Salem Is Here!

Salem Luke Chancler was born on June 10, 2009 at 1:16 p.m. He weighed 8 lbs 8 oz. and was 21 inches long. 

Both April and Salem are doing good.  Here are a few photos, and if you know anything about April, she will post many more soon.

Blessings,

Brandon

Brag Blog

If you're at all sensitive to people bragging about their children's many skills or talents, this perhaps might be a post to skip. However, if you're interested in how awesome our daughter is, keep reading. :)

Eden has just about mastered her ABCs, and counting to 10 in English and Chinese, though almost always skipping #4 in English and #6 in Chinese. And occasionally when she gets to "R" in her ABCs (which sounds identical to #2 in Chinese) she'll jump from the alphabet to counting to 10 in Chinese. Also, apparently she's got no use for "m" and "n" still. eh...she's still brilliant. :)  

For your viewing pleasure:

Family of Three

We finally have some pictures with all three of us in them! These are probably our last official pics as just a family of three and they turned out really great! Thanks Cindy! 

There's more here if you care to see them. :)

and as promised...a pregnancy photo. 

Salem's Snoopy-less Room

Salem's room is finally finished and just waiting for his arrival! I think it's both mine and Eden's favorite room in the apt. :)  Makes me wish I'd done a girly jungle theme for Eden because she loves (L.O.V.E.S.) the monkeys and elephants on the wall!

Decorating a baby's room in America is soooooo much easier than China, because well, America has decorations and China doesn't...well, nothing that doesn't have Hello Kitty or Snoopy on it. 

So Jungle theme it is. And I had fun. :) It's no page out of the pottery barn catalog or anything, but we like it, we kept it affordable, and it's simple. We like simplicity. 

I painted his letters on the wall. Michael's was my best friend throughout this process. And thank you Jordan for the shelves idea for his little jungle friends! (notice eden in the pic...I think she was confused as to why I wasn't pointing the camera directly at her). The chair in the corner is an IKEA Poang chair...seriously one of our best purchases ever. After buying one in Beijing for Eden's room in China (and having to leave it there), we passed an IKEA on the way back from South Carolina a couple months ago and knew it was destiny.

Curtains are another made by me project. It's just ribbon glued on a beige curtain we already had. Curtains are kinda pricey it turns out...so this was cheap. :)  Look at his cute little blue and green diapers just waiting on his tiny butt! The Papasan swing was an awesome craigslist score from his Granddad. Brandon had to get over his fear of the craigslist killer in order for us to go pick it up. And the oh so fantastic changing table was made by cousin Evan. It's ginormous (translation...perfect for cloth diapers!), the perfect height, and fits right into our keeping it simple mindset. And since it is so big it's got tons of room for all the diapers it takes to diaper 2 kiddos at one time. (did we really think this through?)

Seriously...just a few more weeks until there's a baby in that bed.

Did I mention that Eden loves his room? She likes to kiss the animals on the quilt. (??)

I really meant to include a belly pic of me in this post...but I'm lazy and that usually requires someone else behind the camera. But we have plans this week for going out and taking some family pics and some belly pics. So hopefully that will come soon. If not, I may have to reenact in a few weeks with a pillow.

Crackin' Us Up

Some friends recently introduced us to a new comedian and we're LOVING his stuff!! I say he's new...he's really just new to us. He's probably been around for awhile. And who knows, maybe you all have heard of him already and we've been completely out of the loop.
None the less, we just wanted to share the funnies with you because we love his type of comedy. He loves Jesus, which means his stuff is clean, which is always our pet peeve with comedians. Check him out on youtube or tangle.com!
He's got lots of stand up stuff, but here's one of our favorite videos:

Of Hammocks & V-Family

A hammock? really? Does anyone ever really want a hammock for their birthday? Lo and behold...my husband does. So I trekked over to REI one day by myself and scoured the place high and lo for an ENO double-nest hammock and accompanying slap straps. (I'll suck up my pride and say that you really should check these out...they're pretty cool!)

But before said trip, our awesome neighbors, the V-Family, decided they wanted to go in on this cool purchase for Brandon. So, in very cool stealth style, we've been hiding the purchase for a few weeks...until saturday night.

Second part of the story... 

If you know my husband at all, you'll know it's not unlike him to request a "practice" birthday cake. His birthday isn't until the end of the month, but he thinks it's cool to go ahead and get in a practice cake a few weeks in advance, even if the cake might be different than the one I'd actually make for his birthday. Of course, it's his way of getting 2 b-day cakes in one year. So, indulging him again this year, I told him I'd do his "practice" birthday cake on saturday and we'd have it that night. 

Now join story #1 and #2... V-family, Bek & Kev, and Eden and I had a surprise 2 weeks early birthday party for Brandon on saturday night! He got a cool hammock, a nice and very unexpected surprise, and a practice birthday cake 2 weeks in advance. He was pretty thrilled. He and Eden went out on Sunday afternoon to test out the hammock behind our apt. This is our view out of our back porch:

Same picture...just cropped for better viewing of the three...Brandon, Eden, and new ENO hammock.

Ok...Third part of the blog story.

V-family is actually the main reason we had a party 2 weeks early. They leave us this week for new and exciting adventures! After 7 weeks with them in VA and a year with them here, we're having trouble coping with this as we've truly come to appreciate our time with them! We've gotten pretty accustomed to our Friday evening ritual of Settlers of Catan:

But I think Eden might miss them the most. There isn't a day that goes by that she doesn't talk about the guys (V-Family kiddos). She knows them all by name (adapted a little Eden-style), and really I think she'd prefer to play with them over any kiddo her own age. She loves them!! I dread the day that she bangs on their apt door expecting them to come see her!

We will miss you sweet V-Family!! 

Our Big Move. And some Insanity.

This past weekend we moved to a new apartment. A 3 bedroom apartment. About 30 yards away from our previous 2 bedroom apartment.
It was probably the easiest move we've ever made and will ever make. With the help of 6-7 crazy awesome neighbors, we got it done in less than 2 days.
So...now we're rearranging, putting stuff away, and acclimating to an extra 100 square feet. It's great!
And now this means that Salem actually has his own bedroom. And I'm having a blast decorating it. Turns out it's much easier to decorate a baby's nursery in America than in China. And I'm loving all the options! There will be pictures to come (for those of you that care about that sort of thing.)
It also means that Eden is thoroughly confused as to which apartment is ours, which bedroom is hers, which bed is hers (she's in a new crib), and where all our previous neighbors have gone. But...she'll get there.
Meanwhile, I think being inside a lot lately trying to get things settled has made her a little stir crazy. She's a toddler so she does weird stuff anyways, but add to it her having to be inside more than she'd prefer...well, she's making us a bit insane. So lately we've started documenting some sentences we've said to her simply because if we were overheard in any other context, we'd be committed.
Here's a sampling:

"Get your face off of the oven." When she feels the outside of it is warm, she likes to press her face against it. niiiice. not the safest thing ever.

"The chair is not food." We really thought that by now she'd outgrow putting EVERYTHING in her mouth. but no. she hasn't. so we've started really trying to emphasize that the only thing that should go in her mouth is food.

"Get out of the kitchen! Go make some cookies!" When I'm cooking she really likes to be in the kitchen with me. But obviously it's not always safe for her to be in there. So I said this one to her to get her to go to her bedroom to make her pretend cookies with her kitchen stuff. She likes to make "mnnnmns coocoos" translated: M&M Cookies.

"We don't pee in the corner!" Tonight right before bath time I stripped her down and took my eye off of her for a split second in which she ran into Salem's room where Brandon was, ran to the corner, squatted, and peed. Seriously, what goes through the mind of a 19 month old human being?

"Stop biting your knees." Really, there's not a good explanation for this. She's started biting her knees when she gets upset. ??? for real. no idea.

Anyway, you get the idea. Apparently raising a toddler can make you utter some fairly ridiculous phrases. I'm sure we sound insane to our new neighbors. Maybe we are a little bit.