The Four Forehands

Fun with Water

2009-05-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

Lydia loves her water table that Grammy and Papa bought her for her birthday. She loves splashing, no holds bar style. There are little sail boats that came with it, and Grammy added little rubber duckies. Lydia throws them out and then goes to retrieve them. It's so cute! Mommy and Daddy went on the Providence Marriage Retreat at Fort Caswell this past weekend, and Grammy and Papa got the privilege of babysitting Lydia all weekend. After a whole weekend playing in it, the water table is now her favorite activity-especially if Grammy puts her in a little swimmer and lets her go at it!

Lydia's 1st birthday

2009-05-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

Lydia is one!!! She turned one year old on April 30. Below are two pictures on her special day.We had a birthday party for her on the May 3. It was a simple, family party. Lydia hit the jackpot with the presents she got! Mommy and daddy got her 1st bible, Jesus Storybook Bible, and she got two other bibles as well! She received several books, some crayons and big coloring book (probably will use that a little later!), a teaching teddy bear, her first babydoll, Little peoples' Noah's Arc, a grocery cart, and a water table!!! (see the other post for pics of that!)

Here's Lydia helping Daddy open presents. She surprised us all with how well she did tearing at the paper!She wasn't very happy in her birthday hat!Mommy spent so much time on her birthday cake, but loved every minute! Mommy is just so glad it came out so well!

Here's Lydia after devouring her cake-there weren't any good pics of her eating her cake! We found out that Lydia loves ice cream-just like her mommy!!!

I just can't believe that my little girl is one year old! The past year has flown by! This time next year, we'll have another one in tow!

We're pregnant!

2009-04-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

So, this is our little peanut. Due October 30. Lydia is going to be a big sister! Yeah!

We have had two appointments thus far, and starting next month, I begin going for my regular checkups once a month. Yes, we'll find out what we are having, but not until June sometime.

Everything looks good so far. I'm at a higher risk of having gestational diabetes because I had it with Lydia. Sure, I don't want it, but really, it made me eat REALLY nutritiously, and I hardly gained a pound in the last 9 weeks of my pregnancy because of my diet. Once I get over my weird food aversions, I'm going to go ahead and start the diet again, just for the heck of it. (Definitely not for the fun of it!)

So, that's all that's going on with the Forehands. Oh yeah, in the next several months, we are going to try to put our town house on the market (we'll see if this really happens). We need to find something with a little different layout. Who knows where we'll end up-Alaska? Just kidding. Maybe we'll find something in Wake Forest...but I really love our location now in N.Raleigh, but we'll never find what we are looking for, in our price range, in Raleigh. So we'll see!

Yes, I'm going to post some other pictures of Lydia later, but right now, I've already spent enough time in front of the computer. Here's some for now...

Lydia having fun in the morning...

See what Emily puts up with...she is such a good dog...

Pretty girl...loves her baby dolls at Grandma and Grandpa Forehand's...

We loved the snow!

2009-01-26T17:05:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I haven't made a real post in a very long time. Sorry to those folks that actually keep up with the Forehand blog.

So it snowed!!! I loved it! Last year, I got a couple furries on my birthday (February 1), but I have missed the snow the last couple years. I know that Lydia was too young to really enjoy it or really understand what it is, but what a great photo opportunity!

I wanted to get a picture of her sitting in the snow, but the one above turned out fuzzy. She got snow on her hand-I didn't have gloves on her because I thought that her sleeves folded over. The sleeves were so thick that the flap wouldn't fold over. So her hands were cold, but not too bad, and Lydia sure didn't mind!

Lydia really enjoys watching Emily, snow or not. Lydia squealed and talked as she watched Emily in the white stuff. Emily loved the snow. Running all over the place, eatting the snow, and just being an excited puppy dog. Our neighbors were out with their dog, so their dog and Emily ran around for a bit.

We also got them to take a family picture...

Lydia and Daddy...

Lydia and Mommy...

Mommy's little snowman...The next day, after Jason went to work, I took Lydia out in the snow again. I read off of Amy Williams' facebook page that she used a laundry basket as a sled for Luke...so I copied her. I pushed Lydia around the yard. She was indifferent...didn't cry, but didn't laugh. Really, she was too busy watching Emily run around. But wasn't she cute in the basket???
So, we say goodbye to the snow...maybe we'll get more next year when she can run around and play with Emily in it!!!

2008-12-23T21:31:00.001-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Such a good Papa

2008-12-17T17:44:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-17T16:50:00.001-08:00

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.

Our silly puppy

2008-12-04T19:36:00.000-08:00

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!!!

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

2008-12-02T20:05:00.000-08:00

My SugarBou has a cold

2008-12-01T20:06:00.000-08:00

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.

Ok, so I finally joined the Blog Fad

2008-11-28T17:33:00.000-08:00

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!

Lydia loves her puppy! She enjoys eating Emily's ears and getting lots of wet kisses!

Well, don't expect another post soon...but maybe I'll surprise you with one in the near future!