Oh My

Well, Daddy is gone for another week to another meeting. So sad for us. BUT Aunt Stacey is here with us! She is Daddy's younger sister, and she is GREAT. She traveled across the world to help me out this week and celebrate many upcoming birthdays in the next few weeks. She's doing really well overcoming jetlag and staying healthy. She's also doing a great job helping me with the boys. I told Daddy on the phone yesterday that if she wasn't here he might not still have 3 sons when he returned. SO glad she's here! We have been blessed with such great family!

So, speaking of having 3 sons... Yesterday we went to the park to meet some other American mommies and kids to play together. It was a great time, really. We had a little picnic there and were just kind of getting packed up and ready to go then Luke... Well, first let me say that the sprinkler system was not quite working right at the park and there were huge puddles all over the place. We had been doing our best to keep the kids out of the water puddles because, you know, who knows what is in that water. So, anyway, we're getting ready to go and I look up to see Luke standing next to the puddle with his pants down (in front of God and everybody) peeing in this huge puddle. Oh My. I proceeded to hurdle the bench and snatch his pants back up and begin the (extremely useful) lecture on how we don't do that in public. In my poor little 3 year old's defense, we actually do let them go (discreetly) at the park because public restrooms are non-existent here. Somehow Luke missed out on the "discreet" part of the process. Not to mention that the other kids had been using that same water earlier to mix with the sand to make sand castles. Like I said, you never know what is in the water. Oh My.

The Negotiator

People have told me that Joshua is surely going to grow up to be a lawyer or a negotiator or something. He is always trying to bargain with me. If I do this, will you do that? It's not sneaky or conniving or even seemingly calculated. He's just seeing what he can get away with. For example, the other day I asked him to clean up his room before he could read some new books I had pulled out. First he asked if could please read the books, THEN clean up his room afterward. I said, no, he had to clean up first. So then he asked if he could just read one book, then clean up. I said no, he had to clean up first. Then he proceeded to ask if he could clean up half of his room and read half of the books, then clean up the rest of his room and read the rest of the books. Amazing. How does he come up with this stuff? In the end, I told him no, he had to clean up first.

Snakes and Story Time

Telling stories to small children is always an interesting adventure - at least to my children. Because they somehow end up telling parts of their own stories in the middle of your story and adding their own personal commentaries along the way. This past Sunday, in our house church, Daddy was telling a story to the kids. It started out as the story of the Israelites in the desert who were being bitten by snakes because they were complaining and disobeying God. So God told Moses to make the bronze snake statue and lift it up so that the Israelites could look at in order to be saved. Then Daddy proceeded to make the spiritual bridge to how we need to look at Jesus, who was lifted up on the cross, in order to be saved. Daddy didn't get very far with this because as soon as the boys heard snake, they had their own stories going. Somehow our story meandered off to Jesus' temptation in the desert. So while we're trying to get back on the subject of Moses and Israelites, Joshua pipes up and says that if he had seen that snake he would (and I quote) "Chop it up with a sword, then throw it in the mud. Then I would laugh at it." With that conclusion we decided that storytime was over and it was time to pray.

Update to the Update

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted anything. The last update I gave you I thought I was getting over my thrush infection. Boy was I wrong. Since then it got much, much worse for a couple of weeks. There was one week that I was in bed the whole week due to the pain I was experiencing as well as a bad reaction to some medicine I had taken. This is some darn stinkin' stubborn yeast in my body! Last week I actually started having days of only minimal pain, which is very good. I've been on a very strict diet for over a month now to keep it from flaring back up again. We're talking no sugar, very limited carbs. It really stinks, but I've been very motivated to avoid serious pain. Yeast loves sugar and any time I've "cheated" I have had to deal with the horrible shooting pains. Sweets are not worth that, let me tell you. I dropped 5 pounds the week I was really sick. Somehow, through it all God has given me the grace to keep nursing and the desire not to stop yet. Micah will be 11 months this coming Sunday. I know he'd be fine if I weaned him, but I just haven't felt like that was the right thing to do yet. Today I'm so glad I have hung in there. Tomorrow, we'll see how I feel. :o) At this point I'm in no hurry for my baby to grow up. We're taking it one day at a time. Today was a really good day. I'm praying for lots more good days. I would love it if I could keep nursing and actually kick this whole yeast thing at the same time (read: be able to eat whatever I want). But if not, well, we'll figure that out when we have to...

Micah's Skills

I have a crawler!! I don't know if you read my other post about my kids never crawling, but Micah is actually crawling on his hands and knees like a normal baby. Joshua and Luke never did that; they both did the army crawl till they walked. Speaking of walking, I don't think it will be long before Micah is doing that either. He's cruising around holding on to everything these days. He's also fond of walking with his walking toy. I can hardly keep up with him. Joshua and Luke just want to tackle him and play with him the way they play with each other. It's still too rough for me, but Micah is learning to handle it pretty well. They're going to freak when he actually starts walking. It's amazing that Micah can do anything with all the craziness around him all the time. I'm still so proud of him for actually crawling! :o)

Ode to Luke

My sweet Luke had his 3rd birthday on May 12th. He is such a big boy! He can go to the potty by himself, get himself dressed, play his own computer games, quote whole chapters of the Bible, and make everyone in the family laugh. He loves to sing and does so at will and at random times. When he's quoting his verses he has to stop and give commentary on the big words that he did not originally know but has learned from us (just to make sure everyone else knows the meaning too). He is 100% ALL BOY - running, jumping, climbing, wrestling, killing pretend bad guys, and great at being silly. His laugh is the cutest thing and is totally contagious. And though he has his trying-Mommy's-patience-moments, he is an absolute joy to all of us. In school he's been learning all the sounds that the letters make, recognizing patterns and numbers of objects, as well as lots of other things. Luke is a quick thinker and seems to be really creative. If we're making up words to a song, he can come up with his own lyrics just as fast as we can. And, of course, I cannot fail to mention his recent fascination with puzzles. He loves them! He often has extreme amounts of energy, so he jumps and runs a lot. :o) But he can also be very sweet and gentle when he tries. Though he loves to run and jump, he also loves to just snuggle up next to us and listen to books being read. Our Luke is such a special boy, and we're so grateful that God gave him to us 3 years ago!



For his birthday we had french toast for breakfast (by his choice). After breakfast we went to what we refer to as "The Fun Place". On the top floor of a nearby mall there is a huge playland for kids. It also has bumper cars and a few kiddie rides (like the ones outside of Wal-mart that you would put a quarter in). It really is a fun place, and we had a great time there for Luke's big day. Grandma had brought some fun Handy Manny birthday decorations that we had all over the house to make everything special for him. He loved the Handy Manny cake that I made. We had hot dogs for lunch and pizza for supper because that's what Luke wanted. He got to open up fun presents all throughout the day as well. I think he really enjoyed his special day.

I'm Back!

I know it's been forever since I posted an entry on here. So sorry! This entry will hopefully catch everyone up-to-date and get me back on track with posting regularly...

Well, first of all, we survived our 10 days without Daddy at home. It's always such a bummer when he's not here, and we're so grateful to have him home with us now! But thankfully we had my parents to keep us company and offer lots of help! We had a GREAT visit with them, and they seemed to have a fabulous time here as well. I must say that I was very impressed at how well they did traveling so far, spending time in a different culture, and eating lots of different foods. Granted I only took them to the yummy places to eat, but they still handled all the differences so well. What would have been an extremely difficult week for me with my husband gone turned out to be a really fun time spent with them. It was also just great to see them be able to spend quality time with the boys. The boys, of course, loved the attention and all the surprises that Grandma kept pulling out of her bag (think Mary Poppins). :o) Thanks so much, Grandma and Grandpa, for coming all this way to help us out and spend time in our world. We love you!

In other news... After two weeks of nursing pain I, along with my sis-in-law and her midwife and lactation consultant friends, finally determined that I had thrush. Oh my. Today has now been 4 weeks since the whole thing started. I've been treating it in a multitude of different ways, not the least of which was changing my entire diet and cutting out sugar and almost all carbs while only eating protein and veggies. Unfortunately the diet change caused some other digestive issues on top of everything else. :o( I would have a good day and think that it was clearing up, then the next day would be another painful day. I finally started an antibiotic and I've now I've had 3 days of minimal pain so far. It's not fully over yet, but I'm really hoping and praying that I'm finally on my way out of this. I have not been ready to stop nursing Micah, and I really didn't want to end our nursing relationship on a bad note. I have loved nursing all my children despite the painful issues I've had to deal with. I'm just so thankful that I still can nurse! And I'm thankful that God has given me the endurance to get through the difficult days.

There are lots of other things to blog about, particularly my sweet Luke's 3rd birthday! But I'll have to save that for another post. For now, I'll leave you with a picture of my cuties with their grandparents.