Why you should ALWAYS wear your WiiMote wrist strap...

This is the kind of thing that people should see. It's like watching what happens to your brain in a bike accident with and without a helmet. I doubt anyone who sees this will use their Wii again without the wrist strap!

Video

Some tech stuff

At Thanksgiving, a few people in Krista's family asked me to start posting the useful tidbits of helpful information I find online regularly. I know Julie does a lot of stuff with Photoshop Elements and wants to play with it a bit more. I figured this would be a good start:

First is how to remove objects from photos to clean them up:
http://everydaydigitalscrapbooking.blogspot.com/2007/05/digital-photography-tricks-in-photoshop.html

Second is how to merge two photos together. Put yourself somewhere you've never been!
http://www.alibony.com/pse/020708merge-images.html

As I run across this stuff - I'll post more.

It's SNOWING!

I love snow and I love playing in it. I was even more excited to take Will out in it. I was working on Monday...the first day of real snow to play in. We all went out and met up with some neighborhood kids to play in the snow.

We also went over to their school where there are small hills to sled down. Even Conor and Will had a turn sledding. It was both their first time and they had a blast.


Overall, we had such a great time. Will had trouble grabbing anything or getting up once he fell but he loved watching everyone and did fairly well walking around in clunky boots. We were having so much fun we ended up staying out for over an hour and a half.

Giving Thanks

What a fantastic Thanksgiving Day we had. We spent Sunday with the Pankaus and Thursday with the Paynes. God has blessed us with such a wonderful family who all get along and love each other. Both our families are always there to help us out if we need it. God has also blessed us with a beautiful little boy who is so easy going and lively. I thank God that we are all healthy. I am thankful for such an amazing and helpful husband. I also thank God for himself and the wonderful gift of salvation that he has given us. Thank you God for Jesus Christ who loved us so much that he came to die and raise again for our sins.

Here is a glimpse of our Thanksgiving at the Payne's house.





Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Linds quote...

Sometimes I buy jeans just for the design of the pocket!!!

Krista Quote

"The vibration of the toothbrush often makes my nose itch."

I'll be posting these as the come out. Stay tuned for more!

My little Firefighter

What a fun Halloween we had this year. Will was just so precious.



I (Krista) took Will over to my sister's to watch her daughter Kiana so she could go to her two boys school parties. Kiana and Will were so cute together.


Nana was there to keep my company and enjoy her grandchildren. We had fun playing with them.



When we got home, Will found a ladder in our garage to climb that Mike had left out for me. Will was so excited...and yes, he climbed it all by himself.


I hope you enjoyed a little peek at our Halloween. Happy Halloween to you and remember that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by God and he loves you.

People that don't get it...

On a regular basis I find myself wondering what is going on in some people's minds. Either the work they're doing is pointless or is not designed in a way that their audience cares about it. I simply don't understand. At what do people decide that the work is done and there is nothing left to improve? It's almost depressing to me at times. If I ever get like that, someone slap me please.

My Life:

This just about defines my life right now.

Happy (belated) Birthday Will!

I am finally getting around to commemorating Will's 1st birthday. Happy Birthday Will (9/18/07). He started out as such a tiny little thing with an amazing pair of lungs. He was an excellent eater, and very alert. He loved to catnap and was very serious. He didn't smile a lot and took a while to laugh.



Now, Will is a huge bundle of energy. He is still very alert and watches everything. He is an excellent sleeper and will eat anything (except cake). He is not afraid of anything and loves anything new. He loves to climb and move and be thrown around. He has such an adventurous spirit but at the same time he can be very easy going. He laughs easily and loves people. I love his rainbow of personality.



Thank you God for such an amazing little boy that You created perfect for our family. Bless him and help us raise him to love You and worship You in all he does.

Just a bunch of pictures

Lots of life happening so I'm just going to post a few pictures with a little detail. The entertainment value should be enough by themselves :D

While I was at my parent's house dealing with flooding, Krista and Will were playing in the rain!


Taking a nap in our bed with his favorite blanket.


It's not often that he catches our cat (Dora), but when he does - he hangs on and absolutely loves it.



Krista was feeling deprived about not hvaing enough pictures of her and Will, so they took some!


We had stuffed green peppers for dinner tonight - and since the peppers were willing to tell him all their secrets, he went to town!

Other than intended

You know those warnings that say "The product should never be used in a way other than intended"? Yeah - apparently those don't apply in our house. Despite the fact that he can sit on it properly and push around backwards, he'd rather stand inside the storage compartment. To each his own!

Will is as busy as ever. He walks everywhere with little fear of falling. He often walks up and down stairs holding onto the spindles. It scares me to death! Will also loves to carry things around. Often, the objects are as big as he is. He also enjoys talking on the phone (pretend of course). If you say "Hello?" he holds up his hand to his ear and babbles back to you. He is growing so fast, I can hardly take a breath before he is learning something new. Enjoy the pictures.

Yep, he found the toilet paper!

Ha! He stuck his tongue out.

He did this all by himself.

This jumping ball is one of his favorite things to carry around.

Something I don't talk about much

Something I don't talk about much is Adam Kanaszyc. Most of you know that he took his own life a few years ago in a rather dramatic fashion and it was a tough time for me. I did what I normally do in emotional situations and detached myself as much as possible. As I looking back at that time I have just started realizing how much growing up I did in those few short weeks.

Several weeks before Adam's death, he and I had a blowout argument. I was doing what I thought was right in a very complicated situation and he didn't agree with me. It came to a head and really put a strain on our friendship. After that, I was still committed to his friendship and we had made amends from that argument, but I don't think we ever really got the chance to fully heal from that. The toughest thing was calling out a friend, even in love, and intentionally causing strife.

That's what I thought until I got the call from Lucyna and had to call all our closest friends and break the news. As guys, we don't share our feelings much, and the different reactions I got from people gave me insight into them that I had never seen before. As I said before, I disconnected myself and just did what needed to be done through the following days and weeks. Krista even tried to talk to me about it and I just wasn't in a place where I could.

Several months later on the way home from work, I just broke down. No good reason, he just came to mind and I couldn't distance myself from it. I didn't appreciate the impact it had on me until after that drive home and maybe it's taken until now, really, to appreciate the impact on my life.

I don't really know why I'm posting this except to know that I've gone over it in my head a few thousand times and I just needed to get it down on 'paper'. Who knows, maybe that's part of the healing process and maybe I actually am moving on from it. September gets close each year and I start thinking about him, his birthday (9/11), and of course the events of 9/11 and how they're all kind of connected for me.

I've learned that in life, you do what you need to do to get by. I think we each have our own mechanisms for doing that and whether they're conscious or not is irrelevent. I know that his life made the problems of drugs and addictions so much more personal and I wonder how many of my friends, family, and co-workers have little exposure to those things. The impact of those have really realigned my priorities in what we teach Will and how I may (hopefully not) deal with those topics when the need arises.

Don't know why this all matters, just to say that he was a great friend and I miss him. I hope Jon and Maureen read this at some point too and can understand what I'm saying at some level.

Back from Arkansas

Yeah - we're unfortunately back. We had a great time as usual and Will actually did pretty well. He went down with an ear infection that was bothering him but once that cleared itself up, he did OK. There's lots of pictures up at www.pankaus.com if you're bored and are interested.

We ran into some boat trouble at the last second and had to swim the boat on to the trailer since we couldn't get it to run in gear. Something wrong with the lower unit we suspect - it's in the shop now getting looked at. Hopefully it's back an running by this weekend so we don't have to cancel our plans.

Unless something drastic happens, I think we'll be going back for a quite a few years!

Walking baby!

See below!

Busy busy busy

Life is way too busy right now. I'm (Mike) in 3 courses so I can be done done done by Feb this winter. It's so nice to have that destination in sight. We've got lots of scheduled boating, along with a Payne family reunion coming up. Then in just 3 short weeks - Arkansas!

Krista and I are making the trip a bit more interesting by going down 12 hours early, drive at night so Will sleeps through the trip, so that will be interesting. Plus I'll have the pleasure of doing homework while in Arkansas.

So - if you've not been boating yet this year, get on the phone with me ASAP!

Running

Legs....filled.....with.....jello....

I haven't intentionally run (for exercise) in at least 5 years now. Krista bought a treadmill with her birthday money (thanks mom+dad, nugents, etc) and it's great. I'm excited to get in the habit of running (regardless of the weather) and maybe even be healthier! But for now, we hurt. Krista tells me the third day is the worst (that would be today of course!) so let's hope it get easier!

Will at Work

I (Krista) thought I would give you all a glimpse of my job. I love it and have so much fun with Will and the other boys. Will has a blast playing with all the other boys. Jack is 6, Ryan is 4, Conor is 20 months old, and Will is almost 9 months.

They all looked so cute sitting together. Jack and Conor are very much alike and Ryan and Will are very much alike. It's funny how they have paired off. Whenever Will and I walk through the door, Ryan always runs up to us to give Will a kiss and a hug and Conor calls out Will's name and points to him with a big smile.

Ryan has figured out how to help Will walk around the house. Will loves it...I love it too because then my back doesn't get so achy.


Will's 2nd favorite activity besides walking is climbing stairs. I have to pull him off these stairs 20 times a day. He just can't stay away from them. He has become a master stair climber in the last month and now he has figured out how to go back down backwards. Thank goodness!

And here's our little water baby happily playing in the pool. Conor and Will are so cute together. They get easily bored if the other one isn't around to play with. They give each other hugs and kisses before nap times and Conor calls for Will if he hears him crying. It's really sweet.

All the boys really have so much fun together. I love watching how they all interact with each other. I feel so blessed to have this experience and the joy of shaping these four awesome boys!

Boating with Baby

We did it. We've successfully made it to the lake once this year. Will did very well despite me (Mike) having a ton of little things to do once we got there. Some highlights...

He can't really sit in his life jacket yet, so he loves just standing.

He was just so pleasant to be somewhere new and able to get around.


We found a way to get him to nap and it worked fairly well.

After his nap he was ready to go for a drive.


Mommy and Will having a nice day.


That's more than enough for now. More stuff soon!

The boy

The boy has learned to climb. Observe:



Next week's video: Our trip to the ER...

Climber (by Krista)

So Will has become a little climber. Lately he has been pulling himself up on just about everything including his crib which is all the way lowered (Mike edit: The crib bed surface gets lowered, effectively raising the crib rails). He is a little monkey!

I was doing laundry one day and he decided to join me.



We bought a walker toy for him and he soon discovered a new use for it!



Don't you like the weights at the bottom?

Last night he was so desperate to get into the tub.



I love how much of a monkey he is but at the same time, in Mike's words, "Little boy, your going to give your mom a heart attack!"

Boating Time!

We're putting the boat in the water on the 19th...of April... Or as Reeder likes to call it "Boat Ahoy". We're scheduling dates this year which is a little bit tougher than the "call everyone when you're in the mood" method we've previously used, but I think it will work out for the better. I've already reached out to some people to schedule boating dates but if I haven't talked to you yet, call me (Paynes, Algonquin Pankaus, Elmhurst Pankaus - I'm talking to you). My summer is fairly busy but unlike last year, I want to make relaxation time a priority and scheduling dates ahead of time is part of that.

As usual, I'm excited and cannot wait to get the season started. I'm a little frustrated with time commitments I have with other things (serving at church, school, etc) but there's nothing I can really do about that at this point. I'll be done with school soon enough and then we'll see a whole new side of life...I hope.

That's it for now - but seriously, call me if you want to set some dates to go out.

Much to Say

Will is growing in leaps and bounds now. I (Mike) can barely keep up. We're starting to baby-proof the house since he's army crawling so well now, we had to lower his crib since he started standing up against things and holding himself up. As if those two things weren't enough, he's decided he has a lot to say now too. I put together a short clip of just a few minutes at our house last night. I guess everyone said it would be noisy and until now I just associated that with crying, but the squeaking and other noises make things interesting too.

Other stuff that's going on with him... He's taking a bottle from both Krista and I without a problem now and that makes both our lives easier. I can help out with the morning/evening feedings and Krista gets more flexibility without having to find a place to breastfeed when they go out during the day.

Mad makes me laugh!

So I (Krista) decided to take Will's 5 month old photo shoot. I cannot believe what a busy month it has been for Will. The day he turned 5 months he got his first tooth. A week later his second tooth came in and he began to army crawl. A week later he decided it was time to sleep through the night...for 11 hours! That was my favorite milestone. Will is such a busy and determined little guy. He is constantly on the move and does not cuddle despite the fact that he does like to be held.


At the end of the photo shoot I wanted to try to get a picture of Will army crawling. It didn't happen the way I wanted it to. He just decided he was done and got mad at me.


This picture makes me laugh every time I see it. What a cute baby boy!

Sick...again?

This has been a record year for me. I've had the flu twice since coming back from Colorado (which was great). Then, middle of last week I noticed a rash on my neck and it turned out I have shingles. I mean seriously - who gets shingles! Apparently I do... So I'm on high dose meds, keeping my neck and shoulder covered and doing everything I can to avoid the nerve pain I've got with it. I'm basically keeping my distance from everyone I can right now - by Monday night I should be seeing some good improvements - assuming the meds are working.

Other stuff going on - gotta give Grandpa's car back soon and I hope Steve can find a new car quickly enough that I don't end in a jam without a way to get to or from work. I guess I'm lucky that his car was available and that my timing with Steve buying a new car worked out so well. I'm in the busiest part of the year for work, but at least it is for projects I enjoy. I'm knee-deep in VMware and storage projects and I really do enjoy this stuff. School is an easy term for the next eight weeks and I'm incredibly grateful for that. I just finished a senior project course last term and it really wiped me out (I'm sure it contributed to my flu sessions). So for the next eight weeks I'm looking to just do well in school, as always, and refresh myself as spring hits and then it's back into heavy school-work again.

Just keeping my head down as life comes and goes. That's all I can do until I'm done with school.

Wow, Will is almost 5 months old. I can hardly believe it's been that long. Will is finally getting over a major cold. He had a fever for three days along with a stuffy nose and now has a terrible cough. It has been a week. Poor little guy was so miserable and still isn't eating as much as he was before. He has discovered that he likes the pacifier. Since this discovery life has gotten much easier. He doesn't cry all the way home from work anymore. He falls asleep for naps much easier and over all is just a much happier baby. Here are some pictures that I took for a mini-at home-photo shoot.

Small Group

Krista and I just started back in a small group this past week. One of the guys who I work with at Harvest was starting one and it was just perfect timing. We're both excited for the commitment that is required for us as well as 1/2 a night off while Will is home asleep with a baby-sitter. I personally think Krista isn't going to be able to cope for a few weeks and who knows - I may not be either. Regardless - we will certainly learn to deal with it so we can get some regular accountability and study time in our lives.

Rolling

Will is officially rolling himself around the house now. Quick video of it:

Getting Time

Everyone always tells you that having a kid will change your life. What nobody ever told me is that not only do you have this huge sense of responsibility and commitment to this helpless little person that you got to name, but you also completely surrender your right to make spontaneous decisions.

Krista and I haven't been in a small group for a while now. Our old one fell apart, people moved and simply didn't have time for it anymore. It's been on our list to get back in one and with the lack of sleep and everything else in life we simply haven't made time for it. Today at church I had a friend ask if Krista and I wanted to join their group and my initial reaction was 'absolutely.'

Moments later all the potential questions flooded my mind. What night of the week is it? Wednesday - great! I don't have class on Wednesdays....this semester. Can I honestly commit to a small group and then potentially have a class next semester and miss group for four months? I don't know. What time is the group? 7:30 - great! Plenty of time to get home from work and eat before we go there. But wait - Will goes to bed around 7:00 right now. We could just let him crash in the car seat while we meet or we could get a babysitter. But what if he has a tough time sleeping? Do I sacrifice Krista's night-time sleep with a fussy baby before a long day of work for her? Can we afford a babysitter every week for the foreseeable future?

These problems and questions are addressable and I hope we will decide to join the group but the simple quantity of questions that have to be answered is daunting and is proving to be frustrating at times. As Will gets older I guess this will get easier and as we get used to scheduling babysitters and time with people we'll adapt but what a shock to my/our system and schedules.

So what's the point of writing this? Simply to share my experience to you - our friends and family that may be considering kids in the near future. The change to your life and what you do is so drastic that no one can tell you honestly what to expect, except to say that it's huge. It's huge but it's worth it. I wouldn't trade the experiences and the joy that I get from Will for anything.

Solid Food

So lately, Krista and I have been having some rough nights. Will had been sleeping through the night (about seven hour stretches) a few weeks ago, but for the last week or so he has been up at least every three hours. The lack of sleep has been incredibly difficult for Krista and something had to change.
Everything we read says that you should not start solid food until the four month mark. Will's four month date isn't until next Friday (the 18th) so Krista was a little hesitant to start it. After another really tough night she was all for it. I guess the solid food has more calories than just breast milk alone and he needs to eat less often. All that to say - we did it and he slept over seven hours once again. It was really entertaining and he actually seemed to really like the food.
The new food along with him taking a pacifier has made our time much more productive and him a much happier baby to live with. I'm looking forward to him starting to crawl but have settled for just seeing him roll around on the floor for now.