May 2012- Take Two

Take Two!  Blogger is not my friend these days.  I spent about 45 minutes on a post last week, clicked "publish" and watched the screen go blank and my post disappear.  Arrrgghh!!  I'm sure my neighborhood all heard my anguish.  I'm still trying to figure out the formating so this may be a little choppy and out of order.  Anyhow, here we go again...

Things continue to be busy in the Taylor household.  I'm slowly accepting the fact that this is our new m.o. for the time being.  Jacob is continuing to grow and change rapidly.  He is now up to about 14 pounds, and smiles and babbling quite a bit.  He had a few days that he slept through the night, but those were short lived.  No biggie though.  It's only a season ;)

Matthew continues to be a great big brother.  These pictures may be deceiving in that he doesn't really hold or feed him a whole lot.  But he did have one day a few weeks ago that he wanted to do everything for Jacob- feed, hold, change diapers.  I drew the line at him carrying him around the house.  It was a great time to snap a few pics of the two of them together though.

pretending to be daddy sleeping while holding Jacob

He also got a stuffed baby leopard as a gift from one of our friends.  It makes noises when you feed it and hold it.  So he wanted his own clothes, diapers and diaper bag for "Lemon Leopard".  He also wanted to take Lemon to the pediatricians office for shots with Jacob's appointment.  Lucky for him, Lemon never made it to the doctor's office because Matthew wanted to leave him at home that day.

We took a trip back to Michigan at the end of May for my dad's surprise 70th birthday party.  Our arrival was a surprise as well.  My parents were thrilled to meet Jacob and to spend some time with Matthew who had a ball playing catch and frisbee.  He also got to go shopping for some hockey gear since we don't have much here in WA.  

Jacob and Auntie Carolyn

Jacob with Uncle Gary and his granddaughter, Claire

Matthew playing baseball/tennis with Auntie Ellen.

Notice mommy in the street fielding the ball 

because he would smack the heck out if it.

Next it was back home for a little birthday celebration for the big boy.  Hard to believe that he's five already.  Where did the time go?  He wanted a hockey and a super hero cake, so we improvised (see below).

The birthday cake.  My favorite part is Puss-N-Boots in the face off.

And Batman would have made a better goalie blocking the net with his wings.

This is Matthew with his birthday gift from Grandpa Mike and Grandma Karen.

This Lego plane had hundreds of pieces and about 80 pages of instructions.  Don't worry Grandpa Mike and Grandma Karen, we're saving the jet plane for you guys to do with him ;)

Random pic of mommy and Jacob napping

One of the other big events of May was our first meeting (after the hospital) with Jacob's birthmother.  It was great to see her and she is amazed at how much Jacob has grown.  Liane and Debi, the social workers from Adoption Ministry, were there as well.  It was great to see all of these people that were there on that amazing day that Jacob was born.

Liane and Jacob

It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to the Guy's and Streby's this summer.  Jonas, Brodi, Mia, Summer (not pictured) and Matthew all had swimming lessons together when they were babies.  It has been great to stay in touch with them all and see these darling kids grow.  We will miss Mia and Jonas but they are off on new adventures in Kansas and Ohio.  We wish them the best and safe travels.

Another random pic.  This time- mommy and Matthew : )

Lastly, Nana came to visit for a few days.  We all had a lot of fun.  And I think Nana is now an expert at looking for particular Lego pieces in a pile of hundreds.  A skill every grandparent needs ; )
Well that's all the news from the Taylors for now.  I just added a couple more random pics at the end.  Hope all is well.  Take care.

Technical Difficulties

Well, this may be the end of our blog.  Turns out our browser no longer supports blogger and I can't download the new one.  I'm trying to do it in the old one and it's a little more complicated and takes forever for pics to download, so we'll see....

Anyhow, Matthew had first day of T-ball on Sunday.  He loves it!!  He has a great hit and throw, but needs to work on his catching skills a bit.  It's also funny watching a bunch of pre-schoolers play infield.  It looks a little more like rugby rather than baseball.  Here's some pics from the action (the pics are all in reverse order, since that's how the new format goes).

We had some very sad news last week.  Matthew's mom's morning out class suddenly had to come to an end.  He has known Erin and Kelly for almost 4 years now and has made lots of friends in their class.  We will miss our MMO time (especially now- yikes!!).

As for Jacob, it's true what they say about not taking as many pictures of the second child.  We will try to get more next time.  I think that our life has just been so crazy the past few weeks that we just haven't thought about it.  But he's doing great and starting to grow and change right before our eyes.  He's outgrown all of his newborn clothes and is spending some quite alert time just looking at things.  He's started giving us a few smiles and loves to be held facing outward so that he can see the action.  But the second pic really sums up most of our interaction with him these days.

Well got to run for now.  Hopefully I can get this browser thing worked out : ) 

Welcome Jacob Aaron Taylor!!

Matthew has a little brother!! We are thrilled to announce the birth of Jacob Aaron Taylor, born Sunday, March 25th at 2:41pm. He was 6#15oz and 20 and 3/4 inches long. He is a wonderfully mellow baby so far and seems to be able to keep up with the busy pace of the Taylor household. As for us...well, needless to say, it's been a crazy week. It is amazing how one phone call can change your entire world. Last week our social worker, Liane, asked us to meet with a birth mother who was interested in our story. We made plans to meet with her this past Wednesday. On Sunday, I got a call from Liane and the first thing she said was "hi, remember me?". I knew something was up. She said this little baby had other plans than the ones we had made and was being born as we spoke. So I tried to call Scott who was already at church because he had to rehearse to sing for Mass that day. I tried to call again and again and again and again (he found his phone later with 8 missed calls, all about 2 minutes apart, from me). I wasn't able to get a hold of him, but made arrangements for Matthew to stay with our neighbors later that day and headed to Mass.
After Mass (and after I gave him a hard time about not carrying his phone), Scott and I headed to the hospital to meet the birth mom. We had a great interaction with them and she gave us the "green light". So we were able to stay in the hospital with the baby Sunday night in the special care nesting room. We continued to spend time with his birth mother and birth grandmother over the next day and really enjoyed our time with them. We have really come to know and love this family and are so glad that they are now a part of ours.
After we said our goodbye's on Monday. Scott and I headed home to pick up Matthew and our car seat. We stopped at Target on the way to the hospital to pick up diapers, bottles and formula. We had NOTHING ready for this baby. And since then, we've been winging it (and loving it!).

Here's a few more pics...

First Meeting

Even though we are sleep deprived and busy, I think we're still on a bit of an emotional high. Our friends keep offering to take Matthew for play dates so that we can get some rest, but we really feel great at this point. I keep telling them all to check back with us in a week or two though.

Matthew is taking the news of being dethroned as the only child pretty well. He really isn't interested in holding Jacob, but loves to help make bottles and stock up the diapers. I managed to get some cute pics of his and Jacob's hands and feet together the other night.

The Two Taylor Brothers

It has really been amazing how blessed we are with these two boys. And on top of it all, we have awesome friends that have been there with all kinds of help. Especially our good friends, the Sobba family. They took Matthew overnight on a moments notice and kept us feed, Jacob clothed and all of us sane. Many, many thanks to them.

Well I should go for now and get some sleep while I can. I've ended with a couple of Easter pics of our boys : )

Snow 2012 (part deux)

I guess that we (or should I say Matthew?) missed the white stuff a little bit, because we took a trip last week to Mt. Rainier for a little play time in the snow. Matthew loves, loves, loves the snow. That's all he could talk about the whole way there (Is it snowing yet?, How much snow is there going to be?, When are we going to be there?). Fortunately, Mt. Rainier was able to deliver and boy did they!! We could only get as far as Longmire because the road to Paradise was closed due to high snowfalls and avalanche danger. So we went snowshoeing on some of the trails at Longmire and just played around for a while. Matthew's favorite thing to do was to race mommy while pushing her and getting pushed into the snowbanks (I know the video clip makes it look very one-sided, but believe me it was 50-50).
We stayed in a cabin just at the entrance of the park in Ashford. It was a little rustic and Scott had to brush up on his fire starting skills. He managed to figure it out quite well and by the time we were ready for bed, we all had to go to bed in our underware because we were roasting. Matthew also found a game checkers while we were there and throughly loved beating his mommy (with the help of daddy) and now wants to play all of the time at home. He also learned how to play "Chinese chickens" (a.k.a Chinese checkers). However, by his rules he gets to make 8-10 moves at a time.
Here's the pics....

First time snowshoeing

We thought about storming the gate, but decided against it.

Not sure what that look is about.

The pictures really don't do the scenery justice. I'm so amazed at the beauty of this part of the country. We are very lucky to be living here and look forward to many more adventures to come.