Missed Friday... my bad.

Yesterday was a LONG day! We ran errands all day, then went to the apartment in Tysons to get all the random junk still left, packed and loaded up. We found a cleaning crew that worked weekends to come and do all the "fun" cleaning for us this morning, but had to get the junk out first!

Luckily, we were able to convince my brother, James, to call out at work (@ Modell's) and come down for the weekend. We got him to do the painting in Jeremiah's old room (primed back to white) and help Jeremy load the van with all the fun stuff we've been so anxious to bring over to the new house (so much so, we left it 'til last minute, partially hoping it would disappear, apparently....)

Thankfully, we got it done. Tomorrow, we turn in our keys, after we take down our old satellite dish, pick up the doormat, and throw out the trash. YAY! I'm so glad it's over (though the place does look pretty good now that it's all nice and clean... oh well.) Now I can focus 100% on the new house instead of feeling guilty for not getting stuff done elsewhere first.

In other news, tonight we threw a surprise birthday party for my Mom! She's never had a "real" party, let alone a surprise party, so when she walked into our house (we hosted... obviously... if it was our house.... I'd hope it was we who hosted!) and we were all there (including two of her brothers and their "families" [one isn't married, but was down here in DC with his girlfriend--she's really cool, already like one of the family!]) and James was there (because he was supposed to be at school, remember?) she 'bout freaked! (Was that not one of the longest sentences you've ever read??? That's the Jeremiah's Rose talking [a wine by Rockbridge Vineyards... good stuff! No relation to our Jeremiah, of course, but it does have a picture of a bullfrog on the label...]) The party was fun, and I think everyone had a good time. My Mom kept saying, "I'll never forget this birthday... this was the best birthday ever!" So I think it was a hit with her. :-)

Oh, and I finished the nursery! Painting wise, at least. Still need to get his bed set up, but at least tomorrow night, Jeremiah will be sleeping on a real mattress again, instead of in his Pack n Play! Yay! I'll post pics once I get it all done.

And that's all, folks! Time for bed. Wine makes me sleepy (and dyslexic, apparently... I keep spelling things "fo-net-ick-lee", which would really be tough to read... No more Rose for me. Sleepy time! G'night.

Token short post.

I did not get to finish the nursery tonight... I'm all outta white paint. Need to get more tomorrow. Was gonna go get it today, but didn't feel like it, since I'll be out and about tomorrow.

In other news, it's raining really hard, which apparently means NO TV FOR YOU, COME BACK, ONE YEAR! I mean, c'mon, the one time I want to watch The Office, we freakin' lose the signal, because Mr. Satellite dish is sad that he's wet.... Aww, poor wittle satellite dish, doesn't like workin' in the rain. Poor baby.

Grumble grumble....

Are these really the quality posts you want to see on a daily basis?????

My short post for the day.

News of the day: Jeremy got Halo 3. UH-OH! He got the super fancy "Legendary" edition, complete with a Master Chief replica helmet and a DVD of some sort. Yeah, I'm sure that was worth the big bux spent on it. But hey, there will only be ONE Halo 3. Might as well go all out, right??? It is the last one, after all. And... it's in HD. Even on this crappy tv we've got (42" Vizio LCD... who the heck is Vizio?!) temporarily, it's looks pretty freakin' awesome. Well done, Bungie, well done.

I've just about finished painting the nursery, just need to touch up some of the white. It looks a bit barbershop-ish, but I think it'll be okay. My Mom will let me know if it's not working... she's very blunt when it comes to stuff like that...

"You did this to spite me.... you should have asked for my permission first...." <~ Example.

And that's my short post for the day.

Yay for Heroes!

It's "premiere week", baby! Welcome back Heroes and Boston Legal! We've missed you this summer. Hope your's was good, our's was kinda crazy, but good. Bring on the goodness of Monday and Tuesday nights!

We still miss you, Lost. We'll see you in February.

Finally.... we have begun settling down.

Thursday marked a crappy, yet productive day, as Jeremy and I rushed to pack the night before, so the movers could move it all here. And they did, for the most part. A few items remain at the old place: my clothes (hanger stuff, most doesn't fit... :-( ), some stuff from the bathrooms, a few shelves, rug, fridge/freezer contents, paintings and pictures.... okay, I'm stopping that, it's depressing. We've got 'til Sunday to get it all out, and clean it all out. And it'll probably be Sunday before we get around to it, too.. Oh well.

Random note: Directv contractors are jerks. Or, ahem, "A"'s, as my FIL would say ('cuz sometimes 'jerk' just doesn't suffice....) :-) I mean, seriously, you're being PAID (not by me directly, but by my signing up for service...) to come out and do a job; Don't roll your eyes and treat your customer like a 5 year old... "See? My workorder says, 'One jack, one receiver.' ONE.... jack.... ONE.... receiver...." No crap, einstein, thanks for pissing me off! Grr.... I'm writing them an email. I want a free month or something, or I'm switching to FIOS (because, yes, I have options.)

Speaking of FIOS, my laptop is still dead. Thanks a lot, Mr. Fios! I wonder if I could get anything for free for that little hiccup... hmmm...

On to other things:

Jeremiah has decided that he will only eat "chunks" now; He's a big boy and wishes to be treated as such, so kindly please refrain from pureeing my food, Mommy!! (His words exactly, I swear.... well... I translated... roughly....) I mean, every time I put a spoonful of yummy turkey (in turkey gravy! yum!)/broccoli/sweet potatoes into his mouth, he would cry... until I put a little sweet potato puff in his mouth. Then he'd be happy. Eventually, I just cut up a bunch of stuff, left it on his tray until he had almost finished his dinner, and then gave him the spoon and bowl, "Have at it, kid." And boy did he! All over his face, his arms, the floor.... But he was happy, because he was a big boy, and he was eating all by himself.

Oi vey...

One thing I did not expect to learn how to do so soon was put a diaper on backwards... Because by the time I get the wet one off (and even the dirty ones), he immediately flips over and starts "running away". Mommy then has to go chase "the naked baby", and threaten (jokingly, of course, with serious undertones) "to catch the naked baby!" Of course, that then leads to "the naked baby" escaping even faster than before... and right off the side of the bed (I've got a hold of his leg by then, no worries...) See, before the movers came, we slept on a 'firm' (i.e. uncomfortable) mattress on the floor--he could crawl off and still be on his hands and knees. Now, though, the drop is a bit further, which he has yet to realize.

Of course, once we have the nursery set up (still in the painting stages) then I'll just strap him down to the changing table and let him scream (it's so fake.... he starts off doing the whole "coughing" cry, because that's soooo convincing.... yeah... manipulator in the making, already... they start young!) Either that, or I'll just have to keep my keys with me wherever I go, because those miraculously make him stop whatever it is he's doing and just look in awe at the mighty keychain. You'd think it was the holy grail or something--I guess to him, it is.

What else... Oh yeah. Jeremiah's now working on his balance--he can stand completely unassisted for about 3 or 4 seconds before he either plops on his bum, and flails his arms to grab the nearest thing (usually a couch or ottoman.) It's really cute, because he really has to build himself up to do it. You can almost see him thinking, "Alright, Jeremiah, you can do this.... Just wait a second, find your balance.... that's it... okay, now on the count of three, let go of the couch! One.... two.... THREE! You're doing it! You're doing it!" and then, plop. :-) So cute!

Other cuteness includes peek-a-boo. He LOVES it. I dunno why.... he knows what's coming, you can see him grinning through your hands... But it gets him every time... Even over webcam, as Grandmom and Granddad have proven--he loves it. And his favorite nursery rhyme goes something like this:

Out in the darkness.... THERE LIVED A BIG MONSTER! Who liked to eat people..... ESPECIALLY LITTLE BABIES!

Once there was..... A BABY NAMED JEREMIAH! Killed the big monster, by saying,

BOO! BOO! BOOOOOOOO!

Yeah.... don't ask. Okay, I'll tell ya anyways. When I was 12, my brothers Jason (11) and James (5? Maybe 4) went to Portugal to visit my grandparents in the Azores. Our youngest brother, Stephin (less than 1 at the time, roughly Jeremiah's age, actually) stayed home with my parents. Whilst in Portugal, Jason, in his randomness, came up with that song for Stephin. So originally, the baby's name was "Stephin" and not "Jeremiah", but we wanted Jeremiah to be the killer, not his uncle.

Man.... that just sounds worse and worse the more I say....

Moving on.

The house is coming along. We've gotten several rooms painted, baby gates up or on order, several projects yet unfinished, and lots of dreams/plans/desires of next steps. I'm going to enter in HGTV's $100,000 sweepstakes to see if they'll cover my renovation bills. That'd be nice, for sure. For now, Jason's been pretty helpful getting some stuff done. The place looks 100% better already!

We've returned to Mclean Bible, after a few weeks off. We did take the plunge and put Jeremiah in the nursery.... gulp. Yeah, all I think about during the sermon is, "I hope he's okay, I wonder what he's doing," etc... But he seems to enjoy it, for the most part. This past Sunday when we picked him up, he was crying... Some little girl was holding him, trying to give him a bottle, but I have a feeling he was done, didn't want anymore, and was crying because she wouldn't put him down. Then we got home and discovered they never changed his diaper (I sensed a dirty diaper going in, and it was still dirty coming out.... grr....) Needless to say, I'm not all that impressed. Sigh. But we'll try it again, and just let them know, "Hey, if he's dirty, CHANGE HIM!" and, "If he gets hungry, he'll probably only eat 6 oz, and then want to get down. If he's crying, it's probably because he wants down, not because he's fussy...." But whatever. I'd like to think it's good for him, to be able to interact with the other babies, but I wonder what happens all that time inbetween drop off and pick up.

And that's enough for now. A friend told me once that it's better to frequently do many short posts than rarely one long post. Whoops. Well, maybe I'll just try to do more longer posts. :-) At least I blog! Hint hint, wink wink.... you know who you are (and you are many!) :-) 'Just kid, just kid, silly boy...'

Inside joke.

Okay, then, to bed, I said! G'night.

Please just let me go to sleep!

This is probably the least cutest face Jeremiah makes-when he's really tired and we didn't want him to sleep in the van. Aww... Poor baby.

If Jeremiah had been a girl...

We'd definitely be using lots of hair clips and headbands... Even in a pink dress, Jeremiah's all boy! (Jeremy's gonna kill me... Lol)

Yay for internet!

Verizon came by this morning to install our FIOS internet service. YAY! So we are BACK ONLINE!

Unfortunately, while Mr. Fios was setting things up on my computer, he uninstalled my wireless card because it wasn't working properly. Normally, Windows would just allow a re-install, no problem. But noooooooo, Windows doesn't LIKE wireless cards. "You can have an ethernet connection, but no wireless..." BOOOOOOO WINDOWS!

And then, it died. Now, it won't let me outta the "boot into safe mode" screen (nope, it won't even let me do that. NO WINDOWS FOR YOU! COME BACK, ONE YEAR!) So my laptop, with all my pics, videos, music, etc, is now simply a paperweight. BOOOOO!

Thankfully, Jeremy has an "extra" work laptop that I can use to at least surf the net. Hopefully, he'll be able to fix mine so I can get my pics back.

It's good to be back!

Ever wonder what would happen if Jeremiah fed himself?

Now you know... Messy, messy, messy...

A few house pics....

The outside (see "the hotness" in front of the garage??? Yeah, that grill is sweet...)

The backyard (to the right of the deck)
More backyard (view from the house)
Our very own pond! (Complete with goldfish--3 biggies and a baby... so cute...)


This'll hafta do for now. :-)

Grrr...

Found the cord to the camera (wasn't lost, just hiding on the coffee table, all tied up neatly.... yeah, I'm a spaz sometimes....) but now Google Video is giving me trouble....

For now, enjoy these pics! :-)


From this morning:
(the red-eye light kept making him squint...)





Did you see the chops on this guy?! I would keep fingers out of range, if I were you.... :-)

Jeremiah is 8 months old!

Soon he'll be walkin'... Drivin'.... Goin' to college... Time sure does fly when you're havin' fun! In other news, we've been spending most of our time at the new house, with no internet service... Hence, posts are few and far between. Thank goodness for Mobile Blogger and Yahoo! GO. Keeps me somewhat connected. So if ya need me, cell phone is the way to go! And now, so shall I... Go, that is... Anyways...