Driving the little car

Little Lady got a toy push car from Nanny and PawPaw for Christmas, which she LOVES. She loves to go around and around the house in it like in this video {video here}:



In fact, she actually loves it a little too much. When it is inside the house, she refuses to do anything but sit in it and wait for someone to push her around. Then sometimes she gets bored waiting and starts to climb on it.



Therefore, sometimes we have to hide the car out in the garage. Just makes everyone a liiittle too excited!

On sleeping and crying

Little Lady is almost 11 months (next week)! Hard to believe she's nearly 1 year old! But at the same time, she does act pretty mature. She can give little exchanges, like if you say "hi" or "bye", even in casual conversation, she'll wave. If you blow raspberries at her or make a smacking sound with your mouth, she will return either of those sounds and clap her hands, she is so excited! I am also pretty sure she says "mama". When she sees me she will go on and on with the "mamamamamamaama!". And a few times when Christian is around she'll say "dahdahdahdah", so she might know his name too. She also has 3 teeth - two on the bottom middle and one eyetooth. She looks like a funny little half-vampire when she smiles with that one upper tooth.



In those respects, she's a little ahead of Little Sir at her age - he didn't have any teeth, wasn't making any serious talking noises, and hadn't really gotten the hang of waving. But at her age, he was already walking. So far she's not interested in walking at all. She's content to pull up and stand beside things, climb up and sit on top of things, and crawl, crawl, crawl.

One other thing he was ahead of her in: sleeping through the night.

She actually did start sleeping "through the night" (by which I mean she slept until 4am or 5am, needed a bottle, and then went back down until 6am or 7am) around 9 months and I was so excited! I thought, yay, she beat him by sleeping through the night sooner than he did (he was 10 months). But then, about 3-4 weeks later, she quit doing it. She is now back to waking up every 2-3 hours, and last night she was on track to be up every 45 minutes. We've taken her to the doctor to check her ears, thinking she might have an ear infection but everything looked fine. She isn't cutting any new teeth. Also, she stops crying pretty much immediately when someone comes into her room. That doesn't happen if a baby is in pain. What she wants is someone to hang out with her, feed her, and help her go back to sleep. UH NO. She is fully capable of going all night without eating (as we saw from her early sleeping-through-the-night). She is fully capable of putting herself back to sleep. When we do give her a bottle she only drinks 1-2 ounces before throwing it out of the crib (it's cute how she literally throws her bottle, except at 2am, then it's not so cute). If this was a growth spurt and she needed the extra nutrition, she would actually be eating something significant, but she's not.

So last night, after I read Jill from BabyRabies' post about allowing her daughter to cry, I decided we can do this - I am going to let her cry. The child was MAD. Mad, mad, mad. She threw a big fit in there for about 2 hours straight - 11:30pm to 1:30am. Then she finally wore herself out and slept until 6am. I felt really bad about it, I went in a few times but she was just angry and I couldn't console her without getting her up and getting her a bottle, which I was determined NOT to do.

I always said I did not believe in CIO, and I still don't believe in it for babies. But honestly, she's nearly a toddler. She doesn't have anything wrong with her. She just wants some cuddles. And I love to cuddle her! However, I also need sleep. I haven't slept through the night since some time in 2008 or 2009, and I'm over it. Hopefully, I'm helping her too - she is so much happier when she gets enough sleep. She's a pretty happy baby overall. I sure hope we are doing the right thing for my little dumpling.

Thankful for clothing!

Since I make all the blog posts from this blog into a blog book each year, I want to make sure that I record all the blessings we receive so that we can tell our kids later.

One thing that might not seem like a big deal is clothes for me. I am trying very hard not to spend much money as we recover from last year's financial surprises. At the same time, I've been pregnant for 2 years straight and don't have a lot of clothing yet that still fits or made it through the 2 years of being stored. Most of what I am missing is winter clothes, so I've been layering summer clothes under cardigans and other tops.

On New Year's Day we went to an annual brunch that our friends Roger and Jes host each year. When we got there, Jes told me that Roger had just finished a photo shoot for his work and had a bunch of leftover clothing. I could take it, if it fit! I was so excited! There were a ton of clothes that fit, and a lot that I can wear in the winter as well as some summer stuff. What a blessing! I am so thankful for the way that clothing was provided!

For our Secret Santas

I know it's waaaay after Christmas, but I never posted pictures of our kids opening their gifts from their Secret Santas. I am sure the Secret Santas would want to see this!

Little Lady with a sock monkey doll - someone knew how much Little Sir loved his sock monkey at her age!



Little Sir got cars! yay!



Opening Secret Santa gifts...



And it is...



Play doh and cars! His favorites!



What was inside hers (forgot to take a picture of her opening it)



We had a great Christmas Day! I'll post more pictures of what we did that day later, but this post is specifically for our Secret Santas. Thank you again!

Greygee

Little Sir made a firm attachment to one of his blankets about 6 months ago, and the last few months he has become very specific about it. It is an off-white plush blankets with jungle animals sewn on one corner. When I noticed him wanting it in order to sleep, I bought a second identical one online "just in case".

The name of this blankie is Greygee. I am guessing on the spelling, but that is how it is pronounced. It used to be that is how he pronounced Blankie, but recently when I called it Blankie he corrected me: no Mommy, no blankie - GREYGEE.

So now we take Greygee everywhere. Greygee hangs on the back of his chair at the table while we eat. Greygee goes outside. Thank goodness there are two of them, because Greygee gets really gross dirty. When Little Sir is not looking, I take the dirty Greygee and switch it for a clean one, throwing the dirty one in the wash.

It's really cute, he's so earnest about it!
It's fun to have Greygee in the family :-)

Merry Christmas!

Our family is excited about celebrating Christmas here at home, hosting our various family members, and celebrating the amazing Christmas miracles we've been blessed with. Since our original Secret Santas and Christmas miracle, a second Secret Santa has also visited us with more gifts for the kids. We are humbled and blessed. There are lots of gifts under the tree for our kids, despite the fact that we didn't spend anything. We are thankful for the blessings that have been provided for us. It does make me wonder about why I don't hear these Santas coming and going outside my house, though!

One thing I love about not traveling on Christmas Eve is that we get to attend services at Watermark (our church). Little Lady is currently running a fever from either teething or a cold, so we couldn't put her in childcare. Rather than be discouraged, as I have in the past, we decided to just bring her in and sit way up high in the upper level. She enjoyed hanging onto the rail (very secure, don't worry!) for a while and then took a nice little nap while Todd spoke.


You might remember that our first Secret Santas gave us some cash to go see Santa Claus in the beautiful outfits they gave the children. We went to see Santa at A Real Bookstore in Allen a few weeks ago, and here's the picture:


Thank you to our Secret Santas, who are "the hands and feet" of the God that we are celebrating!
I feel like this has been the least hectic and the most meaningful Christmas that I can remember. I hope that we can continue to take this spirit of humility and peace into future Christmas seasons and teach it to our children.


Merry Christmas, everyone! Thank you for following along with our journey!

Our Christmas miracles

I have been trying all day to think of how to write this post that would express how thankful we are for the wonderful blessings that have been provided to us in the last 24 hours. I see God in all of this. It's probably trendy to attribute blessings to God, especially at this time of year, but I have seen blessings like this all my life - enough to believe that it's not just random and that God is not just a great big Santa Claus in the sky. I don't know if He gives us trials so that we can trust Him, or so to show us that we are powerless and He is powerful. I feel like it's probably both.

If you follow my other blog, you know we have been facing some tricky times with our unbreakable lease and dual rent/mortgage after buying our new home in November - so much that we cancelled gifts this Christmas. We were amazingly blessed by a Secret Santa who brought us wonderful gifts we can give to the children, for them to see Santa (which they did - pic to come soon, I need to scan it!), and a gift card toward our Christmas meal (got it today!).

In the last week, a potential renter has come along. We are very thankful that it is someone Christian knows, so the house would be helpful in reducing this person's commute and hopefully beneficial to both parties. The only catch is that, in order to make it affordable for this person, we would have to pay their rent for January plus an incentive equal to one more month. This person would move at the end of December (we've already paid December even though the house is empty), meaning that we'd get out of the lease after paying 2.5 months rent while someone else is living there. There is also an additional fee for breaking the lease. The total amount was very daunting for us, but just barely workable. We knew it was our only shot, because the other potential tenants have just not been working out in the last month. So we took a deep breath and prepared to let go of pretty much everything. We actually felt OK with this. My husband, for all his theological interest in unbelief, actually has an amazing faith. He encouraged me that we would be OK and I agreed.

As soon as we had decided to move forward with this arrangement, we received a very generous gift from some friends at our church. Which might seem weird, except that it's sort of something we believe in. There's a passage in Acts 2 of the Bible that explains how the early believers in Jesus came together and shared everything they had - people who had more gave to people who had less, and that way everyone had enough. You know, kind of like socialism! (that was a joke) When we were dual-income-no-kids, there were times that we gave similar gifts to our friends. It felt weird to be on the receiving end at first, but I remember being on the giving end and I know that we'll be there again one day. I can't wait!

Shortly after that miracle, another miracle came along in the form of a bonus for Christian's work that was much larger than we anticipated. We really do not count on bonuses or even expect them, so this was amazing. Especially in this economy. We are blessed that he works for a company who is doing very well at this time.

We are in awe of God's amazing goodness. I would like to thank each one of you for your prayers, and even all your help in spreading the word to rent our house. So many little encouragements along the way.

We definitely do not deserve all that has been given to us. But isn't that really the message of this season? We do not deserve the baby in the manager who was born just to die in our place. And yet... there He is.

Thank You.