seriously?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:10:39 -0700

I cannot believe that Isaiah is already over 8 months old! He has become a little boy... curious, busy, happy, entertaining, full of joy and wonder.

He has been such a happy little guy over the past month- much different from the isaiah from 5 months ago. Here are his haps:

*Crawling! All over the place. Full on belly-off-the-floor crawling. He loves checking out everything downstairs. His favorite things to explore & play with are his dad’s guitar, the shelf that has all of his bowls & spoons, the coffee table (and all of the magazines that he routinely pulls out), the bathroom trash can (note to self: buy a trash can that has a lid. gross), and anywhere that our computers or phones are.

*Pulling up & cruising. He pulls himself up on anything he can. his favorite thing to do once he has pulled himself up is to happily wave his arms around and bang on whatever he is holding on to. This works best with the coffee table.

*He has teef. 2 of them in fact! He cut his first two teeth last week and did pretty well with it. Since they popped through he’s been sleeping through the night 10 hours! (except the night after we took him to a padre game & the fair in the same day...how about a little stimulation?)

*He smiles non-stop, is very curious, loves people, babbles on and on (we heard a mama today! usually it is just bablah), loves being outside, is still nice & cuddly, can melt our heart with a single look and makes us laugh all the time with his collection of faces.

It is so fun seeing him grow into a little person. Sometimes I long for the tender little newborn moments, especially since the beginning was so rough for us. But this has been by far the best couple weeks of our time together. What a fun little gift he is to us and we cannot wait to continue to see his personality develop!

Just in case you were wondering why we have been terrible blog-slackers, these are the reasons why:
it’s wedding season. enough said for me.
our camera broke on the last day of hawaii. so sad. i have felt naked without it. It will be mailed back to cannon where they hopefully can fix it. Come back soon & well little powershot... we will miss you. In the meantime, please enjoy the amazingness of our iphone photos.

Happy monday!
~courtney

To: Kauai

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:51:19 -0700

dear kauai,

we miss you.

thank you for having such amazing God-glorifying beauty.
For giving us rivers to kayak
waterfalls to swim in
hikes along an uninhabited coast
untouched beaches
yummy food
delicious hawaiian ice cream
an ocean view from our amazing room
an endless supply of beauty
time to rest
time to breathe
time to reconnect
isaiah’s first dip in the ocean
gorgeous pools to splash in
exciting places to explore, but not too much that we couldn’t see it all
a trip we’ll always remember and cherish.

we’ll come back anytime you invite us. the sooner the better.

love, the toneys

ps thanks again nonna & poppa for making it all happen :)

Get 10 Hymns. Help Build a Well.

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:17:57 -0700

i just finished recording a CD.
it is a mostly acoustic hymns project and 100% of the income goes to Blood:Water Mission. They are an organization that builds fresh-water wells in Africa. It takes 3000 dollars to build a well, so hopefully we can sell 300 of the CDs at 10 bucks each. and build a well. Again, all 10 dollars goes right to the organization. You can buy the album on my website: www.davidtoneymusic.com where there is more info, and some songs to listen to.
Get 10 Hymns. Help Build a Well.
thanks for listening.

-david

hawaii. 2

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:21:44 -0700

what an awesome trip.
courtney will do a full recap soon, but for now check out the pictures. and the slideshow/video.
isaiah was a champ. he was happier than he has ever been. he loved the water. loves the air. loved the family time.
it was a great time.

-david

hawaii.

Thu, 22 May 2008 11:28:58 -0700

we’re here!!
isaiah has been a champ. in the plane. adjusting to the time change. playing in the water. he has been awesome.
he has been sleeping great. (maybe he just likes hawaii better) (we should move here)
and he has officially started to to crawl. it has made him much happier to be able to move.
we’re loving it here.

-david

Mothers day

Sun, 11 May 2008 20:54:32 -0700

My plan was to write a blog about my amazing mom and what a blessing motherhood is.

Here I am, at 8:56 on my first mothers day and here is how I feel:
broken
hopeless
drained
so sad

It’s not that it has been a bad day. It was an incredible day: lots of love from my hubby & son, great times with my family, some much needed rest, a good dinner. But at 7:00 it began again. The traumatic routine of trying to get Isaiah to sleep.

For two weeks, it has been a nightmare trying to get him to go to bed. 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours of crying every night. We’ve tried and tried every means we can think of: nothing is comforting to him and nothing puts him to sleep. Finally, once he is completely exhausted, something will work. Tonight it was nursing. Other nights, that has not remotely worked.

Here is a little bit of insight into what is going on: He has always gone to bed without a problem at night. We had our routine: it works. Easy. I don’t even remember now how it changed two weeks ago, but it did. Other things started happening too: spitting up every few minutes (even baby food & rice cereal), naps were hard too, grunting while nursing occasionally. Turns out, the poor little guy has acid reflux. Why it just flared up now at almost 7 months, I don’t know. We were so sad to hear it, but also relieved to have some sort of an answer.

We’ve started him on a medicine, which has helped a lot. We’ve also raised his mattress on one side and altered his eating schedule. Happy Isaiah is back during the day, he is spitting up much less, naps are wonderful again and nursing is slowly getting better.

But, as soon as it gets to be bed time, all of that changes. Whether it is the acid kicking in at night, separation anxiety, correlating his crib with hurting (it hurts when he lays down)- or, most likely, all of them combined, he hates going to sleep at night. We’ve tried and tried. Once he goes to sleep, he sleeps through the night. It is just getting him there.

We are at our wits end. I have cried almost every day. David feels completely helpless. I even had a full on panic attack in the middle of the night last week. Every night, we feel emptied- like we have nothing more to give.

Thankfully, God’s mercies are new every morning. We wake up to a new day and a happy son. Praise the Lord there are 22 other hours for us to fully enjoy our son. The hurt, stress and sadness still remain throughout that time. We are so confused and are not sure what we can still do, but pray. And we ask strongly for your prayers.

Throughout all of this, I have tried to keep perspective. God has brought us through extremely hard times & circumstances in the past. Even early on with Isaiah when I had a cracked nipple and nursing was extremely painful. It passed. My mom always reminds me that “this too shall pass”. I know in my heart it is true. It is just difficult to have that soften the hardship in the moment.

I thank the Lord that Isaiah is overall healthy. I have known babies with cancer or other severe health issues. I am thankful for our beautiful boy who is so excited to explore the world. Not a day goes by that I do not praise God for the miracle of allowing me to have Isaiah when I was told I would not be able to conceive.

This is not how I imagined my first mother’s day night would be, but I know that good nights will return and I will look back on this time and understand all of the why’s.

I hope you all had a wonderful mother’s day. I will definitely still post about my mom and the joys I have experienced as her child and also know being a mother myself. In the meantime, if you think about it, we would love it if you could pray for our little guy. and us.

~Courtney

note: there are new dear isaiahs

6 Months Already!

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:52:43 -0700

I cannot believe that he is already a half a year old. It seems like I was just looking at my newborn baby thinking, "he is so adorable! What the heck do I do with him?". I still think that sometimes :)

Here is an update on our little guy:

So far, he is taking after me size-wise: he is petit and little. He weighs 14 1/2 pounds and is 25 inches long. Both of these are about the 20-25 percentile, so he is definitely a little guy. At least he is proportionate though! We were pretty surprised when he was weighed- we thought he was a little chubby! The doctor suggested we feed him more solids to try to thicken him up a bit.

Speaking of solids, he loves to eat! He eats peas, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes, pears, peaches, rice cereal and oatmeal. We've had to give him a little bit of prune juice a couple of times :) The only thing he has not taken to is carrots... once again, taking after his mommy who cannot eat carrots! He truly does love eating though- we cannot feed him fast enough! He eats one bite then looks at us and starts talking and waving his hands up and down saying, "next bite! next bite!". He is still nursing well a few times a day too.

He is rolling all over the place! He loves his newly found freedom of movement. He started rolling around 4 months and has not slowed down since. He is getting close to crawling (yikes!). He gets on his stomach and tries to pull himself forward while kicking his legs. He makes a ton of noise and gets all excited, which then turns into frustration that he isn't going anywhere. It is pretty funny. We'll have to videotape it and post it soon. He also sits up really well.

He loves:
*being outside. checking out the windmills & bamboo tree in our backyard (neighbor's yard actually. it's pretty interesting- he's also got a hundred pots with no plants and old toilets in his front yard. you'll have to come check it out!)
*playing with anything that is not a toy. pins, computer cords, my phone. He'll have a bunch of fun toys laid out in front of him but completely ignore them in order to try and grab the pen that is in my hand. but his favorite thing is his spoon. he can hold his spoon and play with it for longer than anything else. it’s his comfort toy.
*that being said, he does like his exersaucer, playmat and a few of his rattle-y toys. Especially his little dog that barks!
*eating
*cuddling with mommy
*hanging out with daddy
*looking out the window from his changing table
*grabbing anything and putting it to his mouth
*UCLA basketball... even when we lost....
*The padres- check out pictures from his first game in our photo section. He even has a little uniform.
SORRY DAD & MOM- he has to be a Padres fan, we're in San Diego. My heart will always be with the Angels. Not the dumb los angeles angels of anaheim though. the anaheim angels.
*bathtime

He hates:
*getting his face wiped off after eating
*being put into his carseat
*when I put him down for naptime. he's gotten better the past couple of days, but last week he was not having naptime. Eventually he would fall asleep and sleep for a good amount of time, but there were a couple of days that it took me an hour & a half to get him down for a nap! not fun.

Speaking of sleeping, our inconsistent buddy has had some amazing nights and some not so amazing nights. He was finally sleeping through the night.... then we took him up to San Francisco for a wedding. Threw everything off. That was a few weeks ago. A majority of the nights he will sleep through the night, wake up at 5:30 or so to eat and then sometimes go back to sleep (this morning until 8!). However, we've had a few nights in the past week and a half that we were up for an hour with him...

The past couple of days he has been taking 1 1/2 naps!! Woo~hoo~

Overall, he is a pretty happy curious little guy. We are loving seeing him develop and explore the world around him. We continue to grow in our understanding of how to be parents and God has been so faithful throughout our journey. My newest adventure is learning how to balance my time during the day: working from home while being a mommy first. It's a challenge, but I keep reminding myself to be grateful that I have a job I can do at home so that I can be with him everyday.

Exciting news: next month, we're going to hawaii with David's parents! we can't wait! A little nervous about taking him a long flight though... anyone have any tips?

-Courtney

fetus/baby

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:32:54 -0700

in stomach

out of stomach

click “read more” for the before and after pics

isaiah and eva

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:29:38 -0700

already going for the chest.

we’re in trouble.

Easter thoughts

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:20:07 -0700

The wildfires in San Diego & Orange County left their mark on many a hill, house, lawn and even patches of grass on the side of the freeway. Charred branches and barren fields captured many an onlooker driving down the 5 or the 15.

The other day, as I was driving up to Orange County, my heart jumped at one of the most beautiful sites I have seen. Gorgeous yellow, purple and orange wildflowers- all over the place. Where there once were wildfires, now there are colorful wildflowers shouting that it is spring. Not only do they sing of spring, but they sing of restoration and beam with the glory of God.

The charred branches and bushes are still there. They are just surrounded by bright green grass and fields of color. Similar pictures are popping up along the freeway in Rancho Bernardo.

This stood out to me so strongly. What a beautiful parallel to the Easter story and God’s redemptive work in our lives. When we go through hard times- when it seems like all is stripped away from us, we feel barren, burned and bare, when begin to think that there is no hope and we even may question where God is in all of it. Then, when the season is right, a flower pops up- a glimmer of hope is found. In my life, I have found that God allows times of destitution only to blow me away with his glory in the healing process.

Beyond that, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross takes our lives that are dead in sin and gives us the most amazing hope and grace in salvation. What an amazing reality.

From wildfires to wildflowers.

Happy Easter.

~Courtney