Happy Thanksgiving!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving again. It kinda crept up on us this year. It also means that Christmas is only a month away which is just too much to handle. So we are still working on the house and we have a 13 month old kid and a bad cat that threaten to tear our Christmas decorations to pieces. Here are a couple videos of Lincoln doing his thing!

Baby Swinging from Lucas Harrison-Zdenek on Vimeo.

Dancing to Bon Jovi

Baby Dancing from Lucas Harrison-Zdenek on Vimeo.

I think I finally figured it out!

So I have been saying that I am going to get video uploaded and embedded in this blog since the beginning and it has only been something like 21 or 22 months, but I finally got it. I am using a site called Vimeo so if things aren't working, let me know. Here is the first video.

I will give a quick background to this. My aunt got Lincoln a car for his birthday and sent it in the mail from Tennessee. When we got it, it had been on the whole time and since it is motion activated, not only was Gena surprised when it started up right out of the box, but who knows how many times it turned on in transit. As soon as it got here, it became his favorite toy and now that he can run it himself he likes it even more.

Lincoln and his Car from Lucas Harrison-Zdenek on Vimeo.

Now that I have this thing figured out, there are about 3 or 4 more videos I will post in the next couple of days. Keep an eye on the blog!

Another night, another heartache...

Lincoln went to sleep around 8:15. He woke up around 8:45. He went back to sleep around 9:00. Then he woke back up at like 9:10 and would not go back to sleep. So Gena brought him downstairs and we fed him a big bowl of oatmeal and I took him upstairs and rocked him for the better part of an hour before he finally fell asleep again.

Oh, don't get me wrong...I'm not complaining about tonight. I'm giving you all a little taste of what it is like to live in our house on any given night.

Everyone tells us as he gets bigger that he should be sleeping through the night at (insert number of months here)...4 months? NOPE. 8 months? NOPE. Well, he will definitely start sleeping at a year...right? Apparently not. We might get 5-6 hours of sleep every night, but those hours are split into 1.5 - 2 hour increments meaning neither of us gets into deep sleep. I am not sure if there are other babies out there that do this same thing, but as with anything that is horrible, we feel like we are the only ones who have to withstand this ordeal.

I'm not writing for pity as much as I am documenting this period of Lincoln's life as well as using this blog to complain openly since there really isn't anywhere to do it.

Other than the sleeping issue, he is a great little kid. He is getting himself ready to walk and he stands on his own longer and longer each day. He also hugs and kisses us now and he laughs like a child instead of a baby. He understands most of what we tell him, except for NO of course! We couldn't be happier with him during the day.

I will continue to update regularly now that things are settling down. The summer was crazy. Also, keep an eye out for new pictures occasionally. He is growing so quickly that we have to keep shooting all the time to keep up with it. If you get a chance, look at the 3 month pictures compared to his 1 year pictures. It is crazy how big he has gotten!

Another update...

Nothing special. Just added the one year pictures and some of the pictures from the cider mill the day before we took his one years...

Our little toddler sure does love the donuts. His two chins could tell you that though! He has definitely grown in the past year. He was a skinny little guy at first but now he has a real solid build to him! He is getting close to walking and he stands on his own without assistance for several seconds at a time now. It won't be long before he walks...

The house is finally starting to come together. I have needed some help but we are nearly there with the bathroom downstairs as as well as the shelves in the basement and the cabinet in the kitchen. There are still so many projects on the "to-do" list but it feels good to have made some progress on some of them.

To everyone who attended the birthday party and to all to who sent regards and gifts, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I also want to give an even bigger thanks to the people who helped us get it all together at the last minute. You made it work out and I salute you for the effort! There will be pictures and hopefully videos up soon for all of that!

Until then I bid you all a fond farewell and check out the new pictures!

From One Year Pictures

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

One year old already...boy oh boy does the time fly! Happy birthday little man! Big party for you coming up on Sunday!

Nearly a year...

Has it really been that long already?! It seems like only yesterday that our little stinker was coming home for the first time. It's strange how much things have changed. Both in his little life and in ours. A lot has happened, some good and some not so good. We keep a log of his important things in his baby book. I like to think that this is my way of writing little letters to him the way my mother did in my book.

The first year is nearly over and we have many more to look forward to!!


- Posted using my iPhone

What a crawler!

I guess I forgot to mention in the last post how much Link crawls now! He is a moving man and has been for nearly a month now. He finally got the hang of putting both knees under him and moving forward. We actually have to use the baby gates to keep him out of the kitchen and the upstairs until everything is properly baby-proofed!

I started school on the 8th. I am taking 3 classes this semester: Spanish, Linguistics and Greek Art. Yikes! On top of working and school, there are about a million projects around the house to keep us occupied. We still have to get the dishwasher and install it, put in the laundry chute, tear up the back yard and seed it (which is most likely waiting until spring now) among many other things that need to get done.

We are keeping track of everything that happens to Lincoln during these growing days. It seems that he will be walking quite soon since he pulls himself up and almost stands on his own without support now. He likes to crawl to the couch, pull himself up and beg us for whatever we may be snacking on. His appetite is only trumped by his hatred for sleep. He eats everything in the house. We feed him his food in the morning and then he proceeds to eat from our plates as well. He has been known to down a whole hot dog on his own and want more for lunch (veggie dogs, obviously). And we are thinking that we are going to have to start making him a giant bowl of oatmeal after dinner, just before bed since he seems to be waking up hungry a lot during the night still.

We have a majority of his room painted and Gena has been taking progress pictures so when it is finished I will post everything for you all to see. It sure will be nice to have him in his own bedroom finally. It was nice getting him out of our bed, but it will be all the sweeter when we can have a reading lamp on in our bedroom without fear of disturbing the baby. *sigh* to be able to read before bed again!

That's all for now. We got a new chaise lounge for our couch as an add on from ikea tonight and we also got some new covers for the older part so this is what it will look like now:



Pretty huge, huh? Very comfortable though. And we got some things to upgrade our bathroom downstairs...like I said, so many PROJECTS!

Goodnight all!

Summer's almost over

and I barely got to enjoy it!

I just put up some new pictures. It was about time, huh?

Lincoln is doing quite well. He is over 18 and a half pounds now and he measures in at 28 inches tall!

I don't have much time to finish this post so I will have to continue it later. We are always busy with something new around the house. Today we are painting and going to home depot!

to be continued...

Finally new pictures!

We took some new ones from around the 4th as well as the last few days. There are even a couple from Link's first tractor ride on Great Grandpa's tractor. You may notice from this picture that Lincoln has two top front teeth!

From At home with Lincoln

He also has 3 bottom fronts. I will be sure to take some more soon and keep you all updated!

Also notice that I took some pictures down to make room for more new ones. The old ones are safely tucked away in the Archive album.

First month in

So our kid is 9 months old now. We have been living in the house for 4 weeks tomorrow. A lot of stuff has been going on.

The first few nights in the house, Lincoln was sleeping great and we were getting sleep so we felt great too. Since then we have had nothing but trouble. Lincoln wakes up every hour. We get approximately no sleep. I'm not sure why he won't sleep, but it is getting old...fast. I am reading a book that I have been told works like magic. Hopefully we get more sleep soon!

From Blogger Pictures

Baby boy is getting big. We haven't had a lot of time to take new pictures lately with all the moving and everything, but I will try to get some new stuff up in the next few days so you can all see how he is doing.

We have 5 teeth now. Another one just popped up a couple days ago. Two in the front top and three in the front bottom. We think there is one more coming in on the top but it is hard to tell since he won't let us pry his top lip back to see. his smile is definitely getting more silly looking by the day.

New pictures soon!

Finally

We got the house! We closed on Thursday June 24th at 6:30pm and moved in immediately. I only just went and got the rest of what was left yesterday. We have rooms full of boxes and it will take a while to unpack and get settled, but at least the hard part is over. It's late so I'm going to finish this update another time!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

To all you dads out there. To the wanna-be dads and the adopted dads who just welcome kids into their homes all the time...to the dads-to-be and the grand-dads and great grand-dads...Happy Father's Day. Today I get to celebrate the first of many years to come of being a father.

There will be days when I get woken up to messy breakfast in the kitchen caused by good intentions. There will be days when I have to give the "father/son heart to heart" and "the talk". There will be days when I get to take pictures before an embarrassed Lincoln runs out the door with his date to the dance and days when I have to help him move into a dormroom, apartment, new house...etc. While I look forward to all of these times with affection in my heart and a smile on my face, I am content with the first being now and letting the rest come in good time.

This was part of my father's day gift:

From At home with Lincoln

The Tooth!!

Here it is...

From At home with Lincoln

Father's day is coming soon...

And of course Gena couldn't wait to give me the gift she and the baby got me. It's cool, a DW 9000 bass drum pedal. Not that many of you will understand what that means, but all the same...really cool. Thank you son and wife! Also, you may notice that I posted some new pictures. I put up a group of new shots I took of Link tonight and I also posted some pictures of my dad with me as well as his grandson. With dad day coming up, I thought it fitting to show how great of a dad I have and to show everyone who I learned from. Unfortunately, he doesn't use the internet very often and so he won't likely see these photos, but I'm sure someone I'm related to will see them here and tell him!

From At home with Lincoln

Happy early early Father's Day to all of you handsome men out there with kids!

From At home with Lincoln

P.S. I also posted some more new pictures of the boy in the ZOO album and there is a picture of the house in it's present condition in the slideshow to the right...ENJOY!

Getting Sentimental

We are trying to get things in order around here. This means packing, organizing, throwing old things away and determining what exactly we will need for the next 2 weeks until we move. The first task Gena decided to undertake was to separate the baby clothes. She has a friend in the Derby named Cold Fusion who is pregnant with a boy and we are going to loan some of our old clothing to her. Of course this means we are going through all of his old clothing and saying things like "He was sooo tiny!" and "I can't believe he fit into this at one time!"

It is kinda funny how you can get sentimental after only 8 months. Luckily, I was a total crazy with the camera so we have about 2000 pictures of him from when he was so little. As soon as we get the house I will hook up the network again and we will be back in business as far as staying on top of this blog and updating pictures more often. The only other thing we need to get now is some new professional pictures. Hopefully soon...

Well, it's Summer...

There are approximately 12 tomato plants, 5 dying cucumber plants and 3 or 4 dead cauliflower plants on my porch right now...without a house and a garden space to plant them they are mostly doomed. My mother-in-law is adopting my tomatoes in hopes of some sort of harvest on them this summer, but I suppose I will replant after we close and fertilize the crap out of the garden in hopes of some salvation. I think the worst part of it is that I gave these things life only to watch it slowly wither away again. Even though we are vegan because plants don't have feeling and animals do, I still feel horrible bestowing life upon something and then being forced to watch it die.

Separately from this, Lincoln is getting closer to 8 months and his teeth are beginning to actually come in after months of trying. He cut his first tooth about a week ago now and despite the horrible pain and suffering it caused him, he seems to enjoy chewing on real foods now. He has recently been using this little bottom tooth to shave bits of carrot off into his mouth as well as cucumber and bread. I occasionally get the feeling we will see the emergence of yet another one next to the first based on his demeanor some nights. Hopefully it gets a little bigger soon so I can take some pictures.

Finally, don't get your hopes up too high, but I think we may be finally finished with this house deal. We have an estimated closing date of June 23rd and we have to close before June 30th to receive the tax credit for first time home buyers. We are most of the way through underwriting, which means that as soon as we get our "commitment" from the bank, we are waiting for "cleared to close" and then BOOM, we are homeowners! Like I said, I can only look at this whole thing with the greatest skepticism due to the overwhelming problems we have constantly run into. So keep hope alive, but don't get your hopes too high...

I don't know how I fell apart with this blog, oh wait, yes I do...no reliable internet access, living in a house where we would rather be gone all the time, working more hours...and last but certainly not least, a baby that demands almost every extra minute of free time we have! Anyway, I am working hard to correct my failures here and hopefully soon we will have a house and the ability to upload all of our pictures and post new updates regularly.

On a completely different note...Apple announced the new iPhone4 yesterday and I couldn't be more excited about it!! Preorder begins June the 15th and we have no contract right now. The only bummer is that AT&T is now limiting the amount of data usage you can have. 250MB or 2GB...no more unlimited...bummer.

Totally blogged down!

Since it has been a month since I last updated, I guess I have a bunch of explaining to do...

First...Lincoln uses the toilet. Apparently babies are like real people and don't like stewing in their own filth. He doesn't make it every time, but he knows enough to hold it on car rides and he wakes up before he wets his diaper in the night.

Second, he is sitting up and grabbing at things on his own without any difficulty. He also is getting close to crawling.

Link has several teeth getting ready to push through in the bottom front of his mouth and he chews on everything with great ferocity now.

Lately we have been taking him to the zoo. So far his favorite animal is the turtle and the seal. There are new pictures behind this link:

From Zoo

He sure loves the zoo. He reaches out for the butterflies to come to him and they run away as fast as they can.

Finally, now that he is 7 months old he is getting to be quite a big kid. He has outgrown a bunch of his old clothes and he is into the next size diaper.

We are getting quite close to finally getting this stupid house. While we don't have a cleared to close yet, we have a tentative closing date of June 25th and a friend of mine going through the same type of crap just closed on her house today! Let's hope...

Down, but not Out

I want to reassure everyone who still reads this blog that we are not giving up on this house thing yet. I feel like I need to document what has happened, but I have told the story so many times that I am worried the facts will get distorted if I keep telling it. I guess if I write things down as they happen, the facts will remain the same forever...unfortunately it is about 8 months too late to start that for the house.

We have another loan application in now, but we have to wait for an underwriter to become available to look at it. In the meantime, we are making the best of our situation. A lot of things have been going on in our lives right now but we are staying positive and hoping for the best.

Lincoln is sitting up all on his own for long periods of time now. We have been giving him new foods to try each week. We just got him into peaches and sweet peas. Hopefully we get the house soon and we can start making our own baby food. My garden is getting out of control here in the house and I really would love to have a place to give my plants a permanent home so we can get them ready to feed us this summer. Lots of things we need from that darn house. Link needs his own bedroom!! Badly.

It has been awhile...

My last post was in March. I know. I am slacking! We have been quite busy though. We are still working on the house. It seems futile to even myself sometimes, but I think we may be in a decent situation to finally get it. My score is up and we have someone who is finally willing to fight for us.

Lincoln can sit up all by himself now for minutes at a time and he has been chowing down on carrots, sweet potatoes, pears, prunes, applesauce and peas for a few weeks now. We are also getting into early toilet training by taking him to the bathroom when we can tell he is ready to go. He likes his baby Einstein DVD right after breakfast and although he can't fully crawl yet, it is obvious that he wants to start soon.

He is laughing a lot more than he used to. Sometimes we don't even have to provoke it much which is the funniest part. Keep checking out the slideshow as I occasionally send new pictures to it from my phone even when I don't post an entry.

Real Food...

About 3 weeks ago, we decided to start giving the little man some solids and although they didn't sit well with him at first we got it figured out and he is doing much better with oatmeal than he did with rice cereal. We also got him a little sweet potato and prune and he is loving it. He eats ferociously as if he were a wild little animal! It's pretty funny.

Lincoln grabs at his feet all the time now and today we put him in his Bumbo and he sat up and played for a good long time on his own. He is more and more a little grown up every day. Soon he will be crawling and saying all sorts of words and Gena will cry because of how big he is getting.

We were supposed to find out Friday if our file got preliminary approval from the underwriters but, as expected, I heard nothing. I made several phone calls today to get some info and never got so much as an email back about it. I intend on calling every hour tomorrow as well as attacking her email inbox. We will see who can hold out longer...I am really good at being annoying.

Hard to believe he's 5...

Lincoln hit the 20 week mark on Wednesday. He is now 5 months old and just keeps growing and changing.

The most recent new action is rolling. Link is rolling back and forth now more than ever. He reaches for toys and mommy and daddy. He even laughs a little bit. So many changes are happening and I can see him growing more everyday. I will post some more new pictures soon, but I did just put some new ones in the slideshow so check it out!!

Another move, another house, still no "home"

So we got out of the house we were living in and now we are living in a relative's house. Still no place to really call a home. Living out of boxes and laundry baskets isn't exactly living. There are some new avenues we are working on and it seems that we have the people at the program scared a little since they recently offered to lower the price to get us approved and moved in.

Lincoln is doing well. Unfortunately since we keep moving from one house to another, we don't give him as much tummy time as he should be getting. This is kind of important since he should be getting used to holding himself up on his arms and kicking his legs to learn to crawl. Otherwise, he is still nailing every milestone.

Still nothing all that new to report as far as real milestones go, although Lincoln is still changing everyday. The newest things we see are that he recognizes when I come home from work by the sound of the door rather than my voice and he also changes behavior and attitude when I have been gone for a period of time and then come into the room. His physical characteristics are changing slightly as he gains weight and grows. He grasps things and pulls them directly to his mouth with far more accuracy than ever before. He definitely knows that we are not in a place he knows as home. He seems to respond to our emotions more now as well. The anxiety and discomfort of this move has really taken a toll on both of us and because of this, Link has not been sleeping well and in general he is more fussy than usual.

English Fact: The word “robot” was created by Karel Capek. It came from Czech/Slovak “robotovat,” which means to work very hard.

Word of the Day: sedulous (SEJ-uh-luhs) adjective:persistently or carefully maintained

3.5 Months and Counting

We went and got Link's 3 month pictures taken today at Sears portrait studio in the Oakland Mall. Of course it took us like an hour since he was perfect for 10 minutes and then proceeded to scream for most of the rest of the time. The photographer was actually pretty good though. I have to give it to her, she definitely accomplished what I thought to be impossible.

Sorry about the resolution on these everyone. Sears portrait studio owns the rights to the pictures so when you go to look at them online, they only provide them in a very low resolution, small frame size and in order to steal them now and share them before we pick them up, I had to work with what was available...you get the idea. The link to the rest of the album is HERE.

We get them the second week of February, so I will scan them in at a higher resolution then and repost them on the same link. I am also working on getting a youtube video of him up tonight. We will see how that works out.

No new milestones to relay since my last post from last night. As you can see from the pictures, Lincoln holds his head up quite well. We did discover last night after I posted, however, that he can also hold his own bottle with little assistance. This is a 6 month milestone that our baby genuis has already begun to reach. Way to go Link!!

English language fact: “Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters “und.”

Word of the day: Abate (uh-BEYT) verb: to reduce in amount.

Uuuggghhh...

More waiting on the house. Grrr...we are very close this time, but unfortunately we are pretty much homeless until we close. This has been one heck of a struggle but I feel like a pro when it comes to credit and mortgage applications now because of all the stuff I've had to learn.

Otherwise we have been well. Link is getting bigger all the time. It's funny because I go to work and come home and he looks different to me. We have some new pictures and I have a couple videos I'm going to add soon when I get them uploaded to youtube. He talks a lot now and he also smiles a lot, can hold his head up pretty much on his own, sits up with assistance and also holds toys on his own. There is so much new stuff happening everyday with him! It's awesome!
I'm adding another category to the end of my posts. My mom gave me the idea to also add what defined milestone Lincoln should be going through to offer a comparison between "normal" and our little genius!

"Normal" milestone: Holding head up, opening and closing hands, recognize faces, beginning to babble.

Milestone: Lincoln holds his own head up, sits with assistance, holds toys on his own, smiles like a maniac, recognizes mom and dad and smiles, babbles and talks since 2 months, giggles, and knows when dad gets home from work by the sound of the door opening - 3.5 months.

Fact: “ough” can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.

Sleeping in the waiting room...

Gena is getting a follow up and Link and I have fallen asleep in the waiting room. We probably look homeless except we smell better and have nicer clothes on! Hahaha!





There is a baby here that has even worse breathing problems than ours. At least it's common.

I will try to post Christmas pictures today...I make no promises.

-Posted from my mobile