GeezLouies.net

This has been a very interesting fall.  One of the major advances has been our potty training for Eliana.

It started with lots of naked time… but we gave up on that after couple days due to unintended consequences.

Instead of going cold turkey, we ended up getting a training potty from the grandma and grandpa geezlouies. This has worked exceptionally well. Eliana has been able to let us know whenever she needs to go… this started off slow, but patience sure pays off.. she has been consistently poopoo-ing and peepee-ing for the past week.

Our only advice… start early and be patient… and have lots of encouragement. Proverbs 22:6 “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Each time Eliana does her business… Mommy Geezlouies sings the potty song with lots of clapping and even a gummy once in a while.

On other news… our neighbors moved out to Culpeper. This was eliana’s playmate of around the same age. We had them over for dinner before they left.

In the mail. we have been getting gifts from Grandmammy. Enclosed has been various books like Clifford the Big Red Dog and other toys. Included is this early Halloween disguise…

Last month we visited my old roommate’s family. He just had his fifth kid so we made it up for her baptism. It was quite amazing seeing the way things have changed so much for us since college. Another bonus was that he lived near the chesapeake bay so we had some good crab cakes and hung out at the beach.

Solomons Island was just a 15 minute drive away from his house. It was quite the adventure as this was probably our first and only summer vacation outing for the year.

Also on deck was a visit with an engaged thduggie and AlexP. They were members of a small group we lead in college. Both are men of faith which we seem to meet almost on an annual basis. We had good indian food at Bombay bistro in Fairfax. A little disappointed there was no buffet during dinner time, but I got over that pretty quickly…

Our house is open to whoever is in town. This month it is C-un, a friend from Beijing who is entering into college at St. John’s College (not to be confused with St. John’s University or Johns Hopkins. He is into the BBoy scene, a master of starcraft, a theologian, philosopher, linguist, and all around fun guy (he even cooks and cleans). With the added member to our family, we’ve been quite active…

And of course our church’s community yardsale and carwash… check out some of the pictures from facebook

Weird Dreams during pregnancy

Been having weird dreams lately. Talked with some old friends over some intimate topics… momma geezlouies had vivid dreams as well. It’s something that happened last pregnancy. And so it goes. We found out about two weeks ago that we are expecting number two. It was after three failed pregnancy tests, two months of constant nausea, and a blood test that came out negative.

We finally went to the doctors again where they confirmed we’re expecting… as a result I’ve stayed home to help out momma geezlouies… she’s been feeling under the weather for the past two months, so lots of seltzer water, lots of crackers and lots of craziness.

Baby’s perspective

eliana, however, is enjoying the many newfound pleasures of food, communications, bath time, outdoors, walking, etc… everything is fresh. Looking forward to #2.

I’ll leave you with this link, soothing sounds of falling rain to put baby to sleep, maybe it’ll put you to sleep as well:
http://www.baby-to-sleep.com/

this is a parody of one of baby’s favorite video… Beijing Welcomes You… brought to you by the foreign students at Tsinghua University:

here’s the actual one. pretty good, it’s got over a hundred different chinese/HK/TW actors/actresses/singers you name it, kind of like the “we are the world” of china…

We had a surprise birthday for the G&K Young… old bible study leader, teacher, friends…  It was held at Hill’s residence with plenty of food, fun and friends….  These pictures are taken from Home of the Hills. Thanks HotH!

This month has gone by quite fast… We were up in Vancouver for a little over two weeks and then back in VA for a few days and then right back up to New York.  Quite exhausted to say the least.  Kat’s wedding was beautiful, a great time of worship and family fun… Vancouver was great, lots of food and lots of time spent with momma geezlouie’s family.  The plane ride back was quite an experience… we thought taking the red eye back would have been good, but ended up keeping half the plane awake because baby wanted to stay up…. oh well, you win some and you lose some.

We decided to do the driving thing. We drove up in Mini with my folks to Peter’s wedding in New York. We made a quick decision to crash at Big Q’s place for the weekend and glad we did. Many of my family on my mom’s side haven’t seen baby yet. Peter’s wedding went without a hitch. Quickest wedding I’ve been to… the procession was probably longer than the sermon and the kiss was probably longer and more explicit than some people wanted to see… but anyways, young newlyweds… having fun… great…

This is a family portrait from cousin Brian’s wedding.

Some more random photos with the grandparents taken from grandpa’s facebook: