brief update

Sorry I have been cyber silent for a while we've been focusing on our little family lately and trying to set good habits for this new year. Silencing the phone's more, cutting back on screen time, spending more time as a couple. It's been a good thing but attempting to keep up on things outside our household while balancing healthy family time hasn't quite evened out yet.

Jared took a trip to New York a week ago and surprisingly it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Both girls were awesome and let me get enough sleep and were reasonable about shared mom time. Addiston enjoyed calling her daddy and now feels she has to call him whenever she simply wants to say hi, which I'm sure doesn't distract him from work at all.

The main reason I wanted to update is for Isabella's sake. She is doing great developmentally; sitting on her own, inchworm crawling, babbling, teething, holding objects and grabbing things away from her big sister left and right. However, she is tiny as can be. She hasn't grown since her 4 month check-up and the doctor is getting worried about her. She was in the 50% when she was born and although she has grown it has been at a decreasing rate and she is currently in the 1%. She has little to no interest in eating cereal or other into solid foods. I offer at least 3 times a day and usually she'll take one bite and then refuse. We've taken to mixing rice cereal in a bottle simply to boost her calorie intake. I'm trying to stay positive and keep doing what the doctor recommended, but I feel a slight sense of responsibility since she has been solely breastfed until now. Luckily we have an amazing church family who have already begun lifting her in prayer and encouraging us, if you would join us in this know that it would be appreciated. We go back to the doctor in 3 weeks to see if she has gained anything and if not we do a blood panel and perhaps more medical testing if necessary.

So far we as a family have avoided sickness and this nasty flu season we seem to be having, hopefully that trend continues. Potty training is still a present practice in our house but honestly it has been on the back burner in my mind with all things Isabella considered.

Hymnal

Have you seen the craziness of MTV "My super sweet 16" ? If you haven't, don't bother, I'll break it down for you, the most insane blow out parties imaginable, for a 16 year old, live music, entertainment, 6 figure bills, usually culminating in a brand new car (Sometimes 2) pretty much your wildest dreams for what could be your sweet 16-on crack. 

My sweet 16 was no where near that! It was my family and maybe a few friends at my house eating taco's and cake. There was no blow out bash, the only singing that was done was in the slightly skewed harmony of my siblings and the echo of my mom's (and many more) I honestly don't remember what my parent's got me-I know it wasn't a car! But I do remember that my grandmother got me a hymnal. A purse size black leather gold imprinted, Nazarene hymnal. Let me tell you how thrilled I was....I wasn't. It went into a box that night and has been systematically moved from the top of my closet at my parent's house, to their attic, to my college dorm room, (where I'm pretty sure it leveled out my computer monitor when it was a bit precarious) to our apartment and now it resides on the top shelf of our tallest bookcase in the den. 

Tonight Jared took both girls into Addiston's room to read stories before bedtime so that I could finish up my bible study for tomorrow. After Addy was down Isabella got a little fussy so he took her back to our room to try and calm her down until I was finished, about 12 second later she was in a full on fit and I went back to rescue my mama's girl (you know I love it) A minute-maybe 2 later I came out to the kitchen holding a limp, sleep coma baby, and Jared made the that's-not-fair face. I told him the girl just likes hymns, you gotta bust out the old stuff to which he chuckled because there are many things that man can do but he can't carry a tune in a bucket. 

With a sweaty baby still laying across my chest I went downstairs and carefully got that dusty hymnal off the top shelf of that bookshelf down in the den because I was not going to be able to sleep tonight if I couldn't remember the second verse of "Love Lifted Me" which happens to be some sort of hypnotic trans inducing melody for our babe! Grandma would be proud!

So I finished the song-for good measure -even though she was out, swaddled her and now she resides in our bed, because well I'm just not ready to kick her out into her own room-but that's another story for a different night! 

We Wish you a Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year

Well we made it to 2013!

I feel like 2012 was a blur of craziness getting us here, but we had an amazing year. The high point obviously being adding Isabella to the family.

Christmas was good! We traveled to Cincinnati,  the girls (mainly Addiston) fully embraced the opening presents excitement! pictures:









Christmas eve was spent at my grandmother's house Christmas day at my parents. Jared's parents usually come down the week between Christmas and New Years but his Dad got sick so they opted to skip Christmas this year.




We got a picture of my whole family, I know we're huge!




We did all of the traditional holiday festivities. Cinnamon roll breakfast, lights at opry hotel, and Addiston even got to play with a little bit of snow-and when I say little-bit I mean about the size of her palm and then it melted! Oh and ya know, my oldest brother joined the next generation!






Sorry Tim-I was dared!

New Years was rung in at home with Chinese food and "It's a Wonderful Life" The girls stayed up and did surprisingly well. We pretended 11pm was midnight since we're both from Eastern time zone and watched the ball drop live.

We had the traditional Kielbasa and Saurkraut on New Years Day accompanied by black eyed peas since we live in the south now.

Life has finally settled down, we've put the luggage away till Easter and are in the process of getting the house back in order and catching up on laundry. Both of which were put on hiatus when I started a small fire in the kitchen last night and got to fulfill my lifelong dream of using a fire extinguisher. For those of you who haven't gotten the thrill, the ten seconds of blast aren't worth the 6+ hours of white powder clean up!!

In other news Isabella has started eating cereal and by eat I mean make a funny face when it enters her mouth and then spits it out.


And Yes! Her bib does say "my mom is hotter than your mom"