Another very long overdue update

Hi family!  Sorry it's been so very long since I've updated.  I stink at being a blogger.  I always thought I would keep up with it, but I just don't!  My time reading other blogs I love has even dwindled lately, and some days pass without even checking my email (the horror!) 

Sweet, sweet hugs with C signing "I love you"

 

We have had a great summer around here, but we (or more accurately, I) am so very ready for fall.  The mornings have been pleasant enough this past week that I can open our windows and get some nice cross breezes through our apartment for a few hours each day.  Something else I look forward to every fall is a fall scented candle (or two!), which has been burning in full force lately.

Micaiah will be 3 in two weeks.  He has been growing and changing a lot in the last few months.  He has developed a fear of skunks and owls coming into his room while asleep.  He asks us each night and before nap to please pray for him that none would come in his room.  It has really given us an opportunity to emphasize God's protection over us.  He has grown in his pronunciation of certain words.  He has always had trouble with words that begin with an 's' and have a double consonant at the beginning, like 'smell', 'squeak' and 'spooky'.  He's getting to where he can say a lot of words like those correctly now.  Here are a few funny things he has said lately:
*(While playing outside and needing to potty) "I peed on the monkey grass.  Will the monkeys be mad about that?"

*Micaiah-Who will take the baby out?
  Mama- Someone called a midwife will help take him/her out when its ready to be born
                                                          Micaiah- I think I will get her a pillow or a blanket to fall out on

*(In the car when Caeden was crying from extreme tiredness) "I know you are hungry Caeden and you want a brownie, but we just left Grandma and Grandpa's house.

*"My nose is runny.  We can call Mimi and Papa (on Skype) and I will show them"

Caeden has also been changing a lot.  He's 17.5 months now and trying to say a lot more words.  Granted, Scott and I are probably the only ones who can understand him at this point.  One of my favorites is how he says please, "bees".  He is his brother's shadow.  Everything Micaiah does, Caeden is not more than two steps or seconds behind him.  Even down to wanting more butter or jelly on bread, Caeden will ask right after Micaiah does.  It's hard to believe that Caeden is at the age that Micaiah was when Caeden was born.  Caeden still seems like a baby instead of a toddler in my eyes.

One of the boys' most favorite things to do is to "make a town" as they call it.  They can be found doing it almost every single morning for the past two months or so.  It consists of taking all of the toys out of our living room ottoman and then playing in and around the pile.  Not sure where they got the idea from.  I cringed for the first few weeks that they did it, but it has become one of those things that I just suck and up try to be a "yes mom" about.  Make no mistake about it though, they are surely required to clean it back up!

This was just a funny picture to us because C has one leg straight down inside the ottoman and one leg straight up.  He wasn't very comfortable.  :)

 

 

Probably any of you who actually check on our blog already know that I am pregnant again.  We are expecting our third baby on March 10.  We are SO excited!  Honestly I didn't start out so excited.  I roller coasted a whole lot between feelings of joy and feelings of inadequacy.  But throughout time, and especially as my hormones have evened out some and I've been feeling better, God has brought me to a place of pure joy over this new little life growing inside!  Something I learned after we miscarried our first baby on that terrible day in October of 2008, was that with any subsequent pregnancy, there's no way I could do it halfway.  I don't want to.  I have to be all in.  100%.  I can't hold back my love, or my joy, for fear of anything happening.   Likewise, this time around, the Lord had to gently remind me of what I had learned before that I can't hold back my love and excitement about this child just because I don't feel ready yet to add another one to our family.  God planned this baby, He knew we were ready for the next one, so we have to confidently say as Jacob said when he saw Esau after a long time of being away, "This is a child that the Lord saw fit to bless us with."  And ready or not, we're all in. 

We had music on during dinner one night very early on in this pregnancy, and this song (below) came on. I ended up eating my dinner in a puddle of tears because of it, and it has kind of became a theme song for me. Love it.

http://youtu.be/mMVvqI1-tM4


As for some regular preggo stuff:
-I'm 14 weeks along now and feeling so much better
-The same as with both boys, I felt sick from about 5-10 weeks.  I never actually throw up very much (just a few times), THANKFULLY! 
-My food aversions and cravings were c-r-a-z-y this time around.  So many random things turned me off from hummus, to furniture dusting spray, to small pasta shells (that was a weird one, I didn't mind any other shape of pasta--just the thought of the small shells though was enough to make me ill!)  I (gasp!) had to buy storebought bread for a few weeks because I couldn't stand the smell of freshly ground wheat or the olive oil I use to make bread.  The day I decided I could tolerate it again was a happy day for this girl with a house full of wheat!
-I have been through a bagels with cream cheese phase, a frozen fruit cup phase, an ice cream phase, an english muffin with peanut butter phase, and everything in between. 
-I have craved Spagetti-o's at least once during each pregnancy.  Strange!
-Micaiah always refers to the baby as a girl, although this morning he did actually use "he or she" in a sentence regarding the baby.  He has had all sorts of questions from "Is she wearing clothes?" to "Will she like the beach?" to "Will she like to play with my trains?" 
-I've been able to keep up my exercise so far, which I am soooo thankful for.  I didn't exercise much at all while pregnant with Caeden and it showed, in more ways than one.  I feel much better in that regard this time.
-We find out October 23 what the gender is.  We're the type that don't reveal any name choice until we know the gender, so y'all will all have to wait until then to find out the name too!  All I can say is that our baby better not take after her cousin, Presley, and require multiple ultrasounds before the gender is able to be found.  Talk about frustrating when that's a day you look forward to with such eager anticipation!!

In other news, we are still trying to find a house to rent.  This apartment was fine for a temporary home, but that temporary time has long since passed.  We are very ready to move on.  We're not very good apartment dwellers.  And we REALLY want a yard.  And a bathroom on the main floor.  Caeden understands how to make himself pee when he sits on the potty, but I refuse to move him to underware full time in an effort to get him fully trained until we live somewhere with a bathroom on the main floor so that I'm not having to run up and down the stairs all the time in those early days of training.  Whew!  Makes me tired just thinking about it.  Not to mention we're sick of the smell of this apartment and there's no good place to put another child.  Nonetheless, we are so thankful that God has provided this apartment for us for *almost* the past year.  It has served us well.  But we're ready to move on.

Caeden *loves* blocks

Scott has finished his book!  That has been a huge thing this summer!  We are so excited that it is printed and available to get the words God gave him out to others.  He has ideas for some other books, including an idea for a book for me to write.  Eek!  I wouldn't mind, but we both agree that it's not my time to write right now.  If you haven't orderd one, go do that right now!!

Until next time!

The boys love looking out our back window, likely longing to go out and play!  Right before this picture was taken, I had been showing them some of their new clothes for fall/winter and they both wanted to try some on.  Hence the long sleeves in the heat of August in Augusta!