My girl can talk!

As I was just re-reading my last post from November where I named off a few words that my then 16-month old could say (ie. grapes, shower, etc.) I'm thinking about how much her brain has grown in just 7 or 8 months and I'm just in awe thinking about how God created us. I can't believe how He designed us and how complex we are and how fast our brains absorb infomation and grow...how could we have come from monkeys?!
My little girl went from saying "zsha-zsho" for shower just 8 months ago, to today (at 23 months) saying "In-a take a showa too?" Amazing! She can say multiple word sentences now! I'm astonished.
Some thing's she also says...
"Mommy i have a cookie?"
"See baby Ivia?"
"Stay right there"
"Mommy sit right here"
"I hear sumping"
"I see birdies!"
"I knocked-a gate ovah!"

and one of my favorites...
"where'd dat come fom?"

She's so smart. I can't help but say it. Such a little sponge. She really absorbs and remembers things so quickly...She is not afraid to repeat words and attempt them even if they're hard to say. Its fun to ask her to say something and see what she comes up with...like helicopter..."hepicopta". :) So cute.

So much for time...

Not enough hours in the day....if there were more hours in a day, I think they would likely be filled up just as easily and quickly as they are now. I think the key is prioritizing tasks and managing time well. Something I really need to work on. I tend to get so scatterbrained when it comes to doing housework especially. I start on one thing like doing laundry, and on my way to fold clean clothes, I stop and pick up toys and look over at my computer and then go check my email and facebook for half an hour. Before long, the babies wake up and I still have a pile of un-folded laundry!
Anyway, since I last posted, I've had another baby! I can't believe the last thing I wrote about was in November..so much has happened since then.
I love my house, Rob has been working steadily on it since Thanksgiving, and it really has been a real-life extrememe makeover. We were living in the basement for a couple months (while I was prego, I'll have you know) while the upstairs got hardwood floors and a new kitchen. Most of it's finally done now, save for a few painting and finshing things.
Also, in April our second little girl was born. She's been an adjustment for Madi, but Madi seems to be getting a little better and better with her as time passes. She has really good days being nice to her, then other days where she is not so nice...but I have to be patient and remember that I was the same way when my little brother was born (we are the same distance in age apart as my two girls...a year and nine months).
Anyway, God is good and has also provided us the opportunity to get a new van...just last week before our first trip to the beach. Don't know how we would have made it without it...you can really pack a LOT of stuff for a couple and two babies! It's been great, but now we're really broke! A good lesson in saving and watching where the money goes...it'll be good discipline. :)
I'm thankful.

Today

I woke up this morning not wanting to wake up...but my job (as a mom)required that I do otherwise. My spawn likes to rise bright and early (I can't complain, its usually around 8 am) but my late-night habits make it seem way too early to be getting up.
So alas, I rose and got the little bugger out of bed for the day.
We did our usual morning routine...breakfast (cereal, eggs, fruit - that girl can eat!) and getting dressed/changed.
Right now we are renovating the upstairs of the house, so most of our daily tasks remain downstairs..it's kind of like a little apartment, which I feel blessed to have. We have an extra kitchen-ette down there so we can still do the normal thing we do while the upstairs is getting remodeled.
I can't believe how the little one can pick up so many words already! She's like a little parrot! Today the latest word I've deciphered is "shower". She had been saying something like "zsha zsho" to me the past couple days, and today when I got her up from her nap, I had a towel wrapped around my head, so when she said it - i figured out she was recognizing that I had been in the shower!
Some of her other words include "luna" (spanish: moon) "brrrrats" (grapes) "mook" (milk) "buggy" (bunny) "mlah" (frog) "bakum" (vacuum) and "meese" (please).
I can't name everything she says, because she repeats things so much and attempts to say a lot! But those words are some of the ones she is consistent with.
Other things we did today included walking the baby around the block in her new wagon (from Craigslist!), visiting the recording studio (the new DRCC album Holy Rain 2 is coming out soon! - but that's another story), and having dinner with my in-laws.
It was a good day. I like busy days.

Family Update

Well it's been a long while since my last post and a lot has gone on... Madi has since turned the big "1". We just bought a house. And we are expecting our second baby. Well much more than that has happened too, but its way too much to explain. Those are I guess the "big 3" that I can think of.

I've been a lot more sick this pregnancy and am wearing out the phrase "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired"... but I'm hoping that this too, shall pass (as they say usually the sickness subsides around 12 weeks, which I am approaching).
I am excited that Madi and her new sibling will be so close in age, but I'm also nervous about the task of now caring for 2 young children during the day by myself. I'm sure God will give me the strength I need, but it seems a daunting task when I think of how exhausted I've been with one little one in the mix. I know that God's timing is perfect and that the next little guy/girl will be a big blessing to us, and will hopefully be a nice little friend for Madi.

Buying our first house was another exciting but scary thing, as a purchase is a lot different than a rental. We rented for the first 6 years, and now having already moved, I see how much work owning a house really is - there is so much to do and so little time - espeically with kids! But it's a process...I've talked to several older people who have owned homes for years and they all say the same thing " there's always SOMETHING" . I think the lesson is to prioritize what needs to be done first, budget in mind, and not get overwhelmed and think it ALL has to get done NOW. Because that's pretty much impossible. As soon as you finish one project, something else comes up. Or your eye sees something it would like changed or "updated". (ah how the grass is always greener)... I hope this experience will teach me how to be patient, a good steward/budgeter, and content. I hope I can have fun with the house but not get sucked into the "always need to change something" mindset. I hope we can just enjoy the place and the blessing that it is...do some projects, sure, but just not get too carried away.

Where is Mono?

Pictured here is Madilyn sleeping with her favorite toy monkey, whom we call "Mono" (spanish for monkey). Since I've taken this photo, Mono has sadly gone missing. The last I saw him was 2 weeks ago at church, dangling by his legs from Daddy's back jeans pocket.
Mono wasn't just any toy monkey, he was Madi's (and our) favorite. We bought him at Target one day because the package label said he was made from "100% natural fibers and dyes", and because at the time Madi was putting almost every toy we gave her in her mouth, we felt a little better that she wouldn't be eating any potentially harmful substances (although she still plays with pretty much every other toy the same way).
Anway, I digress. Mono was a comforting stuffed animal, and I know Madi liked him because whenever I'd put her in the carseat and she was grumpy, her eyes would light up when I handed the monkey to her. His nose was all brown and orange from her biting at his face all the time too.
Well, I'm not sure if he fell out of Daddy's pocket in the church parking lot, or in the highschool lobby, or if he's buried in my car somewhere, but I hope someday we do find him again.

Changes

Its so crazy how having a baby changes things. I really can't believe how just having Madilyn in my life has made me see life so differently. I was recently watching an episode of "17 Kids and Counting" (reality show following the Duggar family...they have 18 kids!). They were on a mission trip to El Salvador, visiting poor families, taking them food and Christmas gifts.
I have been to Honduras many times, but not since Madi was born. So just seeing the show brought back memories of my own mission experiences. But I think now being a mother, the way I see things is so much different. I started to cry when I saw the Duggars visit a family who had several children, and a new baby. The mother asked for prayer for the health of her baby, because a neighbor's baby had died recently due to malnutrition. I couldn't help but feel such sorrow...such sadness for the mother who feared she may not be able to provide the adequate nutrition her baby needed just to survive.
I don't know if I would have cried if I hadn't had my own child. I think I'm just more sensitive to those things now...having a baby of my own and thinking what it might feel like if I were in that poor lady's position.
God really has blessed America with a lot of things. I feel very fortunate to live here, but I hope I never forget that there are so many people out there that don't have the same kind of standard of living as we do. I don't know why I was chosen to be born here...all I hope is that I am continually conviced to help those less fortunate. To be grateful, and to give, to learn to serve and have compassion and share what has been given to me.

"Cry it out"

It all started a week ago. I approached Robbie saying "something has to change." I had mulled over various approaches in my mind, but wasn't sure how exactly I was going to get my daughter to sleep through the night. That seems to be the question everyone asks you after your kid is born. "Is she sleeping through the night?"
It must be the question burning on everyones mind....are you getting sleep? Is she getting sleep? Are you sleeping together or is she in her own room?
There are so many different articles and books out there that seem to offer magical advice as to how to get your child to sleep. What I've come to find is that there's no right answer. I've talked to my sisters-in-law who have kids, read blogs, and read books...and everyone seems to have a different answer. The way we did it was pretty much a gamble. We just picked a way, and went with it.
After initially approaching Rob with my plight, he was slightly taken aback. He wondered how we would let our first child cry and cry without maybe causing some kind of damage to her view of us a loving parents. Would it make her distrustful? Insecure? Or would she be fine?
I had read a chapter in one of my go-to books for parents, "The New Basics" by Dr. Michael Cohen. One of his more hard-core approaches was to literally put the child down when they were tired, but not asleep, say goodnight, and leave the room - not to come back until 7.am. However long it took to cry you were to let the child cry and not interfere. At all.
It seems cruel, but after we read the chapter in this book together and read the reasonings behind this approach, we decided we'd give it a try. The author's a doctor, right? We could trust him, right?
Well that night we did it. We took Madi's crib out of our room for the first time since she'd been born. Up until last week, she'd slept in our room, in either the Pack 'n Play, our bed, or the crib. Now she was ready for her very own room! I'll have to admit, once we were a "go" for the plan, I was slightly sad....I would miss snuggling her and having here with me! But I had to remind myself....we all needed better sleep. No more waking every 2 hours for a feeding session..tossing and turning, lying half-asleep stiff as a board, afraid to roll on her or cover her with my blankets.
So we did it - followed through- no interference. We had to simply let her "cry it out" learn to "self-soothe"....
We have learned:
1. She has learned to suck her fingers/thumb, and almost prefers them to her pacifier now!
2. She doesn't really need to eat in the middle of the night, it was probably more for the comfort of it (she's a hearty 18 lbs. at just 5 months old ! )
3. We are all getting better sleep now... and everyone is comfortable.
4. We can function and schedule better during the day now that we have a bedtime/morning routine.
5. Sometimes it takes a little pain in the short-term to grow and learn something helpful for the long term (just like God deals with us!)
I'll admit, it was hard watching my little innocent babe cry and cry, sometimes for a good 30 minutes! But seeing how she learned to calm herself down eventually, and seeing how happy she was in the morning after a good-nights sleep was well worth a few crying spells.
It probably made it a little harder, just cuz Madi has been such a "good" baby since she was born....she never really cried all that much. To see her cry at first made me think something may have been wrong..but knowing she was well fed, warm, and had a clean diaper reassured me that all was well...it would just have to be a season of hardship before a new leaf was turned.
We'll see how long this lasts....its working well so far..until a growth spurt comes, a tooth is cut, a cold is caught...I haven't seen any articles on what to do then! Guess we'll just have to cross that bridge when we get there. I know God will give us wisdom and good instincts to figure it out.