My 4 Month Old Cupcake and Repeating History

Well it happened. Anna turned four months old! I don't know why, but this one seems like a big one to me. It just seems like they leave that little baby phase behind and start doing new things left and right! I'm excited though, b/c it is so fun watching them grow and she continues to be so sweet! Unfortunately, along with turning four months came the Dr. appt. and yucky shots! She's been doing really well though and doesn't really seemed bothered by them yet! She checked out and the Dr. said she looks perfect! Yea! She weighed 14 lb 5 oz (70th percentile) and was 25 inches long (75th percentile and 2 more inches more than she was at 2 months!). Here's her sweet little four month picture with her bear!

A really funny thing happened today! Anna got up really early and I was still sleepy, so I fed her in bed. Afterwards, she fell asleep. When I got up, I had a deja vu kinda feeling and realized that I had taken pictures of Benjamin sleeping in the middle of a bed with a yellow sleeper on. So I couldn't resist and went to find a camera. Later on, I was looking more closer at her sleeper and started to think, hey that's the exact same sleeper that Benjamin had on! And sure enough, when I looked up the picture, I found that it was the same one! What a koinky dink! Test time: Comment on this post and tell me which one you think is Benjamin and which is Anna!?!??!?!

Dave took a comp day today and so we headed to the children's museum here in town. Benjamin did really good playing basketball and got several in!!!

He's looking at me in this picture as we both clap at him for making the basket!


Pull!!! My two boys in hats! :)

Please Pray! I just found out that Dave has to go to Charleston tomorrow. Please pray that he travels safely and that I somehow survive taking care of both kiddos and doing my job at VBS tomorrow evening!

The Progression of Hats and Other Cute Moments

I've noticed a funny thing in raising these kiddos.

They go from being too little to notice or care that you're putting a hat on them...



To hating hats and pulling them off every time you try to make them wear one.
(No picture here)

To absolutely loving hats and wearing it everyday and acting like its one of the best toys ever!



Benjamin and his friend Maddox playing around. I was bummed b/c I went to get the camera b/c they were sitting right next to each other and had their arms around each other. Of course by the time I came back, they had moved! Oh, well!


I just thought this was a really cool picture. They're shaking hands and their hands are blurry, but they aren't! :)


We've been going swimming a lot already this summer! Over the weekend we took them to the public pool here b/c they have a cool water area for small kids with a slide, tunnel, water fountains, etc. Anyways, it was kinda cold, but they both seemed to have a good time!


Anna continues to require to be swaddled up like this to sleep or else she wakes herself up rubbing her hands on her face. The other day, I came over when she woke up and this is how I found her....with one little fist peeking out!

Almost as soon as she saw me, she gave me a big grin!

I'll go ahead and admit my bad Momma moment, that when Benjamin and Anna first make noises and I know they are waking up from their nap, I cringe a little bit. I usually work really hard to get their naps to sync up at least for a little while and that is my only time during the day to myself. So, I'm a little sad that it's over. The great thing though is that they quickly change my mind! When Benjamin wakes up, he comes out to the living room, gives me a smile and a "Hi Momma!", and then runs up to me a gives me a huge hug that usually lasts 5+ minutes! Needless to say, my heart overfills! :) And Anna is so sweet too! She almost always wakes up really quietly and just looks around and tries to sit up. She just has a blank stare on her face and then as soon as I come to get her and start talking to her she gives me so many huge wonderful smiles!!!

Well I'm off to go play with Benjamin while Anna's sleeping! I'm excited b/c we get to go meet Dave for lunch soon. I've been leaving everyday as soon as he gets home in the evening to go help with Vacation Bible School. I don't get back until close to 9:00 and by the time we get the kids to bed, we're both pretty exhausted and don't get to spend much time together! But let me tell you, keeping track of 15 three year-olds for three hours really makes me realize that these two aren't that tiring!!!! :) Be blessed!

Anna Talking

I thought some people would get a kick out of seeing my little cupcake on video. She's been really talking lately and it is so cute! I just added a playlist that plays songs on the blog, so you'll have to push pause on it to be able to hear the video and Anna's sweet voice! Enjoy!

New Car and Matching Outfits

Dave and I have been considering getting a mini-van lately as we don't seem to have room in our cars with the two kids. We borrowed Dave's mom's van for a few days and it sold us that we really wanted one. It's especially nice because we can sit back with Anna when she's upset. The past two weeks we have worn ourselves out driving all over and looking at different vans. We considered several different kinds, but I have been in love with the Nissan Quest for a couple years now. They are more expensive and it was looking like we wouldn't find one in our price range that had the options we wanted. This week I found one in Indy that I really liked and I called them and said what our max price could be and that I needed to know if they could come down to that before we drove over an hour to come see it with two small kids. Well it worked and they came down significantly! We drove and decided we loved, test drove it for a couple days, had it checked out by a mechanic here, and bought it yesterday! I'm so happy with our purchase and feel so fortunate to have gotten the vehicle we wanted! We're really looking forward to enjoying our new car and all the room we now have! Here's our new baby! :)

Benjamin really likes the new car and he enjoyed test-driving all the cars. He would say "drive more big cars" and "take this car home" when we went to see each car! Anna seems to really enjoy the ride of a van better too!

A cool feature of the car is that there is a sun roof in the front and then these four windows in the roof in the back of the car. The car has so much room and all of the back seats fold down into the floor.

Onto some cuter pictures! :) I put Benjamin and Anna in matching outfits a couple days ago. They were too cute! And Benjamin actually enjoyed having me take their pictures. He kept crying when I stopped, so I ended up with like 50 pictures!

Benjamin really likes to rub Anna's head!

She loves watching her big brother!

Benjamin pointing out their matching boats!

I feel so incredibly blessed and happy to have these two healthy, sweet, beautiful kids!

So precious!

Anna got fussy, but Benjamin still wanted me to keep taking his picture...so the last 15 pictures or so are just of him. He's such a ham!

Finally, Benjamin has really been enjoying the rocking chair we have recently. It was in the nursery, but I moved it out while I was painting. He sits in it everyday and really liked it when he sits in his rocking chair and Dave or I sit in the big rocking chair! The reason I think this is so cute is because this rocking chair was mine when I was a little girl!

Urgent Prayer Request

Hi everyone. I'm posting to ask you to please take a moment and pray. Dave's college roomate and his wife really need your prayers. Lindsay is 18 weeks pregnant and at risk of losing her baby. I ask that you please take some time today and pray for them, that God would give them a miracle and allow her pregnancy to continue so that her little one can live and Mike and Lindsay and their daughter can know this life that God created. If that is not God's will, please pray for comfort and peace for their hearts and that God would be glorified through all of this. If you want to know more, you can visit their website at http://www.not2us.net/ . Thank you for your time and prayers. May all glory be to God.

Andee

Anna's Baptism/First Father's Day

We had a wonderful day yesterday! The baptism was really great and we had a fun time with our families. Thank you to everyone who drove up to celebrate with us. Especially thank you to our Dads and Jimmy who spent their Father's Day with us!

The night before we were giving the kids their baths and I decided to try putting Anna in with Benjamin. To my surprise Benjamin was okay with it and enjoyed playing with her! Anna of course had fun because she got to watch her big brother which is one of her absolute favorite activities! :)

All clean and snuggled up and ready for bed!

Night! Night!

Our pastor did a wonderful job and it was a really special moment!

Our little sweetheart! She was so good and just fell asleep in my arms during church and never cried (not even when she got all wet)! My mom mentioned to me that Anna was the only one that made it through the whole service out of 4 little ones!

Our sweet family!! We are so very blessed!

All the cousins on Dave's side!

Time to eat!!!!!

The two sweet little babies!


Anna and Kayla enjoying some Grandpa time!

I really loved Anna's pretty dress!

I changed them into some matching shirts that say "I'm the Big Brother/Little Sister". They were pretty cute together!

Happy Father's Day to the best Dad I could ever ask for my kids to have! Love you Dave! (Benjamin's saying the Day in "Happy Father's Day" in this picture!)

Dave and Anna on their first Father's Day together! There was a beautiful sunset to end our wonderful day! By the time I got the camera it had already started to disappear, but just take my word for it that it was amazing....just like our day!

Flooded Out

We went down to New Albany to go swimming in my parents new pool and to go to my cousin's graduation party and ended up having to stay longer than we had planned. I don't know if you heard, but we had an incredible amount of rain and ended up getting some major flooding in our town. We left about 4 hours before we wouldn't have been able to get out of our town and that's with us using back roads to travel because the road outside our neighborhood was flooded already. Our house never got touched thankfully, but many people weren't as fortunate. Dave's factory had some major flooding and his office had 7 feet of water in it. He lost all of the things he had in there, but he says there wasn't anything that was too important. Lots of people however had major flooding and have lost cars and spent the week tearing out carpet and dry wall. If you travel around some areas of town each house just has a huge pile of damaged furniture, carpeting, walls, etc. Today there were tons of huge dump trucks just going around trying to pick it all up. It's a pretty big disaster for our town. It's especially bad, because lots of people didn't have flood insurance and are facing considerable financial loss. Our hospital had millions of dollars worth of damage and is closed for several months. A man also died trying to drive through the water. I am including all of this information because I ask that you pray for our community. Pray for people affected by this, that they get through this and that our community continues to support one another. And praise God for all the miracles that come from this! Thanks! Following are some recent pictures from the past week....

Anna in her bathing suit for the first time!


The hat really completes the ensemble!


Ready to get in!!!! Kudos to me for being brave enough to show a picture of me in my bathing suit 3 months post-baby!!! :) I couldn't believe it, but Anna really seemed to enjoy the water. She never cried or seemed upset about being in the water and just stared down at the water the whole time! I'm telling you, she is such a sweet and laid back baby! The only things that seem to bother her are being in her car seat for very long and having the sun in her face! We are SO blessed!


Benjamin had a blast! I don't really think this is a good thing, but he was completely fearless! He didn't hesitate to get in and just walked right into the water whether you were there to hold his hand or not! This made for a stressed out Momma, so I ended up getting him some water wings and it made me feel a lot better! It's amazing how fast these kiddos change...last year he got so upset if you barely moved him away from your body he was that clingy! I'm pleased that he isn't afraid of the water and is able to have fun! But if you're ever playing with him in the water, please do my poor heart a favor and keep a VERY close eye on him! :) Jumping in.....

My mom got Anna a new bouncy/activity seat thingy and she seems to really like it! She is getting really good at holding her head up and is always trying to pull herself up to a sitting position, so we felt she was ready! She's a little too short though to reach the ground, but she still enjoys herself!

I'm worried that my little cupcake is already teething. She has her hands in her mouth all the time and is drooling quite a bit! She has had little white spots in her gums where her teeth should come up since birth, so I think she might be an early teeth getter. And while I'm on the subject...I don't think it's wise to criticize how God created us....but I have to say, I don't know what He was thinking when he decided to have poor babies have their teeth break through their gums only to have them fall out a few short years later. It seems like the most cruel thing and I really think it's my least favorite part about having a baby. It just breaks my heart to see them suffering. Poor Benjamin is getting his last tooth (thankfully) and he just got one other and they are his top back molars and they have given him quite a time! He has never been the typical kid to put stuff in his mouth. But with these teeth he bites down so hard on random things all the time and I often find him gagging himself because he's trying to get his hand back far enough to sooth himself. Seriously! This teething thing is ridiculous! Sorry God! (And sorry to all of you for my rant!)

Benjamin got a new toy that is a magnet to the fridge and you put two animal pieces in and it tells you about the animal and sings a little song. Well my little stinker has figured out that it's much more fun to get it wrong and put two different animals together because it sings a goofy song instead and at the end says "that's silly!" Which I don't know if any of you know it, but that is one of his all time favorite phrases! Here he is, tickled with his handy-work!

Here's a funny picture of Anna chilling out on the boppy in what I refer to as a milk coma! :) She just laid there completely still for about 15 minutes alternating between having her eyes closed and open and giving me a blank stare or a smile! Oh, the simple joys of parenthood....you find the silliest things make you happy!

And then some paci time....still just chillin out though! Seriously, this girl could not be more laid back! And honestly, I don't know how I took care of Benjamin now without a paci. They are THE greatest things ever! I often say, it's more important that you leave the house with a paci (or two) than a diaper! :)

Sorry, I realize that was a long post and that I went on and on. What can I say, I like to share about my two sweethearts! :)

We are having Anna baptized on Sunday. Pray that its a wonderful service and a spiritual experience, that we all take our promises seriously and commit ourselves to raising Anna with our faith in Jesus and that we do all that we can to give her a life where she is able to love God and put all her faith in him!

Thank you for your time and prayers! I'm praying for all of you as well. I pray that you are close to God, that you make time for Him each day and that you allow the love He so freely gives to each of us to fill your heart and lead you lives. I pray that you turn to Him in times of sadness and in times of joy. I pray that you realize that Jesus it the greatest gift you will ever receive and that you give your life to Him! I pray that your lives are filled with joy and contentment. I pray that we all realize how truly blessed we are!

God Bless,

Andee