Sniff…Sniff…

It looks like Josiah is sticking with his brothers and sister in weaning himself. We’re really laid back about how our kids nurse. I’ve think I’ve mentioned before how I nurse on demand and that they have all fallen into a great little routine/schedule…on their own minus the tears and hassle of following a book. So, the same is true for the ending of their nursing. They’ve all just gradually drop nursings about every month. One at a time. I watch to see if he’s interested around the time I usually nurse…if not, we don’t worry about it and he just eats his meal with us. He was nursing three times a day and quickly dropped his late afternoon nursing last month. I thought that with the way he had his early morning nursing and bedtime nursing that we would be doing this for at least three or more months.

I was excitedly thinking that! I’m not the mom who just nurses because I feel I have to. I love spending that quiet time with my babies and feeling them close to me. Very bonding and very beautiful the way God has equipped me to be able to feed them.

Well, yesterday he didn’t get up until 6:30 (in the morning) to nurse. And today he didn’t wake up until his regular time (between 7 and 7:30) and didn’t want anything to do with nursing.

I’m sad and a bit surprised. This is the first time I’ve had a child almost weaned and not been expecting another one. It’s kind of nice but still sad that my baby is getting bigger and instead of worrying about him getting enough milk, now I have to worry about whether he is going to find the electrical outlet!

Facebooktwittermail

Josiah’s Eleven Months

Ummm, bad mother here. We’re getting ready to see family this weekend, so I forgot to post Josiah’s eleventh month. So, here goes…

He is still growing and definitely going to be eating us out of house and home. I’m wondering if I can teach him how to cook at one years old. He’s a mockingbird and copies a lot of our sounds and facial expressions. He’s started to learn how to clap. He loves to say dada but not mama. And if you ask him where dada is, he’ll look for him until he finds him. In the car, Ace is his entertainment and Ace knows it. He’s still not sitting up from laying down, although Mark said he did it in the crib the other day. He can crawl in his one legged way all over the place and is getting pretty fast. He likes to pull up on me and for me to hold him under the arms while he walks. He just started shaking his head yes when we lay him down to change him…that’s our opportunity to brainwash, I mean, teach him, to obey by asking yes or no questions.

And last but not least, you know when he is really happy when he grins so big that he squints his eyes. He’s such a joy in our family. I’ll post a picture after this weekend, but if you must see him now, scroll down and look at our Asheville pictures.

Facebooktwittermail

I Won!

I won a bloggy giveaway from the carnival a few weeks back. I really couldn’t believe it until I got the gift card! So exciting. Check out the Shopping Duck and a big thank you for the card. I’ve used some of it to buy for our house…can’t decide what to do with the rest…thinking, thinking…

Gotta run do some cleaning. I’m trying to get ready for this weekend and leaving a house that is decent for Mark’s folks.

Facebooktwittermail

For Mom

About five or six years ago, my mom gave me some irises from her bed to plant. They’ve really never done much. We combined them with some irises that my father-in-law gave me from his flower bed and put them in the back yard. This year, due to nothing on my part…I even forgot to trim them back this winter, they bloomed like crazy.

So, mom for all you do, here are the irises that you and DC gave me!


Pay no attention to the weed in the background!


My mom believes these are irises from my grandmother’s flower bed. She passed away almost four years ago (I was pregnant with Ace), so I am going to be excited if I have one of her irises blooming. I actually have two this color.

I also have white ones and a deeper purple one that I didn’t get pictures of this year.

Facebooktwittermail

Muddy Feet and Other Childhood Pictures

This is all part of being a kid! Cute, nasty, muddy feet!


Ahhh, Sweet Josiah at 10 months!! My husband, clearly, is the better photographer. I don’t think I could have captured these sweet pictures of ‘Siah!
Liam swinging.

I’ve just figured out that I live in a zoo! In my Zoo, as you can plainly see, I have an Arctic Fox (that was mauled promptly after picture taking by a two year old), a seal pup, and a cute little panda bear who cheers for Alabama! Ahhh, what a nice zoo!

Is it almost summer!?! YES!!! Swimsuits had to be tried on before the summer kickoff!
Facebooktwittermail

Best Date Evah!






I have to say that our last date was probably the best date ever. We went bike riding along a canal in our metro area. Supposedly, you can bike from the locks to downtown (Mark thinks it’s like 7 miles but I’m not sure). We didn’t do that. I’ve done something funky to my knee, so it was slightly painful but not that bad.

Anyway, we took the afternoon and biked while the kids slept/played with our fav babysitter Miss Tracy. We biked about five miles total. It was such a nice day, nice workout , and wonderful conversation. We talked about a ton of things including my Bible study and different things going on. Lots of fun. We stopped at a nice spot where you could wade out into the Savannah River. We saw fish and as we were leaving, a moccasin (a not so nice snake for all you city folk)…fortunately we figured out what it was before it got too close to a dad holding his child and I was able to barely scream out “SNAKE!” No joke, that snake was heading fast and straight for them…scary!

Facebooktwittermail

Adventures in Shopping

This is an atypical shopping trip…but I just thought I’d share that Murphy’s Law (what can go wrong will) was applied to our outing today.

So, it’s the first of the month and I thought I would try and get ahead of our monthly shopping and hit some stores by myself. One included a quick trip into a grocery store to see what their price was on organic/”green” beef…we’re trying to decide if it’s worth the increase in price to purchase this beef compared to what we get at our wholesale store. It took only a few seconds for me to see that their prices were more than what I could pay at EarthFare (our organic/health food store). We left there, change Josiah, fed Josiah, and headed to Sam’s.

Sam’s is always busy but even more so at the first of the month. As we walked through the parking lot, I had Zoe holding Liam’s hand, Ace holding onto my pants and Liam was holding my hand. Of course, I was carrying Josiah. As Ace continued to pull my pants down, I asked him to please stop. He didn’t and shortly after this, he tripped on a parking block (you know the ones that keep you from driving onto a curb, etc). As he tripped, he jerked my pants with him. Thankfully, they didn’t come all the way down, but I was showing a little belly and undies for a second. I got angry (because I lost sight of what a blessing he was at the time) and decided he couldn’t really be that bad hurt…it did look a little dirty but that was it. I made up my mind to proceed through the store and get what we needed…however, Liam saw someone’s bicycle parked outside the store and decided to touch and play with every part of it. After dragging him into the store and safely secured into a shopping cart, I bent down to check Ace’s knee. And Liam kicked me in the face (not on purpose). I finally get a good look at Ace’s knee and I saw that he lost a good bit of skin…now I’m mad at myself for getting angry with him for declothing me. We rush through Sam’s while I try to keep Zoe from being an annoying big sister and bugging Ace. Every time I mention getting to the car to doctor up Ace’s knee, he moaned in pain…or drama.

After doctoring up Ace’s knee, changing Liam’s training pants (soaked…and we were out of disposable pull ups), we headed to Wal-Mart to pick up the aforementioned disposable pants and to get some lunch. Boy, that’s a run on sentence right there! Sorry, mom! Anyway, back to the story. So, we’re happily eating our greasy burgers, chicken, and fries, and Liam announces that he pooped. Which meant that he teeteed. Common terminology for him. Let me back up for a second, I only brought in the stroller, my wallet, and the kids because it was going to be a quick trip in for food and pull ups…no diapers, no cloth training pants. A couple of seconds later, he announces he pooped again. And sure enough…he did. We finish eating, Josiah’s fussing for a nap, and I rush to the bathroom to dump Liam’s disposal and slap the dirty pants back on…sorry, but that’s all I could think to do at the time. I secure Liam into the stroller and we head to get our items. After that it was pretty uneventful since I was tired and ready to head home!

Such is life, shopping with four children under five!

Facebooktwittermail

Hey Kids! Want a baby chick for a pet???

Today, I was boiling eggs for tomorrow at MOPS. When the water started heating up, one of the eggs started chirping! Ugghhh! I don’t use fresh eggs, just cage free eggs from the store. But, I remembered my mom telling me that she had cracked open a fresh egg and found a fertilized one…although the chick wasn’t alive!

I isolated the egg and called Mark who suggested I call his brother. I called his brother and he laughed at me! He also said it was possible if there was a rooster around during the egg laying stuff. Hmm. He suggested I hold it up to a light and see if I could see anything in it. I remember my grandmother doing this, but I didn’t know if it would work with brown eggs. So, I emailed my mom who said it would work, but that the eggs can make a chirping noise if there is a small hole in the egg.

I decided to just leave the egg wrapped up on a heating pad…just in case…meanwhile, I wondered what our house would be like with another baby running around…a baby chick that is. I finally got the courage to crack it and it was just a regular egg! That was a close one. It’d be interesting if there was a chick inside.

Meanwhile, Josiah seems to be doing better. I took him for what I like to call a “peace of mind” visit. He’s got a red throat which is probably the cause of his fever. He’s also gained a pound! Dr. B was very happy and we canceled our appointment for May 15th. She, too, was worried that he had lost weight. Mark and I have been on edge the past few weeks wondering if there was something else wrong with him. We are very grateful that he’s gained weight. I hope to see him gain about two to three more pounds by his 1 year check up.

Facebooktwittermail

Updating on Life

Ace was fine after he threw up. Go figure!

Mark and I celebrated 12 years of dating on Saturday night (it was actually the 20th but we had church)! We celebrated with a dinner in (thanks to Ace being sick) from PF Chang’s and swiss cake roll from EarthFare. And a movie.

Zoe’s reading like crazy! She’s an amazing kid.

Liam’s potty training is pretty non existent…still going in his training pants but also on the potty…weird.

Josiah started running a low grade temp yesterday. We’re watching it and waiting. If he’s still running a fever, he’ll go in on Thursday or Friday. It was really weird yesterday because I noticed his hands and arms were really warm, but his forehead was cool. I kept checking him until we got home that afternoon (a trip to the park at the library and the gym) and his forehead was cool the whole time. So, when we got home, I checked his temp and it was at 101.3. Ughhh! Odd fevers…today his forehead has actually felt warm.

I’ve got pictures in folders to be uploaded but haven’t had a chance to resize them…they’re coming though.

Facebooktwittermail