Caedmon's Dedication at Vintage21 Church

At 14 months, Caed finally had the opportunity to be dedicated at Vintage21 Church today.

For those of you that are not familiar with this process, this means that Brad and I brought Caed before the church to say that we commit to raise him in the ways of the Lord (pray for him, teach him and shepherd him well) and to ask our church family to help us in this process (to love him and us and to be a positive example of Jesus to him).

For many people, baptism is a traditional step to take a baby through at this age, but we believe that baptism is an outward sign of an inward decision to follow Jesus (Colossians 2:9-15), and we pray that this will be a decision that Caed will make for himself one day when he outwardly professes that he believes in Jesus and wants to use his life to glorify him. That is a day that we've prayed for since the day he was born and will continue to pray for until it comes into fruition.
Until then, we pray that through our own example in his life, through the truth that we teach him in scripture, through our ongoing prayer for him, and the positive example of those around him, that he's able to see Jesus and realize that he desperately needs a savior to save him from his brokenness. This is obviously a lot to comprehend for a one year old, but I believe that as his little mind develops and he begins to understand the difference between right and wrong, he'll be able to comprehend that God did not intend for us to be broken, but because sin entered the world, our hearts are broken and we can't fix them ourselves. We need Jesus, the perfect savior, to redeem our brokenness and give us new life. This is the truth that Brad and I hope to share with Caedmon as he grows, and despite our own brokenness, it is our prayer that Jesus will allow us to be good teachers of His word and be able to love Caedmon well so that he can experience this truth for himself while he is young.

Here's a picture of the new Bible that Caed received today. His buddy Mason already received one a few months ago, and he was already showing him all the cool stories that it tells.

Clearing Out the Jungle

If you'd seen the 909 house prior to last Friday, you definitely wouldn't think that I was making an understatement if I said that my new backyard was comparable to a jungle, but thankfully, mom and I had the chance to make a dent into the overgrown wilderness Friday and I finished it off (within my capacity) today. (We still need to go back in there with some heavy-duty tools, i.e. chain saw, some other tool to pull up the ground vines and masses of ivy.) Thanks to Erika for watching Caed Friday and mom for watching Caed today so that this feat could be possible!

I can't even begin to imagine when the last time someone pruned the shrubbery, trees or vines in this backyard. They were all over the place. There were even random shirts, shoes, a toilet and unmentionables. If you would have peeked into the backyard last Friday afternoon, you would have seen mom and I practically swinging from several of the vines to pull them down from the trees and yank down all the other garbage that was attached to them. It was quite comical ... and impressive, if I do say so myself. With our joint strength, we took care of quite a bit of work!

Here's a few pictures after our work on Friday (Brad cut down a decent bit of the overhanging branches a few weeks ago):

And here's one of Caed climbing up the stairs on Saturday:

He LOVES his new house and all the exploration that's involved. (Climbing stairs, hitting boards on the floor, clanking the pipes, opening and closing doors, you name it ... what more could a 14-month-old boy want?)

I'll take a few more tomorrow to show you the progress I made today.

Cabinets and More!

909 is really transforming. The cabinets are almost completely in place. The tile guys are set to lay mud room tile today. The trim is completely done, and the painters will be on their way early next week to paint the interior and exterior of the house! (Yikes ... we have to make quite a few more paint decisions!) Shelving is being built for the pantry and plans are coming together for the shelf and desk nooks. I can't believe it ... everything is REALLY coming together!

Here are some of the pictures I took yesterday while Caed and I were deciding on paint colors and working out the details with the kitchen cabinets:

The Back of the House

The Front Door

 The Dining Room

The Kitchen

Upstairs pictures will come in a later post!

By the way, Brad had to run back down to Ikea Wednesday night to pick up more cabinets. Our measurements were apparently wrong and we still had some space to fill (thank goodness it wasn't the opposite problem!) So ... it actually allowed us to have the cabinet configuration that we wanted all along ... with a few glass cabinet doors and all! Although it was a pain in our butt, the contractor's butt and the cabinet installer's butt, it will work out for the best in the end, hooray!

Preparing for Ikea Saturday

Tomorrow's the BIG day .... We're heading down to the Charlotte Ikea to wrap up final details on our new Ikea kitchen and make our purchases. So, in preparation, I'm running through their website today and creating our online shopping list. We plan to get our kitchen cabinets, mud room  cabinets, mud room countertop, shelving for our built-in desk nooks, one bathroom vanity and a few other odds and ends. We hope to take it all home in the Volvo ... ha, just kidding. We're borrowing mom's Trail Blazer and we're renting a trailer, so hopefully that will do the trick. And as you may remember, mom and Judy will be keeping Caedmon Saturday, so we'll be able to have the full day to do this. Sounds exciting and exhausting all at the same time. Wish us luck!

909 Progress

Life's been busy, so I haven't had the chance to give you as many updates and pictures of the 909 progress as I would like to. In fact, I don't even have many pictures of each work stage. It seems like every time I go over to the house, it's for a specific purpose, and with that goal in mind and Caed (usually) on my back in the backpack, pictures are not the priority. But here are a few that I got about a month ago:

Looking at the picture to the left, the new construction on the right will be our future mud room with a glass door leading to the future deck. The area boarded up in the middle of the back of the house is now a glass door into the new kitchen, and the window on the top right is walled in for the master closet. (I'm sure this doesn't make much sense now, but once I can take and show more updated pictures, hopefully you'll get a better idea of the house.) It's all really starting to come together!

Funny story ... a weeks ago, we met our contractor and architect over at the house to run through fixture ideas in each room and as we got upstairs, Caed's patience level was non-existent. So, being the bright parents that we are, we let him walk around in our future master bathroom, where the plumber had recently been testing the plumbing, I'm guessing, and Caed decided to take one step into the shower stall with his brown suede shoes. We pulled him out immediately before he decided to take a swim and both shoes and pant legs, past his ankles were soaked with nasty, stagnant water. And to top it off, we also let him walk and play on a stack of drywall that was laying on the floor afterward, and so needless to say, our little boy was just as a little boy should be when it was all said and done. He was covered in dust from head to toe, and his little 5-pocket carpenter jeans (how appropriate) were caked with drywall and dust. Luckily that was bath day!

But to get back to the progress of the house ... I am happy to say that all general plumbing and electrical work is now complete. (We won't add in fixtures until close to the end, but the pipes and wires and outlet boxes are all in.) We now have a complete HVAC system, all interior and exterior framing is done, and the drywall crew should be finishing up this week. This now means that we need to submit our tile and cabinetry selections in the next day or so, so that they will ready for install the second week of October.

Brad and I are also heading to Ikea for the second time in three weeks to place our kitchen cabinet order and other household paraphernalia, and we'll be hauling it all home with us Saturday night. Thanks to Nana and Papa Tony for hanging out with Caed last trip and to GG and Aunt Judy for babysitting this time around. Caed's not quite up for an all-day Ikea shopping trip yet. But according to Nana and Papa Tony, he is very good at moving and rearranging display furniture!

Oh, and if you haven't heard this from us in person, (it happened back in July) the City of Raleigh finally bulldozed the house next door and cleared the lot. We heard that the lot was sold and that there were plans to rebuild, but we haven't seen any fruit of that information yet, so we'll see. It would be nice if they just decided to leave it an empty lot ... but we'll see.

100% Whole Milk

*Sigh*, today marks the first day that Caedmon has not nursed. We've been working toward weaning for a little while now ... we were holding steady at 3 feedings for a few months, but as of last week or so, when we dropped his afternoon feeding, the other 2 (morning & night) seemed to be less important too. When thinking about weaning, I was always concerned that the night feeding would be the most difficult to drop, but none of them lived up to that fear at all ... praise the Lord!

So, even though this is not quite by the book (not many things we do are by the book really), we took the plunge and dropped the night feeding Sunday night (that went well), and when he showed very little interest in his morning feeding the next day, I knew that it was the ideal time to drop that feeding as well. So, we tried it out this morning and it worked like a charm. Caed went straight to his sippy cup, drank his milk and about a half hour later, he ate a hearty sausage, egg and cheese sandwich with a side of kiwi for breakfast. I couldn't ask for anything better. And strangely enough, his milk-drinking skills have improved tremendously over the last few days. It was like pulling teeth to get him to drink much at all before, but now, he's a real champ and will gulp it down like it's nothing!

I feel like there was always a fear in me about weaning -- the fear that it would be difficult physically on Caed and emotionally tough on me -- but now that we've done it, I see that God just worked it out pretty naturally! I didn't really plan that today would be the day ... Caed was just ready. I'm definitely a firm believer in Parent Directed Feeding (PDF) -- do what the parent feels is best by watching your baby's cues -- so I was ready to set a date and say, "ok, we're going to drop this feeding," and give it a try, but at the same time, there is something to be said about giving into the ebb and flow of a baby's natural development and needs as well. God made us and knows exactly what we need, so when the time comes that we don't need mama's milk, He'll make it happen. I definitely need to be on my toes to catch those cues and instill my "wisdom" on how to best meet his needs, but in the big picture, God's the one who works it out. Pretty cool!

And it's funny, pediatricians say that kids shouldn't try cow's milk until their first birthday because their systems can't break down the protein in the milk, even though they can handle the protein in cheese, yogurt, etc. But even with that advice, I didn't think it would make much difference if Caed had whole milk a few weeks before his birthday. How much could your system really change in the matter of a few weeks any way? So, I started giving him a little whole milk here and there in preparation for the Coldplay concert at the beginning of August (he needed to be in a place where mom could put him to bed, and he certainly wasn't nursing enough for me to pre-package the good stuff). He ended up doing pretty well that week, but then a week or so later when Brad's mom, Nana, babysat it didn't go so well. He either couldn't handle the protein or had a bug because his little tummy was not happy. He couldn't go to sleep and when he did, he'd wake up shortly after with terrible gas and a full diaper. This went on for about 24 hours (probably telltale signs of a bug), and so we stopped the milk all together to prevent further pain ... especially since his birthday week was quickly approaching, and we didn't want him to be sick for all the festivities. At that point, I thought that he could very likely have a milk allergy or be lactose intolerant, despite the fact that he could eat all kinds of cheeses and enjoyed yogurt on a daily basis, so I did my share of reading on the topic and explored milk alternatives because I was determined to wean Caed fairly soon to give Brad and I more freedom to go out at night and possibly allow him to have another slumber party at GG's sometime.

Interestingly enough, we didn't try the whole milk again until last week when I needed to have GG put him to while we went out, and thankfully, this time, Caed had no problems. So, even though it was only about 2 weeks after the first incident and less than a week after his first birthday, there must really be truth in the pediatrician's advice after all. (Who would have thought! :) Or, we just caught him at a bad time when he was getting a bug. Either way, it doesn't make much difference now, I'm just thankful that the weaning process was not difficult for us and like everything else in life, if we trust God with it, it's going to be good.

In Memory of Courtney F. Snyder, My Grandma

Sunday morning we learned that Grandma Courtney passed away. We've been anticipating this for a while now, especially within the last week, but when it actually comes, it's still hard to handle. She had been in a nursing home for about 3 years, and after Grandpa passed away in November, her health steadily declined. I guess that's only natural after 72 years of marriage!

Courtney Snyder, my namesake, was 96 and definitely lived a very full life. She spent the majority of her life in Ohio and enjoyed some of her childhood years in Washington, D.C. when her father worked closely with President Harding, a long-time family friend. Grandma told stories of how her dad would play poker with Harding and the boys, and how she and her family would have picnics on the White House lawn. What fun that would have been!

Grandma grew up playing tennis and was apparently quite the player. She even used a real cat-gut racket. She gave it to me about 13 years ago and I hope to put it on display in our new house.

Grandma was also a wonderful poet, wordsmith and "Grammar Queen," in my book. Whether we liked it or not, she was always on the look out for proper word usage, and thankfully, some of that rubbed off on me and aided in my love for writing and proper grammar use. (I'm not sure what happened to that grammar in my speech sometimes ... but that's another story.) Thanks Grandma!

Come to think about it, Grandma was actually very skilled in many things, even as she aged. She was quite the shark with a hand of cards, Bridge in particular, and she played the organ so beautifully! Birdwatching was a dear passion of hers and you might have even called her a "hummer-charmer". She would take the hummingbird nectar that she would make and stand in the bushes as she held it and the hummingbirds would come right up to her and eat. She helped me do it once and it was very cool! And I believe on one occasion she even nurses one back to health. A baby had broken its wing or something like that, and she made it a little nest in a box and fed it with a syringe until it was healthy enough to return to the wild.

She was even quite a good cook and baker. Mom recently passed down her infamous chocolate cake recipe and gooey chocolate/pecan icing ... emm, so delicious. (But gracious, it definitely wasn't easy to get a hold of that recipe ... I think mom only got it in like 1995 or something like that!) But the meatloaf that I make is her recipe, as well as her peanut butter cookies, cut-out cookies and I'm sure there are many more. The thought about compiling her recipes into a cookbook has crossed my mind ... hopefully if I have time one of these days, I can begin that project.

And wow, Grandma really enjoyed traveling. She did most of it alone, later in life either because of Grandpa's OB/GYN practice or because of Grandpa's bad back, but I believe that she traveled to China on several occasions and brought back all kinds of beautiful memorabilia that decorated their home.

I'm sure that I could go on and on, but when I really think about it, some of the fondest memories I have with Grandma (aside from taking showers with her when I was a little girl and getting to use her scrub brush, and shrieking when Grandpa would "sneak" in and pour cold water on us ... time and time again) were the times late at night, right before bed, when she'd thumb through old pictures or trinkets or jewelry, and share the stories that went with each item. She spoke so sweetly about her life and about her love for Grandpa and her family. Thanks for such sweet memories, Grandma! I love you. I miss you. And I'm so glad that you had the opportunity to meet Caedmon last December. How you lite up when you held him and saw him smile!