Hmmm what to play with tonight?

Well, we've hit a few milestones this week for both Tempie and JJ.  Tempie is spending the week in Georgia with her grandma and Papa J.  She is very excited and having a good time.  This is her first overnight experience!  Grandma is keeping her busy and they are having fun.  Chucky Cheeze, the zoo, and tomorrow a bounce house place (I forgot the name of it...).  I'm missing her like crazy, but making it through :)  Her Grandma is the best...she sends me several pics throughout the day of all their adventures, and we get to skype each night.  I'm SO blessed!

JJ has taken advantage of the quiet house and started crawling.  Hopefully he can somewhat master it before his sister comes home.  He has also started taking milk from a cup.  This is a VERY exciting milestone to me because up till now he wouldn't take milk from anything but me.  Which makes for a very tired momma!  Now I can leave him for a little while and not worry about him crying the whole time...whew!  JJ has also started pulling up on things.  We are at the stage where he pulls himself up to standing in the bed and can't get himself down, so he just cries.  It's a sad (but somewhat funny) experience.  Hope that doesn't make me a terrible mom...haha.  Here's a pic of him tonight.  He pulled himself up on his toy basket and began emptying all of it's contents onto the floor one by one.  I proceeded to change out his toy basket for one that he can't pull on top of himself.  It was mighty cute to see him doing this though.  What a fun time!  Now comes the real challenge: rebabyproofing my house!  AAHH!!!

Hmmm, what to play with tonight?

I can write my letters!

Yesterday while drawing with chalk outside during jj's nap, tempie draws an E and says "mommy look E". I was so impressed. She's starting to write her letters. We worked on T E O F and A. She's getting there, and super cute while doing it! Here's a pic of what jj was doing too. Not from the same day, but it's cute.

Life these days

Things have changed for our family in the past few months.  Bert has gotten a new job working for UK and I have gone part-time at my job.  I had the job of my dreams.  It took nothing less than the love of a mother for her kids for me to give it up.  I was in tears nearly the entire first week of the change.  I was terrified that I'd made the mistake of my life.  I don't feel that way now.  After just two weeks of the new schedule I am sure I love my kids at least 10x more!  I love having the time to enjoy them everyday.  My heart is so full.  I feel like the grinch in that it must be growing to contain all of this!  Yes, there are parts of my job that I miss.  But college students will always be there, my kids will not.  I want to cherish these years. 

Just a few fun facts about the kids these days:
Temperance has a few funny quirks.  When we paint her nails, one hand is ALWAYS white and one hand is ALWAYS pink.  Same with her feet.  It's actually quite cute.  I did my nails Tempie style once.  When she has pig tails in, one of the rubber bands is pink, and the other is red.  When she eats fries or carrot sticks, she will very often eat it down to the last bite and then leave that one on her plate.  So she ends up with a bunch of french fry nubs on her plate.  It's funny.  She sleeps with a book every night.  Her Bible is her favorite book.  I'm so proud of her on so many levels! 

JJ is tiny and super strong!  Due to his reflux issues, he hasn't gained weight like he should.  He's in the 5% for his age, but he is a He-man!  He sits up unassisted, stands up while holding on to things and is really close to crawling.  It's mighty cute to see something so small doing all these things!  He is the happiest baby I've seen.  He just smiles all the time.  He is also VERY SOCIAL!  He would rather have a person's face than a toy any day!  I already have to tell him to be quiet and eat!  He and Tempie play so well together.  He puts up with a lot from her...haha.  They laugh so much together.  It's the best sound in the whole world! 

As soon as I figure out how to get pics and videos off my ipod I'll post some on here. 

Consider giving of your self today for love, for God.  You will be blessed beyond your wildest dreams!

Long time coming!

Well, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog.  The last time I posted something was right around the time Tempie started walking.  That makes sense since that is the last time I've had a moment's break!!  Now Tempie is walking and talking and playing with her little brother!  I'm going to try to get back into blogging.  I'll start by updating pictures.  It just made my heart smile (and tear up) to see the baby pictures of Tempie.  She's not a baby anymore.  And now I know how fast it will go by with JJ.  I watched the video of her eating her pizza here on the blog and laughed, she eats at the same snail's pace now!  I imagine she always will.  When a whole year has been lost on a blog like this it is tempting to feel the need to fill in the gap.  But that task seems so daunting and I know trying to do it will keep me from blogging at all.  So, I will just be picking up where we are now.  Capturing the cute stories my children create everyday.  Enjoy.

My Favorite First

I think I had my favorite first with Temperance last week.  I know there are a lot of firsts out there for her, but this one instantly derailed me of every other thought.  I was in my office with one of my college girls.  We were about to leave for the day, and I wanted to pray with her.  This is not an unusual event in my day.  In fact it is one of my absolute favorite things to do.  Well, she comes over, and we hold hands and begin to pray.  Tempie is playing in the background.  All of a sudden, unprompted, she comes over to where we are and takes our hands and bows her head with us!!!  I lost it.  My baby is taking her first steps towards imitating her mother in prayer!  There have been few moments in my life where I have in an instant cried and laughed all at the same time.  One was when we learned I was expecting this precious child.  This moment is another.  Every time I think about it I have the same reaction.  I want to shout and cry all in joy. 
This morning I decided to take this a step further.  I asked Tempie if she would pray with me.  Just me and my little girl.  It was in the middle of her breakfast.  I took her hands and bowed my head and began to pray.  She joined me!  She bowed her head and just listened till I was done.  (I kept it short...no need to test her on this just yet!)  Now I want to build this into our family routine somehow.  I guess we should have been doing this all along, but now is a great time to start! 
I am so excited I can't stand it!!!!  Oh God, would you please make my little girl into a woman of prayer one day!!  I love her, and if she only learns one thing from me I hope it will be to love you and to love your people.  Lord, let this imitation of posture be just the beginning!!

I think Grandma Carswell was right!!

So, on the way home from church Temperance will often fall asleep in her carseat.  We then have to quietly and carefully lug her and that heavy carseat upstairs and try not to wake her up.  There is no transferring her from the carseat to her bed.  If she falls asleep there, that is where she will take her nap.  I've been known to read a book in the car as she finishes her nap.  Well, this morning, we'd made it into our neighborhood without Temperance falling asleep.  So I decided to try to keep her up so she'd sleep in her crib.  (I just think that must be a better nap for her.)  Don't you know, I tell Bert what I'm going to do, I turn around and start playing with her, and she plays for half a second, then turns her head to the side and pretends to be asleep!!!!  I was messing with her face poking her, all the things that would normally rile her up.  And don't you know she just stays still as stone in her sleeping position.  I KNOW she's not asleep!  Then after a minute, she pokes one eye open and smirks!!!!!!!!  Bert saw it in the rearview mirror and we both just died!!!!  We are going to have a time with this one!!  She then 'woke up' and played with me.  Can you believe it!!  She is something else.  She's going to keep us on our toes that's for sure!  What a girl!!

Afternoon lunch rollercoaster

Parenting can be such a rollercoaster of emotions!!!  Today's lunch would serve as example #1.  I had the hardest time getting her to eat her cereal.  She kept whacking the spoon and telling me she was done.  Mind you, this is the first things she's eaten for lunch, she's not full!  We've been having such struggles at meal times.  Sometimes she wants baby food, sometimes she wants grown up food.  Sometimes she's just being plain stubborn and doesn't want to eat at all.  So, I was very frustrated by the time we got most of the cereal in her.  Bert and I were eating a pizza for lunch.  We like the California Kitchen Margarita pizza.  We will often give her the tomatoes and chunks of cheese off the pizza.  She really likes it.  She's very partial to tomatoes and to pesto flavored things.  She was gobbling it up this time!!  I was very happy she was finally eating something willingly.  Then I wanted to see if she could handle the crust of the pizza as well.  So I let her chew on it a little.  She did great.  So eventually I just gave her the last bit of my pizza.  She ate it up with ease!  She even waited till she had swallowed one bite before taking another.  (Major accomplishment!)  I was elated and so proud!!  She's my little girl!  I love her so.  Here's a video of her eating some pizza.  I think it leaves you hanging at the end, but no need to worry, she handled that big bite just fine!  And soon after, she dropped the pizza and it was no more!!  Copper the winner this time!