Pictures

I'll send out pictures first, then a short update. Oh, who am I kidding? My updates are never short, even when I think they are. :)

Cats

The kitten in the picture is C's cat. We're almost done with an almost-5-week-stint of cat sitting. The kitten now gets along with the other 2 cats, and has been fun for the kids. Teancom especially has loved the kitten being around. Soon, Cleo and Ceasar, our two cats, will go home with Fumasa to C's house and she'll be their new owner. Ceasar will have a heavenly home with tons and tons of space to hunt and run around in. And then we can still visit the cats when we go see C.

And this is Teancom sporting some awesome sunglasses. :) The glasses are G's. G is holding him in this picture, actually, but is making such a weird face that I cropped him out. Besides, next to Teancom, ... nothing's cuter than that!

My New Wedding Ring

Part of my update is that we bought me a wedding ring! If you remember, I lost my wedding ring in a car accident in Jan. 2004. So for 3 1/2 years I've been wearing one of 3 cheap rings I bought on eBay for $14 a piece. We have made it a date night to go ring shopping. We've never been meaning to buy a ring, we've just been looking for my "dream ring". We found one once that was amazing, but it was almost $3,000. We didn't have that kind of money. ... Anyways, we went on a date a few weeks ago and decided once again to browse jewlery stores. We walked into our third store of the night and there was my ring. We were both enchanted and amazed, and we bought it! It's exciting to have a wedding ring again.

This is kind of neat for me. The ring is a band that matches Rob's band pretty dang well. Rob's ring is yellow gold on the outside and platinum in the middle. My original matched his sort of. It was the same sort of design, but with alternating colors of white, yellow, and rose gold on the inside. We had bought both rings on clearance, and because of that, I wasn't able to buy my ring in the size I needed. It was a size 10 that needed to be squeezed down to a size 7. Well, after that, the ring wasn't quite the same (besides, I liked Rob's ring better for me, but it was too masculine--this new one, though it's white gold, is brushed, so that takes off that masculine feeling). I wasn't too happy with how it looked after that, but whatever. It was a ring.

So this ring matches Rob's ring better, it's very similar to my original, I like the white gold look better than the tri-gold, and we could order it in my size so it's infinitely more comfortable. All in all, I like it better than the original ring we bought for me.

This is exciting news for me, so thanks for letting me bore you with sharing it.
And these two pictures of Teancom are just so dang cute I couldn't resist sharing them.

Teancom

And now for the update part. Teancom's big news is that he chipped his top middle left tooth. Yep. On Rob's head. Yep. ... Don't ask, I don't know either. But the chip is very slight and won't be an eye sore or anything, so he'll just have a chipped tooth until he's 5 or 6. Not sure that's a big deal.

Teancom has now stood on his own three times that we've seen. He cruises along furniture, too, so that's progress. He isn't ready to try to take a step on his own yet, but that'll come with time. We have also just barely taught him his first sign: more. It's about that stage where signs come in real handy.

Elijah

Elijah is a monster, but we're learning how to deal with it. He won't take a nap for like a week and then he'll be so awful and so exhausted that he'll take 3 days' worth of naps. Then the cycle starts over. Obviously, the days with naps are infinitely better than those without. ... I have started joking with my friends that I'm offering him up for legal adoption. Miciah had a really yucky year 2 and wasn't as bad for year 3. So Elijah's great year 2 didn't prepare us for a crummy year 3. Oh well.

A funny story about Elijah. Elijah still gets his binky for nap time and bed time. He'll get up in the morning and I'll say, "Elijah, I need your binky" and he'll hand it to me. If he doesn't want to give it up, he has to go back to bed and be ready to give it up when he comes back out of his bedroom. Usually this works very smoothly. Well, a few weeks back he was really fighting us about it. After him pushing the line over and over, I finally told him that I was going to throw it away if he didn't give it to me (it's one of 3, so not too big a deal, just a lesson taught). He didn't give it to me, so I yanked it out of his mouth and threw it away. Of course he was upset. We talked to him about it and he calmed down. About 10 minutes later he came to us and said, "I look binky in trash can and say, "Binky, why you go away?"" That made us smile. ... If you're wondering, Elijah has had no problem since giving us his binky. In fact, the very next time he came out of his room, he put his binky on the table, unasked, and said, "No put binky in trash can."

Miciah and the Kindergarten Pre-Screening

Miciah is ready to start Kindergarten. We took her in for her pre-screening. You know, what is this color, what are these letters, what rhymes with orange. Stuff like that. She knew all of the answers, as she proudly reported when she got back to my side. :) ... Then this funny situation occured, and I wanted to share it cause it made me laugh (when it was safe to laugh). The next kid to do the pre-screening was a boy. The same lady who took Miciah back was there to take this little boy. She said, "Are you ready?" and then the kid takes off running down the hallway and out the school doors screaming, "I'm not ready! I'm not ready!" His mom is chasing out the doors behind him yelling, "A, stop it! A, come back here!" They have a chat outside and then A comes back in the doors. He waits until Mom is safely a few feet inside the doors, laughs, and runs back outside. Mom chases. A comes back in the doors again, and the lady says, "Are you ready now?" He follows her down the hallway, still shouting, "I'm not ready! I'm not ready!"

Made me glad my kid is Miciah. Though, I won't claim none of my kids would ever do that. They probably would. It was just funny.

Rob

Rob is excited about post-docs and about getting his first paper published. He is very near having the first paper ready to publish, and that excites me, too. It makes graduating seem like a reality. It will be interesting where the next stage of life will take us. Rob would be happy to go any one of a couple of places, so we'll see where we end up. It would be weird to think about the possibility of moving next year, but if that happens, I guess that's okay. One of the possibilities is in the DC area, and I think if that becomes a real possibility, Rob would love to go there (Army Medical Research and NIH are both there, and he'd love either of those). If that happens, we're probably back to an apartment, and I can tell you I won't mind that AT ALL. I've loved owning this house, and it's my baby, but I won't mind the lesser responsibilities of an apartment.

Tamra

It's my month to talk in church, apparently. I spoke in church last Sunday. I guess it went okay, that's what people told me. And I give a lesson Labor Day weekend on the miracle of forgiveness. I've been studying a lot about the topic and it's made me want to be more humble and repentant. It's a work in progress. :)

My Parents

That's our news here. My parents are joining us later tonight. Dad will stay until next Monday and Mom will stay until Sept. 1st. It'll be nice to have them here with us. They're always a delight, and we always get to see lots more family because they're here than when they're not here.

Tamra