Although we still have a long way to go with unpacking, I thought I’d share some pictures of our new house.

The living room (right when you walk in the door):

The family room (adjoining the kitchen):

The kitchen:

Our master bedroom:

Our lovely soaking tub:

Our walk-in closet: (yes, I had to include that in the pictures because we’ve never had so much room for our clothes before!)

The bonus room (soon to be theater):

The other half of the bonus room (the play area):

Lex’s nursery:

The previous owners had a little boy as well, so this cute mural was already on the wall when we moved in:

We have two more rooms, the guest room and the office, but they’re completely empty right now so I didn’t bother taking pictures of them.

And here’s just a picture of Lex to reward you for sorting through all the house pictures:

It appears that somebody might be teething.  I’m not naming any names, but even our shoes aren’t safe anymore!

Last night was a tough one again.  Lex’s cold is almost gone, but he’s got a remaining dry cough that really wrecks his (and our) sleeping at night.  We’re running a humidifier in his room, but there’s really not much more we can do for the poor kid.

Meanwhile, this morning Lex decided to climb into the fridge.  (We didn’t let him get very far.)  Here’s photos of that attempt:

We were given a Meyer lemon tree years ago as a housewarming present when we bought our house in North Portland.  And amazingly we’ve kept it alive thus far.  But after this crazy snowy winter we’ve had and the abuse it endured with our recent move to Bethany, I’m not sure it will be with us much longer.  The other day we trimmed it way back and in this picture Lex is giving the poor plant some water:   

Looking into the house from our deck:

The dogs don’t get talked about nearly as often as our other child, but I do feel on occasion that I need to include them in the blog.  So here’s Kiwi hiding in her “perch” (a dog bed strategically placed on an end table by our couch).  She is surprisingly tolerant of Lex these days, but occasionally she does need an escape plan, so we’ve taught her the command “perch” and she goes and hides in her elevated dog bed (out of reach of the energetic toddler).  

And then there’s Apple, our poor blind dog who is now going deaf as well.  Tim and I joke that she’s our “Helen Keller” dog.  After over a month of living here, she is now finally starting to be able to walk to the grass in the backyard and then successfully return to the back deck.  Tim and his dad built a nifty ramp off of the deck so she can avoid going down any steep stairs.  (See the picture below)  

Speaking of Tim, he’s still sick, and has spent the last few days at home.  We can’t all seem to be well at the same time lately.  But Lex and I are doing better, and thankfully Lex is sleeping for longer durations at night again.  Nothing like the nine hour stretch he gave us that one time, but I’m thankful for four or five uninterrupted hours!

I didn’t get the chance to post a blog entry yesterday, but here’s an update on our wee little leprechaun.  Lex has been very helpful doing chores around the house lately.  Here’s he’s loading the dishwasher (with himself):  

And here he’s sweeping the floor: (who needs pants anyway?)

And “folding” clothes with mommy:

While he doesn’t say “pot of gold” or “Top o’ the mornin’ to you,” Lex does say a few things now.  Mainly “uh-oh” and “Ahp-el” (for our dog Apple).  Very cute!

This weekend was pretty low-key.  Lex and I are still recovering from being sick, and now Tim finally seems to have caught the family bug.  I always have ambitious plans for our weekends (i.e, cleaning the house, unpacking, etc.) but this time we lowered our standards and just tried to rest.  The boxes will wait for another time.

Lex grows and changes by the day and we’re continually delighted by his new accomplishments.  Yesterday he stood up by himself from sitting without leaning on anything for support.  And he’s practically running around the house now, not just walking.  Unfortunately he does a lot of this without paying any attention to where he’s going, so new bruises keep appearing.  

He still won’t sit still if I try to read him a book, but he does love to thumb through the pages on his own.  Here he’s going through my breastfeeding manual (he’s apparently into non-fiction):