Bath in a shower

I think I have come up with something wonderful.

A bath in a shower.

Here is how it started: Abigail loves to be given a bath. She loves to play with the little bath toys, kick her little legs excitedly and splash her hands all about. The only problem is, with all of that splashing about, it seemed like her goal was to get all of the bath water out of the tub and onto me or the floor. This turned it into something that was more of a chore that a fun experience. Either change into clothes I didn't mind getting sopping wet, and cover the floor with towels, or skip her bath.... babies don't get that dirty anways do they??

I regress - the other factor is I LOVE taking showers. Nice, long, hot showers.

So, the next time I needed to take a shower, and Abigail was awake, I decided to take her little bath tub in there with me, fill in up with warm water and let her splash away while I took my shower. It was a win-win and we both had a wonderful time. You do have to have a rather large shower for this to work out, but ours is perfect for it, I sit on the built in ledge/seat, enjoy my nice long shower, and I get to watch Abigail happily splash in the water and play with her little toys. (The baby also needs to be able to sit up on their own in the little bath for it to work).

Child training tip of the week

I am considering adding a child training tip of the week. This will mostly be something that will help me solidify and reinforce what I am learning in this joyful journey of raising and training my children. I am not writing it because I think I have it all figured out, by any means! I will just be sharing some of the tips that are working for our family. God has blessed us with his Word, some good Godly examples of parents raising wonderful children, and some helpful books that have encouraged us along the way. So please don't take this as I am telling you what to do with your children, I am just sharing things that have worked for us - if they work for you too, then great!

So, let's get started.

Tip for today: When I am training my children, I always speak with the voice that I want them to respond to. For example, if I tell Noah or Abigail "no" in a nice, gentle and quite voice, and I mean it and back up my words every time, they will come to know that when Mama says no, she means no, regardless of the volume or tone of voice. This doesn't mean that I am over the top syrupy sweet, but I always aim to speak with a gentle voice to my children and I expect them to obey the first time. That way they aren't waiting for Mama to raise her voice, or get the serious tone before they obey.

Play dough

Daddy and Noah playing with our home made play dough.

3 fire alarms...

The other night in the middle of the night we had THREE smoke detectors start chiming (loudly) that they were out of batteries! What are the chances - 3 in 1 night?? I said maybe it was because we had changed all of their batteries at the same time last time. Doug thinks it is a wiring issue. Anyways, I am thankful that it was on a night that Doug was home!!! Just one more way that he takes care of all of us. :-) Funny thing is, I hadn't even heard the chiming, I only heard Doug once he was pulling the dresser across the room to stand on to reach the smoke detector. I am a SOUND sleeper!

Fun at the park

Not sure if you can see it in the picture, but Abigail has sand all over her face. (I know, I know, not a very attractive picture in any way shape or form!) I had just started to let her sit in the sand and play, because she is getting pretty steady.... well, I guess not that steady! She did love kicking her little legs and grabbing the sand with her hands.


Just last week Noah started going down the big slide by himself. He has been very cautious about those type of things, and he really didn't have too much interest in the "daring" type things. Last week was a breakthrough in him realizing he could do it all by himself, and then he wanted to do it a bunch of times. Then when we came home he wanted to tell Daddy all about it.


He also really likes wearing his little Ninja hood.


Abigail hanging out at the park, taking everything in and enjoying her fingers.

We are so blessed to live so close to such a wonderful park! Noah loves the sand, and it is so nice that they put a large shade over the whole park last year. FUN!

Enjoying our backyard and the firepit

Everyone on Daddy's lap!


Warm and cozy


This is the best! Loving my Christmas present already!

Abigail enjoying her broccoli

Abigail is "eating" quite a few foods now. I say "eating" because it is mostly "playing" and sucking on the food. She sure does enjoy it though! We waited until 6 months, and her first food was avocado. Since then she has had carrots, green beens, squash, egg yolk, honey dew, chicken, cucumber, apple, and toast. She is still getting probably 99% of her nutrition from breast milk.






Lest you think we are too healthy, I will share this picture I snapped as I was giggling at the opposites attracting. (And no, Abigail doesn't get the ice cream!)

Abigails first day riding in the "car"

Noah did a great job of sharing his seat

Doug and LA

Doug just left, he is driving down to LA this morning, and then he is driving back tonight. Then after he teaches his 3 classes tomorrow morning at Fresno State he is heading down to LA again, and then back tomorrow night! So - there and back twice in 2 days. Extra prayers for safe travels!

Noah giving Abigail a ride

Yesterday was the first day that Abigail got to ride in the little red car. First she and Noah rode together in it as I pushed them to the mail box, and then I let her ride by herself (she was strapped in), as Noah pushed her. They both had a gloriously good time, and I had a lot of fun watching them and taking their picture. So cute now that they are getting close to actually playing together.

Obedience

Obedience in our house means:

1. You obey quickly
2. You obey completely
3. You obey cheerfully

If we tell Noah to do something he needs to do it quickly, completely, AND cheerfully. If not, it is disobedience. I have found that having this definition of obedience really helps with his attitude and the heart of the matter when being obedient. It is often a mirror to myself - if Noah isn't obeying cheerfully or completely, I look at myself and my obedience to the Lord and there is often something there. So then I have to repent and ask for God's help. It is also often because I haven't been being 100% consistent - then it is time to up the diligence and work on being more consistent. It is such a privilege and joy to have these children and get to train them up in the way of the Lord. It is so wonderful to see the fruit of our labor already in Noah. He is such a blessing.

WinCo

I have a love/hate relationship with WinCo. Namely, I love WinCo and WinCo hates me. Not really, but it sure felt like it. I went to WinCo the other day, no I take that back, I went to WinCo 3 times the other day. I seriously debated blogging about this, because it is almost too embaressing, but I am over myself now, and I figure you might get a good laught, and if nothing else it makes me more real.

So heres the story - I decided to go on an adventure and go to WinCo the other day for our shopping. (Yes, that is what I call an adventure). I loaded up the kids and headed out. It isn't close to our house, but I had been wanting to try it and figured since Doug was out of town and I didn't have much planned for the day it would be a good day to go.

Boy, that place is big!! But I was in shopping heaven. Noah and my eyes both got really big when we got to the bulk food area, where you put everything in the little bags and tag them. To me, that is SO much fun. Getting to get a little bit of this and an little bit of that. (That is why I love buffets and pot-lucks so much!) It was all such amazing value! I got dried fruit, pistachios, peanuts, pizza dough mix, wheat germ, etc... and a few mini lollipops "wawwy-pops" (Noah still have a hard time with l's), for a special treat. We also got diapers for both kids, cat food, fire wood, marshmellows, you know, all of the necessities.

Well, we had shopped for quite a while - Abigail was in the Ergo carrier and being quite a trooper. And then it happened... we were in line and I swiped my card and it said "Enter Pin". I told her I wanted to pay with credit because that card wasn't a debit. (Is this all starting to seem a little like de-ja-vu?). Well, turns out they don't take credit, and this time I wasn't so lucky to have a spare check on me, and like a silly girl I hadn't put my other credit/debit card back in my purse. Ack!!!

I was trying to look on the bright side, and thinking "well, I guess it was fun to pick everything out and now I can pick it all out again". The kind lady then said that they could hold everything for me for a few hourse in their walk in cooler. So I went home, fed the kids and put them down for a nap - then we headed back to WinCo. We were in a bit of a hurry, because I was trying to get back before Abigail's next nap, as I wasn't able to leave right after her other one. Anyways, got there and I am in the parking lot looking for the debit card, and couldn't find it ANYWHERE. Ack!!! I went in to ask them if they could hold if for me longer, and also to see if possibly they would just be able to key in my debit number, but they said no.

So - we headed back home, Abigail napped again, and then we headed back out to WinCo. Mind you, this is no short jaunt from our house! So 3rd time is the charm and we got to buy our food and groceries. Noah had a great attitude the whole time, and we actually had a lot of fun listening to this new children's book on c.d. on the way It has a lot of songs on it as well - I think I had it all just about memorized by the last trip home. I rewarded Noah with one of those lollipops on the way home. It was a good excercise for me in patiance, trusting God, and not getting upset about the things I can't change.

I did seriously debate after the first and second time if I should just cut my losses, call them and say I wasn't going back. But like I said I had a lot of groceries, and a lot of it was necessities - like the cat food and diapers.

Oh yeah, it turns out I had left my check and debit card on the top of my car from when I was putting the kids in their car seats. When I got back from the 2nd trip they were in the street by our house. Thank you Jesus that they were still there!! And yes, I did put my debit card back into my wallet so hopefully I won't get into this predicament again.

Happy Birthday Nicky!!!

We all had a great time at Boingo's in Visalia for Nicky's 6th birthday. WOW!!!! 6? Already! It seems like it was just a little while ago that he was a cute and chubby little baby at our wedding!

Early Christmas present!

I got my first Christmas present this weekend... a fire pit! Love it! Noah has had "camp-fires" quite often over at Papa and Grandma's and it is always the highlight of the evening. So now we are able to have our very own camp-fires in our backyard. We had one last night and it was so much fun - there is just something special about sitting around a campfire! I think my next Christmas present needs to be an ax though - because we can only borrow Papa's for so long!

She has teeth!

Watch our Grammie - she has teeth! (She has her bottom 2, and she has had them for a good month now - makes for a super cute smile!)




Noah showing Daddy how to shoot the deer - or whatever it was they were shooting??

Grammie had the week off, so she came to Fresno and we got to go to dinner and visit.

How to tell when a baby has a burp

Abigail is just about to get out of the "burping" stage, but I wanted to pass on this little bit of wisdom to all of you new mommies, before I forget! When Abigail was in the NICU in Modesto our favorite nurse Toni would often say "Oh, I think she swallowed wind" (Her Australian way of saying she has a burp). Sure enough, we would pat her back and up a burp would come and the fussing would stop. Finally I asked her how she knew - because she wouldn't say it every time she fussed, just some of the time. She told me that you look right above their upper lip, and if that area is darker, they likely have a burp. It will just look slightly darker - not the lip, but right above the lip. It looks almost like a very light 5 o clock shadow of a mustache. I would have never noticed it if she hadn't said it, but once we brought Abigail home I would always check the skin above her lip and it was a sure-fire way to tell if she had a burp. (Small print - Not making any medical claims, if their lips are blue or purple definitely take them in, and I am not sure if this will work on all babies). I hope that helps one new mommy!

Political Activists

Abigail checking out the lawn sign.


Noah helping Abigail with her bow.


Chanting: "Yes on 8, yes on 8" as the cars drove by! :-) Just kidding.

In case you didn't know where we stand/stood on the issue, now you do! If you ask Noah he can tell you about it too - next time you see him ask him who can get married and he will tell you "One man, one woman". For a while there before he got it down he would come up with all kinds of wrong combinations, like: One man, 8 women - or One woman, 2 men. But now he knows the right answer! And he would always point out the prop 8 signs when we would drive by them.

The Saturday before the election we felt led to go and show our support for prop 8. and hopefully encourage others to vote, so we took our sign and walked to the main intersection by our house and held up the sign. We prayed and sang and waved to people as they drove by. It was pretty neat to see peoples responses. We got a lot of honks, waves, and thumbs-ups. It was interesting, we only got one car of thumbs-downs and that was by the kids in the back seat of a car. (I guess their parents are teaching them just like we are teaching ours).

Praise God Prop 8 passed! The little exercise in freedom of speech that we did as a family was really a blessing to us, and a lot of fun too.

In honor of Doug

Doug loves Star Wars. We even walked into our wedding reception to the Imperial March... so in honor of him, please enjoy this video - it is pretty cool, even for non star wars fans!!!

Chinese babies and swinging

Princess power


Chinese baby - my mom brought their outfits back from China.




Dazed and confused - hanging on to the swing and her pacifier for dear life. :-)

Bounce house

King of dark, but here is Noah showing off his bouncing skills in the bounce house!

Cake walk video

Here is Noah going around the "cake walk" by himself - so cute, and he won!!! We got to take home 3 yummy cupcakes thanks to Noah! :-)

Fall Festival

We went to a little Fall Festival at Bethany church right by our house yesterday. Noah had a lot of fun in the bounce house!


He is wearing a little China boy outfit that my parents brought him back - all the way from China.


Checking out my little pouch baby.


She is becoming a thumb sucker!


Peek-a-boo!


Here is Noah doing the cake walk - it was pretty cute. I tried to upload the next even cuter one, but it didn't work - I will try again.

Enjoys!