On the Verge...

So we are having another baby.  Whew.  There, I said it.  No creative lead up and stunning reveal.  Just there .  Baby.  Bam. That's a little what it felt like to find out that a third child would be joining our ranks a bit short of 3.5 years after our first child was born.  We were content with our two.  A boy and a girl.  Who could ask for anything more, right?  Also, Quinn and I each have just one sister, so it seemed natural for us to stop at two. So that's what we were working to do.  I won't go into the details of it all with you in this forum, but we really were attempting to avoid pregnancy. So this wasn't a "woops" moment.  This was a "many things happening coincidentally" moment.  And so when we confirmed that we were, indeed, expecting another baby, there was a bit of shock (of course), but also peace and assurance in knowing that God definitely showed us His hand in it. We told Abram pretty early on and he...

I posted this video on Facebook. So this is for people who follow the blog that aren't on facebook (read: grandparents) Can you tell we do a lot of pretend flying to Austin, Colorado, and Boise in our playtime? :) Sorry I haven't been posting more.  Lost of stuff happening here and not much time to just sit down and upload and write.  We actually never take out the good camera any more.  Horrible.  Horrible parents, we are. Just kidding.  More like just parents, we are.

A week ago, I lost my temper.  I'm not an outward temper looser.  Like, you don't have to be worried if you are around me and I loose it.  You may not even notice.  I really don't do it that  often.  When I loose my temper, I loose it on the inside.  You might see my neck tendons stick out a bit, maybe my teeth gritting (if you are looking closely), possibly some wide eyes and clenched fists, but that's probably it.  So it doesn't seem that bad from the outside, but inside... oh, inside, it's bad.  I never knew how bad until I actually hurt myself doing this inside-temper-loosing.  And God is using it to teach me a serious lesson.   It was a normal day with two kids... (did not mean for that to sound like the beginning of a "Rescue 911 episode, but I'll go with it)... only I was tired and already on edge.  I was just looking forward to the hour that I might get to have alone with both kids sleeping as I took Abram into the k...

Abram had his first swim lesson today!  It was a grand success. By the end of it, he just wanted to swim "by his own self" and wasn't very interested in kicking, paddling, bubbles, etc.  I'm just glad he wasn't afraid of the water. Definitely not afraid. And being the incredibly sweet and thoughtful brother he is, when he discovered how much fun it was he kept yelling to Selah; "Come on Selah!  Come swim with me!"  So Sel and I got in at the end.  Didn't get any pics of that.  But she monkey glued herself to my side and as long as she was there, she was absolutely loving it too. So excited we are getting to do these lessons and our friends have this pool.  We may have a coupla water babies on our hands!

Many, many things have changed "around here" since I've been gone.  We were in a holding pattern for our move from Sharjah to Fujairah for almost a month.  Things got packed and moved, expecting to be able to move, only to experience delay after delay and obstacle after obstacle.  We finally had  to move the day our lease ran out in Sharjah.  So we are ultimately glad that we had it for the little extra time that we did, because we needed it!  Occupying them while I packed boxes for the move (I think we didn't move for two weeks after this). Don't judge me.  We took the kids to a friend's house across the street while we were packing.  When I picked them up, there wasn't room for their car seats in the back.  So for a one minute car ride across the street, these two cuties got buckled in the front together and shared a pretzel.  And I prayed the entire time.  A trip to Ikea for necessities and hot dogs to celebrate ...

Today was one of those days.  It was actually more like two of those days rolled into one.  The morning was a "Really?!  I mean, really?!" kind of morning.  And the afternoon was a "Wow, the Lord is so good and faithful" kind of afternoon. Even though the city we live in says  that they aren't doing scheduled power outages this summer, we have just happened  to have a power outage the last three Mondays at almost exactly  10am.  The first few I was extra annoyed, because they were in the middle of Selah's morning nap and the sound machine that we have to have running while she is sleeping and the fan that keeps her room relatively cool both shut off and she woke right up, of course.  This week, we have transitioned to one nap a day, so she wasn't sleeping during this morning's power outage and I wasn't as frustrated.  But when the power hadn't come back on after 30 minutes like it usually does, I was getting a little exasperated. ...

I would be a horrible parent if I documented every single step that Abram took in blog-land and failed to mention anything about Selah's verbal and mobile developments as of late. She has officially taken steps!  The most she has ever done is five in a row, but it's usually two or three before she lunges herself forward and falls, sometimes quite dangerously.  I would never have predicted this, but Abram was my cautious kid, who took one month to actually start walking.  When he did, he hardly ever fell forward or lost his balance.  I think it's because he wanted to make sure that he could do it well before he did it.  Selah, on the other hand, is more than happy to try over and over again, every time catching herself with those little hands on the hard ground and sitting right up to look for the clapping and smiling.  She still can't (won't?) just stand up by herself without first pulling up on something or someone. But she can stand unassisted now and...