Who would have guessed...

another post from me!  I am going to try to update the blog a little more often than I have the past year or so.  Here are a few more things about the boys...  Mason has started playing more with his animals.  When we tuck him in at night we have to makes sure they are all get tucked in with him.  He said they need "cubers" so they don't get cold.  :)   A few other cute things he says "Oh, thank you", wapples (waffles), I'm just crying right now, let's see, your not supposed to do that, excuse me, and I made my undies sad.  Thankfully he is mostly potty trained!  Cloth diapers for 2 was a lot of laundry.  He still has occasional accidents, but overall he is doing pretty good.  He wears regular undies for nap and cloth pull-ups at night - the last couple mornings they have been dry so we are about to go regular undies all the way.  He loves all his grandmas and grandpas, Dora, walking the dog, throwing rocks at the park, read books, paint, playing on the computer, and wrestling.  I leave the wrestling for daddy.  I sure this love this little man! 





 

We are still struggling a bit with Mason at bedtime.  It didn't help that he had snuck into the hallway while we were watching one of the Lord of the Rings.  Who knows how long he was there, but it was when they were fighting the Orcs...he was up a little more that night due to being "scared". 

 So we thought we would gate him in for a bit to break the habit.   We found that he had taken everything off his bed to make this little spot for himself.  Of course he couldn't forget the animals.  :)

Paxton is growing like a weed!  The past few weeks he has learned to clap, blows "thbbppsstt" with his lips, and he has waved once.  The poor guy had his second tooth break threw a couple nights ago about 12:30am, and he was screaming/crying for an hour straight.  It's been bothering him at night, but he is still as happy as can be during the day.  He loves Peekaboo, baths, being outside, taking walks, having mommy carry him, the Peek-A-Who book, playing with Mason's toys, grabbing the iphones and remote controls, and eating with his fingers (cheese, rice crispy cereal), and wrestling with daddy.  Mason is dying to wrestle with Paxton, but he is still pretty rough with him. 

 

 

Eyes Opened

I hate sad movies and books!  I do not like to waste time and money watching/reading something depressing.  I feel like life is hard enough as it is so why fill my free time down in the dumps.  So for awhile that's the approach I took on the starving orphans in Africa and around the world.  Deep down I knew they existed, but I just didn't think about them.  Part of it was out if sight out of mind, part of it was how can I even begin to make a difference, and part of it was just me not wanting to think about them and their daily struggles.  But I praise God that our eyes have been opened because this isn't just a movie or book.  This is real lives - precious, innocent lives - and real souls that need to be filled with a parent's love and the Father's love. 
Not only that but as Christians we are called to take care of the orphans.  I always considered myself a good, caring person, but to be completely honest, my way of "taking care" of an orphan was buying him/her a Christmas gift every year.  I don't think that's what God has in mind at all.  I looked up orphans (fatherless) in the Bible concordance a few months back, and I was amazed at how often they are talked about particularly in the old testament.  (Is. 1:17, Ps. 82:3,4) The Israelites were commanded to leave a portion of their crops for the orphans in addition to what they were to "give" to God (Deut. 24:19-21).  God was concerned about their well being then, and I know he is still today. (James 1:27)  Personally I think what I do to help the poor, orphans, or widows should be part of my everyday life and  separate from what I also give to God. (Matt 25: 35)

Congo alone has about 5 million orphans.  While that may seem too big to tackle, I know that I can make a difference for at least one.  Then hopefully I can encourage someone else to do the same, and they can do the same, and then before we know it hundreds-thousands of children's lives have been changed.  Katie (Kisses with Katie) and her life has changed (directly or indirectly) the lives of hundreds if not thousands of lives.  There are no limits to God's power to change lives through us. 

There are three main ways each person can help the orphans.
1.  Bring them into your home - foster or adopt
2.  Resources - sponsor a child, give to families trying to adopt, donate items to a child or orphanage
3. Time - be a mentor, reading buddy, etc to an orphan

I read that 30% of Christians have thought about adopting, but only 1% do.  It is also said that if only 7% of all Christians adopted an orphan there wouldn't be anymore. 
Satan - the source of pain and suffering - doesn't want that to happen.  He will distract us or fill us with all sorts of reasons that keep us from helping, but it is our prayer that more people's eyes will also be opened.  It is time for action!

"Don't try to avoid responsibility by saying you didn't know about it.  For God knows all hearts, and he sees you.  He keeps watch over your soul, and he knows you knew!  And he will judge all people according to what they have done." Proverbs 24:12 NLT

BTW family we posted pics of our boys a couple days ago (see below) in case you missed it.  :)

Love these boys!

It has been so much fun in our house now that Paxton has been crawling!  Once he started crawling (around Thanksgiving) Mason began playing with him a lot more.  They love to do everything together.  When one wakes up, the other one glows with excitement.  Don't get me wrong Mason sometimes gets annoyed with Paxton for playing "chewing" with his toys, but he really is pretty patient with him.  Both boys love it when Zac comes home to wrestle with them on the floor.  Paxton started pulling up on things early/middle December so I have a feeling he will be walking a lot sooner than Mason did. 
I love these boys to pieces, but I must say that they have worn us out the past couple weeks!  Last week Paxton's tooth finally broke through so we went over a week of him getting up a lot at night from that.  Unfortunately Mason started getting scared at night around the same time, but his has been a longer process.  We have tried a night light, letting him sleep with the door open, letting him sleep on the floor (which is what he prefers) nothing seemed to help.  Saturday night was the worst.  He kept coming into our room throughout the night.  As soon as we put him back in bed he started crying which then woke up Paxton.  So we finally tried bribing him, and it worked!  The past 2 nights have been a lot better.  He's just gotten up once.  Now if we can just get Paxton to start sleeping through the night... 
Funny story - one night Zac asked him what was scary.  He said there is a mouse in the hole (it's a dark corner of his room).  Z said there is no mouse, but M didnt believe him.  So then Z said well the mouse is nice.  He just likes to make cookies (referring to one of our books M likes).  So now M is scared that a mouse is making cookies in his room!  Silly little guy!  Here are some pictures of these guys.  They are out of order (which drives me crazy, but I don't have time to mess with it)  :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have almost finished our kitchen!  We started giving it a face lift this fall, and Zac just installed the lights (thanks to Christmas money and gift cards from family) over the holidays.  We just have to patch up the holes where the previous lights were.  The upgrade didn't cost us that much.  All the appliances were used from craigslist except the microwave - which was in the cheap clearance section because it didnt have a turn table.  We also painted the walls, cabinets,  and did the back splash ourselves which we got a great deal on the back splash tiles at a non-chain place.  We now just have to hang some stuff on the walls to give it more color.  It was a mess, but well worth it!

 

 

We've got some exciting news!

A daughter is in the works...we are adopting!  It's pretty amazing how God has led us to the point we are now.  I first thought about adopting when I was in college working with inner-city children in Houston (Impact) for 3 summers.  After we got married Zac and I talked about it as a possibility, but nothing concrete.  Then God kept finding ways to bring it up in our lives.  One of our neighbors is a great Christian couple that has fostered and adopted many children.  The other old neighbor (who has now moved to a different neighborhood...we sure do miss you!) has 3 young children, and then adopted a baby from Ethiopia.  Then last year at a Christmas bunco I found out one of our good friends from church was thinking of adopting internationally also (which they are currently starting the process right now too).  This past year Zac and I read two books recommended to us by different people that really rocked our world and opened our eyes to the poverty and atrocities so many around the world are going through everyday ...A Hole in our Gospel and Kisses for Katie.  So after 2 miserable pregnancies we decided that we would definitely adopt our 3rd.  We planned to adopt from Honduras.  I spent 2 months there after college doing mission work, some friends of ours currently live there, I know Spanish and Zac is pretty good at the language, Mason is in a Spanish preschool...in our eyes it seemed like the perfect place.   But God had a different plan.  The Honduras adoption program (on their side of things) is at a complete stand still, and on top of that we found out even if we did get a referral we would have to be there 4-6 weeks when we picked up the child.  So we looked at other Latin America counties....again those programs were either currently shut down or required anywhere from 1-3 month stay which we can't do with our two young-ins.  We wanted to do a 3rd world country because the main reason we weren't adopting domestically was because we wanted to get a child out of the extreme poverty, disease, and exploitation that plagues so many of the other countries.  So before we knew it Congo hit us smack in the face.  While we hadn't planned for Africa, that is obviously where God had planned for us to adopt.  Again Kisses for Katie really softened our hearts toward Africa.  If you haven't read it you should...it is an amazing book! **  Also there is a large non-denominational church a few miles from us (where our old neighbors go) that has around 30 families that have adopted from Africa that could be such a great support to us and our baby girl.  Don't worry Robinson Avenue peeps...we aren't changing churches.  :)  So to sum it up we want to adopt a baby girl, and God has showed us there is a great need for children to be adopted in Congo.  PLEASE read this blog post. http://www.millionsofmiles.com/2010/02/lisanga.html?m=1    It was shared on a facebook group I have joined for families adopting from Congo.  It is written by a lady who has gone to Congo and visited an orphanage there.  It reaffirmed us that we were doing the right thing. 
We have no idea how we are going to afford this, but I have talked to many people that said it all works out.  They pretty much all said if you are willing to take in God's precious orphans, He will take care of the finances.  I heard SO MANY incredible stories of how right before each bill somehow the money came in (donor, grant, unexpected raise, etc).   I always thought that adoption could only be done by the wealthy, but what I'm finding is many of the people who are adopting are average middle class families who have a heart for God's children.  We know things will be difficult financially, emotionally, etc.  But we are willing to take a leap of faith, and we have no doubt our lives and the child's life will be better for it.

**Kisses for Katie is about a girl who after high school moved to Africa and God has done amazing things through her.  She is now 23/24 and has her own non-profit organization, adopted 13 African girls, taken in and saved hundreds of lives, shown and told of God's love to countless others, and empowered others to do the same.  I recently read another book - Anything the prayer that unlocked my God and my Soul- written by another lady who heard about Katie's story and how it changed the life of her and several other's in her church.

My growing boys

My little baby is 6 and a half months old!  Paxton is such a happy, smiley baby!   Mason as been a good older brother.  He gives Paxton hugs and kisses, and will talk to him, tickle him, and ask about him if he's not in the room.  Paxton loves having Mason around too.  He's also become very interested in Sammy, the dog.  I have a feeling it won't be long till Sammy goes into hiding to keep away from both these boys.  I call Paxton my jumping bean because he loves to be standing up when I'm holding him so he can jump up and down.  I thought Mason was a wiggly baby, but Paxton has him beat.  Paxton loves his daddy, but he is definitely a mama's boy.  Mason usually preferred Zac and men in general when he was young, but Paxton loves the ladies. 

Paxton has started doing so many more new things the past month.  He started sitting up, but he still needs some help or he will fall over after a minute or two.  We also started him on solid foods, and he LOVES it!  He will hammer just about anything we give him.  He's eaten 2 different cereals, 4 veggies, and 4 fruits.  The only thing he hasn't liked is mashed avocado, but that was one of the first things we gave him.  So I will need to try it again now that he has tried more of a variety of food.  The thing that cracks me up is how he sticks his tongue out when he takes a bite of his food.  He also does it when he's lunging in for his breast milk.   

He has also started moving around.  He's been able to roll around for a couple months, but now he can army crawl forward.  I really have to watch the floor now that he can get around more.  Mason doesn't exactly love having little brother be able to get into his toys..especially his cars, legos, and trains. The "mommy, he's got my ______!" has already started. 

 

 

Paxton has never really taken a paci.  He will chew on one, but that's about it. He would occasionally chew on his thumb also, but the past week he started sucking on his 2 fingers turned upside down.  I don't see how it is comfortable, but he's started doing it more regularly.  It's pretty cute, but I'm not sure what I think about this new little developing habit. 

Mason has been testing us a little more the past several months, but he is still such a sweet boy!  He was in timeout for not obeying, and when he came out we saw that he had made a blue-green pattern with the magnetic letters.  I was shocked!  We've talked about patterns a little bit at home and school, but I've never seen him do it on his own. 

Mason started going to a spanish immersion preschool one day a week this.  Last year he went to a mother's day out/ preschool one day a week last year and loved it!  Between school and home last year he learned all his letters, 14 shapes, colors, and numbers 1 to 10 in english and spanish (now he can count to 14 in spanish and 20 in english).  So I thought it would be good for him to be challenged with something new this school year.  I decided to go this route because it will be so good for him in the future to have exposure to another language while his mind is soaking up anything and everything.  Plus we are hoping to adopt a child from a spanish speaking country so I'd like all the kids to know some spanish.  He's never cried when I've dropped him off, but he's still unsure about the new school.  He doesn't like change much.  Hopefully next semester he will start to feel more comfortable.  His teacher says he doesn't participate much right now, but she can tell he's picking up more of what she is saying (she talks in spanish the whole time).  Plus we'll use it at home with him some, and I can tell his spanish vocab is really growing. 

We've been working with him on potty training again the past week or two.  He's doing really good about peeing in the potty.  We didn't jump all the way in since we were going to go to my parents for thanksgiving, and he's staying there for a few days by himself afterwards.  But we will probably really dive in soon after he gets home.

We are exhausted!

So I'm starting this post at 6:30 this morning...the whole house has been up since 5:30 (which is better than the last two mornings which were 5:00), and I've decided that's it's time for a blog update. I've had trouble falling asleep the last few nights and one of the things that has been going through my mind is writing a blog. So here I am trying to get things done that I'm lying awake thinking about. Between me not falling asleep till about 1 and Paxton waking up at 2 and 5 with Mason waking up shortly after, I'm exhausted. I told Zac this morning we have to come up with a plan because this is not going to be the new normal! 
We had an amazing time on our vacation, but we have learned that traveling with your kids isn't anything like traveling without them.  It's fun, but definitely not relaxing and romantic!  We will probably try to do this trip regularly because my grandpa has moved down to Foley (12 miles from the Gulf Shores beach) making it very affordable.  We started by spending 4 nights at a condo actually on the beach with another couple from church.  Then we stayed 3 nights at my grandpa's.  All we did was just hang out at the beach everyday except for one outing to this train museum/exhibit in Foley. The boys did great traveling!  It helped that we had bought a minivan and 2 headrest DVD players for the boys to watch.  Plus we left around noon and got there around 1 am to maximize the time they would be sleeping in the car without having to drive all night.  Here are some pictures.   I'll post more on facebook.

 
 

 

As I mentioned earlier Paxton hasn't been doing good about sleeping through the night.  Mason was sleeping through the night at 3 months.  A month or two ago Paxton was doing pretty good about waking up around 4 am and then going back to sleep till about 7 (Mason was getting up around 6:45-7 also).  But I think his body is so sick of being dragged all over the place that his sleeping has been getting worse instead of better. 

I started looking at the calendar and I saw that we have only been home with just us  5 weekends out of the past 20 (I didn't include weekends that family was visiting)!!  That is insane no wonder we are all out of sync!  Here's a quick synopsis of our summer for those that care.  :)

So we had Paxton May 7th and most of May we had family coming and going...which was great!  Memorial day weekend we went to my parents house to a lot of family could see Paxton.  Then in June we found out Patty (Zac's mom) had breast cancer so we went there 2 weekends to be with her.  July we were gone 2 weekends, Zac was at training for 2 weeks (I was at my moms for part of that time), and we had family in town for 1 other weekend.  August 7 Zac found out he was going to OKC to do storm duty/relief for 20 straight days starting August 10.  (Thankfully it was there instead of some place on the coast, and he won't have to do it again for a year or two).  Of those 3 weeks I ended up spending 10 days in OKC partly to be see how Avery did with her surgeries.  We had already planned to start remodeling the kitchen over Labor day weekend, and most normal people would probably say let's do it another time after having been gone so much.  But we're crazy...we went ahead and started on the renovation and worked on it from the time Zac got back till we left for vacation Sept 14th.  Oh and the weekend before our vacation I was back in OKC for our annual college girls get together.  So much for taking it easy with a newborn around!  :) 

Needless to say we don't plan on going anywhere for a long time!  The first priority is to get these boys back on somewhat of a schedule! 



Family of 4

Wow where have the past 2 months gone!  I can't believe Paxton is already 9 weeks old.  The first month he was home was a bit of a blur, but the past several weeks have been good.  It took Mason a little while to adjust, but I think more of it had to do with the fact that he got hand, mouth, foot the day after we got home so he wasn't able to go anywhere for 2 weeks...he is definitely not a homebody!  Once we were able to get out of the house and take little outings he started doing a lot better.  In fact the first time I left the house with the kids was to go to Walmart and the library, and both times he said "no home" several times when it was time to leave. 
A few random things about Mason from the past couple months:  he started picking his nose - at first it was to get a rise out of us but now it is to actually pick boogers and then tries to bring them to us....gross!  At least he doesn't eat them.  He refers to himself as Nae-nae and Paxton as Packman (although he usually just calls him baby).  He can sing several songs (twinkle twinkle, ABCs, peekaboo, Jesus loves me, this is the day...to name a few). He can count to 10 in spanish....he usually counts in spanish instead of english.  On a side note we are starting him in a spanish spoken preschool one day a week this fall since he seems to pick it up so easily.  He loves to play with cars and trains.  Although  think he spends more time lining them up and then organizing them into piles...he's a quirky little guy.  We've had to have the "obey" talk with him which he initially took very well, but now he will often say "no obey mommy" or "no obey daddy" followed by "obey grandma A" (grandma Alice - my grandma) or "obey Sammy".  Basically saying he would obey grandma Alice or the dog but not us.  He hates to get his diaper changed.  When we pull his legs up he will say "no, this my legs".  We will probably give potty training another try in August, but he still doesn't seem to interested right now.

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Thankfully Paxton's delivery was so much less eventful than Mason's!  I was in labor half the time, only had to push for 10 minutes, there were no health issues with Paxton, and we were able to leave about 28 hours after he was born.  The only problem was my blood pressure dropped quite a bit after I first delivered him and I was a little anemic, but at least I didn't pass out like last time.  Paxton thankfully has been a great nurser so we didn't have to worry about his weight at all.  He is such a good baby...I think he is going to be laid back like his brother.  He likes to cuddle and swaddle more than Mason, but really he will just go with whatever.  He sleeps pretty good for a newborn.  The past couple weeks he will eat around 10pm and then 2am and then again around 5 or 6.  He has gone till 3am a few times, but not consistently.  He is smiling and cooing at us which just melts my heart!  Mason is ready to be able to play with him.  We used to have to watch him really closely - he used to try to sit or lay on him and he yanked him out of the bouncer onto the tile once - but he is getting a lot more gentle and careful with him.  The first 3 pictures are a few of Paxton's newborn pics one of our friends took.

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 Here are a few other pictures.

Mason is lining up shelves from the refrigerator.  He's got a weird fascination with lining things up.

 I've started trying to do more school type activities with him like painting, writing, sorting, etc.  He just loves to learn

 I didn't mess with cloth diapers after Paxton was born, but I started them both back 2 weeks ago.  I've learned so much more about cloth diapering since I started with Mason so I really don't mind doing it.   We did get a retractable cloths line though because we we have so many now to try and hang dry around the house.  I just love all their bright colors!  I need to take a picture of Paxton looking all cute in his diapers...maybe next time.   It's good to know that I'm saving a lot of money and helping the environment. 

We are a happy family of four now and so thankful for our 2 wonderful, healthy boys!