Happy New Year!

WOW,  2014 was quite a year!  It was a year of learning, a year of growth, a year of struggles and a year of fun.  Moving to Tampa proved a much greater challenge than either of us anticipated.   When we decided to move to Tampa after I accepted a job at USF Mark began looking for jobs in the area.  It was a struggle for many reasons, and in the end, although neither of us had any intention of moving back to Gainesville, it seems as though higher powers must have.   We met some new wonderful people along the way,  and had great adventures exploring the Tampa/St. Pete area, but we realized after many months of really long commutes that we weren't in the right place for this time of our lives.  After searching for opportunities to move (even to some great distance) what was right under our noses the entire time presented some more obvious opportunities and we decided moving back to Gainesville was the right decision for us now.  We've now been back in Gainesville for 2 months and life is a 2015 is already quite different than 2014.  We brought our 1st house (more on that later), Jacob is back in Baby Gator with one of the same teachers and may of the same classmates he was with before leaving, and life here seems . . . . well, it just seems right.  Jacob and Bailey love having a yard to play in, we all are enjoying living together full time again (Mark was commuting to Gainesville to work for the past year), and I enjoy (amongst many other things) that my longest commute to work is 15 minutes. 

Let me try to re-cap all of the adventures we've had since being back in Gainesville.  We moved right before Thanksgiving and for the first time in many years didn't cook anything for Thanksgiving dinner.  We did instead enjoy a wonderful dinner with the Gaters and it was such a nice welcome back to town.  The second week in December the Siburts came to visit.   It was originally just a trip for Grandma and Grandad, but since it was Grandma's 60th birthday we decided to surprise her with almost the whole gang.  Michael, Claire and Scott all flew down and surprised Grandma with a weekend visit.  We enjoyed spending time with everyone in our new house and celebrating Grandma's birthday.  The guys did lots of house projects, the girls got pedicures, and we all went out for an awesome birthday dinner.  It was a really fun weekend!

Jacob's new ride

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Christmas lights

The next week we moved everything that we'd moved into the house (the bare minimum) back out so that our hardwood floors could be refinished.  It was a long week but we were fortunate to have a friend's empty house to stay in for the week and after 7 days out of the house we were able to officially move in.  After A LOT of cleaning we put furniture in all of the rooms and began unpacking boxes to stay :-).    That was the week before Christmas. 

"New" floors

Christmas was quiet this year, and wonderful.  We had Christmas Eve dinner with the Gaters and the Pitkins came over for Christmas dinner.  Jacob was very excited about Christmas this year, constantly singing Christmas songs (he still is!) and very concerned about every detail related to Santa.  Mark and I currently have a bet about how long he'll be singing Christmas songs.  I guessed Easter, he guessed the 4th of July . . . we both may be wrong!

Christmas Eve play time with Mr. Gater

Leaving cookies by the front door for Santa

Ready for Christmas morning

Okapis!

Veggies for Christmas dinner

 The weekend after Christmas Beep, Pops, Piper & JJ arrived . . . and Uncle Henry surprised us by riding down in the back of the truck without Mom knowing he was there for the entire 12 hour drive!  They brought a trailer of furniture for the house and we had a great time while they were here.  Mark and Pops did a of projects around the house and Jacob loved the constant activity and attention.  He went on lots of bike rides with Uncle Henry and we all went to visit the Retirement Horse Farm in Alachua.

Ready for another bike ride with Uncle Henry

Park play time

Feeding the horses

Happy New Year from Uncle Henry and Jacob Henry!

After the new year and the departure of all of our visitors it's been back to reality.  Work has been good but really busy for me.  Mark just has his big annual arbor day celebration, and we're always doing some "exciting" new projects around the house on the weekends.  We've spent time playing with lots of friends, enjoyed being able to once again walk to stores from our house (which I forgot to mention is on the same street that we used to live on about 5 blocks west).   Life is never perfect (is there such a thing?), but life is very good right now and we feel very blessed!

Gainesville Bound

After a year of adventures in Tampa we are moving back to Gainesville.  This year has definitely been one of learning for us. We decided to move to Tampa a year ago to pursue my career with the full anticipation of Mark finding a job within the first few months.   A year later, after spending weeks apart because Mark still has his great job in Gainesville, we are moving back.  Neither of us would have predicted that a year later we'd be packing boxes once again and buying a house 5 blocks from where we used to live.  There are a lot of factors that resulted in this decision but ultimately we want to live together(7 days a week), in a place we like to live(and don't have to fight terrible traffic twice a day), and where we can both get good jobs.  Gainesville fits that picture perfectly.  We're going back with a fresh perspective in many ways, and are excited to begin to feel settled in a place we know and have grown to love.  We are buying our first house, I am working at UF in a research, teaching and clinical role, and Mark is still the City Arborist.  Since making the decision to move back to Gainesville things have fallen into place.  Jacob(miraculously) got back into the same class at his old school, we found a great house within walking distance to a number of our favorite shops, and we're excited to be moving into a familiar but new stage in our life.  It is bittersweet leaving my current job but I could not have more supportive co-workers.  So, Monday morning the moving truck arrives and we're Gainesville bound!  More to come including pictures of our new house :-)

Halloween 2014

Happy Halloween!  We had a wonderful time this year . . . after convincing a very 3 year old Jacob it was a good day to wear his costume.  Jacob decided he wanted to be a sarafri train conductor this year and we bought the costume a couple of weeks ago so he had plenty of time to get comfortable wearing it.  Jacob picked out costumes for Mark and I (safari animals), and we had the tiger costume from last year that Bailey so fortunately was able to wear for a few pictures.

Jacob's school had a Fall Festival yesterday that we all went to.  He doesn't usually go to school on Fridays so he wasn't to sure about going and refused to wear his costume.  By the time I got home from work he was convinced dressing up on Halloween day was ok and was in full conductor attire.  We took Bailey trick or treating to a few neighbors houses and then went to the Children's Museum for their Halloween party.  We all had fun and it was a comfortable place for Jacob to enjoy the Halloween festivities.  Enjoy the pictures!  

Sick days

We've spent the last 2 days home sick;  Jacob has a sinus infection/ terrible cough.  Despite spending a lot of time watching Curious George and snuggling on the couch we've spent some time playing "Safari Train" on the porches.  We have 2 trains and Jacob is (usually) the train conductor/ zookeeper.  Here's a couple of pictures of our cute little zookeeper.

"Potty Training"

I'm not sure that potty training is an accurate term here.  In the last week, Jacob decided he was ready to wear undies and use the potty and that's it, he's doing it. Period, done, I could end the post here.

Let me rewind a few months though.   We've been trying, on and off for a few months to potty train him with no success.  In the back of my mind I kept repeating to myself the advice a good friend gave me about potty training, "You can't want it more than they do." 

1.  We tried the "potty train you child in 3 days" routine where we didn't leave the house, he ran around with no diaper and we tried taking him to the potty a lot.  That didn't work, he just held it forever and then peed a gallon on the floor wherever he was.

2.  We tried the timer method, asking him to go sit on the potty every 20 minutes all weekend until he peed.  That didn't work, he refused to sit on the potty.

3.  We tried sticker charts.  He tore them up.

4.  We even tried offering a toy for each time he went to the potty.  He told us "I don't need toys."

5.  We didn't try the "M&M method" because there wasn't a food that would have bribed him and he won't eat M&Ms or any other candy.  (Maybe we could have tried ice cream cones :-))

I decided our next try was to going to include only underwear.  He's been wearing pull-ups at school (his current classroom won't allow diapers).  He just treats them like diapers though so they aren't helping with the potty training.    So my thought was, put underwear on him (we did try this a very long time ago briefly but he wouldn't even put them on) and see how it goes. 

Fast forward to last Saturday.  He woke up with a dry diaper and even after watching an episode of Curious George in he was still dry.  So, I decided I'd take him downstairs and ask him to sit on his potty while I got his breakfast together.  He peed immediately.  So, I put underwear on him and we went about our day.  We (nervously) went to the Aquarium in the morning and he stayed dry but refused to use the bathroom there and then peed in his car seat right before we got home.  We put him down for nap in pull ups and after nap put underwear back on and kept on trucking. 

Fast forward again to tonight, Friday night.  He hasn't had another accident since, has woken up with a dry diaper every morning, and is wearing undies to bed for the first time tonight (his choice).  He did it, and he is proud, and we are too!  He tells us when he needs to go and goes, he tells his teachers when he needs to go and goes.  We spent the first couple of days asking him frequently if he needed to try as a reminder.  Now, if we ask him he replies, "If I'm doing the potty dance I need to pee.  If I'm not doing the potty dance I don't need to pee.  I'm not doing the potty dance."  He's completely got it and he's shocked all of us a bit. 

I stayed home with him Monday just to  have one more day to solidify things before he went to school.   On Tuesday when I took him in with undies his teachers were quite apprehensive(rightly so, he sits on the potty everyday at school multiple times and hasn't gone once).  He did it though, he didn't have any accidents.  The next day they were much more optimistic, and by the time I picked him on Thursday they said "he's got this" and smiled. 

This shouldn't surprise us because he seems to make this type of change suddenly and not until he is completely ready.   He showed no signs before he stopped nursing suddenly right before 18 months. Within 5 days he stopped.  He didn't climb out of his crib until the week he turned 3 and then he did it non stop so we took the side off of his crib and there was no transition period at all to sleeping in his now "toddler bed".   

So now, he's ready to go, have fun, play, be a 3 year old wearing his cute little 4T Disney undies and Mark and I are trying to figure out what to do in this new stage of life. :-)