2 weeks later ...

The last two weeks have been sort of tiring, but good overall.

Emma is growing like crazy. It's amazing to see how much change occurs in the first few weeks. Comparing pictures from a week ago, she seems different.


She's a really good baby, mainly just eats and sleeps. The other night she slept for almost 6 hours, weird huh? Normally, she goes in about 3 hour stints.


Ezra is growing in leaps and bounds too. He's talking a lot more, and always trying to help. He copies us a lot. Susan was playing Wii Fit the other day, and after she stopped, Ezra got on the balance board and started stretching. It was funny.


He's still playing away with everything. He's been playing with his blocks more. They're his favorite now. He enlists anyone and everyone to help him build his towers.


Ezra gets along well with Emma, and tries to help a lot. He likes to try to hold her, which is sometimes good, sometimes bad. He's learning to be more gentle, but it's a slow process. He'll get it though. He's a proud brother, he loves his little sister.

Susan made us a cinnamon roll cheesecake. It's different, but good. There's a couple of adjustments that she'll probably make the next time, but we like it. Its a cinnamon roll type crust on both top and bottom with cheesecake in the middle.


Having both of our little kids is a blessing, though a chore at the same time. We love them both very much.

Emeline Jane

Emeline Jane Camp was born at 1:34 AM on April 9th, 2010. She was 9 lbs 6 oz and 20 3/4" long.




She has been and will be a welcome addition to our family. Emma is a pretty calm baby so far, which will be nice.


This time at the hospital was considerably better than when Ezra was born. We all came home yesterday and everyone is doing really well.


We came home to a great surprise. Our orchid tree started blooming on the 9th. What a beautiful birthday present.



It has been wonderful having family around to help us the last couple of weeks, and we thank all of you that have helped us out so much with everything.



Ezra is still getting used to the whole idea that there's another kid around the house, but it looks like he'll warm up quickly. He calls her "ma", which has been a bit confusing as to whom he is referring at times.


Emeline has been sleeping a lot, which is to be expected. She managed to stay awake for an almost 1 hour stretch today, so we'll see how tonight goes. She's been eating a lot, finishing her 2 oz bottles just about every time she feeds.

We're grateful to have such a wonderful little family. Ezra is getting so big and learning so much, and our little Emma is here with us too. The Lord has truly blessed us.

Forget lilies ... Easter Hibiscus!

New hibiscus for the yard, aren't they pretty?

So the posts have been rather sparse as of late. Things have been a bit busy.

We expect the baby this week for sure. We both can hardly wait (especially Susan). We had Shawn's parents over for a bit, on watch for the baby. It was a big help to have everyone here. Ezra really liked seeing everyone as well.


He really liked having so many people to play with him all of the time.


Easter was fun for Ezra, though he took a bit to catch on at first with the searching for eggs. Once he figured that out, they were all found fairly easily. He liked his new color book as well. He really liked all of the candy, but we've made a point to hide most of it; otherwise, that's all he would eat.

New cars and landscaping ...

So we got a new car.
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Well, Ezra got a new car anyway. He really likes his present from Great-Grandma. If you push it backwards and let go it takes off on you, which Ezra doesn't seem to be too keen on. But you can't have everything, now can you?


The weather has been great, when it hasn't been raining. The yard is coming along. The orchid tree dropped all of its leaves (due to the "cold" and being transplanted recently), but has started some new growth. The palms look great, but they're not too picky.


The citrus trees look really good. The lemon tree is just covered with buds! A few have started blooming. Having fresh citrus will be really nice.


Shawn has spent a long time digging in the backyard for the sprinklers. The good news is that the digging has finished in the backyard for the most part. The bad news is that the backyard looks like a WWI battleground. The project will finish eventually.


We are excited for Emeline to soon be here. Both of us can hardly wait, for various reasons. Only a few more weeks...

Time flies

The last couple of weeks have gone pretty fast. We all got over our second round of the cold last weekend, finally. We've kept pretty busy with various projects, and chasing after Ezra.

Ezra has started trying to put random clothes on himself. Sometimes he'll end up with pants on his head, or a shirt on his legs, but he's working on it.


The weather has been interesting. It has been raining about once a week for the past month or so. And you thought we lived in the desert, huh? It's supposed to be raining tonight too, but we haven't seen anything of it yet.

Kelly and Cameron came over last weekend, originally with the intent of helping with some yard projects, but we got rained out. We had fun visiting though; it's always nice to see them. Ezra especially likes to see them. He wasn't sure exactly what to think at first when he got animals put into his pockets, but he kept trying to put everything in his pockets for the next few days.


Ezra got a new fleece blanket today from some fabric that we got this morning. He loves his new monkey blanket.


In the background you can see signs of the backyard project. The sprinkler system is going in, slowly, but going in. The constant rain has both helped, by softening up the clay, and also hindered the project, by making it too muddy to work on a lot of days. It hopefully shouldn't extend too much longer.


We hung pictures up in the nursery, and so now all that it's missing is the baby. She'll come soon enough, we're thinking probably around Easter sometime (nobody seems to think that Susan is going to make it to April 15th). It will change everything quite a bit again for us, which will be interesting, but we're excited as well to have our little girl. Hopefully Ezra will learn to be gentle with her and be a good brother for her.

Happy Valentine's Day

So we all got over our colds. Ezra, however, has started in on another round of teething and a growth spurt. It has made for a long couple of nights. Last night he seemed to do better, and tonight he's slept well so far. He tried to give up his nap today. Before church, he decided that he just wouldn't go to sleep at his normal nap time. He got pretty grouchy after the first hour of church, so we ended up bringing him home. We put him down for nap again, and he wasn't happy about it. A few minutes later we went back to his room and found him like this in front of the door:


He had just completely crashed, so it was probably good that we brought him home. Other than that, it's been a nice relaxing day.

Susan is counting off the days until her due date. She's ready to be done with the pregnancy already. Luckily, this one has not been quite as hard as the last.


On Saturday evening, we went out and bought a stand mixer. Susan has been wanting one for a long time, and having a 20% off coupon and an attached rebate helped as well. It will be, and has already been, a welcome addition to our kitchen. Within the first 24 hours of opening the box, we've already made cookies and bread with it.

Projects...

So the backyard is still muddy, thanks to the rain last night. That's okay, the desert could use the rain, and so can our trees. The yard has random trenches all over it (the start of a sprinkler system), but they have a tendency to fill up with silt every time it rains again. The fun that good old clay soil is.

We're finally just about done with our colds completely. Ezra has a bit of a cough lingering, but it's almost gone. He's back to his normal rambunctious self. We got him a small table and chairs that are his size for him sit on and color at. He really likes it, and it keeps him from climbing on the dining room chairs so much.

So we finished the nursery on Saturday. We had painted the walls two weekends ago, the trim last weekend, and just had to put it up and do some touch-ups. We also got a dresser and put it together. Not bad for amateurs. Ezra grabbed a couple of the smaller pieces of trim and held them up against the wall while we were trying to get them all put up. He always likes to help.

The couch is well-loved (read "old") but it will stay for a while longer. It's crazy to think that in about 2 months we'll have our little girl taking naps in here.