting them straight and holding them in place. That's about as much involvement as I had.

Pretty soon we had a gate! This was Pierscen's first approach...

Check out that beauty! The first three slats on the left are fence. The rest is gate. I thinks it's amazing.

Here is the view from the back - the only evidence that there is a gate. We used a gate kit that was awesome. Made it much easier - and much more steady.

Now the rest of the fence... that's a different issue. It's completely falling over. The rope on that tree is not to keep the tree up. It's holding the fence up. This is a big reason that we are using pipe instead of wood posts. It's falling over because the wood is rotting. No need to worry about that with metal pipe! The rest of the fence will take time though.

I am super happy with how the gate turned out. I am so grateful for Ryan! He is such an incredible guy. He can seriously do anything - which I will prove even more later.

Proof that the toddler bed is going pretty well... (Sundays are rough. Trying to take a nap before church at 1 pm and then when he finally does sleep, I have to wake him up. Poor kid.)

Summer time is great for park visits.

And sunbathing. ;) Well, sort of sunbathing. I showed him how nice it could be to lay out on the deck, even if it was mostly in the shade.

Ryan bought P a t-ball set. It has been so much fun to watch him. He loves to go outside and practice when Ryan gets home. I love it.

One of the best things about summer is garden grown tomatoes. Seriously. Nothing is better. And nothing beats home made salsa.

The main reason that the fence needed to be postponed was for this project: Time to tackle "the wall." From the moment we moved in, we have wanted to put in a retaining wall along this section of driveway. It's just a massive project to do on our own. But it was time...

We ordered the bricks. Believe it or not, this was not enough. (More on this later).

Knowing that I wasn't going to be terribly useful for this project, I vowed to myself to do whatever I could. (24ish weeks preggo). So I decided to move all the wood that I could reasonably lift. Go me!

 

That done, it was time to start digging out the wall. We learned when I went to order the bricks, that in order for the wall to be stable, anything over 6 feet (sometimes less) should use geogrid, which is like a netting. You are supposed to dig back 4 feet behind the wall and roll it out every few layers of brick. This wasn't something we were really planning on doing, but it had to be done. The problem was, this wall was nothing but rock! It was going to take all summer just to dig it out.

My sweet friend Tanya volunteered her husband to come help. When they arrived and Justin was what an impossible task was before them, he had a wonderful epiphany. He had a tractor! Ryan drove him to the place where the tractor was stored and Justin drove back across town with the tractor.

It was the most wonderful thing in the world! In a matter of hours they had the whole thing dug back. Ryan asked our neighbor if he would move his truck so we could do this. Honestly, we would probably still be digging that wall out without the tractor's help - and it's the middle of October! Thank you, thank you, thank you Justin and Tanya!

Shortly after Justin and Tanya left, Pierscen disappeared for a moment. When he came back, he was talking to some neighbors in the street - pantless. Ryan asked where his pants and underwear were and he directed us to the new gate... where he had christened it. Hahaha. Oh boys will be boys. Better than peeing his pants.

I also started doing a tiny bit of newborn babysitting for a friend every once in a while. I brought up the bouncer seat and Pierscen thought it was hilarious to climb in. I guess he is the baby for a little bit longer... ;)

And a 24ish week picture... I think.

Snagged this picture of quality father/son time...

And lastly - some pictures of our awesome sunflowers. (More later). I planted these early summer (technically much later than I should have.) Ryan doubted they would grow - but boy did they! They were huge! They attracted lots of variety of bees. It was really cool. The picture of the left is a bumble bee tucked inside the pedals. I think we may end up planting sunflowers every year now. They were beautiful!

It was a good, productive month. We always have something going on around here, but we definitely feel like we have accomplished a lot.