A Little Grace

Well we had a little more excitement this weekend than I would have liked.  On Saturday T had a baseball game, here in town.  It started at 12 and the girls and I planned to go up as soon as we had lunch.  I got the girls set up with their lunch while I fed Peanut.  I finished up with her and laid her on the bed.  She’s just started rolling with frequency so I made sure to lay her to where she could roll to either side and still have plenty of room. 

I headed to the kitchen to check on the other two before I changed her diaper.  I found a mess of applesauce so I stopped to clean it up.  It couldn’t have taken more than two minutes when I heard a loud thump followed by loud crying.  I ran back to the bedroom and sure enough she’d fallen off the bed.  I felt so terrible!  I set her on the bed all the time and she’s never moved more than a few inches. 

I just “happened” to have been washing the sheets so all the pillows were on the floor.  She was actually half under a pillow when I picked her up so I think she fell off, onto the pillows, but then pitched forward into the hard wood floor. 

She cried for probably less than a minute, and then kind of just snuggled into me.  I checked her all over and didn’t find a bump or even a red mark so I started to think maybe she didn’t hit her head, but then she started acting REALLY sleepy and was just very still.  At this point in her life she is never still.  She is always moving, reaching, and grabbing.  I went to get my phone to call the nurse hotline and she threw up all over.  I texted T and called the nurse.  She had started to perk up a little at the point, but the nurse said it would be a good idea to take her in to the ER to get checked. 

T came home right away and got Bug and Boo.  Peanut and I headed up to the hospital.  Once again, I was glad we live in a small town.  It was more like a visit to the clinic than the ER…even calmer actually.  The hospital was quiet and the only people we saw were the admissions lady, the nurse, and the doctor.  They checked her out, and thought she looked just fine.  She was acting totally normal at that point and had no bumps or bruises anywhere.  She might have a slight concussion, but they just said to watch her carefully for the next 24 hours.

Thankfully the 24 hours passed without any problems, and she has been totally normal ever since.  Of course I’ve been super cautious with her, and have hardly set her down unless I’m sitting right next to her.   When we got home from the hospital it was time for her nap, but I just couldn’t put her down so I carried her around till she fell asleep.  I try not to do that since she never gets as good of a nap, but I knew it was going to be either hold her or sit in her room and stare at her while she slept.

Of course I felt SO terrible!  None of my babies have ever fallen off of anything, and I am very cautious with them.  I had even just told Noni, “She’s starting to roll a lot more so she probably shouldn’t nap on the bed anymore.” and then I went and left her on the bed!  I told T, “Sorry I broke the baby.” and he said, “You’re not feeling guilty about this are you?” 

“Of course I am!  I left her on the bed when I knew she was rolling!”  He told me it was just an accident, but there is no way I could not feel responsible. 

While I was sitting there rocking her T texted and asked how she was.  I texted back and then opened up a blog post I had been reading earlier.  It had a link that lead me to read this post by Big Mama where I read this  “And sometimes that’s what motherhood looks like.  Second chances.  And third chances.  And fourth chances. We’re going to make mistakes and we have to give ourselves grace.”

I love the way God “speaks” to my heart.  He may not speak in an audible way, but He always gives me exactly what I need to hear, at the time I need to hear it whether it be through a friend, through His word, or through a blog post. :) Right in that moment, rocking my precious baby that could have been seriously hurt, while I was beating myself up, He gave me the grace to forgive myself and just be thankful.  Thankful for my sweet babies.  Thankful that He protected our little Peanut.  Thankful for pillows thrown carelessly on the floor. Thankful for my husband.  Thankful for a home baseball game.  Thankful for our lives together.  And thankful for grace.

Singing Boo

The other morning Boo wanted me to take a video of her singing.   Here is what resulted…

That was For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. ~ Romans 3:23

The next one is For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~ Romans 6:23

I love how she says Lord as “Wourd.”

Haha, love that kid. :)

“Laugh With Me!”– Part 20

November 8th

Bug will get on rhyming kicks where she will go around rhyming everything.  Sometimes this can be a bit interesting as in the case of duck, truck, f***, suck and missed, tissed, pissed and pit, hit, lit, sh**.  I try not to be too embarrassed when she comes up with one of these in public.

November 13th

We were on the way to bible study one night, all the things that we have to take packed in the car, when S started giggling, “I tooted!  Hee hee!  It smwells funny!”  K, from the far back seat where she was sitting that day, piped up, “I think it smells good!  Like a burrito!”  Me, “Eww!  That’s the chili we’re taking!”

November 21st

Papa was reading off some Christmas trivia questions from his tablet.  “Where does Santa Claus live?”  Bug snuck a peek at the tablet and seeing Antarctica, quickly said, “Arkansas?”

November 25th

Bug and I were playing Guess Who? one day and we got to the end. She had my character figured out and said, “Is your person Fiddlestick?!”  I started laughing, and she looked confused, “Fredstick?” she tried, which made me laugh even harder.  “No Fredrick!” I answered.  Now she still says, “Fiddlestick” because she knows it will make me laugh.

“Dat funny?”– Part 4

September 5th

We had just watched the Veggie Tales show about Queen Esther and while the girls were playing I heard K asking for the toy cell phone. Boo responded, “Not yet.  You can have it after I text Haman.”

September 10th

When we drive from here to the city we always pass a giant rooster (I’m talking like a 7 ft. tall, wearing blue overalls rooster).  Boo really likes the rooster.  One day upon seeing him she bust out with, “Da woosta!  Da woosta!  A woosta says HOCK-A-DOODLE-WOO!”

September 30th

Boo really likes the song, Stand Up for Jesus and one day at church she loudly said, “Stand up Mommy!” I whispered, “It’s not time.  See?  No one else is standing.” and gave her the “Shh” sign.  “Stand up!” She insisted, “Stand up for Jesus!”

October 1st

T and S were going to make cookies.  They got out all the ingredients.  She stuck her hand into the jar of flour and then pulled it out and got flour everywhere.  T told her not to do it again.  She did it again, and we said, “Oh no!  You disobeyed and now you don’t get to make cookies.” She was so sad she cried and cried.  She was really upset and went on and on.  It was at that point where she didn’t really even remember what she was crying about she was just too worked up to stop.  Eventually she said, “I dust won’t stop cwy-ing!”

October 2nd

Boo has certain numbers that she will latch on to and use for everything.  At one point it was “four minutes”.   Whenever she would wear something that was getting too small (this particular day it was some shoes) she would say, “Dese were K’s shoes.  Now dey mine.  In four minutes dey be A’s.”

October 12th

After having a cold for a few days she started to get better.  When she woke up in the morning she told me, excitedly, “Mommy!  My cold came off!”

October 22nd

One day she was talking talking talking (definitely not unusual)    She found an empty diaper box on the floor and put it on her head.  “I’m a chatterbox because I have a box on my head!”

November 3rd

We went to a friend’s house one day and on the way home she said, “We need a wope (rope) swing!”  T answered, “We don’t have a tree that‘s big enough.”  She came right back with, “Well yet’s buiwld one!” 

Marshmallow Geometry

Last week we had our most successful lesson to date.  Bug was SO excited and declared it, “The BEST school day EVER!”  Yay!

I have been using the Common Core curriculum I purchased, but since Bug has known about 95% of it already we’ve flown through it. Consequently both of us have been getting a little bored with school lately so I’ve been trying to come up with ideas to make it a little more exciting.

We have been working on 2D and 3D shapes and when one of the worksheets said to use toothpicks and balls of clay to construct shapes I decided to substitute marshmallows to make it a little more exciting.  It was a big hit!

Please excuse our messy classroom!  I really need to clean it out and start over before next year!

It only took Bug a few moments to catch on with what I was asking her to do and then she was a girl on a mission!

2D square.

Boo Bear pretty much just poked and squished marshmallows and snuck as many as she could into her mouth. :)

Buggy was so into making her shapes she didn’t even ask to eat any marshmallows!  Pretty serious because they both LOVE marshmallows.

She was so excited to make her first 3D shape, a cube.  I love how she still shakes her hands when she gets excited.  She did it about a dozen times during the lesson. 

Boo is funny in this video. Apparently she thought I told her to eat some marshmallows and she wanted to obey. :)

She did SO good!  Several times I started to give her a tip on how to do it, but I bit my tongue and let her figure it out for herself and she did all of these completely on her own! 

Boo made the interesting shape on the right and I helped her make a cube.

After Bug finished with her shapes she filled out the chart for each shapes number of sides, vertices, and faces.

I just hope she doesn’t think the definition of vertices is marshmallows. :)

I went to feed the baby while they continued making more shapes.  I came back to find this note…

It says PESGEVUSFIR. Translation: Please Give Us Fire.  Daddy came home right after that so I asked him to give a fire safety lesson. :)

Then we got out a candle and let them roast marshmallows.

Yum.

And since we ended on a high note, we’re on Spring Break!!!

April Fool’s Day

I make it a point to at least do one April Fool’s joke on the girls each year.  This year I told them they could have brownies for breakfast…

But I really meant they could have Brown E’s.  :)

My camera died right then after all my Easter picture taking, so I missed the looks of exasperated amusement from them. :)  We were supposed to go play with some friends, but it didn’t work out so instead we walked up to Daddy’s work to see where his new office is going.  They are doing a bit of remodeling and moving offices at the hospital so we went up to check it out and have lunch.  

It was so nice out!  On the way home everybody was tired.  Bug and Boo kept taking turns walking and riding, and finally both of them declared themselves to be exhausted so I let Bug ride and carried Boo.  Then we came to the hill before our house and I knew I couldn’t push and carry Boo at the same time so I set her on the top bar of the stroller and pushed roughly 100 pounds of weight up the hill!  I was huffing and puffing by the time I reached the top! :)

Peanut went straight to bed and the girls spent some time doing chalk out front while I read in one of the new porch rocking chairs and soaked up some Vitamin D.  When it was time for books they asked if we could read on the porch swing…perfect!  We spent half an hour reading and swinging in the warm sunshine with a nice little breeze. I am LOVING this amazing Spring weather!  Absolutely gorgeous!

Happy Easter!

We had such a wonderful day celebrating our risen Savior!!!  It was jam packed and started bright and early!  The girls woke up to their Easter buckets and excitedly sorted through their goodies: books, puzzles, chocolate, pencils, notepads, bubbles, shoes for Boo and pjs for Bug. 

*Yawn*

Poor Peanut only got a few books, but she was still asleep and wouldn’t have known the difference anyway...next year I’ll have to step it up! :)

Papa, Noni, and Mama arrived around 8, having come from the sunrise service in the park.  We all had breakfast together before getting ready for church.  Daddy was outside till 10:15 last night putting up MY Easter present…a porch swing!  I thought it would be a cute place to get Easter pictures so he obliged. :)

Our Buggy is getting so grown up these days!

Boo is our little sunshine spreading joy, happiness, and a bit of mischief wherever she goes. :)

Our sweet Peanut…such a blessing!

Group shot!

We headed to church next. Mom, a friend, and I sang an old hymn Beneath the Cross of Jesus.  Buggy was standing up with us singing (without a microphone) and about halfway through Boo decided to join us.  She kept asking Noni to pick her up, and when Noni did Boo started singing too.  The congregation loved it of course. :)

After church we all came back to the house for a big Easter lunch.  T marinated a huge ham for days, and it was amazing!

The girls got fun Easter baskets from Grandma with all sorts of fun goodies, including big boxes of chalk, perfect since we were just about out and they LOVE chalk!

They also got baskets from Noni and Papa with adorable matching pjs and other fun goodies!

Peanut was really going to town trying to get her basket open!

Daddy played Easter bunny while they were opening their baskets so as soon as they were done it was outside for a hunt!

Bug was running around full speed grabbing as many eggs as possible!

Boo on the other hand was meticulously opening each egg she found and exclaiming over the contents.  This was the big enchilada…a whole dollar! :)

Peanut confiscated her empty egg. :)

Peanut was a bit crabby all day and only wanted Mommy, but my arm was getting quite tired so she and Daddy hunted for some eggs together. :) 

Later, she just would not quit fussing and we finally took off her Easter dress and put her in just a onesie and from then on she was as happy as a clam! Her dress must have been irritating her…the tulle was a little scratchy. Poor thing.

A little discrepancy here! Haha :)

We hadn’t gotten grandparent pictures in a while so I corralled the troops and got some good ones. 

Noni and Papa.

Grandpa and Grandma.

Mama.

This must have been a record-breaking Easter for weather!  It was 64 and SUNNY.  Absolutely gorgeous, and unheard of Easter weather!  We were actually getting hot out there, and the house got up to 73 with the sunlight pouring in the windows!  It was heavenly!

We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting, going for a walk, doing chalk, and soaking up the sunshine!  What a wonderful day!

Happy Easter!  From our family to yours!