Friday, March 26, 2010

Crawling!!

Well he finally did it! He is crawling!
They told me that he did it yesterday at daycare, so last night we got him down on the ground and got the camera out and sure enough he did it. We even got Drew out of the bed so he could see him. He is growing so fast! Of course today he is 10 months old. It has really gone by so very quickly and now that he is making such huge milestones, like crawling and eating table food, it is making him seem so grown up already. I am really looking forward to next weekend and spending some time with family through the Easter holiday so they will get to see how much he is changing.

For an official 10 month updates, here of some of the things JC does
*sits up and now crawls, although what he really likes to do is pull up on your hands and stand, he wants to walk really bad!
*eats all solid foods now and has begun to drink real milk with meals. He still has a morning and bedtime bottle of formula.
*still only has the one tooth, although now the other front bottom tooth is just beginning to peak through.
*sleeps through the night about 90% of the time, but does occasionally think he needs a midnight snack bottle!
*Says mama, bubba, da da, and now bye and will wave. He likes to say bye at bedtime too, especially to his bubba!
*Cries when I leave him at daycare about 2 mornings a week, he is really a mama boy! He cries EVERY afternoon when he sees me walk in the door until I make it to him and pick him up.
*Now only takes a paci at bed times and only at home (they do not give it to him at all at daycare anymore).
*Favorite toy seems to be the leapfrog drum. He can really keep a good beat! I need to video that for the blog.

As a side note about all the food he is eating now. Yesterday they gave him breakfast and lunch at daycare. Normally they fed him just baby cereal for breakfast . So yesterday he had for breakfast 1/2 a poptart and 1/2 a banana along with a cup of milk. For lunch he had beefy macaroni, pineapple, carrots and a roll! Then for dinner at home he had a chicken nugget, green beans and pears with 2 cups of milk and then ate cheese puffs while he sat in his chair during our dinner time! He is a piggy!!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Officially eating solid food at almost 10mon and only 1 and 1/2 teeth!

Well here is the proof...

He can now officially eat solid food. He has one tooth that is good and in and barely the corner of the other front bottom one coming through, but that is not stopping him! I had actually tried last week to feed him some carrots, peas and green beans that I had mashed up with a fork. He did not want them then. Well little did I know that he just simply wants to do it all himself! Today when I dropped him off at daycare one of the girls told me that yesterday he had snatched someone else's lunch! And that lunch was chicken nuggets. Now we have only been feeding him baby food so they were really concerned that I would be upset. Of course it does not really matter to me, we just did not think he was ready for it yet, but I guess he thought differently. So today I decided we would try it out at home since I had some leftover chicken nuggets in the fridge and some green beans. Well he loved it and got most of it in his mouth. He is still sitting in the highchair right now and Jim has fed him 2 jars of baby food in addition to all the green beans and nuggets! I really had no intention of him getting both jars that were on the counter, only one of them, but did not communicate that and Jim already had the other jar open and feeding it before I realized. JC is an absolute mess now! I do not do these kinds of messes! We taught Drew to be a very neat eater, my sister has the messy kids! Oh what will I do with him! I love him, and he is getting big so fast! Below is a video of the eating.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Treasure of The Word

A friend and I have been reading the book A Place of Quiet Rest by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It is a wonderful book about developing an intimate relationship with God through a daily devotional life. I read this story that was part of one of the chapters this past week. It so convicted me of how much I love the Word and cherish it. I will let the story speak for itself from here...

“I must have a Bible of my own! I must have one, if I have to save up for it for ten years!”

The year was 1794. For as long as she could remember, little Mary Jones had yearned to hold a Bible in her hands so that she might read it for herself. For years, she had sat at night on her weaver father’s lap and listened to him tell stories of Abraham, Joseph, David, and Daniel. But her family was far to poor to afford a Bible, even if one had been available, for Bibles could scarcely be found in all of Wales during those days.

Two years earlier, Mrs. Evans, the wife of a nearby farmer, having learned of Mary’s longing to read the Bible, had promised the child that when she learned to read, she could come to their house and read their Bible. As soon as the first school opened in a neighborhood village, Mary had eagerly set about learning to read.

Now, the ten year old girl had just walked two miles from the North Wales village of Llanfihangel to the Evanses’ farm. The distance was no object to the eager child: “I’d walk farther than that for such a pleasure, ma’am!” she said to Mrs. Evans.

When once Mary finally was left alone in the room with the Bible, she reverently lifted off the white napkin that covered and protected the cherished Book. Then, with trembling hands, she opened the Bible to the fifth chapter of John where her eyes lit on the words, “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39, KJV). Confident that God had spoken to her directly, she earnestly vowed to search His Word with all her heart.

Every Saturday from that point on she made the journey to the Evanses’ farm where she read, studied, and memorized entire chapters from the borrowed Bible. All that time, however, her heart ached, so great was her yearning to have a Bible of her own. She purposed that she must have a Bible, at any cost.

For the next six years, in addition to her studies at school and the many chores to be tended to at home, Mary used every available moment to do odd jobs for friends and neighbors. Every penny she earned was carefully laid aside, until at long last she had saved enough to buy a Bible of her own.

When she learned that the closest place a Bible could be purchased was the town of Bala, some twenty-five miles away, there was no question in her mind about what she must do. With hope in her heart, she started out early one morning, walking barefoot so as not to ruin her one pair of shoes Before she reached her destination, her feet were blistered and cut from the stones in the road.

Physically weary, but barely able to contain her excitement that her lifelong goal should be so nearly realized, Mary finally arrived in Bala where she poured out her story to the minister, Mr. Charles. When she had finished, Mr. Charles reluctantly informed her that the last of the Bibles available for purchase had already been sold and that the remaining Bibles had been promised to others. Furthermore, the Society that had printed the small quantity of Welsh Bibles did not intend to print any more.

So great was Mary’s disappointment, that she began to sob uncontrollably. Touched by the intensity of her passion to have a Bible of her own, Mr. Charles decided that she must have one of the few Bibles left in his possession. Words cannot describe the ecstasy Mary felt as Mr. Charles placed into her hands the precious treasure for which she had prayed, wept, and hoarded all these years. Her heart sang as she walked the twenty-five miles back home, carrying her very own Bible, the Book that would remain her dearest friend and companion throughout her life.

The footnote to this story goes on to tell how: “Mr. Charles Thomas’ encounter with Mary Jones deeply impressed him and led to the establishment in 1804 of the British and Foreign Bible Society, a society dedicated to publishing and distributing the Word of God throughout the world.”

Monday, March 15, 2010

Birthday Party, Ear Infections, and Migraines

That is just about the order that our weekend took! Saturday we celebrated Drew's birthday with family and friends. He had a wonderful time and it was a great party. The morning was a little bit rough. The first dozen balloons we purchased were lost by mistake when they flew out of the van as we were loading up to leave home. We had to make a second trip to Kroger for balloons. Not the way I wanted to start things off and definitely upsetting but it all ended up good. I think all the kids had a great time and we had plenty of food to please everyone. Below is a slide show of all the party fun!
Click to play this Smilebox slideshow: Drew 6th bday party
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After the party we came home, completely exhausted, and decided to go ahead and push all the clocks ahead to get us in gear to get to bed early. We managed to get to bed at 10pm new time, so 9pm before the Spring Forward, not bad. However around midnight I began suffering from a major migraine headache. Also JC seemed to wake up sporadically through the night that night. Jim did a great job of tending to both of us. Sunday morning I ended up staying home along with JC. He was running fever by this time and pretty out of sorts. He would not sleep unless I was holding him. By lunch time I gave him some ibuprofen and it brought the fever on down and he perked up. Thankfully he did not run anymore fever over 100 but just kept pulling at his ears. He had been doing that for several days so we highly suspected an ear infection. We planned on Jim taking him to the doctor first thing this morning. Unfortunately they were down one doctor and could not see him until 2:30 this afternoon. He does have a double ear infection and is now on augmentin for about the next 14 days. He has just gone to bed for the night with a dose of ibuprofen for the pain, he has been very uncomfortable. I think he will definitely be one of those completely helpless and pathetic men when he is sick!! Well my headache never really went completely away and sure enough it came on strong again over night last night. I tried to drive to work this morning but did not make it to far down the road before I turned around and came back to bed. I think it is gone for good now, I hope! Spring time is very hard on my migraines because of the changing temps and pressure in the air.

So, as you can see our Spring Break has been off to a rather rocky start, but that is okay. Jim and Drew are going to Batesville tomorrow to spend a few days at his mom's and do some things around there for her. They had planned to go down yesterday afternoon but then with JC getting sick had to shuffle their plans around a bit. I am thankful that he was able to do that because I was not really able to physically care for JC on my own today.

Here is another great picture I got of the boys last week, enjoy!

Friday, March 5, 2010

The new background and a couple of funny stories

I think the new background is incredibly appropriate for a family of two little monkey boys! In the last week JC has just about begun to crawl. He can actually move himself backward pretty well, but this is not really his intention and therefore makes him pretty mad! Soon, oh so very soon, he is going to be EVERYWHERE!! I am not quite ready for it but it was going to happen eventually, right?!?!

So now on to a few "happenings". Last Sunday I took four 4th grade girls from my Sunday School class out for a reward after saying all the memory verses for a 2 month period of time. I let them decide what they wanted to do and they wanted to go roller skating at a place close to our house. So we set out after church to get some lunch. The skating place did not open until 2pm so the plan was to pick up some lunch and go back to my house for a while. Well, at first Drew was scared to death of all those girls in the house, and then he decided he liked it a pretty good bit and basically became their life-size baby doll for awhile! We got to the skating rink just as they opened and man they were packed! Lots of birthday parties going on and what not. So we get in there and I am planning to skate with them. Now I cannot even tell you when the last time I roller skated was, I am thinking it has got to be 20 years ago. As I was lacing up the skates I began to panic and realize just how nuts I really have gotten that I would seriously strap on a pair of boots with wheels attached to them and proceed to then try to stand on them, let alone move around! I am happy to say though that skating must be somewhat like riding a bike, something you do not forget how to do. I did pretty well I think, now it was not graceful or impressive by any means but I did manage to get my balance pretty good and skate at a pretty good pace. I did hit the ground twice. Once when one of the girls pulled me down as I was helping her and the other time was completely on my own, I just lost my balanced and landed on my backside with A LOT of force! Needless to say I have a very bruised knee and a nice bruise on my hip that are still there today! Overall though I really had fun! It was a great time of bonding with the girls. They are all so special to me. God did not bless me with daughters of my own but I believe He wants me to be a special person to each of these girls and I thank Him for the relationship that I have with them.

The next story is a funny Drew story. On afternoon last week as we were heading home from school here was a song playing on KLove that the chorus talks about no one being like God. I cannot remember the exact song at this moment but that is what the chorus says. Anyway, Drew was singing along with it and suddenly stopped and told me that no one was like God. I told him that he was right, no one is like God because He is God. He then says, "I am not like God because I do not have a beard." I started laughing! How funny that he thought of God as having a beard! And that the beard is what distinguishes Him from the rest of us!! Of course I know that the only images he has ever seen that depict Jesus are of a man with a beard so naturally that is what his 6yr old mind thinks of. We talked more that day about why God is not like anyone. He is beginning to take so much in from the scriptures we are learning for Awana and from Sunday School. I do think he is somewhat interested in salvation but does not really have a clear understanding. He understands about people going to heaven and that we have people we love that are already there. He actually had a friend over to the house a couple of weeks ago that he was telling all about the picture in our dining room of his Papa. He told him that Papa is in heaven with Jesus and one day we will see him again. His Papa would be so proud of him! So, the next time you think you can run your own life and tell God what to do you just remember, if you don't have a beard you are not like him!!

Well we have another busy weekend ahead. Jim will be in Ridgeland, MS for the State Indoor Championship. He will be leaving early tomorrow morning and probably not going to get home until about midnight. Drew actually has to go to school tomorrow. We are having a 60% day tomorrow to make up for snow days. While he is at school JC and I are going to go visit my nana at the nursing home. I am praying it will be a good visit. Tomorrow evening my bestist friend and her girls are coming over and we are going to cook dinner together and hang out. It will be a nice distraction from Jim's absence. The weather is going to be gorgeous this weekend so I am hoping the kids can do some outdoor playing!

Hope you all have a wonderful and blessed weekend! I am sure I will have more monkey business to share soon!!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Birthday Fun!


Last night we took Drew to IHOP for dinner, as pictured above! Following dinner we took him to Walmart to pick out a baseball glove and bat because he will be playing t-ball in the OB City league for the first time this Spring! We had a great time. JC got a little tired as you will see from the pics and the video. It did not take very long at dinner for us to realize why we rarely go out to dinner with the kids these days!! It was a good night though and Drew had a good time. He is looking forward to his birthday party coming up!




Monday, March 1, 2010

6 Years


At about this time 6 years ago I was in a labor room at Baptist Hospital Desoto having labor induced with my first child after my water broke at 37 1/2 weeks pregnant. By 11pm that night, after trying to push for 2 hours, Jim had to make the decision to have the doctor perform a c-section. At just a few minutes past 11:30 we welcomed Drew to the world. He weighed 6lb 11oz and was perfect! Our lives have not been the same since! It is so hard to believe that he is actually 6 years old today. He is growing up so fast and becoming such a sweet young man. He loves to tell us all the time that he loves us. He has begun to pray quite a bit on his own lately. He will say some of the sweetest things to the Lord! It makes me want to cry now just thinking about it. I went to school today and took cookies to his class and was able to read a book to the class. He has a special hat on today. He was so excited about spending his birthday at school today. Tonight we are taking him to dinner at IHOP, one of his favorite places, and then to Walmart for him to pick out a baseball glove and bat because he will be playing for the first time this year in the OB City league. I will take more pictures of him tonight. Below is another one that I took this morning, he was showing off his new shoes!