On the Verge...

Yesterday was an insano pants day.  I'm not sure where I came up with that term, but I find myself using it a lot these days.  So we'll go with it.  Anyway, since today  is Selah's three month birthday, this post should have been written  yesterday.   But, alas, that did not happen.  So now we are on the verge of three months and one day.   Here is the three month update: Date:  July 22, 2012 Weight : Went in for a visit about acid reflux last Wednesday and she was 11.5 lbs. Clothing size : Snuggly in 3 mo. Feedings per day : 5/6, depending on the day Night sleeping:  Still really great, praise God.  I guess she might be sleeping so well at night because she naps so little during the day.  If I had to choose one or the other, I guess I'm glad we have good night sleep.   Naps:  So it's been over a month of tough napping. We'll have a few great days with long naps and a predictable schedule and then a few hard days of only 45 minute naps

I was just thinking today how Selah was looking less and less like Abram.  She is definitely chunkier. She went to the doctor yesterday and weighed 11.5 - that's a 1.5 lb gain in 4 weeks.  Not too shabby. Anyway, I decided to go through the archives of Abram photos to see if she looks like he did at the same age.  This is what I found: Granted, I chose one where Abram was making a Selah face, because she's not as expressive as he was at that age.  And She is three months and he was almost four.  But I'm thinking there's still a bit of a resemblance :)  They have their own unique characteristics, for sure, but I think they are assuredly siblings! On a side note, Selah's napping has gotten a lot better.  So far the only schedule we have to speak of is usually  she goes to sleep at 8 and wakes up sometime in the night (between 2 and 4) and wakes up for the day at 8ish.  The naps and feedings during the day are starting to fall into a kind of routine, but n

It is much harder to move out of the country than one would imagine.  I don't know, maybe you have imagined that it would be hard, but I had this delusion that we would sell everything, pack up some suitcases,  fly across the ocean and that would be it.  Not so much (or little, in this case). The selling stuff is time consuming enough.  It got me started thinking about when Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all of his possessions, give it to the poor, and follow Him and the man walked away sad because "he was one who owned much property".  I always thought that he was sad because he loved all that property so much that he didn't want to part with it.  And maybe that was the case, but I've started to think that maybe he walked away sad because he knew he just didn't have it in him to go through the insane process that would be selling all that property.  Maybe he was thinking about how many garage sales he would have to have in order to get a good amoun

Where did that phrase come from, anyway...? Thank you all for your encouragement and prayers in response to the post yesterday.  It seems that God is answering them already!  Last night, after a lavender bedtime bath, she went down with only 10 minutes of a little bit of fussing at 7:00pm and she slept until Quinn fed her a bottle around 11:00!  So my wonderful friends who came over to be a man on man defense only had to "defend" against one sleepy toddler for about an hour.  He was already in his PJs (he asked for me to put them on when I got them out of the dryer at around 5:00) and he apparently he essentially asked to go to bed a little before 8.  So then my wonderful friends got to visit with each other and eat chocolate until we came home a little before 10. It was a really good night with Quinn.  We ended up going to Hula Hut on the river. Then we got to take a nice long walk back to the car in the rain and ended the night with a piece of pie and some decaf at

* There are pictures in this post.  They are just all smooshed in at the end* There is something pretty major happening in our lives right now.  I haven't written about it here yet because I wasn't really sure how to address it.  I wanted to give it the thought that it deserved and make sure that I was presenting it in the most honest way.  Now I find myself with barely enough time to take a shower, much less process through a well thought out blog post.  So here is a quick and candid explanation of our future: Our family will be moving to the Middle East this fall.  We will be joining some friends who already live over there with their three kids.  Many of you know the details.  Some of you may be hearing this for the first time.  For time reasons, I'm not going to go into them here.  If you want to know more about our plans and intentions, email me!  It may be a quick response, or it may be an offer to put you on our email newsletter list to keep you up to date, but I

Up until this point in his life, whenever Abram didn't want something or didn't want to do something, he just shook his head.  When he did  want something he would nod his head - sometimes.  He hadn't really gotten the hang of yes and no and he's almost 20 months old.  He could tell you all of the letters in the alphabet (except "J", for some reason...), but he couldn't tell you "yes" or "no". That is until a few days ago.  All of a sudden, a very clear and defiant "NO" has finally been added to my son's vocabulary. At first, it was pretty cute.  He is very purposeful in forming his "o" with his mouth.  Almost like he's kissing.  "Noh".  I would giggle a little.   The first day. Then I regretted that giggle.  One cute "no" every once in awhile, turned into a repetitive "NOO! NOO! NOO!" every other minute in response to everything we said very quickly.   Uh oh. 

Sorry it's been so long, loyal blog followers (read: grandparents). Things have been extra special hectic around the Smith home the last few weeks as we prepared for the first of three large garage sales in which we are trying to sell 99% of everything we own. I promise to explain the reason for this at some point in the very near future, I just have to find the time to sit down and really give that explanation the time and thought that it needs. I do realize that I mostly write as if I am only updating grandparents, but the truth is that I am now just over 20,000 views on my blog! For the professionals, that isn't that big of a number, but for an amateur like me, that's a lot. And even though my kids do have three sets of grandparents who are loyal blog followers, I do not imagine that they have visited this site 20,000 times combined. So I want to make sure that I share the plans for our future in the best way possible, since it's going to be a really big thi