Strawberry Picking Outing

Raring to go!  We pretty much had the field to ourselves, and it was overcast.  Perfect.

 Caeden was none too excited about being in the carrier.  He was much happier when we took him out and let him walk around.

 Boys + dirt + fresh snack = happiness

No telling how many strawberries Caeden ate...including the dirt all over his hands and several of the green stems we didn't have a chance to pick off!

Micaiah must have said 100 times, "We pickin tawberries!!"  He'd pick one and then say, "OH!  That a GOOD one!" and toss it in the bucket. 

5 gallons later, we have been having our fill of strawberries this past week!

We Don't Always See the Fruit

At least not right away.  In this journey of motherhood with young children, so often the seeds we sow do not bear fruit for many many years.  We pour and pour out of ourselves praying that God will use our teaching, modeling, and even mistakes for good in our children's lives.  We pray that one day all of the seeds we have sown will bear fruit. 

But sometimes we do see fruit right away and in the moment.  These times can encourage us to continue on with perseverance. 

Scott and I really want for prayer to be a normal often done thing for our kids.  We don't want it to be any big deal for them to hear us praying out loud for them.  We want them to learn to readily pray for each other.  We know that for this to be normal when they are older, then we need to be doing that from the get go. 

So anyway, the other day Caeden slipped in the bathtub and busted his lip.  Scott and I whisked Caeden out of the bathroom to get some ice.  We happened to go back in just in time to hear Micaiah praying for his brother.  Unprompted and on his own.  Because Caeden needed it.  Because he knew it was important.  It makes me tear up right now just thinking about it.

I'm not trying to bragg on my child.  I just want to remember this sweet moment being that it was the first time he has ever done this on his own.  I also just want to remind everyone to persevere and keep on teaching your kiddos; there will be fruit.  If not today, then tomorrow, or the next.  But it will come.

  Loving on each other

Hair cut!

We've trimmed Micaiah's hair a couple of times over the ears and at his neck, but last night I finally let Scott cut it way down. Take a look at the removal of the baby curls. I am sad that the curls are gone, and I do hope they grow back. :)

He's holding a brownie bite, not hair!

Micaiah at 2.5 years

Our little buddy boo is 2.5 now. This is such a fun, fun age, and time isn't stopping for me. There are so many things that I want to remember about Micaiah.

First, his basics. He's 35 inches tall and about 29 pounds. He is definitely starting to thin out as he gets taller. Scott and I noted just the other day how his belly is looking less and less round. He sleeps anywhere from 2-3 hours for his nap and about 11 hours at night. He still does roomtime for an hour in the morning, and loves it. He enjoys having that time where he can do things without Caeden bothering his stuff.

He is a monster breakfast eater, a so-so lunch eater, and a bird at dinner. He loves all things bread, fruit, chocolate, and yogurt. He also l-o-v-e-s parmesan noodles. He calls it "mac'n -n- cheese" (which is also what he calls regular macaroni and cheese, which he likes, but not as much as parmesan noodles) One of his food quirks of present is that he will eat raw apples and carrots (with dip!) for a snack, but if it's on his plate for a meal, he gets upset and wants them to be made soft.

He got the game Candyland for Christmas, and although he doesn't totally get the concept of how to fully play the game yet, one of his most favorite things to do is to talk about the gameboard. He loves counting the gummy stars and the gingerbread men. He loves talking about the characters and their candy. And what he really loves to do is to take one of game pieces and have it walk through the game, eating the different candies, high fiving the characters, and talking all along the way.

One time a month or so ago Micaiah heard some birds chirping outside. He said, "They're calling you to come outside!" Totally don't know where he got that; it's so funny what kids come up with. He still mixes up his pronouns, you, I, and me, most of the time. More and more we will hear instances of him using one of them correctly, but more often than not he still switches them up, using "you" to talk about himself. We've just gotten used to it :)

He loves to "work." He likes getting a screwdriver and using it to fix things around the house. He will work on his little car with a screwdriver for the longest time. Something we've really loved watching with him lately is how his imagination is developing. We very often will find him role playing. Recently I overheard him while he was playing in the ottoman in our living room (where we keep living room toys--he likes to empty a few things out and sit inside of it). He began by holding a monkey and then putting him on the other side of the ottoman and said, "Ok, I'll be right back to get you. You stay in your class." A few moments later he grabbed "Laughy Monkey" and said, "See! I told you I would come and get you!"

He absolutely positively adores reading. I think he would sit and listen to books all day long. When we go to get him out of roomtime, we will very often catch him looking at books on his own. He will even "read" them sometimes saying a few words from each page. Although he's pretty shy about doing that on command. Along with reading books, one of his other very favorite things to do is to listen to Scott and I tell stories. Every morning at breakfast when Scott is finished eating, Micaiah will ask for "2 tain tories, 2 Micaiah tories, and 2 De-us tories!" He loves hearing stories about trains, himself, and Jesus. Real or made up, he will sit, listen, and love it.

I love the way he answers questions. He will say "that muh-cause..." Like if I ask why he was crying, he might say, "That muh-cause you wanted Mommy to come get you."

My sister is going to have another baby, and while talking about that one day Micaiah said, "Aunt Kimely going to have a new Judah!" (Judah is Kimberly's little girl she already has)

As evidenced in the picture above of Micaiah in the car going to Mimi and Papa's house, he still loves his G. I'm not sure how we're ever going to part with GG, but I'm choosing to just think about that another day. He is only 2 afterall, right?

We've had some cool conversations with Micaiah in the last few months about God. We've been able to teach him what it means for God to be omnipresent. Micaiah will say, "He EVERYWHERE!" pretty exuberantly.

I think what preceeded the conversation about God's omnipresence was when we were listening to music one day and Micaiah noticed that the song was about God. He said, "That God, like at church!" So we got to talk about how it's all the same God. There is only one God, and he's in our church gathering, at home with us, with Daddy at work, and on and on. He enjoyed thinking of other places where God would be.

The days just keep on passing. Moments turn into hours which turn into days. I do remember this boy being just a round and pudgy little infant.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...I just don't want to miss even a second! Being a mom has refined me in so, so many ways. And I'm only 2.5 years into it!!! I truly do want to enjoy and delight in each and every mundane...and extraordinary...moment that God gives me with them.

Tidbits

Life has been busy and full lately. Not busy in a bad way. Things are going well!

The boys are growing like weeds. Micaiah has grown about an inch in the last month alone. Caeden is trying to get the hang of both walking and talking. He'll walk 5 or 6 steps at a time now before flopping down to crawl. Micaiah is loving this nice weather we've been having. All he wants to do is play outside. Too bad we only have one small patch of grass outside our front door to run around on. Soon and very soon, we're hoping to have a house and a yard for our little darlings.

Micaiah likes putting on his daddy's shoes. I'm not really sure what the thing on Micaiah's knee is called, all I know is that Scott wears it on his knee when he plays basketball. Speaking of, we found out that Scott has a torn meniscus in his right knee. He thinks his left one is torn too, but that one hasn't been diagnosed. He'll either need to tough it out and not be able to run or play sports anymore, or have surgery and then take it easy with running and playing sports from then on. The surgery would be a 20 minute, simple procedure. We just need to talk about it some more and decide the best thing to do and the best timing for it.

Scott celebrated his 32nd birthday last week. Too bad he wasn't feeling 100% as he had the beginnings of the virus that ran through our household. Caeden came down with hand foot mouth disease a few days before his birthday. It wasn't until the day of his party that we realized that's what he had. The day of the party Micaiah had the high mystery fever that starts off the virus. He then passed it on to Scott who got the fever on his own birthday the day after Caeden's. Caeden just had a few blisters on his feet, a few on the outside of his mouth and some inside his mouth. Micaiah had them all over. One day he complained of having dirt between his toes. It was a viable complaint seeing as how I was just about to sweep the kitchen floor where dirt has been tracked inside. However after cleaning the few specks of dirt he had on his feet, he was not satisfied. Come to find out, the poor boy had blisters all between his toes. :( Scott only had the sores in his mouth. And thankfully I didn't get the virus at all! Whew!

Melt my Heart

This little boy sure has my heart...


In the car on the way home from bringing lunch to Scott at work today, I heard Micaiah say something from the backseat. I turned the music down (because he had earlier requested for me to turn it "loud") and asked him to repeat what he said.

He responded: Wun-ful -- (wonderful)

Before I could ask who or what was wonderful he said with emphasis "IIII wun-ful" Remember that he still mixes up his pronoun usage, so when he says I or me, he is meaning whoever he is talking to, not himself.

After arriving home when he was running around outside our front door he gave me a flower. It was the first yellow dandelion weed that he has picked for me all by himself with no prompting. May I just say that his daddy is doing a great job of teaching him how to treat the special women in his life!

Micaiah-isms and other cute stuff

Just a quick little post to share what we're laughing about lately. There are a few words that Micaiah has been saying that I think are super cute. I had a video to post, but it didn't work. I'll try again later.

Ga-la-la (gorilla)

Rinosis (rhinoceros)

neckeness (necklace)

by ya-fef (by yourself) Picture with me for a moment a boy who snuck out of his room during naptime and got into the Vaporub, rubbing it all over his nose and mouth. When I caught him in the act he said, "You do it by ya-fef" with the Vaporub all over his lips. I had to contain laughter!

Update: here are a few more that I couldn't think of when I was in a hurry the other day.

uh oh kebalo (uh oh spaghetti-o)

lahb lahb (library)

katackted (distracted) He can't be around when Caeden is nursing because Caeden gets so distracted. Micaiah has heard me tell him this on numerous occasions, so now he says that Caeden is katackted.

boo-red (bread) He really does say it in two separate syllables/words like that. He's too funny!

Muck (milk)

Caeden does some super cute stuff too. We don't want to leave him out! One of them is that when playing with the Little People barn, he lately always goes straight for the sheep. We call him a little shepherd. It's his favorite. He can even be summoned to the barn by pressing the "baaa" button.

Caeden is working on learning the stairs!

This is what happens when I accidentally leave fingerpaint in the reach of a crafty two year old during his roomtime. Thanks to Crayola, it is extremely washable and comes out of carpet without too much trouble! Lesson learned.

Little Drummer Boy

You have to watch this video (link the bottom). I love love LOVE this version of the song Little Drummer Boy.

I used to really dislike this song. As my Aunt Mac used to say, "too many rum bum bum bums." But I think it's the extra words that have been added into this version that makes me love it so. That and there's a funny memory attached to it for me now.

Two years ago Micaiah was almost 3 months old. We had just traveled back to Gwinnett from Augusta that day. Micaiah never was one to sleep very well in the car after he was about a month old, so he had not slept well that day. He was cranky and overtired to say the least. Nonetheless we packed him up to head to the Gwinnett Arena for the Christmas Eve service. I forgot his paci. In his state he *needed* a paci.

Being at the Gwinnett Arena, it was LOUD. As soon as that drum line came out during Little Drummer Boy and started barreling away, Micaiah's crakiness went from bad to worse. I could not calm him in the squishy tight stadium seats. I tried taking him to the cry room thinking he would be ok if it wasn't so loud. No luck. I tried sqeezing into a bathroom stall to nurse him. No luck. I tried walking him through the lobby to bounce him and sing songs in his ear. No luck. Finally I ended up in tears right along with him.

Thanks to a dear friend, I found out where the nursery was. I was a regular nursery volunteer, so I thought that even though I hadn't signed up for him to be kept in the nusery that night, if I could just find someone I knew, they would let me rock him in peace or something.

Have you ever thought about how awkward elevators are on a normal day? I have, and this was worse. I felt bad for the people in the elevator with us because we were both in tears for the agonizingly long 30 seconds it took to get to the downstairs floor.

I was able to make it past the nursery security officer. I think he had pity on me knowing that there's no way I was going to harm any of the babies in the nursery since I couldn't even keep my own baby from crying. Anyway, I found some people I knew, left Micaiah in someone else's arms while I went back upstairs to get Scott.

I told Scott I was just ready to leave. By the time we got back downstairs, Micaiah was peacefully asleep. Aaaaahhhhh.

Two years later, I can smile.

Watch the song and enjoy.
(it won't let me embed the video, so follow this link and watch)
http://vimeo.com/16074082

This is Christmas

I've really grown to dislike all that Christmas has become. The comercialization of it. All of the emphasis on gifts, the wreaths, the trees, the red and green. Even Santa and that ever popular Elf friend. Just so you don't misunderstand, we do have a Christmas tree. We have some red and green sprinkled about, I like Christmas wreaths, and we do give gifts (just not with Santa, but that is not what this post is about). It's just the heart of it all in this culture today that gets me.

We've been doing an advent calendar this month where we put up a different part of the story of Jesus' birth each day as we read through the story. For the last week or so Micaiah has woken up each morning and said very excitedly, "Baby De-us on calendar!!!" We always tell him "Not today, we'll put him on the calendar on Christmas."

I just love his eager anticipation...on a 2 year old level...of our Savior. That is what Christmas is about: celebrating our Savior King and remembering his birth. Only like we're trying to teach Micaiah, it doesn't stop there. He actually already came, took death for us, and is coming again! We not only want to look back and remember, but we also want to continue to look forward with eager anticipation. May we remember what Christmas really is and not make it about anything else.

Brotherly Love

There has been a new level of comraderie between the boys lately as Caeden gets older and older. I just love watching their relationship grow.

Micaiah offered Caeden one of his "gam tacks" aka graham crackers after nap one day this week. After I showed Micaiah how Caeden's cracker was all soggy, he said he wanted his to be soggy too.

Today after lunch Micaiah said, "Play Cain" which means, "I want to play with Caeden" (By the way, he's totally capable of pronouncing Caeden correctly...hopefully he will start doing that regularly soon!) They played Little People together for quite awhile while I worked on a project. Such sweet times.

Bath time is much better with a buddy! That is, until said buddy reaches a little too far for a floating toy and gets a faceful of water. The enjoyment goes downhill from there :)

Only a two year old...

Only a two year old would want to sit next to a bug in a vacant house and share his goldfish with it.


On another note, this morning the 2 year old independence exerted itself in a super sweet way when Micaiah wanted to pray all by himself. During breakfast he said he wanted to pray, and when Scott started to walk him through the words of a prayer like he usually does Micaiah said, "No daddy. No mommy."

He prayed, "God, thaaaaank (he rarely says thank *you*) Abby dog, na bah (which means banana bread. He was eating pumpkin bread at the time, but kept calling it banana bread), Ashley (he recently learned that I have a name), menga (which is how he says 'amen').

Micaiah Rais - 2 years

What a fun year Micaiah has had! So much as happened and he has grown so much! To start of the year we moved from Chattanooga to Augusta. Thankfully the move was pretty seamless for him. He learned to walk at 14 months. He became a big brother at 18 months. He was potty trained at 20 months. And he finished up the year by moving to a big boy bed at 24 months.

There are so many things that I want to remember about Micaiah at 2, this might be kind of lengthy.

*He fell out of the crib for the first time on August 15. We were visiting Mimi and Papa at the time. He was so affected by it that each time he went to bed after that for the rest of the visit he shook his head no as he said fall down.

*His favorite song is Happy Birthday. We sing it to everything! He pronounces it "Hap Buh Duh"

*He still loves trains, planes, playing outside, coloring, cooking (for real or in his play kitchen), giving kisses to Caeden, bathtime, Cookie Monster, and dogs, dogs, and more dogs.

*He likes to help me make bread each week, and he can tell you all of the ingredients.

*One of his newest loves is school buses. The other day while driving he saw one. I hadn't seen it, and when I questioned him about the said bus, he replied "turn around!" That was the first time he has said that, so it made me chuckle.

*He still does not love his class at MOPS. Scott and I counted, and previous to MOPS, he has only been in someone else's care besides a family member seven times in 2 years. SEVEN. So it's no wonder he's a little freaked out by the concept. I still drop him off each time, and we are working on getting him more and more used to it.

*Just a few weeks before his second birthday he finally started stringing 2 and 3 words together and using multiple syllables! We weren't sure if that day would come.

*I love it when he talks about Mimi and Papa (who he only gets to see once or twice a month) and he'll say "see her" (or him, depending on which one he's talking about). When I tell him we can't see them today and that they live in Atlanta, he'll say "call her." So sweet.

*Micaiah is a major fussy foo in the mornings until he eats breakfast. I know there are other people this way, it's just new to me because I'm not one of them! Hopefully it's a quirk he'll outgrow. Or at least he better outgrow the fussing part of it.

*He knows all of his colors, can count to five, can finish words to the alphabet song, Thomas song, and almost any book that we regularly read.

*He calls Caeden "Cain" and himself "Cai". He knows that I am Ashley and Scott is daddy.

*Every night we ask Micaiah who he would like to pray for. He comes up with various people he knows and family members, but the one who almost always tops the list: Howard, from next door, who he calls "Hoooow"

*He refers to himself as "you" and me as "me". If I had a penny for every time he has said "hold you" we'd have a decent college fund started. He also frequently says "watch me" when he wants to watch ME do something.

We love our little boy!