FIYAH!

So imagine you're asleep. Your little family is all all cozy in bed. You hear your husband's alarm clock go off for work and as he turns it off and lays back down you hear the gentle sound of raindrops hitting the window. "Mmmm. It's gonna be a cozy rainy day in bed" You think to yourself. Your husband begins to rise for work and looks out the window to see how bad the rain is and you pull the covers tighter and start to drift back into sleep when you hear your husband gasp..."Oh my God the Condo is on fire!" 

That is how our day started today.  That lovely "rain hitting the window" sound was actually the horrifying crackle of flames 20 feet away from where we sleep. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my babies thinking that our actual condo was on fire. I ran to the sliding glass window and this is what I see:

Except when I saw it, there was not a firetruck, or ambulance in sight. Just this raging fire that nobody seemed to know about at 8am.  

I see the flames are jumping from the porch to the grass and i'm thinking, it's going to spread. We scurry around for articles of clothing, the laptop and camera.  Coen see's the fire from the window and is pointing at it and saying "Oh no, biyah!" 

Mike is loading the kids into the car when I hear this "Kaboom"....a propane tank on the deck has exploded. That's when I snapped this picture. I ran to all of my immediate neighbors and knocked on all of their doors. I'm sure I terrified the woman across the hall. She wandered sleepily into the hall wondering why I was banging on her door to see this red-eyed, Chaka Khan-haired woman running around saying "There's a fire!" 

I finally get out...with no shoes, Coen with no pants and we get in the car and drive down the street. The mother in me just wanted to flee....the journalist in me wanted to go back and watch what was happening.  We watched as 3 fire trucks pulled  in and neighbors ran out to watch the blaze. I kept running back,  praying it hadn't spread to the other condos. Luckily it hadn't and the fire was under control.  It did take them about 45 minutes to get it out though. 

Terrifying and yet...kind of exciting. Sure got a start to our day. 

Turns out nobody was hurt, thank Goodness. I just keep thinking, What if Mike never looked out the window and it had spread? We would've slept right through that. Definitely counting our blessings. I can't imagine being the occupant or even the people across the hall. They were all affected and have severe damage/loss of their home.

This is the second fire here. The ones directly across from our building burned about 10 years ago....Time to move! LOL

The cause of the fire....

One of these...

On a wooden deck though? No bueno....

The whole incident was in the local newspaper which you can read here:
http://www.standard.net/stories/2014/03/26/roof-collapses-roy-apartment-fire-building-evacuated

and you may recognize one of the photo contributors....

Jonah-4 Months

Man, I feel like I just posted about 3 months and now this kid is already 4 months. Our little squeaker is acting like he's 6 months and holding his head up like he's been doing it since birth. He sits in his bumbo unassisted (I had to prop Coen's head up til about 6 months) but we are having the same problem that we did with Coen...he chubby little legs get stuck. When we pull him out you can hear him "pop" out like the suction is being released. LOL I don't leave him in it very long because I fear it will cut off the circulation. He loves to sit up though. Also he has rolled over a few times from back to stomach.  According to "the book" babies usually roll over from stomach to back first, but Coen didn't do it and neither did Jonah. What can I say...these kids are rule breakers! :P  He is "cooing" like crazy and seems to "talk" back when we say things to him. He is very ticklish and laughs at the silly faces we make. Overall he's just a ball of joy.

We've moved on up to 3-6 month clothes, so I guess he's right on track for that. Newborn clothes are officially retired and given away. So I guess we better not have another kid. Although sometimes he falls asleep with me, he sleeps just fine alone in his crib or bassinet and i'm so grateful that I pushed myself to follow through on teaching him to sleep alone. He's fine, and i'm getting much needed sleep.

My pediatrician gave us the green light on rice cereal at 4 months so, today we will give it a try and see if he likes it. I feel like my supply has been a bit low with being sick lately, so hopefully a little rice will help while I binge on Oatmeal and Mother's milk tea. I'm still shooting for a year of breastfeeding. Although I went 18 months with Coen,  i'm going to pump more this month and officially substitute the bottle for one feeding and gradually move up. I was a human pacifier for Coen, I won't do that again.

Also, as per 4 month initiation in this house, Jonah rolled off the bed. Coen did it the first time at 4 months too so we are officially onto low surfaces and supervised high surfaces (if at all) I happened to come home from school and lay down with my lil chunk for a nap when I was u pleasantly awakened by a "thud" followed by shrill screaming. He literally scooted across the bed from my side to mikes side and fell off. Thank goodness we left carpet in the rooms and he didn't land on anything or hurt himself. I think it scared us more than anything. So glad these kids are built like little linebackers.

Anyhow...cheers to 4 months my sweet boy! And as usual, the photo blast:

First Kisses

I don't know why but I kinda love this.

Awkwardly Beautiful LOL

Coen-16 months

I realize that now that Coen is over a year and has had his 2nd birthday, I haven't really talked about his milestones. I guess kids grow a lot the first year so after that, it's just little things. But...the little things are equally important and so I've decided to keep up on my handsome oldest son on here as well.

Well let's see. Since Coen's 2nd birthday we were only getting a few words out of him. No real sentences strung together or anything and we were a little bit worried because of course you come across other 2 year olds who have a helluva lot to say and know exactly how they want to say it and say it like an adult. We realized we're not super talkative people. I mean a lot of the time i'm doing homework, or editing pictures or cleaning house, making dinner etc...and Mike is at work or reading or playing FIFA or something and it doesn't take a lot of convo to do those things. Don't get me wrong we converse with each other but not in the way that kids pick up on. We decided to make an effort after Coen's 2nd birthday to start talking more about everything, what we're doing, how we're doing it, why we're doing it, what color it is etc.. etc... We sound pretty crazy but i'll be damned if it didn't work.

Coen is talking non-stop. He is literally a parrot. I'm so impressed with how quickly he's learning new words. He's using "Please" and "Thank-you" in the right context, he's cleaning up his room on his own now and saying "put it back" he's saying "Help" when he gets frustrated with something and can't do it on his own (HuGE one for me because normally he'd just stand there and scream while I pointed to 900 different objects trying to appease him) he's saying "Shoes" and "Bike" and "Batman" and "here we go" and "wahoo" and "Baby" and "brother" and knows most of the parts of the body and he knows that stove is "hot" and when things come out of it they are also hot. We just went over colors last week and just today he came in and said "blue car" and "red car" and he was exactly right. It's amazing.

Communication is so important and knowing what he wants has made things so much easier.

As far as the terrible 2's....eh....He's had his moments. I fear 3 will be the worst. I'll be honest, I'm more of the disciplinarian in our house. Mike thinks i'm too hard on him, but I want him to learn the right behavior and the wrong behavior now so that we don't have to try to break bad habits later. It's funny because whenever he is doing something he shouldn't be doing, who does he look at to see if he's in trouble? Mommy! But on the same foot, he respects me and still loves me at the end of the day and he's learning right from wrong. I have to see the tantrums on a daily basis so...I guess Mike just wants to spend his time loving on him. That's fine. He can tackle the hard stuff when he hits his teens.

Anyway. My little guy is just getting so big. He astounds me. He really does. Every free minute I have with him to myself I just wanna squeeze him and soak it up.