And....

....she is in the tub happily. No crying this time!! :o)

When the cat's away....

My husband is a great father. He is so fun to be around. He loves our kids. Loves to play with our kids. The kids adore him. And so do I.

We definitely have different approaches to life with our kids. I tend to be the one who is overprotective, trying to "think ahead" and prevent all injuries, conservative in behavior, boring, and just plain no fun. Steve however, likes to live life to the fullest and allow the kids to experience things spontaneously. If some issue is to come along in the process, then he just deals with it at that moment. This earns him the title of the "Fun parent".

Recently I went to Swaziland on a 10 day missions trip with a group from my church. I asked Steve if he would miss me, and he jokingly said, "No, I will finally have some freedom!!" This was evidenced by my first Skype call with him from Africa. He proceeded to tell me how he and Josiah set up the soccer goal that J had received for Christmas outside. It had started to rain soon thereafter, so "Since you weren't home....", he says, they moved the furniture aside upstairs, brought the goal in and then played soccer in the house.

He had no idea how this move would impact his future or the well-being of our two-year old daughter.

You see, Saturday night of that week he decided to give the kids their baths instead of waiting to do it on Sunday morning. He put a little bit of water in the bathtub, inserted Zoe with a few toys and then went about doing some tasks around the house. Not long afterwards, she started hollering for him. He goes to check on her and she asks him to fill her Dora castle with more bubble bath so she can make bubbles. At this same time, Josiah comes in asking Steve to play soccer with him. They debate about how long their game would last, finally settling on a 5 minute limit. They head upstairs to play. About 2 minutes into their game, Zoe starts yelling for Steve again. He calls downstairs telling her that he would be there in just a minute. They continue playing and she continues to call to him. At the 4 minute mark, Josiah kicks the ball and it goes down the stairs. Steve sees this as an opportunity to head down and check on Zoe. As he is going down the hallway to the bathroom, her cries are getting louder and louder. Once in the bathroom, he sees tears just streaming down her cheeks. Her arms are extended and she was holding her hands outwards. She yells out, "Daddy, it's the poop!!!" Sure enough, there was one in each hand. He grabs it out of her hands and throws it in the toilet. Washes his hands, gets her out of the tub, washes her hands and tries to get her cleaned up, while Josiah comes crying in the bathroom because daddy had left him with one minute to go in their soccer game.

He did finally manage to get them both into another tub and give them baths. The old tub got cleaned. Now if we can just convince her that she isn't going to poop in the tub every time she takes a bath...

Finally....

I have not made a list of resolutions for this new year. Instead I am proposing a list of things that I "hope" to FINALLY accomplish sometime in the next 12 months. These are things that should have been done long before now, but being the lazy, busy, distracted, procrastinating person that I am, alas, they are not done.

*I hope to FINALLY finish the pillows I started for the living room. It has been at least 8 months and I am only halfway through the first one.

*I hope to FINALLY paint Zoe's room and find a bedspread for it. The old wallpaper trim was removed last March. It is time.

*I hope to FINALLY get all the clothes off the floor of my half of the closet. If I ever do, I think Steve will faint.

*I hope to FINALLY finish Josiah's quilt for his room. I do believe this has been sitting waiting to be finished for at least a couple of years.

*I hope to FINALLY clean out at least one of the 23984774876098 junk drawers we have in this house. I need more storage space.

There are tons more "hopes" that I could post, but this is enough to get me started. What things do you hope to accomplish in this new year??

Doesn't the number 7 represent perfection??

Steve and I had not even been married a year when we decided to attend a marriage conference at the Wilds. It was a fun weekend filled with food, skits, games, time with friends and most of all instruction on building a biblical marriage. I don't remember a lot of specifics from the weekend except that one lady from our church that we didn't know very well thought that Steve was younger than me. (Seriously?!?) One thing that both of us still remember to this day is the speaker describing the ups and downs that marriages go through and most specifically that years seven through twenty are the "lean years". The years when most marriages fall apart and when most divorces take place. Well, we have finally reached that point. It is over -- at least for the next thirteen years. Today marks 7 years since we both said "I do", so it is downhill from here. We will both be enduring and holding on from now until year twenty, when things will finally be good again between us.

Reminiscing....

God has definitely blessed us with two wonderful treasures. Every now and then I like to sit down with one or both of my kids and look through old pictures and videos to see how much they have grown. That is what we did this afternoon. With Josiah's birthday coming up, I decided to have us all watch the video of him that I made a while back. It contains a lot of my favorite early on pictures of him. It brought a tear to my eye. If you wish to watch it, it is here.

P.S. Yes, I know it has been FOREVER since I have blogged. Hopefully I will get back in a routine here pretty soon. Ciao for now... :o)

Snowy Afternoon Adventures

Because of all the snow here in the Triad, Sunday services were cancelled. We had a pretty quiet morning here on the plantation. Pancake breakfast. Josiah and Steve played wii and I worked on a quick sewing project while Zoe took her morning nap.

Sunday afternoon lunch would be at my parent's, as usual. There are definitely benefits to having them live next door. :o)

Once Zoe awakened, we set off in the truck the back way headed to Nana and Papaw's house. Josiah was not to excited to have to walk in the snow from the truck into my parent's house. Zoe could have cared less. We stomped the snow off our feet in the garage and headed inside....this is where it all began.

I can see it now. Zoe sets her eyes on Nana. Let me pause here in the story to tell you that Nana is one of her favorite people. She goes crazy, yelling and screaming, jumping and running, whenever she sets her eyes on my mom. And that is exactly what she did this time. Only in the process she trips on the threshhold and fell flat on her face. Not sure if it was because her arms were up in the air reaching toward her Nana or because of the puffiness of the jacket her daddy put her in that she was not able to get her hands down in front of her to soften the fall. She landed on her mouth.

She was crying at first. I picked her up and tried to rock her and soothe her. Upon taking a closer look, I realized that her tooth was bleeding. It almost looked at first like she had broken the tooth off. We realized later that she had just jammed it up into her gum. We washed her mouth with a cold wash cloth and then set out trying to find something to distract her and calm her down.

I admit that I definitely need to work on making Philippians 4:6 my own in situations like this. I was already thinking about what might happen to her as a result of this fall. I am seeing visions of children's partials dancing in my brain. I convinced Steve that we needed to call the doctor. He called the after-hours call nurse. She said to feed her popsicles and to take her to see the doctor in the morning.

I just couldn't stand it. I HAD to look on the internet to see what people posted about children with teeth pushed up in their gums. Of course, everything I read was about teeth turning black and the need to get to the dentist ASAP.

So, we called the dentist. He is way too kind. He told us to meet us at his office in a half an hour. After looking at Zoe's tooth, which she was not all too happy about, he confirmed what we had been thinking all along.

She will most likely lose her tooth.

It could end up being pulled as early as two weeks from now, maybe even sooner if the horrible tooth turning black thing occurs.

Since she is so young, there is probably no damage that occured to her permanent tooth.

With the baby tooth gone, it could take longer for her permanent tooth to come in because it will have to push through bone instead of just following the path of the baby tooth.

Sad to say, I think her chance at a baby modelling career is over.

Please be kind and don't make fun of her.

She is a trooper. On the way home from the dentist she was singing one of her favorite songs:

Oh no, never ets go

Crew ca calm, Crew ca calm.

(That's the Zoe version.)

And what a truth there is in that...

Praise Him in the Storm

It has been a rough week for us. I cannot deny that fact. But even in the midst of all the sadness and pain, there are two things that brighten my day more than anything else.  I would be a fool if I didn't take the time to praise and thank God for these wonderful gifts.