Fetal Matter

 Allison is in her 6th month of pregnancy and we found out a few weeks ago we'll be having a girl.  Although I never question whether or not it would be a girl, I was still hoping (a little) that it was a boy.  I had envisioned Eli and his younger brother playing karate kid, catching grass snakes, and doing front flips off the couch like my brothers and I, but now I have the joy of envisioning him and his little sister doing those things together.  There's a good chance she'll be a tom-boy, a slim chance she'll be 'super girly', and no chance that she will be a wimp - she has way too many tough girl cousins.

Eli is 11 months old, which means he'll be around 15 months when our little girl is here.  We weren't exactly planning to have them so close in age, but it should be fun and crazy around the house for a while.  I'm thinking we'll have 3 more after this one, Allison isn't thinking that so much (but maybe with a little peer pressure she'll give in).  Eli's been walking since 9 1/2 months and is looking like a walking champ.  I'm also officially crowning him the fastest 11 month stair climber in the world.  He eats normal food, still poops his pants, can give high fives (occasionally), and loves his mommy.

We bought a house the end of September and have really enjoyed it.  We now live in Richmond (3 minutes from Sugar Land) and have some great neighbors - one is an Aggie.  We've since had an outdoor movie in our backyard, played ping-pong in our garage, and hosted a Thanksgiving pot luck with friends we are grateful to have.  Allison even cooked a 22 lb. turkey for the meal!  One of Allison's favorite things about being here is that she gets to decorate an entire house for Christmas (our neighborhood is known for its Christmas lights).  So, our house is looking like the north pole and thanks to my grandma we have an awesome tree.  As soon as I finish putting up lights I'll post a picture.

We were able to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with family back in Paris.  We enjoyed our stay and were able to see all the family.  For the first time my brothers and I, along with our kids, were at the same place.  We enjoyed dinner, a bonfire, the 3-3 football game, seeing my dad and grand-dad, and all the food.  We also spent Thanksgiving lunch with Allison's family - all 30-something of them.  They have a large clan.

The Evolution of Eli

Netflix and Month Six

Below is a list of news around Tribe Malone.

1. We got Netflix and watched our first movie (Sherlock Holmes) two nights ago.  We don't have cable and don't like spending money on going to the movies, so we felt $9 a month for hundreds and TV shows and movies was a deal.  We highly recommend it.
2. Eli is now 6 months old.  He tries to crawl, but does a much better job scooting.  He has mastered pushing up with his feet, but keeping his head on the floor.  He has also become quite the trickster - twice now he has pulled his diaper away from his body and pee'd on me (yesterday it was at Chick-Fil-A).  He will now grab anything in sight - and try to eat it (including my glasses).  He babbles a lot! We've tried finding a translator, but are pretty sure he only says, "I'm hungry", "I'm sleepy", or "I have poop in my diaper".  He has his daddy's thighs.  We still don't know who he looks like.  He had some respiratory issues, but they've been taken care of by our good friend, Dr. Chapman.  Eli bites real hard - even without teeth.  Lastly, Eli is a mini-me of Michael Phelps in the swimming pool.

3.  I (Gary) went off staff with Young Life and has been the Pastor to Students at Parkway United Methodist Church (Sugar Land) for a month now. My van has surpassed the 244,000 mile mark.
4.  Allison finished a painting she's been working on for 3 years.  
5.  We spent Memorial Day weekend in Paris for Allison's mom's wedding.  The weather was great, food was great, decorations were great, hanging out was great, it was a great time of celebrating a new beginnings for the both of them.

For Allison's first Mother's Day we celebrated a few weekends later (I was at camp).  I surprised Allison with a nights stay at The McKay House - a bed and breakfast - in Jefferson, TX (www.mckayhouse.com). Jefferson is a special place for us because it's where we honeymooned.  We ate dinner at the same restaurant (same table) we did 2 1/2 years ago, but this time we had company (see picture).  At one point we told our waitress we honeymooned there and in an act of generosity she brought us a piece of cheesecake.  We decided not to tell her it wasn't our anniversary. -- The room was called the, 'Garden Suite', and had his and  her claw-foot tubs.  The food was incredible and the only other guests were an older couple whom was the weatherman for Dan Rather a while back (he did TV and radio for 30 some odd years).  The breakfast was incredible (everything from scratch) and we definitely plan on staying there again.  
                                                            

                                                                    Mother's Day 2010

                                                                      Honeymoon 2007

                                                                         His/Her Tubs

 Our Free Cheesecake

For my first Father's Day Allison got me a grill and a book called, 'Raising a Modern Day Knight'.  I've yet to cook on the grill, but I'm thinking July 4th weekend would be a good time to break it in.  I left with Parkway the Sunday of Father's Day to spend a week in Canton, TX with 12 high school students and some adults from the church for UM ARMY.  It's a mission type camp where we, and 80 others, painted and fixed houses, built wheelchair ramps and front porches, and did various work projects.  It was one of the best trips I've ever been on.  We had terrific adult leaders with us and the attitudes from kids (even though they were working all day in the heat) were great.  God did some great things through all the workers and I'm positive everyone left a little different than how they came.

Four and A Half Months and Some Change

"Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas."

Our baby boy is 4 1/2 months old.  I (Gary) am 26 years old.  Allison is 24 years old.  That means if we don't have another kid we'll be empty-nesters at 44 and 42...still in our prime!  However, our first pregnancy and first baby has been easy - which makes us think they'll all be like this - which makes us want to have more.  I know we're naive, but it's hard not to be.   We're having a lot of fun right now.

Change is a coming with our family - mainly myself.  I've spent the past two years working with Fort Bend Young Life and it's been a great experience.  I was approach a while back about taking a job with a church here in Sugar Land as their Director of Student Ministry.  After much prayer, thought, talking with Allison, and interviewing I decided to accept the job which begins June 1st.  I'm excited and the opportunity and look forward to working with the pastor, other staff, and volunteers.  Young Life has been great to Allison and I, and we'll still be involved, but it will sorely be missed.  Shout out to Tig, Ali, Dana, and the committee for taking care of us so well.  

I'll post more about the new job later. 

Climbing Mt. Everest...sort of

Love for your children should never be performance based, however, is it ok to get really, really, really, really excited when they do something awesome?  Some people climb Mt. Everest, some scale the Himalayas, other may swim the English channel.  Eli climbed over his 'Boppy'. 



Eli Update
Eli is 3 months old and we're finally getting the hang of this parenting thing - too bad they keep changing.  Since last week he's made life a little easier on us by deciding to sleep through the night.  We'll put him in bed around 9p and he doesn't wake until 8:30ish.  It's GLORIOUS.  He smiles more, laughs a lot, and enjoys talking to his mama (goo-goos and gah-gahs obviously translate to 'I love you mommy and daddy').  The worst thing about him getting older are his poops.  They smell very bad.  Overall, we'll give him a 10 out of 10 on the awesome baby scale and we're very fortunate to have such an easy baby (I'm told they're not all like that). 

Gary and Allison Update
We're doing great - most of the time anyways.  I suppose any day you wake up to a job, smiling baby boy, food, a roof over your head, and people who love you is a great day.   Allison is beginning to work on concocting her own recipes for a future cook book.  She made some sort of lamb/croissant role tonight that might add a few pounds to the posterior, but it was finger-lickin good.  I'm finishing up the semester with Young Life and getting ready for the summer.  Along with taking students to camp two different weeks, I have an assignment this summer at Frontier Ranch (YL Camp in CO) for a month that I'll be able to bring Allison and Eli on.  Apart from Young Life we've been enjoying our church (Grandview Fellowship) where I teach high school kids on Sunday morning.

Our good friend and fellow YL leader, Nicole Prosser took some great pictures of our family that I'll leave you with.

Pee On The Wall

In light of General Larry Platt's new hit, 'Pants On The Ground', we've decided Eli's theme song right now could be, 'Pee On The Wall'.  Reason being he successfully shot a stream of urine onto the wall while laying in his changing table (I'll post a picture soon).  Here's the whole song (click here for original lyrics).

Pee on the wall

Pee on the wall

Looking mighty cool shootin pee on the wall

With the poop in my diaper

paci in my mouth

Pee hit the wall

Call myself a cool cat

Looking mighty cool 

Layin on the changing table with pee on the wall

Get it out, hey!

Get my pee on the wall

Lookin mighty cool

Cryin' lyin' on the changin table with my pee on the wall

Back on Dec. 4th I wrote a blog titled, 32 Weeks And Counting.  I wrote something about not wanting our blog to turn into a baby blog.  After having Eli I understand why people want to blog so much about their newbie.  THEY ARE AWESOME.  haha.  Seriously.  So, I'll try to keep thing fresh on here, but there's really nothing more exciting or interesting going on in our lives right now than our little boy.

February Update:

We've been in our apartment for a little over a month now and really like it.  We miss having a yard, wood floors, and a second living area, but we don't miss the draftiness of it - or the human-sized cockroaches.  That reminds me: When I was seven or eight we used to find the small cockroaches and dare each other to bite off the head...and we did.

 

Happy New Year

For us, 2010 started with a bang. Last week Allison became 36 weeks pregnant and we were excited about Eli coming the end of January. However, when Allison went to her doctor appointment Monday they told her she was dilated to a three and needed to go to the hospital. When she called she was really calm so never did I think she was going into labor. Once at the hospital we tried going home, but they wanted her to stay overnight for observation. The following morning (Tuesday) I talked to the nurses about letting us go home and they assured me if Allison hadn't progressed we could leave.

Twenty minutes later we find out Allison had dilated to a six and was now officially in 'active' labor. Soon after, an anesthesiologist came by to give her an epidural and her life (and mine) became much better. Around 2p a nurse came into the room and Allison began pushing. An hour later later the doctor came in and Eli James was born at 3:33p. We stayed another few nights at the hospital and were able to bring him home Thursday afternoon.

When I say "home" I mean the apartment we moved into while Allison was in the hospital. Unknowing that Eli would be born a month early we decided to move into an apartment from the house we'd been renting since we moved to Sugar Land. So, Wednesday a group of guys and myself moved four trailer loads of our belongings across town and they were life savers. Allison and I both are EXTREMELY grateful for all the help and support people have shown us this past week. Not only have people helped us move, but we had people visit the hospital(some with food - our pastor came up right after and prayed with us), decorate our hospital door, take great pictures of Eli, buy groceries for the apartment, provide air mattresses for our mothers, offer to let any of our family stay at their house, bring dinner this past week, and showered Eli with gifts. Allison and I have shed tears talking about privileged we are to be around such great people.

Speaking of great people, our moms were able to come down the day Eli was born and they've been wonderful. They single handedly transformed our apartment into a functioning home. We both agree our level of stress would be much higher without their presence.





We haven't gotten much sleep this week, but we have a beautiful son and wouldn't change anything.



Quote of the Week: (This occurred during contractions) Allison: Find a music channel or I will rip you apart!