Well this morning Jack's pediatrician diagnosed him with "Papular Acrodermatitis of Infancy" or Gianotti-Crosti syndrome, and a touch of eczema.

Basically he's got this rash all over his face/ears, arms, hands, legs/knees, ankles, and feet. It doesn't itch, he doesn't have a fever, and he's acting perfectly normal. It's just a rash that comes from a virus that isn't contagious or anything, and it lasts for about 4-6 weeks before it goes away.

Poor kid looks way worse than he actually is.

Jack's First Birthday Party!

Well yesterday was Jack's First Birthday Party! I still can't believe he'll be a whole year old! Unfortunately the ice kept almost everyone that we invited from being able to make it, so that was a bummer. Just one family of three showed up. (Yay for the Edwards!) But it didn't matter, it was still fun to celebrate Jack's birthday.

I made a little cake in the shape of a "1" for him to dig into (this was the part that I was so excited about - I had no idea what he'd do!) It was so funny because he wasn't quite sure what to do with the cake. He basically played with it the whole time, then only after a little taste from his Daddy did he start eating up all the cake that was stuck to his hands. Then after a quick bath, we opened presents, and he got lots of new toys, clothes, and books. He is so glad to have some "big boy" toys! He was seriously getting bored with all that little baby stuff.

So anyway, even though there weren't very many of us, I think that Jack had a good day. After the party we came home and he stayed up way past his bedtime playing with his cool new toys.

Yay for birthdays!!

First snow!

So last night was the first "good snow of the season. You know, light and slowly falling - no wind or anything, just beautiful white snow.

Jack was totally enthralled by it. It's funny to think that these are things that he is experiencing for the very first time. He had never sat in, tasted, or played with snow ever before.

It was a big moment!

I was so thrilled to have a space of my own to decorate for Christmas this year that I thought I'd post some pictures from decorating day for you guys.

Enjoy!

Holidays are the best

And here I am again - two months have gone by without a post...

Woops.

Anyways, nothing super exciting happened to us between the last post and this one - just working, living, and growing.

But lately things have started to get very exciting because if the upcoming holidays. Last year the holidays were sort of clouded over with the pending arrival of our little bundle of joy, so this year we really get to focus on the reason for the season and just be thankful and joyful that we are where we are and that we have a very happy little family.

Now for each of our updates:

Jack: He can walk! Now - I say he can walk because he can - we have him on video taking a few wobbly steps across the room. But most of the time he just chooses not to. Crawling, afterall, is simply easier. I haven't gotten him to take any steps for a couple of days now, but we're going to keep trying. He's also doing this very funny thing of trying to imitate words that we say. So far he can "say" "Poopy" ("peeeee"), "It's hot" ("ssss haaaa"), "Book" ("boo") and "Laura" ("lelelelaaaah"). The big news, though, is that we're preparing for his first birthday party in about 2.5 weeks! I can't believe that he'll be 1. Crazy how fast time goes.

Lisa: No real big news for me. I've been sick for the past week, and am actually looking forward to going to work this afternoon. Tomorrow we get to take dinner over to a friends' house that had a baby last week. I am SO excited to meet this little guy! Sometimes I think that I missed my calling to be a OB nurse - the whole pregnancy/birth process absolutely astounds and fascinates me and I always get so excited when another friend is expecting (there's going to be another small group baby in April!!) Besides being sick and loving babies, my main focus at the moment is getting all of our holiday plans made and Christmas shopping done. I am super excited about Christmas this year - Jack's first Christmas that he'll be big enough to open his presents. Can't wait :)

Tim: No real big news for Tim, either. We've been really thinking and praying hard about his going to seminary in January, and I think that it's going to work out. It will be very good for him I think because he's been kind of "stuck" in the doldrums that is State Farm for awhile now and could really use a good refresher on the bigger issues of life and faith. I'm very excited for him. But we could definitely use your prayers as he struggles to find satisfaction in his current job.

Well that's about it for us - like I said, just working, living, and growing. But loving every minute of this life together.

Til next time -

P.S. - The picture is of our little JACK -o-Lantern on Halloween. We had a great time!

We're moved!

Well, we moved into our townhome on August 1st, and we are loving every bit of living here! Having an upstairs and a basement, a fireplace, a back patio, and our very own washer and dryer is awesome! I really feel like we have a "home" now. I'm in the process of hanging things on the walls and really putting a personal touch on the decor, and it's a lot of fun.

Jack is loving the fact that he is finally able to get around! He is crawling like a mad man, up the stairs, into the fireplace, behind the couches, under the computer desk, and all sorts of other places he isn't supposed to go. One of his favorite things to do right now is crawl over to the back sliding doors in the kitchen and shake around the vertical blinds that are hanging on it. Hey - it's the simple things in life, right?

I am really getting into my job at Eastview. With more experience comes more confidence, so I am feeling more and more confident in what I do every day. I am learning so much about what it takes to be a missionary and go on the field both for the long term and the short term. It is not for the faint of heart!!! I am able to interact with awesome, awesome people all over the world on a daily basis, and for that I consider myself lucky. I am always kept busy and am making some really good friends, too. All in all, I am 100% glad that I took this job. Praise God for making my job decision so clear!

Tim is still at State Farm, and is still in the Quote and Bind department. We're crossing our fingers that he is able to post out for a different position within State Farm, and transfer out of Quote and Bind. He is very good at the job, but (understandably!) it is just not even close to what he wants to do with his life. So please pray with us about that!

I am really getting excited about the fall weather coming, because that means football games, sweatshirts, autumn leaves, and holidays!! As a matter of fact, I think I'll go get out my fall decorations right now :)

Happy fall!!

moving

Sorry, it's been a while since the last blog (assuming anyone is reading this), but here goes.

Lisa mentioned last time that we had a 90% chance of moving. Well, make it 100% because we are moving into a townhouse in TWO DAYS! I am so stoked to be moving into our own place, and we are so grateful to Lisa's parents for letting us live with them for 7 months to pay off a lot of debt. We're in a much better position financially than we were this time last year.

Other than that, not much has changed. Jack is continuing to grow and we are very proud of him. I'm still at State Farm and I'm planning (keep your fingers crossed) on taking a seminary class in the fall. Lisa is still at Eastview helping the church and bringing in extra income for our family.

I finally feel like we are just starting to get our feet on the ground after a long time of being up in the air.

Summertime

Well... July has begun, so I feel like I should put up an update with what is going on in the Stanek family.

I am finally starting to really get the hang of my job. Today I had someone ask me if I would "volunteer" to help do something for someone else, because they knew that if I was doing it, it would be done right. That felt good. Feeling confident at my job is helping me feel confident in other situations, too. I think that while I was staying home with Jack, for whatever reason, my confidence level was slowly on the decline. Confidence in what, you ask? Mostly just in everyday social situations where I have to interact with others that I may not know very well, or in things that I need to do that I haven't done before, etc. I didn't really have a problem with that until after I had been at home with Jack for about 3 months. I noticed that I was significantly more withdrawn than I used to be - probably getting a little too used to not having much daily interaction with people.

But regardless, working is good for me. Working part time is good for my family too, because we rarely have to find a babysitter for him, and we aren't losing the majority of my paycheck to child care costs. So all in all, I am very happy with my job.

Let's see... what else is new....

Jack just got his first tooth on June 30th! I thought the teething process would be a lot more "painful" (for me) than it was. Jack wasn't extra crabby or anything - the only thing I noticed was that he slept a bit more than usual, and even that could be attributed to his growth spurt. So it was quite a surprise when I put my finger in his mouth and felt a tiny sharp thing poking out of his gums!

He's also rolling around the floor from front to back and back to front, until all of a sudden he's all the way on the other side of the room! I think he will be crawling any day now.... That will be interesting - and very exciting, Jack is so ready to be able to get around!

In other news, there is a 90% chance that we will be moving into a townhouse in the beginning of August! We are super excited about that, but there's no lease or anything yet, so I'll give more details later on...

Happy 4th of July!

Happy First Anniversary to Us!

One year ago the Tim and Lisa Stanek family began!

This has been the best - and most eventful - year of my/our life, and we are having a ball.

Congratulations to us for one whole year of marital bliss! =)

furniture

Well, now that Lisa is working, we are looking seriously at places to live. We found a great townhouse close to our old apartment, that would be an awesome place to live. It has a fireplace, it's large, has a partially finished basement, etc, etc. We are also looking at a "luxury" aparment behind Buffalo Wild Wings. They call themselves luxury apartments, but I wasn't wowed. They are nice, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't use the word luxury to describe them.

We are also starting to look at furniture. We went to furniture row yesterday to look at head boards, coffee tables, and kitchen tables. We found a bunch of nice stuff that we really liked, but we are waiting to purchase them. While we were shopping, a sales guy made his sales pitch to us and kinda just stood there, waiting for me to break the silence. In a sales environment, the first person to break the silence typically loses. Well I wasn't going to break it, but my awesome wife said something like, "if you want to leave, you can, we may be a while." My hero.

Take that, State Farm!

I have officially accepted a part-time position at church as the administrative assistant to the Director of International Ministries (20 hours) and the Director of Young Adult Ministries (5 hours). The pay isn't phenomenal, but it is enough to get us into a place of our own, and a nice one at that!

And the best part is that I get to pick my own hours! As long as they add up to 25, my boss said it really is up to me when I want to come in. AND I don't work on Fridays. So from Monday through Thursday, I get to come in on my own schedule. The good part about this is that I will only need someone to watch Jack for 1.5 to 3.5 hours on Tuesday mornings - that's it. So we won't be canceling out my income with childcare costs, AND Tim and I won't have to leave him with other people except for once a week, only for a couple hours. During the summer, I'm probably going to leave him with my sister, but the search is on for someone in the church to watch him once she goes back to school in the fall.

This week was an interesting week. I was called to come interview for a full-time position at IWU's library where I used to work, but as I thought about it, the work I would do there wouldn't even be remotely close to what I want to do with my life. The work I'll be doing at the church puts me much closer to what I want to be doing, and I know that I will be a much happier person if I like my job. So it sort of came down to more money vs. a happier, but poorer Lisa. I chose the latter. There is potential for my job at church to go full time eventually, so I'm trusting that God will provide until that time comes, and I am very happy with my decision.

Yay!

Jobs jobs jobs

And the job search continues...

Had a pre-interview and testing at State Farm last week, went pretty well. Will be following up later this week to hear what they think of me.

Still waiting to hear about the job at IWU's library.

Got a call today from a staff member at Eastview about a part-time administrative assistant position, but I missed the call because I (of course) have misplaced my phone. Hopefully he'll get back to me and tell me more. A part time job would be great, unless the pay is canceled out by childcare costs. But before I think about that part, I need to find out more about the job. Keeping my fingers crossed that he's flexible...

I have sent my resume to a local library and have heard nothing so far.

I also have my resume in for both an administrative assistant in a guidance counseling office at a local junior high as well as a teacher's aide at the same school.

Pretty much, I think that job searching should be considered a legitimate career. It takes skill to tweak a resume just so many ways in order to fit 500 different jobs. (I exaggerate, obviously, but still...)


Hopefully something works out.

mother's day and dead dogs

On mother's day, Lisa and I, and the whole family went to Paxton to visit with Lisa's grandparents. Because Jack woke up extraordinarily early this morning, I was already tired to begin with. We all drove to Paxton in the Schaumburg family Mini-van. Because the drive is long, and there is literally nothing to look at on the drive except for baby corn, I brought my portable DVD player. While Eric, Lisa , and myself were watching The Emperor's New Groove, we were jolted back to reality with a quick swerve of the van. The next thing I know, I am looking up at a dog running in front of the van...

The next thing I know after that, there was a big thud, and we ran over something. I look back to see a dog in the middle of road trying to get up, but failing miserably. We ran over the dog. It was quite sad. We turned around at the next intersection to go a) pull the dog of the road, or b) put the dog out of its misery (I'm not sure which, and didn't bother to ask). But by the time we got back to the dog, it had a) gotten up and walked away, thinking about how lucky it was to be alive (not likely), b) been picked up or dragged off the road by another car, or c) disappeared into thin air. Either way, it was crazy. This kind of put a damper on our day. Stupid dog.

We spent the rest of the day lounging around Lisa's grandparent's. There is a weird family thing that Lisa's family does where they all play baseball together (grandparents, aunts, uncles, kids, neighbors, everybody). It's weird to me because my family never does anything like this. But I digress. Because I don't like baseball and did not want to play, Eric and I went to the local watering hole and fished. We caught nothing but weeds. It was still fun to sit on the dock and cast.

(there are new pictures of Jack on his baby blog)

cinco de mayo and baby teeth

Well, I learned something new this week. Apparently when babies start to teethe, they get congested. So Jack doesn't really have a cold after all... because his first tooth is starting to come in!! Tonight, Tim said he could see Jack's bottom front teeth through his gums, and he put his finger in there to point to where he could see them and all of a sudden the poor kid's gum started bleeding. Which is exciting because a) his first tooth is coming in! and b)we now know why he has been extra fussy and congested - but at the same time is no fun because he is extra fussy. But it's all good - I know this whole teething thing comes with the territory, so we can take it. Some other milestones we hit this weekend are: he rolled over on his own for the first time (and only time... he hasn't done it again since, but we're working on it)!; and he started eating cereal from a spoon without crying or spitting all of it out! He is growing so fast :)

In other news, Tim and I had our own little Cinco de Mayo celebration on Saturday night, and it turned out to be quite the experience. We decided to head over to Fiesta Ranchera (a Mexican restaurant that I really like, but Tim doesn't really... but he is nice enough to go with me anyways), and as soon as we walked in the door we were blasted with mariachi music set to the beat of a cranked-up bass line. We were seated in the very back of the restaurant, in the section next to the private party/bar room... along with a table of about twenty drunk, 40something women, one who was wearing an obscene "crown" - clearly a bachelorette party. We were just there for a nice Mexican dinner. We didn't sign up for what came next. Apparently a group of college kids had rented out the back bar area, and had gotten bored of staying in their designated room. About six clearly inebriated college-aged guys came stumbling out, into our section of the restaurant, which also was where the sound system was set up and blasting music, and the drunk middle-aged women thought it would be cute to stand up, scream "WOO HOOOO!" at the top of their lungs and... uh... I guess the word would be "dance" with these young guys... but they definitely weren't doing the waltz, if you know what I mean. I'm pretty sure I was blushing just watching. We ate as fast as we could and got the heck out of there.... especially when we realized that these guys were probably the same age as most of these ladies' kids. Sick. The worst part was that there were families with children in there. There was a dad sitting in the booth behind us with a little girl about 7 or 8 years old. He had to keep telling her not to be scared, that the music was just playing loud, and that the people dancing just wanted to have fun. We left no tip. Not just because of the nasty display of drunken dancing (Tim said in the middle of it all, "I feel like after all this, the restaurant owes me something." I couldn't have said it better myself.), but mostly because our waiter was too busy pouring the drunk people more drinks to even stop by and refill our water glasses. After that, we bought margarita mix, rented Night At The Museum, and headed home for some good, clean Cinco de Mayo fun. The moral of the story is - do NOT go to Fiesta Ranchera on Cinco de Mayo. Or if you do, refuse to sit in the back of the restaurant. But really, just don't go there.

Also - today I walked at graduation! It was a little awkward because I basically haven't talked to anyone from IWU since Jack was born, and it was also kind of a long, hot ceremony. But I'm still glad I did it. It was a nice way to say farewell for good.

Well I'm tuckered out from trying to comfort a teething baby and walking around for 4 hours in killer high heels that kept getting stuck in the muddy grass (graduation was outdoors), so it's bedtime for bonzo!

babies can't blow their nose (happy Daena?)

Jack has a cold.

This means that he has trouble sleeping, eating, breathing, and sucking on his passie (that's pacifier for all of you who aren't in on the baby lingo). And Jack has always been quite the drueler and now it is only amplified. He now has snot and spit coming out of his face. It's no good, no good at all. And the poor kid can't blow his nose. We do have one of those baby snot-sucker things, but I'm afraid it is woefully inadequate. We need something that runs on electricity...

Not much else is new on the home front. We took some dinner to some friends of ours yesterday who have recently had a baby. I have already forgotten what it is like to have a newborn. Jack is growing by leaps and bounds!

From Lisa

Well didn't Tim do just the best job setting up this blog? I'm impressed.

Anyways, like he said, I've been able to stay home with Jack since he was born, but now I'm starting to look at a couple job opportunities. Today I have a job interview (prayers would be nice!), and if this one doesn't work out then I'll probably be staying home a little while longer. Which would be more than okay with me, but I'll still be keeping my eyes open for other family-friendly jobs.

And also like Tim said, I'm really ready for a vacation :) So I'm crossing my fingers for maybe a weekend away for our one-year anniversary coming up next month. Next month?! Wow - it's hard to believe that we've been married almost a year already. It completely flew by. I also can't believe Jack is already almost 5 months old! Where has the time gone? Oh well, I hear that the older you get, the faster time goes, so I suppose I should get used to this, shouldn't I?

Well, it's time to put Jack down for his morning nap so I guess that wraps it up for today!

initial updates

For now I'll just update everyone on what is going on with us...

Tim - I'm working at State Farm now selling auto insurance. It's nothing great, but it's paying the bills for now. I'd like to end up with a higher paying job within State Farm, and eventually end up back in youth ministry. It's a long haul till then though. I'm just trying to enjoy my life in the here and now. I'm also addicted to a video game called World of Warcraft. It's fun.

Lisa - Lisa is currently a stay at home mother (and what a great one she is). We are considering the possibility of Lisa finding a flexible job to help us in the income department. This isn't something that we are crazy about, but if a job comes along, I think she would take it. Lisa is also in desperate need of a vacation. We're working on it :)

Jack - Jack is four and a half months old and the joy of Lisa and I's life. We are extremely proud of him. For now, he is standing (with a little help from Mom and Dad), smiling, laughing, crying, whining, yelling, talking, eating, and pooping. We are working on him being able to turn over. When we put him on his stomach, he puts his arms out to the side and arches his body (imagine a skydiver).

TV SHOWS we watch include: lost, american idol, heroes, survivor, the office, and the amazing race.

getting started

I saw one of my buddies who has a blog about his family and I thought it was a great idea. So here I am starting a blog so everyone can keep up on the newly formed (June 2006) Stanek Family. Woot.