The Four Forehands: 2008

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Such a good Papa

So, my dad, Dave, always says that we never take any pictures of him and Lydia. So I decided to dedicate a whole post to him, him alone. Here are some pics of Papa with his little princess. (Yes Mother, you are allowed to be jealous and give him a hard time!)

Lydia is becoming a little brat

So, Lydia is doing this new thing...sticking her tongue out and blowing, puffing up her cheeks which creates little bubbles and drool oozing down her chin. She also has started hitting her chest while babbling. She says dada, gaagaa, ahhhh, and Uncle Josh and Papa thinks that she says joshjoshjoshjosh. She isn't crawling yet, but she has a way of getting into everything!!! I don't know what I'm going to do when she starts moving around.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Our silly puppy

Jason and I adopted Emily from the SPCA in August of 2006. We had been married for 3 months, and since we weren't going to have babies right away, I wanted something else...I begged and begged Jason to get a dog. We both grew up with dogs, him with boxers and me with labs. So, we went to the SPCA to look, my brother Josh went with us. We (I) fell in love with a little puppy, lab/hound mix. She was so adorable. We left there, thinking that we'd call the next day to confirm that we wanted her. Well, the next day she was gone. But the LORD had our best interests at heart. We decided to wait a bit before getting a dog. We were about to close on a townhome the next week, and thought it best to wait until we were settled.

Well, we waited only a couple of days. I went online to look at what the SPCA had, and then dragged Jason down there two days later. "Merry," a white/tan lab mix, had just been moved over to the adoption center the night before. She had been found wondering the streets, no tags or anything. She was named Merry because she was such a happy puppy! They estimated her age to be about 3 years old. We were the first to see this wiggly worm of a dog. The worker who helped us told us that she wouldn't last the day there-someone was going to take her home that day. Jason and I decided that we wanted to be the ones to take her home. We paid $110 for her, bought a collar and leash on the spot, and walked her out to the car. Jason wanted to let her go to the bathroom before we put her in our new-used Saturn Vue. As we walked her around, we talked about names. Jason had an overwhelming desire to call our newest member of the family Emily. Since he always gets his way, we welcomed Emily into our hearts and home.

Now we have a spoiled puppy on our hands. She sleeps on my pillow when I'm not in bed. She wedges her way in between Jason and I when we are watching a movie on the couch (I always end up with her tail end-Jason gets to rub her head). She'll whine if we are taking too much room on the couch, not allowing her enough space to lay. If there is something on the couch where she wants to curl up, such as the remote, she will circle on top of it, peering over at me until I move it in order for her to lay down. She expects food at a certain time, and if she doesn't get it, she will whine and stare at us. She waits at the edge of our kitchen whenever one of us is in there, waiting for us to drop something on the floor. Emily is a protective dog-she'll bark at a stranger, then tuck her tail between her legs and give a low growl as she backs away. She barks when the wind blows outside. She has a place up in Lydia's room where we have placed her pillow bed so that she can look outside at our townhome complex parking lot. If the shade is not pulled up, Emily will nudge her nose to move it. We have made a new place for the trash can, up high on top of our potato cabinet (I don't know what it's called-we got it from the Olivers) that is about 2 feet high. Before we moved the trash can, she would get into the trash from time to time, usually when we hadn't paid her enough attention or she didn't have a toy or bone to chew on. Within the first couple days that we got Emily, she chewed Jason's rainbows, my rainbows and another shoe of mine. We have since made sure that she has something other than shoes to chew on! Emily tries her best to play with my parents' dog, Samson...he doesn't want to have anything to do with her though!! He's an old grouch of a lab, a grandpa so to speak. This is Samson...

Despite all of her flaws, she is the perfect dog for us. She is so very gentle and loving. When Jason comes home from work or from just being out, she is so excited, wiggling her body in ways that make us believe that she doesn't have a spine. She goes to find her bone to present it to Jason or any guest that comes to the house. Her bone is her prized possession and loves to show it off! When I am downstairs, I can tell her "Go get Daddy," and she races up the stairs, jumps on the bed, showering Jason with kisses until he wakes up! She is never aggressive. Lydia can be propped up on her, tugging at her ears, trying to put them into her mouth, and Emily just sits there (probably wishing that she could go curl up somewhere else).

One time I had a friend and her nine month old over, and Emily was chewing on her bone. The baby crawled over and took the bone from Emily, and the dog just perked up and wagged her tail. She is the perfect dog!!! She is going to be Lydia's best friend growing up!

Emily gives Lydia kisses all the time...

So the other day, I was feeding Lydia on the couch, with Jason sitting next to me. There were things on our ottoman, leaving no room for Emily to come up. She paced back and forth whining, every once in a while putting her head on the ottoman or Jason's leg. We kept telling her to go lay down, but she refused! Finally, she walked over to Lydia's little gym, and tried to paw at the boppy laying on it. Jason and I looked at each other and laughed! What a silly dog! So, Jason had to get up to get something and went ahead and moved the boppy, ordering the dog to lay down. Here's what a pathetic puppy looks like....

Our computer crashed right before Lydia was born, and I lost all of my pictures...(unless Jason has them somewhere on cd)...therefore, all the pics that I have to show are of Emily since Lydia was born! Here are some good shots!

We love our puppy!!!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Come one, Come all!! What would you like off the wagon!??!

Monday, December 1, 2008

My SugarBou has a cold

I absolutely hate sucking her nose out with that stupid bulb syringe. She screams like she is about to die! Agh! Her last cold lasted for about 3 weeks, so hopefully, prayerfully, she will get over this one quickly.
On top of this, we are trying to teach her to put herself to sleep, something that we should have done a couple months ago. This means that there is a lot of crying, which tears me up because I can't go to her to comfort her. But that has been my problem...I've been going to her everytime she cries instead of letting her calm herself. Well, I know better for the next baby.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Ok, so I finally joined the Blog Fad

Ok, so I'm new at this, and I honestly do not know how much I will 'blog'...I never saw myself setting one of these up, so we will see how it goes!

What's going on with the Forehand family?

Well, Lydia just turned 7 months old! She is growing up so fast, and doing more and more things!

We started 'solids' last month, and boy, has she got the hang of purees! I give her a bite and before I have scooped another spoonful, she has her mouth opened, wanting more. She knows that when we set her in her bumbo or her high chair that she is going to be getting food...she becomes impatient and starts crying because Mommy doesn't move fast enough to get her food ready! She is such a joy!

I was a sub for Bunko in November, and I ended up taking Lydia with me. (It was WAY past her bedtime when she got home) She had fun playing with all of Grammie's friends!

Jason is working at Honda as a mechanic. He really enjoys the work, and we are so thankful for his job at this time when the economy is not so good. It would help us financially if people wanted to spend money on getting their cars fixed!

I am at home, enjoying watching my baby grow. Jason works nights at Honda, so we have a lot of time together during the day as a family. We have thought about me finding a part-time job, a couple of hours, 3-4 days a week, but nothing has come up. Grammie and Papa think that we need to take her for auditions for commercials etc since she is so beautiful! I actually had several people in Target today say that she looks like she should be in an ad! Jason would never go for that though!

Thanksgiving was a long day, going from my folks to Jason's. But it was so nice to spend time with family...except my bro Matt and his wife, Laura, were in Greensboro with her family. It was a little odd not having the whole Brubaker family together. We will all be together at Christmas though! It's going to be a fun Christmas, this being Lydia's first! She is going to be spoiled, presents gallore!