Bunches of stuff....

Lets start with Justin. The day after his 1st b-day he finally figured out how to go up the steps. Oh boy! Time to start closing the basement door or gating it. 1st pic is of him realizing he can get up the step. 2nd pic is of me thinking he is going to fall, so I bailed on the pic to save the boy. 3rd pic is of him happily sitting on the step before HE realizes he can't balance himself for very long.





Today, as he was crawling on all 4's across the floor, he would periodically straighten out his back legs in the air...a weird bear crawl if you will. And tonight he went to sleep on his belly for the 1st time. I was wondering how long it would last. He moves a lot, and we have a sheet and a heavy comforter on the bed that he regularly gets caught up in. It lasted 1/2 hr. When he started crying and I went in to check on him, he was out of all the covers and sideways on my pillow....and he doesn't sleep on a pillow.


Now, on to Austin. For the past week he has said "no diaper" at night. Scary, since he sleeps between Matt & I. Well, not only have there been no accidents, last night he woke up at 4am and crawled out of bed. I asked him if he had to go potty, and he said "no." However, he walked into the bathroom and asked for help. I quickly got up, helped, and praised him endlessly for being a big boy and getting up to go potty and not pot-tying the bed. I resumed the praise this morning when he/we woke up. I then got up to go to the bathroom, and Austin proceeded to tell me that he was proud of me too. If he only knew how proud of me I was for making it to the bathroom! :)

Back to Justin for a sec. A quick update on his vocabulary. When you sing him the song Ring Around the Rosie, as you get to the "ashes, ashes" part, he says it first. If he is nursing, he stops to be sure he gets to say it at the right time. Very funny! It sounds like he is saying "Austin." It sounds like "aw-sin." On his b-day it was pretty clear to me and most everyone else that he was trying to say "happy b-day." It sounded like "ha-bee."

He's almost 1 year old!

Justin will be 1 on Monday. Where has the time gone? Into a clean house? Uh, no. Into teaching Austin chemistry, or maybe just how to identifiy the letters he sings so well in the ABC song? Uh, no. Into making sure I am nice and healthy for another baby (as the midwives demanded at Justin's 6 wk. check up)? Uh, no. Maybe into decorating the house more-better this year than last year? Uh, no. So, where DID it go? Well, other than into a minimum amount of cooking & cleaning & showers & laundry, it mostly went into hours and hours of enjoying my kids being LITTLE kids. These times and years won't last, and I want to suck up as much of them as I can before they are gone, like a fine mist of water that disappears before your eyes. I hope there will be time to clean more, cook more & better, and teach the kids (kinda important since I plan to homeschool). But for now, I am perfectly content to sit with my 2 beautiful boys and just watch, listen, laugh, and sometimes even learn.

Since I spent 3 weeks w/Austin on identifying the letter's A & B, he has had 3 more weeks to practice because we haven't gotten back to preschool. I hope to resume with him after the 1st of the year. His cousin Savannah plans to come over and learn too.

Justin was scooting/hopping on his behind before he learned to crawl. I assumed he would quit after the crawling started. Nope! He really enjoys bouncing himself around. It seems to work best on non-carpeted floors. He is a riot to watch. I would love to get a vidoe of him dong it.

This one was for you sis! We love you and we miss you and we pray for you and your family!!!!

Kiddie updates...

Matt & I haven't decided how we are going to handle halloween w/the kids. But for now, Austin just knows that we bought a bunch of candy to give away to other kids that were dressed silly. He had a blast. He was trying to give candy to everyone (every jogger & car that went by). As you can see, Justin was getting into the act as well. Both of them were waving boxes of nerds in the air like they were anticipating the candy buzz. Notice the large bowl FULL of candy. We were only able to get rid of half of it, and that was with Matt giving hand-fulls in the last 1/2hr.





















Justin is rolling all over the place to get to where he wants to go. He also gets on all 4's and rocks, but then ends up on his belly or back or on his behind. At church Wednesday night the ladies that watched him in nursery said he actually crawled some. I suppose I forgot to tell Justin he is only to have his "firsts" around mommy & daddy. Austin rolled a lot also. He never did the army crawl. Went from rocking on all 4's to crawling. Justin is a big solid food eater, but still predominantly a nurser, just as Austin was at this age.

As I was reading our women's bible study book Feminine Appeal, there was a part in the latest chapter I read where the writer remembered her child running around in circles in the kitchen, at age 4, singing "your the best mommy" over and over. It immediately reminded me of a few small things that Austin has said that I should be remembering and cherishing. Thursday, I was cleaning the kitchen and the floor. I stopped a couple of times to nurse the baby and give him a different piece of real-estate to hang out in. At one of the breaks I was sitting in the l.r. in the recliner and Austin came up to me and hugged me from the side and said "mommy, your the best cleaner." I told him how nice it was of him to say that to me, and I thanked him. (It's a good thing he's only 2 and doesn't really know what clean is.) Often he will come to me in the kitchen and hug my legs and say "mommy, I love you" or "I love you more."

Austin's funny saying of the week, "mommy, only girls have rest raps." He means bra straps.

Austin says.....Justin does

Not really like it sounds. This post is about some funny things Austin has been saying and something new Justin did yesterday.

Austin: If you say to him "we don't have the money for it" he says "then get some out of your purse" or "go get some from the bank." Referring to a food item he wants, if you say to him "we don't have anymore" or "we are all out of it" he says "we need to buy some more, its on sale." When we go to the store he says "am I going in mommy? Don't leave me by myself, I can't drive." If Matt talks about his paycheck, Austin will say "that's money in the bank." He still says "hold me" when he wants you to hold him. I know there are more cute things, I have a list, somewhere.....
Altho he has been "potty trained" since early summer, we still put him in a diaper at night. Tonight he informed me he didn't like how the diaper felt and wanted it off. I obliged, but in a little bit I will be putting a chux pad under him just in case. Especially since he sleeps w/us!

Justin was sitting upright on our bed today, as he does often. I had my back to him and when I turned around he had turned towards the edge of the bed where the rail guard is and had pulled himself up onto his knees and was very excited to be looking down over the edge of the bed. over the next few minutes, every time I sat him back down on his behind, he immediately turned himself sideways and pulled himself back up. Altho the rail is 12" high, I am not comfortable with this new ability. I remember when Austin was able to do it, altho it was after he could crawl, matt and I had to stop letting him do it for fear he would push himself up and over. Altho Justin is still not crawling, he dives head first off the couch now (no more setting him there unattended) and rolls enough that he can't be left alone or unattended on anything that is up off the ground. He has been rolling to his right side to go to sleep at night.
He is going on 2 weeks w/a cold. We pray he gets better soon. We're running out of toilet paper to wipe his itsy bitsy nose!