Bad Parent Moments and Renovations

We definitely love how eventful life is with the Walkman! We've had some interesting experiences in the last couple of weeks that I would like to label "bad parent moments." Okay, they aren't really that bad, but they are kind of funny. The first happened on the day we picked Matt up from the airport from his Dubai trip. Walker and I were outside playing in the yard, pushing around his "cozy coupe" car, and he started running a little too fast and face planted right on the driveway. It was one of those times when I felt like life was in slow motion. His tiny body fell first and then his face hit with a smack, resulting in a little scratched up nose and a big strawberry on the forehead. It was his first real fall (he's had tons of falls in the house with lots of forehead bruises and bloody lips and noses) with real scratches! I was devastated and so disturbed because his nose was swollen and red and he was upset. What did Matt say? "That's my boy!"

So that was my "bad mom" moment because I was the one playing outside with Walker when he fell. Now, onto Matt's "bad dad" moment. We were at lunch today after church with Pastor Ron and a guest speaker from Habitat International who was an interesting guy from New Zealand. Let me first say that Walker is in this phase where he doesn't want to sit in his highchair during meals out (so restaurants aren't always so fun right now). We were trying to be polite and talk with the guest and hear about how Habitat is working in Ethiopia...when I picked Walker up because he was crying (and about to be screaming). I realized he was quite wet and just assumed he spilled his juice. Then, I felt my jeans getting wet while Walker was sitting on my lap...and they were even a little warm. Oh, and my food had just arrived. Unfortunately, I was internally starting to panic because I realized we didn't have a change of clothes in the car, it wasn't time for the guest to leave yet, and I just wasn't sure what to do. Margi decided to take Walker outside to see the boats and the water, and she too noticed he was wet. Meanwhile, our waitress was a bit slow in getting us our checks. When we finally got to the car to leave and change his diaper, we realized the diaper wasn't on at all! EEEKK! He was wearing overalls, and the diaper was down around his ankle. How sad?! Matt was the last one to change his diaper and apparently forgot to fasten the sides. So, Walker basically peed in my lap at the restaurant and then remained in his pee-pee overalls for the next 20 minutes or so. Then he got to ride home in just his diaper and shirt (and one shoe). How's that for a "bad parent" moment?

Bad parenting moments aside, Matt had a great trip to Dubai to plan for this summer. We are looking forward to that trip as a family (please pray for Walker's first trip overseas and for a good plane ride for him!). We are also getting ready for some house renovations right now, which is very exciting! We are hoping to close this week (pray for that too and that we can afford it). This will mean a master suite (master bedroom and bathroom) with a real closet, an indoor laundry room (no more cold or wet walks to the scary garage at night to wash our clothes--yippee!), an attached garage, a wooden deck and a new septic system. Plus, there will be some other upgrades like a new AC unit, new windows and new insulation. Our house is so cold in the winter and doesn't warm up much, so this should help. It's a pretty huge undertaking, but it will help us stay in our house. It's just too small for us right now, and we are hoping to expand our family in the future, so this will certainly help give us the space we need.

I promised more photos...here goes...there are a lot!

These are overalls that Matt's aunt made for Matt when he was 2 years old. We had to take Walker's photo in them too! (and we could only do that with a cookie as a bribe)

Walkman can never have too many "blankies," which he lovingly refers to as his "manks".

Lunch with the fam can be exhausting...Walker literally fell asleep mid lunch.

Love that sweet smile...and yes, this is Florida, but it has been freezing lately!

I know there's little resemblance, but that's my boy!

Go Gators! We are a divided household, for sure. The Walker's and several Wilbanks' are all Gators, but Matt and John are Alabama fans. Boo!

You know it's a good snack when it's all over your face.

Walk loves to play in the rafia ribbon that Julie and Ashley use in their packaging for FTD [frame the date]. We are so excited for their business, which had an amazing month in February. See where they were featured on a man blog.

Walker is a good helper in the family business. He is a great source of entertainment.

Matt's day home from Dubai...Walkman was happy to see his daddy!

Here's the infamous after pics from the fall. This really doesn't do justice to how bad he looked on the first day.

We recently added office furniture and some storage pieces to our front porch, and we are really proud of it. It looks totally different and it's very functional. We actually use the desk all the time now.

This was Walker after church last week...he was sporting his sear-sucker suit and golf cap. He looks a little like a lounge singer here.

He knew he was looking adorable. The jacket was passed down from his friend Smyth at church, who is known for being a fashion icon among other kids at MissionWay.

Bath time is our favorite time...well at least it is Walker's. He will not go to bed at night without his bath. After dinner he starts asking us, "Bath? bath? bath?"

I'm glad he loves his books. This was the first time I had ever seen him crawl up on the couch to "read" his books.

Couldn't resist the hood...I wish my pj's had a hood.

This is how we all feel on Sundays after church! Sundays are great days but LONG days too...this is what the car ride home is always like.

How Time Flies

Life never seems to slow down for the Wilbanks family. It's crazy as always! Let's see...our latest news includes Matt starting seminary classes (online with New Orleans Baptist); Matt arrived in Dubai today for a planning trip; and we are all (yes, even the Walkman!) going to Dubai and Ethiopia again this summer, in July. Other than that, I am helping to do some communications work with an organization called Lausanne for a huge gathering of believers from around the world in South Africa in October, called Cape Town 2010.

I have lots of new pics to add, mostly from Christmas...I know that was a while ago now, but better late than never, I suppose. These are just a few...I have more coming soon. Christmas was a BLAST this year...Walker had a great time opening gifts. He likes the gifts, but I'm sure you can guess that he liked the paper and boxes even more. He still loves to push big boxes around the house while collecting random items and throwing them inside the box. We call him our little worker bee because he is constantly moving objects from one area to another (like from the box to the couch, to the floor, etc.). He was a pretty good helper when we were getting Matt packed the other day, although he mostly took Matt's stuff out of his suitcase. We also found a number of missing items behind our DVD player the other day.

A couple of random updates from Christmas...we had our first real Christmas Eve service at MissionWay, and it was great! We had around 200 people there (the size of our congregation is about 200), so we were pumped about that. I sing with our worship band some of the time (I love it, but I'm also in charge of the flow of the service, so I usually have tons of responsibilities on Sunday mornings), so I had a great time singing. After the service, we headed to my sister's house to celebrate with my family (the Walker's)--about 15 of us. My parents' house burned back in September, and they were still displaced. They hope to be back in the house in about a month. Then we went to the Wilbanks' house on Christmas morning and to my mom's the day after. Busy times! But it was a lot of fun, especially with Walker being so active.

At his 15-month appointment, he was very healthy, so were we thankful for that. He is a bit on the small side as far as weight...let's just say he FINALLY made it over 20 pounds. Yay! We think it's because he is SO busy...he is always running, running, running. In fact, when we saw Matt's cousin's sweet little girl, Kennedy, who is 2, she said to me, "Is he Walker? Or is he running?" Love it! So adorable. I would have to say that even though we called him "Walker," he is always running.

His vocabulary surprises us more every day. He can repeat almost ANYTHING we say...which means we are a bit more careful these days. In fact, he started saying, "Oh shoot!" And we've had to change what we say and try to emphasize, "Oops!" or "Oh man!" He says man like "mon"--like he's Ethiopian. It cracks us up. He has a British accent when he says "box" and "socks," and a southern accent when he says "dog" or "ball," and a Jamaican accent when he says "man" and "hands." He definitely keeps life entertaining. We have literally lost track of how many words he knows now. I think it was around 50 at Christmas. Now he makes connections that are so amazing. He likes to tell us when there's mail in the mailbox when we get home, plus he puts together small sentences like, "mom go" or "dog out" or "socks on." He has dictated which shoes he wants to wear several times now. We laugh because he uses his baby signs a lot, but he doesn't need to since he says whatever the word is while he is signing it to us. I just like to say that even though he doesn't look a thing like me, at least he acts like me...he talks all the time and never meets a stranger.

Walkman looks like a baby gangsta in his puffy coat and hat.

This was his sad face one day when Kyle was leaving.

I love this pic...from our Christmas card this year. Julie and Ashley were excellent photographers. We took this at Janet's because we didn't have any presents under the tree yet. He managed to snatch most of the ornaments off the bottom of the tree, except for that tiny present ornament, which Matt made when he was little.

He looks like he is about to get in big trouble!

Walkman loves his reindeer slippers!

And his Elmo "cell phone"...it's funny how quickly they pick up on things. He picks it up and says "hello" all the time.

He seems to be having a serious conversation with someone...

Here's one of his favorite gifts...especially the mic. He was afraid of it at first, but now he loves to sing into it!

He also got this sweet froggy pillow, which he loves because it's so soft. I kind of wish I had one too.

This was when Walker discovered the ornaments on our tree...

This was on Christmas morning...we arrived at the Wilbanks house (I requested everyone stay in their pj's), and the first thing Walker did was dance with Aunt Ash and Uncle Kyle. He's a dancing man!

This was the sweet little face we got to wake up to on Christmas morning. Precious!

Catching Up

So, it hasn't been as long between blog postings this time, but it's still been more than a month. Our camera actually broke, so it's been a little hard to take new pics of the Walkman. He's now 14 months old and is a chatty little man. He has more than 50 words now! We are amazed every day by the new words he says...words we had no idea he even knew. It's so fun! His favorite things to do these days include going outside to play (he calls it "side") and dancing (he actually says "dance"). When he wakes up in the morning, the first things he says are either "what's that?"--while pointing to something random in the room--or "dance"--then he starts dancing. It's so cute and funny!

Back in October, which seems like such a long time ago, Walker was Superman for Halloween. He looked adorable in his costume. Unfortunately, it was really hot here at that time, so he wasn't able to wear the costume for very long. Otherwise, he was sweating and getting upset, which I couldn't blame him for. I hate being hot too! He was so friendly while he was trick-or-treating. We would walk up to each house and he would wave at the people and smile and act very sweet and cute. He got lots of candy for that!




We had a great Thanksgiving and got to celebrate it three different times. Walker loves him some turkey, but his favorite things were mashed potatoes and angel biscuits, which Jamma made. Other than that, we are getting ready for Christmas. We've finally put up and decorated our tree (so maybe the tree was up for almost a week before we put ornaments on it--go figure!). We have a few decorations out, but we have limited those due to Walker's busy little hands. He likes to touch everything, so it's just easier to go with less stuff around the house. As soon as we have some more pics, we'll post 'em!

Summer Vacation

At the end of the summer, we spent a week in Orlando with the Wilbanks' family and enjoyed a fun and relaxing week together. We slept in, hung around in our pj's, ate really good food and eventually made it to the rec center and the pool. We also did some shopping and took Walker on his first trip to Sea World. He loved it! He absolutely loved looking at the fish. It was the first time we noticed him waving to random people and trying to catch their attention and talk to them. It was definitely cute.

Walker was fearless in the kiddy pool. I know I've said it before, but the boy loves water!

He also loves Uncle Kyle! Seriously, he gets mad when Kyle leaves the room.

the fam at Sea World

Poor Papa John...I don't think he minded it, though. And did I mention that the whole week was "Papa John week" for Walker? He wouldn't pay attention to anyone else.

There's my cute little man with his big 'ole teeth! He has 8 of those big teeth.

A Screaming Pumpkin

THE PUMPKIN PATCH
Going to the neighborhood pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin sounds like a great idea. And while it does yield some pretty cute pics, it can also cause a little bit of stress...especially when the pumpkin patch is next door to a church where a wedding is letting out. Yep, that's what happened to us when we went last weekend. Walker has begun exploring the range of his vocals and, as a result, ends up screaming at the top of his lungs. He's not mad or upset, he just screams. And that's exactly what he did as all the guests were leaving the church. Fortunately, he's cute and people just smiled at him as they walked out to their cars. We did, however, find a great pumpkin, which Walker looks at every day and calls "pump."