A home for the Figgins

We are officially under contract for a home. It's quite a scary venture but we're excited. As long as the sellers take care of a couple of issues we found in yesterday's inspection we'll close Sept 30th and move the next 2 days! Moving at the beginning of Oct will cut Dave's drive to work in half which will be really nice. Anyway . . . we're stoked. Here's some pictures of the place.

Dave's New Job

After lots of cell phone minutes and lots of crying on my part, the Lord came through and David has a job. I learned a lot about faith and I think David and I grew as a couple. I learned to be a little more trusting and let go of control a little.

We found out last Tuesday that David was going to have a job. Both Eisenhower High School and Clark Intermediate called on the same day to tell him they were submitting his name to HR and wanted to hire him. He at first was going to take the first person to get him a contract but when Eisenhower called the next day saying they wanted him to start meetings the next day and he could sign something then he just didn't feel good about it. He and I talked it over and I told him to call and talk with the district Fine Arts chair (he'd been talking with him over the past few months about getting a job). He had a good chat and they had him sign a letter of intent securing his position with the district. It was such a relief.

It's taken until today for them to finish his background check and get the paperwork in order (they're swamped and have a new person in HR training) but he signs his contract tonight and I will send out my resignation when he does. I have always wanted to be a stay at home mom and now I will get to. Funny how the thing you want can sometimes be the most scary . . . we'll be fine but I need to start figuring out a cleaning schedule so I can do a better job of keeping house and making dinners. I'll have to grocery shop when Dave gets home until it cools down here because my car's AC sucks if it's over 90 as it always is here. I am just excited to be a homemaker and to raise Elijah. He lights up our lives.

Now it's on to house buying, we're almost ready to make an offer and that will start a new chapter in our lives as real home owning adults!

Elijah Update: I just had to share this picture of Eli. He's such a sweet boy and at this point he rolls over nearly every time I put him on his tummy. So strong! He's also putting his fist in his mouth (some days more adeptly than others) and grabbing his elephant toy on the bouncer. He no longer grabs and shakes his rattle as well as he used to but I think he's just bored with that now.

Sad face

Last night I was trying to help Elijah finish waking up from his nap. So I took his binky and continued doing whatever I was doing. I looked back and he was looking at me with big eyes and his typical sad face, which happens to be the cutest sad face I've ever seen. I happened to catch it on film finally. So here is Eli's sad face.



Isn't that great!

Sleep

So I really need to post more and not worry about if this is a nice looking entry with lots to say. So I was telling my friend Melanie about how well Eli is sleeping and she told me it was journal worthy and I didn't journal it. So here it is. I've been working on getting Elijah to sleep through the night (8 hours) as the pediatrician said that a baby can sleep 8 hours through the night by 8 weeks. She said that if you get them sleeping 5 hours by 5 weeks, 6 hours by 6 weeks and so on that they can be sleeping 8 hours by 8 weeks. It sounded good to me and since he was already doing 4 hours when he was 1 week old I figured it could happen. She said that when you are doing this that the baby will probably eat every 2-3 hours during the day. At 4 weeks old Eli had a bad tummy and the next day he was better and we went to San Antonio but he has altered his "normal" schedule a little the night before with his bad tummy. The first night in San Antonio he put himself on a 5 hour a night pattern. I was thrilled and he kept it up and was eating every 2-3 hours. When my mom was here I didn't want to mess with it and keep her up if he cried but he was consistently sleeping 5 hours each night.

When she left I thought I'd try putting him to bed 30 minutes earlier and see how that went. He woke up at the same time the first night putting him at 5.5 hours and the next night slept 30 minutes later which was 6 hours. Last week his eating changed a bit (eating less at each feeding for a while then increasing again). He had a really bad night with some gas last Wednesday and so he kept fussing but was happy with if I put his binky in his mouth so I did that every 10 minutes for an hour then a few more times and then I realized he has slept 7.5 hours. I felt so guilty so I got him up and fed him and put him back to bed.

The following night he whined 2 or 3 times total and I put his binky in his mouth and he slept for 8 hours before I was in so much pain I had to wake him to feed him. The next night he had just had shots and ate like crap during his last 2 feedings so I was sure the dream was over, but he slept for 7 hours before I woke him up to make sure he had some Tylenol in him and fed him (who wants a hungry baby in pain screaming at night right?) Since then he has consistently gone 7-8 hours between feedings at night. Sometimes he has really bad gas and I have to rock him back to sleep but he is doing so well. He eats about every 2 hours during the day but I am so glad to have good sleep at night. I have such a sweet boy.

Now all I need is some advice about adding formula to his eating. I don't want to stop nursing but I do want him to bottle feed formula periodically so that if I need to be gone for more than 2 hours (ie a date with my husband) I know he'll take a bottle. Advice?

The 4th

We were lucky enough to be able to go to San Antonio for the 4th of July to see Elijah's cousin Jamison be blessed. It was the first time all of the cousins were together. For those of you who don't know Elijah has 2 cousins who are about 2 weeks older than he is. Here are some pictures of the boys. Jamison (Lindsay & Logan's) is in the plaid shorts, Remington (Doug & Hallie's) is in the navy shorts and of course our little one is in the red shorts.



We enjoyed our stay although Elijah was quite overstimulated by the end and screamed our last night there. We were glad to be home and Elijah was too. So much so that he just laid on the floor and talked for 30 minutes when we got home. Now for his blessing this weekend!