Meanwhile...back at the ranch

You know, I always want to title my blog posts "Lately..." since it requires no creativity and is spot on to what motivates me to blog.  It's never a specific event I'm writing about, it always just seems like I'm catching up on our lives for the past few months.  Aren't you so glad I don't title my posts the same thing? Okay, maybe I'm only doing it so I don't get bored.  That's why I do a lot of things :)

Anyway, here's what we've been up to lately...

    I know it's maybe embarrassing to admit this, but we've finally gotten rid of the FLEAS that infested our house.  We didn't bring them in (that was courtesy of the last tenant in the house) so we shouldn't be embarrassed about it, but it just made us feel dirty that we even had fleas in our house.  It was one of the worst experiences of my life (though I bet bedbugs would be worse.  I hope I NEVER have to deal with that one).  Let me just say that fleas are incredibly hard to get rid of to begin with, but if you don't have any pets they're almost impossible to get rid of.  When you have a pet you can at least treat the animal's fur so that the fleas all die when they jump on (because fleas prefer pets to humans), but when humans are the only blood source, we can't treat ourselves, so we have to just keep vacuuming and washing and showering and spraying.  Over and over again.  THE WORST!  I didn't even feel comfortable in my own home because I was always checking for fleas.  I didn't want to lay kids down on the carpet or play on the rugs for fear of fleas.  It is such a RELIEF to be rid of them.  And they better not come back!  You hear that, fleas?  YOU BETTER NOT COME BACK!  (you think that scared them enough?).  Needless to say, it did not make our house here in Cumberland enjoyable to live in and we made a lot of trips up to Nana and PopPop's house in PA.  Thank goodness we are only an hour and a half away.

 Speaking of Nana and PopPop's house, we love going up, and are usually up there every other weekend.  Chase loves all of the attention and the cool toys there.  The only thing that would make it even more awesome is if more cousins lived close by.  Here's hoping we get a job near SOMEONE in our extended families.  So far we haven't been too lucky yet.  Our leads are mostly in random states with no family nearby.

 My sisters flew in to PA for a visit, and when we were all at the house, we did some photo shoots of the new babies (and Chase-though not nearly as much).  I don't have the photos from the main photographer, but I got some from the camera belonging to one of my sisters (that's 10X better than my camera....someday....).

 Here's one of the 4-day-apart cousins.  You can't tell from this pic, but Mason is 3-4 lbs heavier than she is.  We call the 4 days between them the 4 days of plenty :)

 This pic shows off Mason's big cheeks!  It's so different for me to have a chubby baby.  He still seems like a giant to me since Chase was so small, and he's catching up to Chase already.  Chase wears size 4 diapers and Mason wears size 3!

 One of Chase's favorite games for a week or so was to come in the room and yell "Buckle" after he buckled all of the buckles on his buckled booster seat (I threw in that extra buckle for good measure).  Then I would run and unbuckle them so he could go back to work and buckle them again.  Would have been an AWESOME game if I didn't have to run back to the dining room and unbuckle everything every 2 minutes ;)

 I probably just think he's smart because I'm his mom, but I'm so proud that Chase knows all his shapes, colors, numbers, and letters!  I am a little embarrassed that he knows most of them from Baby Einstein and LeapFrog movies, but at least he's watching things that help him learn, right?  Some of his favorite toys are a shape puzzle and the Alphabets puzzle mats that go on the floor (I'll have to get a picture of those later).  Here he found a stick outside and started saying "Y...Y"  I didn't know what he was doing until I realized that yes, that stick looks like the letter "y".  See how smart he is? :)  He also loves going outside so he can find the "op-a-guhs" (octagons.  the Stop signs).  He points out all of the shapes and colors he sees while we're in the car, too.  Such a fun age!

 More fun at Nana and PopPop's

 Tummy time for Mason.  I miss Memphis' craigslist because there was so much to choose from, but I did manage to get this playmat from the State College, PA craigslist.

 Chase's second year at the turkey farm.  He loves to hold the baby poults, but isn't too gentle yet.  Once when I held one out for him, he squoze (I know it's not a word.  I like it better than "squeezed") it too hard and it peed right in my hand.  Nothing like getting turkey pee on your hand when you can't wash it off right away.  So I licked it off.  Okay, I washed it when I could get to a sink.

That's all I can think of for now.  I'm surprised I got a break to blog all this since Mason is sleep training now and doesn't sleep for very long at a time yet, and Chase is potty training right now--and that's a mess!  We're on day three of potty training and still haven't had once success!  It's frustrating, but maybe he's just telling us he's not quite ready.  He just barely turned 22 months today, after all...