Donovan Lee Howell

Our baby was born! He came 15 days early, so we were a little surprised. He was born on October 19th. He weighed 7 lbs 11 oz, and was 19 inches long. He is doing really good. He had some jaundice, so he had to be on a light for a couple of days. He's off now, and we go to the doctor tomorrow to check him. Hopefully he's all better. We think he's the cutest baby there ever was.

Getting weighed at the hospital. His poor head was pretty stretched out when he was born. That's probably my fault. I think he got my big head. It's all better now though.

Freshly born.

His first bath at the hospital.

He likes to have a concerned look on his face a lot.

Look at his chubby cheeks.

The girls sure love their baby brother.

This is the outfit that we brought him home in. It is actually the same outfit I wore when I came home from the hospital. My mom brought it to us. So it's over 32 years old. I thought it was neat that my mom did that for us.



Here he is all bundled up and ready to go home from the hospital.

Isn't he the cutest?

How can you not love this face? How can a baby possibly get this cute? I blame it on Dallas. You can also see the nice light underneath him. That's what he had to be on for a couple of days.

10 Things We Hate About Our House

This is the sequel to our wildly popular post "10 Things We Love About Our House". Since our house isn't old like Mindy's, we don't really have any quirky things we love or hate about our house. It's all pretty standard stuff. But here you go anyway.

1. The Swamp. When our house was built 3 1/2 years ago, they decided they wanted to use seed for the backyard. For some reason, they didn't feel it was necessary to make the ground level at all, or even remove good size rocks. They did, however, feel it was necessary to water it to death twice a day or so. Thus, we get a swamp for a back yard. This picture shows it at a dry time. It is completely useless as a backyard.

2. Poop. We have a few neighbors with dogs who don't think they need to clean up after them. Their dogs come onto our yard, and poop on our lawn. I swear, if I knew for sure which house these dogs came from, I would personally go and poop on their porch. There is not a lot of things I hate more than dog poop on my lawn.

3. "Landscaping". Since we live in a townhouse, we have to pay $90 a month for HOA fees. This covers everything on the outside, including all landscaping and maintenance. So this is what we get. $90 dollars a month for dirt.

4. Crappy toilets (no pun intended...ok maybe a little pun). They don't flush very well at all. For some reason, Ashley has always had (there's no polite way to say this) really big bowel movements. So, whenever she has one, she pretty much clogs the toilet. I have to say they are impressive. But back to the point, the toilets suck. Plus the seat is like really cheap plastic.

5. Neighbors. We have really nice neighbors. It's just not always nice to have them so close. They have two teenage girls that really like to run up and down their stairs and scream. Since we share a wall, it sounds like they are in our house sometimes. That's just one of the drawbacks to living in a townhouse.

6. Stairs that don't go straight down. We found out how bad this is when we tried to move stuff to and from the basement. Big stuff like couches and beds don't go around a turn like this very easy. People that design floor plans should know stuff like this.

7. Cleaning our wood floors. This bugs Dallas more than me. We can't really clean our floors without them streaking. We've tried different ways, but they're never just clean and shiny. Maybe we're just dumb and don't know how to do it, but it's kind of annoying.

Well, I'm sure you can tell that I'm reaching for things to add to the list by now, so I'll just stop at 7. We really don't have much to complain about.

10 Things We Love About Our House

Mindy did this, and so we are too.

1. Our kitchen has lots of counter space.



2. Our wood floors. Ok so they're really laminate and not wood, but still.

3. Big closet in the master bedroom. I have never seen a bigger closet in a townhouse.

4. Big bedrooms. I don't think I've seen bigger bedrooms in a townhouse either.

5. Our cool wood blinds. I really like nice blinds. Don't like the cheap ones at all.

6. Our jetted tub. It would be better if it had jets on your back, but it's still nice.

7. Our huge closet upstairs. Is it a linen closet? I'm not sure. But it's huge.

8. We love our washer and dryer being upstairs with the bedrooms. We don't like them off of the kitchen or somewhere else.

9. Our nice paint job on our main level. We like having lots of color. We did NOT like the actual work of painting it. That would definitely be on our hate list. We really like it now that it's done.

10. Most of all we love our new basement. We didn't have to do any of the work, and it's super nice. We can all hang out down there and be together.

Quirky Me

I always see these, and I never do them. I thought I would do one for fun. Here's six quirky things about me.

#1 I used to number my socks so I could match them together, and they would wear out the same.

#2 I own about 35 sweatshirts, and 20 jackets. Most of which have hoods.

#3 I have to clean the kitchen before and after I cook.

#4 When I'm home alone I put in a movie that I've seen many times just for the noise. I don't really watch it.

#5 I have conversations with my cats. When they meow at me I answer them like I know what they're saying. A little story about that. When I moved in with Jason, Olivia witnessed me doing this for about two weeks. She finally asked me "what did she say?". She thought I could really understand them. I'll never forget it.

#6 When I put chocolate syrup on my icecream I do it in layers. It's not enough just to put it on top.

Basement's Done!!!

Our basement is finally done. We are so excited about that. It's been something that has been on our minds for a long time. I didn't know if it would ever happen, especially before the baby came. We are really happy with how it turned out. The general contractor we hired was really easy to work with, and he did a good job. Now, we are working on getting stuff moved out of our office so we can free up the baby room. I can't help too much with that though because there's a lot of heavy stuff. I've included some before and after pictures. So, enjoy because I know we will.

That door just goes to the food storage.Closet that we'll use for games and whatever else we need to use it for.

That's track lighting on the ceiling. It wraps completely around that area. We can have up to ten lights. I don't know if we'll need all that light yet. It might be too much.

Jason's handy work. That leads to the furnace room, where the cat food and litter box is.

America's Next Top Model

So, the girls and me have been watching America's Next Top Model. The season premiere just happened to come on when I was doing home work with the girls and I just left it on. There has been a girl on there that is really a man. I don't know what the proper term is whether it's transvestite(I don't know if that's spelled right) or something else. When they were explaining that she was really a man I was watching for Ashley's reaction. I wasn't sure if she was really going to catch on to what they were saying. She looked at me though and asked "So, she's really a boy?" with a confused look on her face. I said yes and tried to explain that there are some people out there that are not happy with being a boy or a girl, and will sometimes dress up as the opposite. I didn't get into the whole surgery aspect of it, I didn't think that would be age appropriate. I was somewhat lost though as to how much I should say. So, next weeks episode came on and Ashley said "Yeah, I want to see when the He She gets kicked off." I have no idea where she got that term from. I didn't say it. I don't know if she came up with it on her own, or if she heard it somewhere else. I thought it was interesting that she would use that term. We've been watching it every week, and every week I wonder if I should really be letting the girls watch this. Not just because of that. I wonder if they could develop self-esteem issues from it. I don't know if I'm over thinking it. They ask though every week now is the model show on? So, we just continue to watch it. I don't know why they like it, but they do.

Pregnancy

Just have a little thing to say about the baby. Our count down to my due date on the left of our blog is supposed to show how the baby is growing and positioned. I can tell you he has turned like that. I can definitely feel him in my ribs now. It's not the most enjoyable feeling there is. I do love feeling the baby move though over all. The pregnancy so far has been one of the most enjoyable things I've experienced. I like being pregnant, and I never thought I would have said that. I thought it was going to be miserable. I always knew the outcome would be worth it, but I didn't think I would actually enjoy the being pregnant part.

Good Job Jason Again

Jason, since learning how to do half ponytails a couple of weeks ago, has already moved on to bigger and better things. He can now do pig tails and braids. He does them just as good as I can do, and it's not fair. There are very few things that I am better than Jason at, and hair used to be one of them. He is taking that away from me, and it makes me sad. He can't do french braids yet, so I'm still one up on him there. Give it a couple of weeks though and I'm sure I'll be posting about him learning those too. I'm kidding. I think it's great that he can do his daughters hair, and I know they enjoy it.

Good Job Jason

I just wanted to tell a little story about Jason. I was working and Jason texted me all excited that he did half ponytails for the girls. He's been doing whole ponytails for a couple of years now and he's pretty much mastered those. I guess he decided to move on to bigger things today. He said he should have me teach him how to do them the right way. I think he did a good job on his own. I don't think there are many Dad's out there that would try to learn how to do their daughters hair like he does. I thought it was really cute how excited he was and he sent me these pictures to show me. It made my morning.

Mornings Suck

I started a new shift last Sunday. I now go in at 6:30 in the morning. I have to wake up at five in order to have enough time to get ready and leave for work at six. My first week on this shift was pretty tough. I've been working swing shifts for about three years, so it had been awhile since I've worked mornings. Also, I really enjoy my sleep and for me to feel rested I have to go to bed around nine. I don't like to go to bed that early. It would be okay to get less sleep if I didn't have a job where I just sit and type. It's very difficult to sit there and not fall asleep when you haven't got much sleep. For some reason they frown upon sleeping at work, so I have to try not to. I imagine though it will get easier. It's nice to have evenings off though. I get to spend more time with the girls which is nice. I don't get to see Jason very much, which isn't so nice, but this is what we have to do so we don't have to find a babysitter. We hope it will be a temporary thing. Okay, I'm done complaining now.