Growing up fast!

Hi there.  This is my first post since Christmas.  If you’re reading, thanks for always coming back to read up about our family.  My brain has finally had room to think about creative writing and my body has finally gotten around to actually sit down and do it!  So here we go.

We had a good holiday, complete with a lot of family time and extended family-Ethan-lovin.  Nick and I had a great early Valentine’s date by going to watch Les Miserables the broadway production 25th anniversary tour at the Palace Theater in downtown Cleveland.  Then on actual Valentine’s day we had a family valentine’s date by going to La Kabob, our favorite local Lebanese restaurant.  Upon hearing the Middle Eastern style music in the restaurant, Nathaniel started shrugging his shoulders and dancing a shoulder dance.  He’s never done any dance with his shoulders, so we think that Middle Eastern music must necessitate moving of the shoulders.  At least with Nathaniel.  Then the third part of our Valentine’s day celebration was at our friend’s house on the weekend following Valentine’s.  Kasia, a fellow mom friend, and I had both gotten the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook for Christmas, so we wanted to make a Family Valentine’s dinner using only SK recipes!  It was delicious and fun!  Thanks, Deb, for making it possible.  Follow Deb for great family friendly recipes!

We celebrated Chinese New Year (and Nathaniel’s 2nd bday)!  We had about 25/30 people over at our house.  Good food, good music, awesome people.  We invited some Oberlin College Chinese international students over to our house for the celebration.  Such a fun time!

Mostly, I’ve (Lydia) been starting to get used to toting around 2 kids on errands.  It’s a daring feat us 21st century moms have to tackle:  lugging a carseat on one arm, diaper bag across the body/on the shoulder, purse on the other shoulder and holding the hand of a toddler.  And that’s just with 2 kids!  How do you moms of 3+ do it?!  Anyway, I’m starting to get the groove with 2 kids.  Ethan’s easy-going personality has made it so easy to transition!  Praise the Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you!  God knows what I can handle and Ethan is it.  The next step is to find a consistent time everyday to work out!

There have been some major milestones in Nathaniel’s development since Christmastime:
1)  He said his first sentence:  I see a bull-doh (bulldozer).
2)  For the first time, he knelt down on the parking lot asphalt and did not want to walk anymore because he wanted me to hold him (ah, the hardships of becoming more independent)
3)  His vocabulary is exploding- he is retaining so many new words every day and speaking them so much more clearly than before!
4)  He steals apples from our fruit basket.  I never thought I’d be disciplining a kid for stealing apples.  He also eats whole cucumbers plain.
5)  He tried Siracha hot sauce for the first time!

Ethan’s also been growing by leaps and bounds.
1)  When you talk to him, he will coo and smile back at you.
2)  He had his first “laugh,” which was an inhale followed by a relaxed exhale coo.  Cutest thing ever!
3)  He’s 16 pounds.  He’s 2 months old.  He’s Ethanator, the monster baby!!
4)  His eyes follow Nathaniel’s every move.  Older brothers are so influential!
5)  Nick has been teaching him outward, inward, downward and upward blocks and punches, to prepare him for Kajukenbo in the future.

I will leave you with a few photos to enjoy.

Just chillin’

Sometimes you just need some of this in your life

What’s that smell??

Beady eyes!

Saturday morning snooze with an owl and a hat

Family dessert

Nick caught this before I even woke up…I guess I fell asleep with my glasses on…

Clapping for himself!

Nathaniel’s a pro at blowing out candles; such a pro that the candles were blown out even before we sang Happy Birthday…and then he blew them out 4 times more after that!

Winter’s First Dusting and Some Ethan Lovin’

After reading the blogs of 2 mom friends from college (Bringing Up The Bear Cubs and Cultural Fusion), I am inspired to get back into blogging regularly about our family.  So without further ado…

Winter has finally arrived.  We got our first sheet of white, dusty snow last night!  Looking outside after waking up this morning, I smiled to myself as my heart became content at the beauty of God’s creation gently covered with snow.  Even though there wasn’t much snow, it was enough to give the outside a wintery look.  Perhaps we will have a white Christmas after all!

You guys haven’t met Ethan yet, have you?  Let me introduce you to him!

Ethan Josian Romanin, aka “hammie” or “squeaker”

This is Ethan.  He was born on Thursday, December 13, 2012 at 6:35pm after about 6 hours of labor, no pain medication and about 6-7 pushes.  He was 10 pounds, 4 oz.  Not the tiniest baby.  He was apparently, the biggest baby to be born in St. John Westshore’s birthing tub!  How’s that for records?  We spent 1 night in the hospital and then came home.  We’ve since, been blessed with meals almost night of the week and visits from dear friends.  Nick’s been home too, so that’s been a treat!  I love family time!

Nathaniel has been doing well with the our family’s transition.  He is exhibiting typical “older sibling” symptoms of randomly acting out and being difficult at times as he understands his new role in our family.  In general, though, he is doing great and is enjoying spending extra time with his dad at home!  He is also learning to understand how to play (or rather, NOT play) with Ethan.  Nathaniel is definitely an affectionate little guy.  He’s always kissing and hugging Ethan, gently stroking his hair and helping me to burp Ethan by patting him on the back.  He’s turning into a pretty great big brother.

Today was my first day at home by myself since Ethan was born and I was a bit nervous and stressed out about what it would be like without Nick’s help.  Well, it turns out that it’s not as bad as I had imagined since I’m writing a blog post right now.  Anyhow, with today’s snow, I snatched up some time in the morning to go outside with Nathaniel while Ethan was sleeping.  It was Nathaniel’s first encounter with snow that he can remember (last year barely offered us any snow and Nathaniel doesn’t remember that far back).  He doesn’t have snow boots yet, so I just put his sneakers on and I wasn’t sure if the snow was snowball quality snow, so I didn’t put on his mittens, figuring we would just look at the snow and walk around a bit.  Well, there was just enough snow outside to make snowballs with, so I showed Nathaniel how to make a snowball and then I threw it at him!  He loved it and asked me to make more snowballs for him to throw.  So I made about 10 snowballs for him to throw and for each throw, Nathaniel would stomp a few paces and make a loud grunting noise as he threw the snowball!  He had a blast!

It started to get very windy, so we went back in the house and upon entering the house, Nathaniel’s feet slipped on the linoleum and he ended up on his back on the floor!  His sneakers had no traction on the bottom, so they had packed on a bunch of slushy snow and created a slippery sole.  Poor Nathaniel has never had his feet go out from under him, so he got scared and angry and whined/complained about it for 30 seconds.  Don’t worry he’s ok!

Well, after we got his coat and shoes off, he started wailing and looking at his hands.  His little hands were red from throwing those snowballs and they were cold.  He was probably experiencing that tingly feeling as your hands adjust to being freezing to being warm again.  At any rate, I quickly took him to the bathroom and put a warm wash cloth on his hand.  He was relieved to find out that what I was doing was helping him and he quickly cooperated by keeping his hand still and not flailing about.

So although our first snow adventure was not flawless, we had a great time throwing those snowballs!  I definitely learned my lesson:

1.  Get snow boots
2.  Mittens need to be ON any time snow is involved

That’s it for now.  Merry Christmas to you all!

babbling big brother

Post hair cut picture

It’s about time for an update, dontcha think?  Nathaniel is currently almost 22 months!  He is as cute as ever and is doing a lot in terms of learning and developing!  A lot of the development is in speech and understanding social cues, etc.  Here are N’s top 10 developmental changes/milestones!

1.  He says “Bye, Baba!” when Nick gets ready to leave for work.  Nathaniel understands that saying, “Alright, well, I’ve gotta get goin’” (or something similar) as one puts coat and shoes on mean that departure is imminent.

2.  He is sleeping in a twin bed with a bedrail now.  After 2-3 weeks of getting caught getting out of his bed and playing in his room instead of napping, he is now pretty well adjusted to the new rules that come with his added freedom.  This move to the twin bed was mainly to prepare for Ethan.

3.   Repeating, mimicking and imitating me and Nick are what he does best!  When Nick and I are talking in the car and N’s in the back sitting in his car seat, we sometimes forget that he is listening to our conversation and occasionally, we will hear Nathaniel interject some familiar word he heard in our conversation.  Sometimes he’ll also surprise us by saying something we said that he’s never said before, like “DANG!”  Time to start being careful of what we say and do!

4.  ”Walk like an old man.”  He will bend forward at the hips and walk with small steps and with his hands behind his back, just like an old man.

5.  If you tell him to “do soooo cute,” he’ll cup his hands and put them by his checks, cock his head to one side and smile a cheesy smile.

6.  He loves babies!  I think this is God’s way of preparing him for a little brother.  At church nursery, N loves rocking car seats and giving pacifiers to babies.  He also likes doing anything he sees an adult do with a baby (i.e. feeding them, giving them a bottle, etc.).

7.  He knows how to peel a banana (once you’ve opened it up for him)…though, sometimes he doesn’t know how far to pull the peel and then he’ll end up with an entire strip of peel in his hand, to which he says “Uh-oh!” and walks over to the trash can and throws it away.

8.  N has a voracious appetite for the most part.  He’ll eat whatever we eat and sometimes eat as much as me!  He loves dipping things and sometimes it’s his way of just eating dip…but most of the time he’ll eat the dip with whatever he’s dipping with.  He is sitting on a booster seat at the table now and uses a fork/spoon very adeptly.

9.  He distinguishes tunes/songs now and attributes certain songs to certain people who introduced those songs to him.  Nonna and Popo both have songs that belong to them so far.  He also changes the way he dances according to how the song sounds.  Slow and melodic songs will find N swaying and moving slowly.  Fast and uppity songs (LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem or Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal) result in Nathaniel bouncing up and down with his hands and arms flailing about.  It’s a sight to behold!

10.  He knows how to blow his nose and blow out candles or blow bubbles!  Being able to blow his nose is such a blessing with cold/flu season being here in full swing!

In other news, Ethan, our second so far unborn son, is supposed to be due December 17, which gives us another 2.5 weeks!  At the 36 week mark, I got very anxious, not sure if Ethan would come 4 weeks early like Nathaniel did.  But so far, as I approach 38 weeks, still no sign of Ethan.  I hope he comes the first week of December.  Who knows, though.  Babies come when they come.  There’s no telling!  The birth of Ethan is one among about 7-8 other births that will be happening in our church family this winter.  It’s a baby boomer season at church!  Nursery, get ready!

So, as Nick and I await the coming of our son, we begin to also think about the coming of our Savior as a baby on this Earth.  We are excited to start advent season and see what God has in store for us in the upcoming year!  Drop us an email or comment so we can re-connect with you!

Playing w/fall leaves

It’s cold out here!

hee hee

Mama’s sunglasses are cool!

Making faces w/Mama

This is how I sleep

The many faces of Nathaniel

 

L: Potty Training

Potty training

We’re good friends with the Swiffer and mop these days.  Nathaniel has gone diaperless for 3 days so far and the first 2 days were filled with various types of pee and poop accidents.  Today was the first day he’s pooped on the potty since we’ve started the diaperless days. He’s pooped on the potty once before but that was definitely not a conscious effort; it was more happenstance.  Today’s poop, though, was me putting him on around his normal poop time, him pooping and seeing his poop and realizing that it was he who had pooped on the potty.  Yay for this big accomplishment!  I will spare you the picture of his first poop in the pooper.  haha  Peeing is not as easy because for him, he doesn’t care that he pees onto the floor.  So, I went and picked up some toddler underwear and I’m going to put them on him.  The hope is that the discomfort of wet underwear is incentive enough for him to pee on the potty.

We’ll see how it goes.

In other news, we’re excited to be only 3 weeks away from our trip to the Outer Banks, which will be taking place in the middle of September.  We’re looking forward to a time of relaxation and sun!

Here are pictures of my 2 experiments with beets:

Cold Beet Soup

 

Beet Bread

It’s a rainy day…time to get a lot of stuff done around the house!

 

A Hernia Holiday -N

On Friday, August 17th, I had a hernia repair done.  It was the first time I’ve ever had to go through major surgery (if that can be called major).  I am in a lot of discomfort now, and I can’t pick my son up for two weeks.  However, there are a few things I’m thankful for.

-Anesthesia

-A week home from work

-Whatever glue stuff they used to close the holes up in my stomach

I don’t feel like the strongest guy in the world right now, but I’m not in a ton of pain (as long as I don’t move much).  This is also giving me some valuable down time to kind of think and relax my brain.  Work’s been pretty hectic!

Either way, I’m anxious to get better, but content to have some respite.  Hence, my “hernia holiday!”

~Nick

3 years

Our anniversary was yesterday, 8/8!  We celebrated by going to a batting cage and hitting slow-pitch softball, trying to hit fast-pitch softball and trying to just see baseballs.  Nick hit some of the baseballs; as for me, I had no such luck.  I would always be caught swinging way too late.  We were in the 60 mph cage and boy is that a fast pitch!  I can’t even imagine the type of training it takes to play major league, where pitches can be upwards of 80 mph!  Yikes!

After batting cages, we did some putt putt, hiked alongside a river and went to the mall to change into formal wear (that made me feel like a spy, changing in a public bathroom so that people wouldn’t recognize me upon my exit of the mall).  We finished the night with a nice dinner at a French bistro called “Le Bistro du Beaujolais.”  It’s one of our favorite fine dining locations around here and is only reserved for very important occasions.

It was a great night!  Many thanks to Nick’s mom for making half a day of quality time together possible.  Such a blessing!

Here are some recent pictures, including pictures of our anniversary-wear and a recent visit to the beach (Lake Erie beach).

 

There’s a baby boy in there!!

A rare family picture

 

Playing with Nonna

 

 

Bubster Hasselhoff is what we call him

Self-shot: Nathaniel is learning to mimic very well, so I made a face and he copied!

 

Nathaniel is starting to practice drinking out of things other than a sippy cup

 

He’s also really into climbing chairs and couches now. Getting good at it!

 

 

 

 

 

L: The animal in me

It’s time to post about crafty stuff once more [finally!!].  It’s been a while since I’ve had time to do anything crafty.  Of course, there’a always working on Nick’s striped sweater that’s been sitting around for 1 year…and there’s always making new PUL diaper covers…and starting the 2-3 dress and shirt ideas I have in my head.  But I wanted something quick; something I could finish in 1 or 2 afternoons.  So I chose a wet bag and a simple blouse.  Today I will blog about the wet bag.

I’ve never owned anything animal print…in my life!  But now, I own 1 animal print item:  a wet bag for diapers and other wet stuff.  I bought this material to make a changing pad for a friend, so the material was laying around in my basement crafting space.  Well, after seeing a few good deals on Zulily for wet bags, I decided it was time that I changed from using grocery store plastic bags to a reusable, washable wet bag.  I actually already had a plain, white waterproof fabric wet bag that neither Nick nor I liked because it had a drawstring closure and would let diaper smells get out of the wet bag.  Eek!  So, I took it upon myself to convert the drawstring wet bag into a zipped wet bag with a cotton outer layer to give it some more style.

Enter animal print.

It’s zebra–black and white stripes.  Totally NOT me!

But I decided to go out on a limb since after all, it is just a diaper bag.  I also had a homeless zipper that once zipped up a shirt/blouse (that has since been torn apart for other purposes) laying around that was the perfect length!  Surprisingly enough, I also have the tool for pressing snap buttons into material (for the loop of the wet bag).  So, combine all of the things “laying around” my crafting space…and voila!

A new animal print wet bag.  Take a look!

Behemoth, our black cat, got in the way

 

Repurposed zipper

 

 

Snap button for the loop to tie around stroller/door knob, etc.

 

Kiddy Pool Fun and Pesto

Well, I had an entire post written out and then WordPress didn’t let me publish, so I clicked on something I thought would let me save the draft and it ended up taking me to a different page and, well, my entire post was deleted.  Bummer!

So, here I attempt to reproduce what I had written.

 

On the days where temperatures get to the mid-upper 80s and lower-mid 90s, Nathaniel loves playing in his kiddy pool.  He has no fear of the water and just loves splashing around, dunking his head in the cool water and drinking some pool water through it all.  He was out yesterday and I captured some fun pictures of him playing.  He couldn’t get enough of the pool!  Thoughts of getting out only crept into his little head when the he started getting cold.  And even then, he wasn’t sure if he really wanted out right away!  I hope these pictures will kind of re-create what his time in the pool was like.  :-)

 

There were many more cute pictures, but I just chose the ones that best represented his time in the pool.  :-)  Hope you enjoyed them!

Developmental milestones:

1.  Using a spoon and fork- he can eat yogurt, oatmeal and the like with a spoon.  He can stab firmer soft stuff (pieces of fruit, scrambled eggs, etc.)

2.  21 teeth!  Bright and white, nice-shape and straight!  Hopefully his permanent teeth grow back like this too.  haha

3.  N loves babies!  Whenever he sees a baby or a picture of a baby, he’ll say “bae-beh” and do the sign for baby.  It’s cute.

4.  Dancing is his favorite hobby.  With all the weddings we’ve been to recently, he’s had many opportunities to practice dancing!  Favorite moves:  walking like a zombie (Mama taught him that), spreading his legs out like he’s stretching (watching Mama do Jillian Michaels), spinning in a circle, leaning to one side in a pose, whatever else he sees other people doing.  Favorite music:  Michael Jackson, Michael Buble or swing/big band, classical.  Nick played some heavy metal for N and he just stood there looking kind of confused…

5.  Helping Mama is his purpose in life for now.  Even if he doesn’t quite have the skills to do so in a true helping way.

6.  Building blocks instead of destroying them.

7.  Up/down stairs- he practices doing this without going on all fours.  Of course, Mama and Baba help him do this.

8.  Swimming in the lake, pool, whatever body of water he can swim in.

9.  Reacting to “no” or not having his way.  He gets red, he clenches his fists and his whole body gets tense…and he stomps his feet a little bit and sometimes walks a few paces away and then comes back.  Learning how to control your feelings and desires is a hard thing!  Lessons in self-control begins now…not when you’re in school.

10.  Cuddly boy.  He’s very affectionate and loves hugging and kissing people!  Oh, he’s also very sociable…he waves to people at the grocery store and people driving by our house.

In other news, we made pesto from the carrot tops (yesterday’s post).  Here it is!  It was delicious!  Nathaniel ate so much pesto…almost as much as me!  We hadn’t had pesto in a while and N loves pesto.

Carrot greens pesto

Purple carrots!

Well, here in Amherst, Ohio, it’s been a hot summer.  Hot and humid, just like a good midwest state.  Good job, Ohio.  Fortunately, though it’s generally been a pretty dry summer, we have had some good bouts of rain/thunderstorms.  Even so, Nathaniel and I have had to be diligent in watering our vegetable garden.

We’ve already had some good yields:
1.  a nice batch of plump, big sweet peas

2.  some green beans (we tried green beans in a rectangular planter this year and they did not fare as well as they did last year in the ground)

3.  many salads (Italian salad mixture plus bok choy and spinach)

4.  1 batch of carrots, which will be featured in this post

We will be looking forward to a nice harvest of tomatoes and an even nicer harvest of Acorn squash!  Questionable vegetables are:  brussels sprouts and Poblano peppers.  We think they were planted to close together…thus, creating many leaves and greenery, but no fruit so far…but we’re still waiting.

The carrots we bought were multi-colored carrots- orange, yellow, purple and white.  You’ll see, they look pretty cool!

He’s walking!

Top ten of the past few months in no particular order

1.  We went to California for 4 days to attend Lydia’s mom’s wedding

2.  Nathaniel started walking in California

3.  We’ve made homemade gnocchi and ravioli and our homemade salami is curing in the basement.

4.  We are excited about a summer of weddings!  We have one a month from now until August.  We’ll be in Connecticut in May,  New York in June and Bowling Green, OH in August, and then back to Ohio for another wedding in August.

5.  Nathaniel is starting to speak to us with phrases marked with question intonation, meaning he will speak jibber jabber to us but end his phrase with a rising intonation.  He does this whenever he is asking us permission to do something, hold/get something, have more food, have a toy, etc.  It’s very cute, but we still don’t know what exactly he is saying.

6.  Lydia’s working on making a wooden bead maze toy for Nathaniel.  It’s modeled after this:  Melissa and Doug Bead Maze

7.  Nick has a lot of wood in the front yard to split because we had 3 trees taken down/trimmed.

8.  Nathaniel walks all over the house now, waddling his way to places.  It’s funny to see him decide where to go and how to get there.  He’s getting cuter each day as he starts figuring out the social interaction part of life.  He’ll say hi to everyone at the store when I take him grocery shopping; he’ll randomly cock his head to one side when you’re talking with him; he’ll play peek-a-boo with you with his blanket, ducking down behind stuff or poking his head out from the side of something; he’ll mimic everything you do; he has a great sense of humor!

9.  We are getting back into Argentine Tango, going to classes at Oberlin College once a week and attending random dances at our teacher’s house.  It’s been great fun!  Nathaniel’s even danced with us a few times on our backs in his carrier.  haha

10.  A current list of house projects to be soon accomplished:  new carpet in 3 bedrooms, replace drop ceiling in basement bedroom, get the guest bathroom re-done.

And here are some pictures of the past few months:

When he’s outside, he’ll find a rock, hold on to it and never let it go.

Always playing piano…

He LOVED watching the airplanes!

While he is getting more dexterous with the spoon, it’s sometimes still easier to self-feed with fingers.

He has a great sense of humor!

Handsome boy

He’s the same size as some of the sections of wood!

Little drummer boy

Need a caddy?

Bumblebee

Eating on the driving range

Homemade spinach/garlic mustard/ricotta cheese ravioli!