Our journey

Friday, February 27, 2009

A week already?!

Since we have started our most recent language class, it seems like I blink and a week has gone by! This week Ryan went to a nearby mountain and skied for a day. He went with his supervisor and another friend. He said it was a great mental health day. I am also very happy that Selah seems to be getting back in the swing of regular napping. Maybe the excitement of the toddler bed has finally worn off. She has officially napped 7 days in a row for the first time since the middle of January.

Selah is more and more clearly asserting her independence lately. She wakes up every morning and insists on choosing her own clothes. She changes her dolls' clothes multiple times a day and makes sure that they are fed, walked, napped, ect. I keep telling her what a great big sister she is. She regularly offers her baby sister (still in utero) a blanket, a drink or just talks to her and asks her to come out and play. Earlier this week I decided to see how well she knows the letters of the alphabet because she always wants to watch her "Letters" video. We looked at the letter magnets on the refrigerator and I grouped 4 letters together, asking her to show me a specific letter in the group. I was surprised and so proud to find out that she can identify every letter in the alphabet, except X, E, and H....at least on that day. I think she really knows all of them because she has showed me those letters on other occasions. She also grabs the 'M' and gives it me, saying, "M for mommy" and gives daddy the 'D' and herself the 'S' saying each person respectively.

This week we went to dinner with one of Ryan's friends whom we've encouraged to speak the national language with Selah. She wouldn't say much back to him, but when another one of Ryan's national friends called while we were at dinner, Selah told him that we were eating dinner and drinking tea in the national language. I was so excited to hear her speaking the language and actually responding to the questions she was asked.

No news on the pregnancy front...though we are waiting for news from Ryan's sister as she should be giving birth any day now to her second little girl. I'm also very thrilled that the Lord blessed us with the opportunity to use some frequent flyer miles to fly my best friend, Stacie out to stay with me for 9 days a few weeks after the baby is born. Ryan has to go out of town in late May for a few days and I wanted someone to come stay with me. Praise the Lord that we were actually able to use our miles on the days we wanted!!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

It was a happy Valentine's Day

Last Thursday, Selah and I, along with another young mom made Valentine's sugar cookies. Selah mostly enjoyed playing in the flower and sneaking pinches of dough to eat. It was fun to introduce her to making cookies.
On Saturday, we enjoyed our weekly Skype calls with Ama & Granddaddy and Grammy & Pops. Selah received a candy necklace and bracelet from Grammy & Pops--which was a hit. She mostly enjoyed wearing the necklace, and did manage to break it at least once. We gave her a heart-shaped lollipop, which was also very exciting being that she has fixated on the the "Lollipop" song over the past 2 weeks. We have listened to that 2 1/2 minute song SOOOOOO many times!
Ryan bought me some great chocolates, flowers AND cooked one of the best dinners I've had in a long time. It was chicken cordon bleu with real ham and swiss cheese, a great cream sauce, whole grain rice and spinach/orange salad. I am blessed!
Selah enjoys watching Mickey Mouse on mommy's iPod.

30 Weeks Pregnant....I know. My belly has grown a good bit.

We went to the doctor yesterday and apparently there's a big girl growing in my tummy. She is almost 4 pounds right now, and I still have 9 weeks to go. In other words, as far as averages go, I'm measuring in the 34th week when I'm actually in the 31st week. The doctor said that I can try to cut out extra carbs to try to make a difference in her rapid growth. It worries me a little because I had really hoped that this baby would not be bigger than Selah, but I am very thankful that she seems very healthy. Ryan joked that I could take up smoking....

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Cute Selah Stories




As we sat around the house yesterday morning, Selah wanted to watch the "Tiger" movie. For those of you who are curious enough without anymore intro than that and are thinking, what children's movie has a tiger in it?....it is obviously Madagascar, the animated film. However, to my recollection, there are no tigers in the movie.
Anyway, after the movie, Selah wanted to see pictures of a zoo, so we got online and looked up the zoo right here in the area. Next we heard a sweet little "go to zoo???" petition and couldn't resist, being that we had nothing else on the schedule for the day and we'd been talking about the zoo for a couple of weeks with Selah. After driving about 45 minutes, we arrived and set our expectations very, very low. There were 3 reasons for this: a friend told me that it wasn't a very good zoo, we could hardly find the sign on the entrance and were the only ones in the parking lot when we arrived at 11:15 AM.
After wondering around for an hour, we started finding every animal Selah was hoping for: tigers, lions, zebra, peacocks, ostriches, every kind of monkey and bird, bears, emus, llamas, camels, miniature ponies, turtles, snakes, fish, goats, sheep, ducks and even prairie dogs. I have to say, being from Amarillo, seeing prairie dogs at the zoo seemed a little comical to me, but when I thought about it a bit more, it made sense. There's not a lot of "prairie" in these parts! Selah was tenative about getting too close to any of the cages, but did want to share her fish crackers with the lively monkey that we saw at the end of our visit. He appreciated the fish cracker and raisins, but not Ryan's poking the end of the umbrella through a hole in the fencing. He hit the cage kind of hard in response....which only encouraged Ryan. According to what I hear from Ryan's parents, I think this part of his personality hasn't changed much since he was young.

Recently, Selah has been asking us lots and lots of questions: "what's this, Mommy? what's that, Daddy?, etc."

Here's tonight's exchanges:
"Where's Selah's car?" (in the shop getting body work done because its broken)
"Mirror on car broke." (yes, honey, the mirror broke when the icecream truck hit the car)
"Where's the mirror?" (in the road somewhere)
[a bit of thinking]
"Where's the road?" (ummm, by our house)
"Daddy sad."
[turns to Daddy and pats his arm and gives a him a kiss]

A few minutes later, we had another great conversation. She accidently pulled a tea candle over early tonight at church and got hot wax all over her hand. She is fine, but remembered her own sadness at this point.
"Selah hurt hand." (I know, baby. Everyone kissed it and its all better now.)
"Selah sit in mommy's lap?" (Okay, you can sit in mommy's lap.)
[Selah lays down "like a baby" in my arms and cuddles close and puts her lips on my collar bone]
"Selah drink milk." (I laugh and never really know how to respond in this situation. She's been weaned for a year now, but we've been reading some books about having a new baby at home and I think she gets the idea for how baby sister is going to eat!)

A few minutes later...
"Selah is baby Levi. Mommy [is] Anna. Daddy is Tim." (This is a family we know in our city. We meet with Anna and Levi once a week for play group and we never forget to pray for Levi before going to bed! As we're walking into our apartment building and wrapping up these insightful conversations, she runs up to Ryan and says...)
"Hey Tim!"

I find this hillarious on several levels, but mostly that she renames everyone in our family, then proceeds to call us by our new names for the next 30 minutes or so and she remembers to pretend to be baby Levi for most of that time.

Then, as we were putting her in bed tonight, she looked up and saw the lamp was still on. She said, "Turn the lamp off" in her sweet, little requesting tone of voice. As I walked to the lamp, she closed her eyes tightly and said, "turn light off with eyes." Brilliant. She is one brilliant little girl, if I do say so myself.

My first attempt at basic video editing:


Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Scrabble



Last week we had a friend from another part of the country visiting. One evening we decided to play scrabble in the national language. It was quite difficult (in my opinion) because there weren't many long words played which gave us very few options for new words as our turns came around. We were pretty proud of ourselves when we finished (we didn't use all the tiles, but were within 10). Our brains were mush at the end.

Ryan and I started a new language course this week. We are actually taking the same course from the same teacher. We're both looking forward to it and already enjoyed our first day. However, this means that I will be spending about 3 times as much time studying language every week.

I wanted to share a funny story about Selah. On the night of the Presidential Inauguration, Ryan asked Selah if she could say, "president". She confidently said, "present" as if she nailed it perfectly. Ryan and I laughed and she thought for a moment. Then she said, "If you poo poo in the potty 2 times, you get a PRESENT. " Hilarious. You can tell what stage of training we're in right now. She has a gorgeous, high-tech toy helicopter waiting for her in the bathroom...waiting and waiting. Two weeks ago I took her to the toy store and let her play with toys for 1 hour. I simply observed and introduced her to new toys every now and then. After much playing, we went witht he pretty cool helicopter. It has buttons, noises, colored balls, and teaches numbers and colors! Now, if we can just get her to poop in the potty!