overheard at our house today {big sister edition}

izzy (while watching micah be silly and belly-laugh his way through a game):  mommy, thank you so much for bringing micah home.  he's my favorite baby!!

that's good stuff, people.

wordless wednesday (best buds)

wordless wednesday (why i have a hard time getting a workout done)

EEEK! it's one of our favorite christmas traditions...

silent night

and the answer is no.  it's not that uncommon to find izzy asleep with a "baby in her belly".  :-)

wordless wednesday (a watched pot...)

hope fulfilled

i know you're probably surprised to hear from me.  after all, as my mom pointed out recently, it has been close to two months since i've written.  i've accepted that because of the nature of my business, this little blog will probably have some major peaks and valleys, but as the fall rush is gradually slowing i'm ready to once again overwhelm your eyeballs with photos of my darlings. 

but first...

josh and i decided this year to do something "christmas-y" with the kids each day between now and christmas.  we've got a handful of things already on the calendar - baking cookies, watching "rudolph", attending christmas concerts - but the first order of business was getting our tree up as soon as we got back home from our thanksgiving travels.  so yesterday we pulled the truckload of boxes out of the closet and set to work.  we assembled the tree, hung the lights, and started on the slew of ornaments.  the little ones excitedly grabbed handfuls of them out of the "kid box" while i gingerly unwrapped the ornaments out of the "super-special-please-don't-break-these" box.  i gently picked up one of my very favorites and turned it over to read the back for the 1000th time - for your child known only by god.  then like i have every year since 2005, i wept for the child we lost that year. 



like she has with every little one that has ever been a part of our family, my mom cross-stitched a special gift particularly for that baby and i hang the ornament in a prominent place on the tree each christmas.  but this year, as my mind moved from the loss of our second child all those years ago to judah's death last year, i couldn't help but wipe the tears and smile with joy as i remembered a post i wrote last christmas.  the sixth stocking is a story of grief and hope - grief over the tremendous loss our family had just experienced but hope that in the next year the lord would bless us with a child.  this is the third year that we've hung six stockings on our mantle but it's the first year that our house has been home to six people.  and now, just inches from that first ornament made by my mom is another that she recently gave us...




praising god for his faithfulness!

weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

psalm 30:5

the night owl strikes again

we arrived in marietta on saturday afternoon only to realize that we'd left half our baby gear at home.  we didn't forget to put it in the car...we just flat forgot we'd need it.  you'd think we've never traveled with a baby before.  but one of the joys of mine and josh's younger siblings now birthing babies as well is that they tote around much of the same gear we do.  and not only is their gear nicer (let me tell you, a lot's changed in the last three years!) but their younger brains work better than ours so they actually remember to pack what they'll need.

one of the didn't-make-the-trip items was the baby monitor.  since all four of our little peeps were sleeping in one room while josh and i were down the hall in another room, we thought we should make a wal-mart run to get a backup monitor in case micah protested his first night away from home.  but before we could make it out the door, josh's sister, rebekah, offered us her ultra-swanky video monitor.

ummm, hello!  

i'll admit that this thought has crossed my mind before:  a video monitor?  really?!?  what do you do?  just sit and watch your baby sleep all night?

YES, and it's fantastic!  well, i guess there wasn't much sleeping going on while i was eyeing my littlest two, but i got a sweet glimpse into their world together.  and what a cute, funny, precious world it is!  (my apologies to all the video-monitor-owners out there that i used to secretly giggle at.  you may now return the favor because not only did i watch my babies over the monitor for 30 minutes, i took pictures as well!)

the night owl crept up to micah's crib and whisper-yelled to see if he was awake...



when he responded with an immediate jump to his feet, playtime soon began.



i'm usually a pretty big stickler for bedtime, but for some reason it didn't seem all that important on this night.  :-)

where the wild things are

it's not just a book...it's a place. and i can say with complete certainty now that it's in pine mountain, ga. on our visit to marietta over labor day, josh's family took us on our first "wild animal safari", and we all came home disgustingly filthy...but full of smiles.





if you ask izzy what her favorite part of the day was, she'll tell you with an excited flair that it was the gruffalos. ironically, she'll also ID that as the part she didn't care for so much. but who can blame her? i was thrilled/terrified as well when the massive monsters moved from outside our van window to head-completely-in-breathing-and-slobbering-in-our-faces...






this is when izzy and i almost made a run for it...




sometimes, though, massive heads or expansive horns got in the way of the animals being able to put their whole heads through the window. no worries, though...that's why god made two-foot-long tongues. EEEEK!



and if you're wondering about micah, he wasn't such a fan of the whole mess at first. for all you fellow adoptive parents out there, i know what you're thinking, and in my defense, i had no idea the gruffalos would actually try to get inside the car with us. there was no turning back once we had entered the gates...



but he eventually calmed down in my arms and was content to work the finger-of-much-soothing while he cuddled with grandpam.



you know, now that i think about it, i think the squeals of delight might have been as "exciting" for him as anything else. see for yourself - and enjoy jack's bull's-eye at the :32 mark (or should i say bull's-nose)...

wordless wednesday (googly eyes)

music appreciation {lewis style}

jack got his red guitar fixed this week, and our ears are all bleeding a little now because of it. we finally decided to take him out in the yard so the whole neighborhood could partake in the joy, and i shot a couple of minutes of concert video. in loading the video into my movies folder, i saw a bit of a theme that i'd like to share with you. please enjoy music appreciation: lewis style.

my favorite moments:
the acrobatic feat at 0:46
the sudden burst of hunger at 0:54
jack's transformation from 1:14 to 1:25
and finally, the lumberjack-esque dance at 1:42.

birthmarks {learning to do "man-work"}

and now for the girly-girl version of yardwork...

wordless wednesday (this is what happens when i let jack feed the baby)

the importance of flushing

lots of us have funny photos that look a little something like this...

but i hope that none of you have had the experience of finding what i did today.  while preparing lunch this afternoon, micah went missing.  i be-bopped around the living room and school room area until i finally discovered him in the bathroom...eating used toilet paper out of the potty that some other little person had forgotten to flush.  

really wish i was making this up...

birthmarks {the way they sleep}

sometimes it's sweet...



sometimes it's messy...



a lot of times it's upside down...



but it's never boring.



that's ok...it gives daddy one last cuddle with them each night before we head to bed ourselves.

birthmarks {the beginning}

i can remember vividly one of the moments that brought me to the point of confession.  i was changing micah's clothes a few weeks back, and as i pulled his shirt up over his chunky tummy, i noticed something i hadn't before.

a birthmark.  something given to him by the lord that makes him unique, something that makes him who he is.

my first thought was, how in this world has he been home with us for a month now and i'm just now noticing his birthmark?  yes, bringing baby #4 home has certainly been unique from our first three experiences.  we weren't able to spend those early weeks with micah doing nothing more than rocking, cuddling, and studying his features, which was even more reason to slow down now that he's home.  i want to be a mom who notices the freckle on her six-year-old's right pointer finger and the birthmark behind her four-year-old's right ear.

or the tiny mark on her new baby's belly.

so here's what's on my heart:  the lord has given me this precious family, and everyday for us holds something unique, something that makes us who we are. 

kind of like birthmarks.  they're the things i want to notice and the things i want to remember.