Jake Stephen Wiggins was born on 11-27-2014 Thanksgiving afternoon at 2:29. He weighed 6 lbs and was 19 inches long. He has a head full of what appears to be dark duck downy hair and I can’t keep my fingers off of it. He was born at 37 weeks 3 days gestation and because of that, things aren’t going the way that I had envisioned they would, but that will be a separate post. He is adorable and just the sweetest little thing.
Welcome to the world Jake, I can’t wait to see what you make of it.
We woke up to our first bit of Montana snow this morning. It had started around 8 last night as what was reported to one of my friends by a cashier as The Storm Of the Century. The wind was howling and the snow was coming sideways. In the end there was only a thin layer of snow on the ground this morning. If that was the storm of the century this is going to be a nice calm winter and I’ll be so happy.
Somehow after getting over her initial excitement about the snow Lil’s attitude deteriorated and we spent the first almost 30 minutes of the morning in tears (hers) and grumps (again hers) and frustration (both of us) so I decided to change my plans for school today. I was originally going to do language and reading practice and some math in the morning. I changed my mind to do fun creative art type stuff. Lil is so creative I figured the creative outlet would help get rid of the grumps. It worked like a charm.
First I gathered some snow in a 9×13 cake dish and set up Lil’s water paints. While she molded the snow into a snowman (shocking) and then painted it I worked on making some playdough. She loves painting snow and spent quite a bit of time making a whole scene out of the pan. The she decided to see if she could make ice out of the snow by putting it in water. We talked about the science of what happened when she put her snow in the water and it was very interesting.
I was trying out a new playdough recipe and was still working on it when she finished her painting. She proceeded to dance around the kitchen counting to 118 for me and then counting by 10 and then singing the days of the week. This is the stuff I love about homeschooling Lil. Even when we aren’t doing a real lesson there’s still learning happening all day everyday, it’s awesome.
I made this huge batch of playdough by the recipe because I wanted to see how it worked out naturally. Let me just say I should have gone with my intuition and made a 1/2 batch or something because I have a huge mountain of orange playdough with orange glitter. Normally I make my playdough plain and then separate it into smaller amounts and then add the food coloring to it before I knead it. This works fine with my normal recipe, but like I said I wanted to make this recipe the way the author intended first. So I only made one color and Lil chose orange. I should mention that this is a 5 cup of flour recipe, it really did make a mountain of dough. Before I kneaded it and it became smooth it looked like someone had dumped a bunch of sweet potato mashed potatoes on my counter (and added glitter). I really do like the texture of this recipe and will be trying it again, but my way to see if it works out. Of course my way ends up with me having very colorful hands for a few hours, but I’d rather that then so much of one color.
With Thanksgiving being around the corner I decided to have her make a playdough turkey. I cut a (really bad) turkey body out of brown construction paper and she added to it. She loved it!
Then she made a turkey in her hand, I think it’s suppose to be like when you do a hand outline to make a turkey. That’s my best guess.
Then she made a dog.
After the dog she asked me what to make next. I don’t know where it came from, but I told her to make a ostrich. She said she couldn’t because she couldn’t remember what they looked like. I pulled up Google on my phone and found her some pictures. I think she did a great job with it.
He’s hopping if you couldn’t tell. I think she made a hippo in a pond and a bunny that I didn’t get pictures of. I’m sure more playdough fun will be happening soon.
At my 24 week ultrasound (it should have been my 20 week US, but we were in the middle of moving and 24 was the earliest I could get in) the wonderful tech gave Lil her own copy of one of the pictures of Little Brother. When we got home I asked her where she wanted it and she picked a spot right above her toy boxes “so when I’m playing I can see him and think of him”.
That night while watching the video monitor (we were watching her then because sleeping in her own room was so new and it made her feel better to know we were watching) Waldo said it looked like she was singing or something.
The next day Lil tells me that she was singing and wanted to sing the song for me. While her song wasn’t the most interesting thing to some people I’m sure, but was one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.
This will not come as news to any family or people from Facebook, but we’re having a baby. I’m 29 weeks pregnant with a little boy and we couldn’t be more excited.
This picture of Lily is how we told most of our families and friends.
We waited to tell anyone (except Waldo’s Dad because we were living with him) until I was 13 weeks and we knew the gender of the baby. I had this amazing genetic testing done that told us the sex so early, it was awesome. And bonus, we know he doesn’t have any genetic issues.
Don’t worry about Lily, she wasn’t thrilled about getting a brother at first, but now she is all over it. She can’t wait to meet him and she is just so attentive to me and crazy sweet. I can’t wait to see her with him. Of course she hates the name we picked out and refuses to call him by it. We have decided on Jake Stephen and because of the Disney show Jake and the Neverland pirates; which she doesn’t watch BTW, she hates the name. She insists that we can’t name him after a show, I tell her that we aren’t and she just doesn’t care. She calls him Brother or Little Brother and that’s it, end of story. I’m betting she’ll warm up to it eventually.
This is one of the first pictures of all 4 of us. We were out buying some maternity pants and I snapped this shot in the dressing room.
I’ve had a number of ultrasounds, this one was at 11weeks. This is the one that was attached to Lily’s sign.
I’m going to do my best to update more often and try to even post some things from the last 29ish weeks so I can remember them. That’s my plan anyway.
Four years ago when Waldo’s Mom called him and told us that she had cancer we decided that we had to move to be closer to her. We were renting so it was a pretty easy decision. Also making it even easier, Waldo’s parents lived in the same town that most of my family lived. So Win Win. Within I believe 3 weeks or something like that we had packed up all of our stuff, worked it out with our jobs to work from home while we were gone and we left. We had figured this would last a year or two. The cancer was very advance and we knew that we hated California (or at least the Central Valley) so we wouldn’t be staying any longer than necessary.
A year after moving to California Waldo’s parents decided to move to Idaho. Rita (Waldo’s Mom) was still going strong and felt that the clean air and better people of Idaho would help her recovery better than the nastiness of California. Since we lived with them and as stated before hated California we decided to give Boise a try. I was sad to leave my family after only 1 year, and not nearly as many visits as I had hoped, but it was the best thing for us so we packed up again and headed East.
As it turns out we loved Boise. There was a zoo, aquarium, kids science museum and great places to shop for natural foods. Everything we could want. We ended up spending 3 years in the Boise area. Waldo’s Mom loved it too, not for the same reasons as we did, but she liked it. To all of our surprise and happiness she lived another 2 years before the cancer finally got the better of her. 2013 was a hard year for our families. In the Spring we lost my paternal grandmother, in September we had our miscarriage, about 2 weeks later we lost Waldo’s Mom and then 6 weeks later my maternal grandfather Pop suddenly died. Other little things also happened to us, but those are the biggies.
After losing Rita we couldn’t leave Waldo’s Dad right away so we stayed. We knew it wouldn’t last forever, Waldo’s job would need him back at some point. Well that point came a few months ago. We got the phone call or email, honestly I can’t remember how it came, but the end result was that we needed to move back to Montana.
Now don’t get me wrong, we love Montana. We have friends here. Do you know how hard it is to make friends when you a) work at home b) don’t do church c) don’t go out to clubs/bars and the like? Well it’s nearly impossible. We finally made friends with 1 very nice couple right before we moved back, I hated to leave them, but had to do it. Anyway, back on track. We also love how beautiful Montana is and while I haven’t visited the East side of the state, I’ve seen pictures so I can say this with some certainty, the area we live is the most beautiful part of all. We are also aware that there are down sides, such as we aren’t really outdoorsy people, and there’s no zoo and such here so being outdoors is how people live here. And there’s like 6 months of winter here. Winter is coming. People it’s no joke. There will be snow. Sure there was snow in Idaho, but not like here. It’s like never ending. But we have friend and friends with kids so YAY!
After the call (whatever) came we started to put all of our ducks in a row. We didn’t have a set date that we had to be back, but it had to be reasonable. We started packing up the things that we could live without and started to look for a rental. A major problem quickly because apparent, rentals in the Kalispell, MT area didn’t last long and because we have a cat that cut out about 9 out of 10 of the possible places. I don’t understand what so many people have against cats, but it’s a real thing and really started to get us know. One day while telling Waldo’s Dad how hard it was turning out to be to find a rental he suggested we try to buy. And thus the seed was planted. Waldo talked to a friend who had recently bought a house with a Rural Development Loan and after getting the name of his mortgage loan person and his realtor we were off. We applied and got the loan. We called the realtor and got to look at the listings. On the second day we had access to the house listings we were narrowing down the ones we liked and came across a new build in a nice neighborhood within our price range and we loved the kitchen. We called the realtor and because it was a new build and had only been on the market 2 days and they were doing showings daily she suggested that we put in an offer. We did and it was accepted. We packed up the car the next day and drove to Montana to see the house that we put an offer on.
It’s a townhouse which isn’t ideal and it’s about 1200 sq ft so it’s smaller than we really wanted, but we loved it. We were very happy about putting in our offer. While we were looking at the house we realized a guy Waldo worked before lives across the street and we met the wonderful woman that lives next door. Between that and the view out the backdoor I’m pretty sure we would have bought it no matter what, but we did like just about everything else luckily.
We went back to Idaho and started the whole process of getting the things the inspector fixed and closing on the house. We also pack like mad. It all worked out because just about 5 weeks after starting the whole loan process we were opening the garage to our first home and while we miss Waldo’s Dad, we couldn’t be happier.
So I started this with stating that we had moved again, but I’m putting it down here that this will be the last time for quite a while.
Our ride.
Lily and Daddy at a rest stop in Idaho.
Our new home.
OUR VIEW!
