Swimming Lessons

Alyssa has been taking swimming lessons this summer. She is doing great! Here is a short video I shot today of her in the water. 

Also, her current instructor is an Olympian!  She swam for Estonia at the Beijing games.  How cool is that?!?

Kitchen Refacing Project

A grand undertaking has begun. With the assistance of our neighbor's son-in-law, we are refacing our kitchen. I will attempt to chronicle the progress here on the blog. The project began on Friday, July 15th. Pray for us!

Day 0


Day 1


Day 2

Sibling Love

For Alyssa, it was love at first sight. For Titus, it has developed over the last 5.5 months. While I know there will be bickering and quarrels in the months and years to come, I also hope that the love these two share now will grow and prevail in our home.

Wildlife Seen IN and AROUND Our Home

 

From left to right, top row: golden silk spider, ground skink, white-tailed deer, opossum, brown anole; middle row: barred owl, Mediterranean gecko, green tree frog; bottom row: blue-tailed skink, cockroach, raccoon, armadillo.

Not pictured: all the common birds, the unidentified snakes, the unidentified spiders and the bajillion insects including the grasshopper that must have been 4 inches long.

Alyssa's 3rd B-day

Alyssa turned 3 this week. It's hard to believe. It's past my bedtime, so I won't write much. Here are a few pictures to summarize the big day.

Mid-March

A quick update on each of us:

LeMar is still working two jobs: Wachovia and Target. This amounts to about 55-60 hours of work per week. It is exhausting for him and for me as well. He will probably scale back to only working at Wachovia in the near future to spend more time with the family and pursue a volunteer position with a law enforcement agency in the area. This will allow him to keep his Florida certification current

Alyssa is doing very well. She has made a very smooth adjustment to being a big sister. She loves interacting with Titus and rarely has jealousy issues. Occasionally she will have accidents at home which I'm interpreting as an attempt to demand attention from LeMar or me. She was moved to the 3 year old class at day care at the beginning of January even though she was only two and a half. They determined that with her being very smart, completely potty trained, tall for her age and having great verbal skills she would fit right in. She made the transition very smoothly and has continued to do well with all the three-year-olds. Many members of the staff are still surprised when I tell them she won't turn three until the end of June.

Titus is growing at an alarming rate. He is two months old now, and I don't know where the time went. Just before he hit two months, he rolled over from belly to back. I don't think he has done it since, but I don't think it will be long before he is doing it regularly. Last week he made a shift from being a newborn to being an infant. He began having long periods of alert time and starting taking more milk during a given feeding and overall throughout the day. His adjustment to daycare was very smooth, but that is not shocking at such a young age. He doesn't mind going back and forth between breast and bottle. I've been pumping at work, so he is still getting breast milk even when we are apart.

As for me, the first few days back at work were tough. I was missing Titus and just being at home. Also, restarting all my research drives took a little time and a lot of brain power. Now, I seem to be into the swing of things and I'm keeping busy throughout the day. I'm writing this post between giving an instrument attention when it needs it every 4 minutes or so.

Happy St. Patrick's Day (a day early). Here are a couple pictures from a going away/St. Patty's Day party for some friends of ours:

Who's who?

One of these was taken in June 2008 and the other in February 2011. Can you tell who's who?

Happy Birthday to LeMar

LeMar is celebrating his birthday today. This event is preceded by my new holiday on 3/6: Annual Bake-a-Cheesecake Day. Tonight we will eat hot wings and cheesecake, open presents, put the kids to bed and watch House.

Alyssa was recently diagnosed with a level 4 peanut allergy. Her pediatrician has recommended removing ALL nuts (peanuts AND tree nuts), any nut products (e.g. butters, sauces, oils), and anything potentially containing nuts (e.g. M&Ms, chocolate chips, yogurt covered raisins) from the house. Additionally, she/we need to carry EpiPens everywhere she goes. Furthermore, we can't eat at places like Chick-Fil-A that cook in peanut oil. For Alyssa, the impact of this is minimal since most of these things she hasn't ever had or become accustomed to. For LeMar and I, this is terrible news! At least we are not with her 24/7, so we can still enjoy these things when she is elsewhere as long as we wash hands and brush teeth before seeing her again.

My maternity leave is over; today is my second Monday back at work. Titus adjusted quickly to day care. He does not mind the bottle at all; he, like Alyssa, is easily motivated by food.

My parents visited for two weeks before and briefly overlapping my return to work. It was great to have them visit, and we really appreciated all the help they gave while here. We put them to work fixing leaks above ceilings, installing a recessed light, stripping wallpaper and painting in a bathroom, solving leaky toilet issues, typical household upkeep, cooking and cleaning. Thanks again for all the help!

Titus is growing very nicely. He even rolled over this weekend from tummy to back. It was pretty cool because I was able to watch the whole thing happen from start to finish. Alyssa's first roll happened when neither LeMar nor I where watching.

LeMar's sister Ayrielle and two friends paid us a brief but lovely visit Saturday into yesterday. They were on their way to Orlando for spring break, but we were happy to host them for a night en route. It was great to visit and for Alyssa to spend a bit of memorable time with her only biological Aunt.

Here a few pictures before I get back to work:

Welcome Titus

Titus LeMar was born yesterday, January 12th at 1527. 8 lbs. 8 oz. and 21 in. All the family is doing well! More pictures are available via LeMar's Picassa album (link in the right hand column).

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

We have had a wonderful Christmas day. It is far from white; the temperature right now is 71! The highlight of Alyssa's day was finding a wooden train set that Santa left all aid out beside the tree. In fact she was so excited about, she passed all the gifts and went straight to the train. After about 15 minutes of play and 5 minutes of convincing, we were able to get her to open a present from her stocking. After just one present, she went back to the train! Needless to say, the train was a big hit. Thanks Santa!

Here are a few pictures from the morning. Videos are to follow.

Gift Ideas

Some people have asked about what we need for the arrival of our little boy. I've put together a "Wish List" on Amazon's website for our little guy. Here is a link to it.

Recent videos of Alyssa

Here are two recent videos of Alyssa enjoying life. Sorry about the quality, they came from our cell phones.

LeMar's Job Update

Family and friends, please keep the prayers coming! LeMar saw an opening with a near by police force. He quickly applied and will soon be going in for an interview!

LeMar's Job

LeMar has found a job here in Gainesville. We are quite grateful for his employment, but that being said, this job leaves some things to be desired such as wage, sufficient hours, and type of work. LeMar is working the floor at Target. It is a job, but please continue to keep his employment situation in prayer. We are hoping he can find something better. It is good that he as found something; this video is a testament to just how bored he was being unemployed.

http://picasaweb.google.com/LeMarPollard/CostOfBoredomVid#

October Update

Friends and family,

Please forgive my blogging absence. Grad school is no cake walk! What's new with us? Well, we found out we're having a little boy in January. There are pictures available via my Picasa (Link on the right). I think we've settled on a name for him, but we're still "test driving" it at home before making it public.

LeMar's job hunt continues. We're not sure what plan letter we're on now, but it is getting up there. Please continue to keep this situation in your prayers.

Alyssa is enjoying "school" (daycare). They get to play outside in several large playgrounds almost every day. She seems to really like her teacher and to have made friends in her class. We frequently hear about Eddie; apparently he goes to timeout a lot. She loves to read with us at home. She is also on a Disney princess kick right now thanks to our friend Eileen's influences. I definitely know more about these princess now than I did when I was a little girl. She has mastered all of her uppercase letters and a good number of her lowercase letters. She can also almost count to twenty, but she frequently goes awry between 14 and 18 and only hits about 1/3 of those numbers. She is also learning to ride her tricycle, but she prefers to push off of the ground with her feet instead of pedaling. She is less cooperative now than she used to be. I think she is just trying to assert her independence, but it makes parenting her hard right now.

I'm busy with school, as always. I just finished up midterms and my third cumulative exam. Now I need to get back into my research, which has been on the back burner for the last 3 weeks, write a paper for each of, accomplish a group project, and think about finals, which will be here way too soon.

Alyssa's room - Before and After

This was to be Alyssa's room when we first saw the house with our real estate agent:



This is her room now:


Here is a 360 degree view video. I couldn't rotate the video file, so turn your head on its side to the left or rotate your monitor 90 degrees clockwise for the best view.



And here is Alyssa waking up in her big girl bed and her new room for the first time!




She has adjusted great to all the changes with the new house, new bed, new city, etc. She misses her friends from Panama City, and we miss our friends, too. I will be starting orientation at the Chemistry department on Monday. Alyssa will start day care part time on Tuesday, and LeMar's job hunt continues to move at the pace of a three-toed sloth (slowest animal on earth). Please continue to keep us in your prayers. God bless!

The Worst of the Damages

Here is a look at the most extreme damage from the movers:

Before:


After:


They also damaged several pieces of furniture, some out of sight but some quite visible.

Quick update; more will follow

Hello all! We've officially moved to Gainesville. We bought a house and took on some serious re-flooring and quite a lot of painting. My parents were down from Colorado to help out, and it was greatly appreciated. Now that they've returned home, Alyssa is missing them a lot and asks about them daily. Speaking of Alyssa, she is all grown up! Potty training progress continued throughout the move without too many set backs, and in more exciting news, she now sleeps in a big girl bed. Her room is very, very cute. I'll post pictures soon of before-and-afters throughout the house. In case you're wondering how the fish did during the move, you'll be happy to know most handled it well. We lost only 1 of 7 even though they were forced to live in bags for 5 full days. A couple were sick after the ordeal, but we've been medicating them all and it seems everyone else will pull through. Well, it is now after midnight, and I'm exhausted. Check back within the next week for pictures!

Introducing Alyssa's brother or sister

He or she is expected to join the rest of the air-breathing family members in January 2011. For those interested, that puts me currently at 12 weeks along in a "40 week" pregnancy. Alyssa came at 39 weeks, praise God; she would have been 9+ lbs. if she stayed an extra week. I seem to be past all the morning sickness and have moved into the "honeymoon phase" of pregnancy; I look normal and feel great! We are all very excited about the new addition. It will of course make the move, grad school, and LeMar's job situation all the more interesting, but this child is a such a blessing we wouldn't trade him/her for anything.

Speaking of LeMar's job hunt; he has applications pending with FHP (state troopers), TSA and UFPD. Please remain in prayer for his job situation.

We are continuing to get ready for the move which is now less than 4 weeks away. Time flies! We're excited to get down there, but a little sad about leaving friends behind. Good thing we have a blog, email, skype and phones to keep in touch!

We found a house!

We're back from Gainesville, and the weekend was very successful. We found a house, which is now under contract, and it will be ours at the end of July barring any snags in the rest of the process up to and through closing. We also found a daycare that we think we'll like. No news on a job for LeMar, but we'll keep that issue in prayer and trust God's provision. Here are a few pictures of the house:








Our next adventure is rock climbing. I can't wait to get up there on the cliffs again. We'll bring back some pictures. Speaking again of pictures, check out the link to Emily's Picassa Albums on the right. There are pictures from our trip to Atlanta two weekends ago.