googly-gurk

caroline is learning and practicing the prosody of the english language, which ironically results in speech that sounds very far from english! this stage is really fun for me because it's a cute little glimpse into what her voice sounds like. (the voice that will probably never turn itself off again!!) in this video, you will see her watching cars drive by our house. for about 3 minutes before i began recording, she yelled the same little bit of gibberish at every car that passed. she was having a good ole' time!


she is also really into animal sounds, as you can see on the video. anything with big teeth gets a big growl, but she has refined her dog, cat, and monkey sounds. :) she loves sleeping with her sock monkey (thanks, heather!!) and exclaims "ooooh ooooh!" if i forget to give it to her.

(side note: the sock monkey is the first thing that resembles a bedtime obsession object for either of my children. but the first night i gave it to her to sleep with, she slept 13 1/2 hours without one single peep. i honestly doubt that the sock monkey had anything to do with that wonderful night of incredibly long sleeping for my 10-hour-tops child, but i give it to her now more out of celebration of that night! haha! but it is one soft little monkey!)

we are having so much fun with caroline right now. she is really into yelling "dadadadadada!" a hundred times when she sees brian, which i'm sure does his daddy's heart good. i hesitate to say this, but i think she is back to normal as far as teething goes. she is sleeping so much better at night, though she thinks her day is supposed to start at 5:30.....we're working on nipping that one in the bud! she is back to eating pretty much whatever we put in front of her, which makes my days so much easier!! i'm sure that is contributing to the sleeping better as well. she is on her way to dropping her morning nap, though she still needs it most days right now. i'm excited to think about this summer when she can be out at the beach or the pool in the mornings without a need-a-nap-meltdown! fun fun fun!

i can't believe she is almost as old as ethan was when she was born!

find 50 minutes and watch this video!

we just got home from church, and i just have to share the message we heard tonite. wow! what a blessing!

titled the supremacy of Christ and truth in a postmodern world, it is about 50 minutes long and is one message from the 2006 national desiring God conference. the speaker, voddie baucham, is very well-spoken and incredibly engaging. in this message, he contrasts the Christian worldview with the secular humanistic worldview, and he explains how the differing worldviews answer the following questions:

-who am i?
-why am i here?
-what is wrong with the world?
-how can what is wrong be made right?

good, good stuff! i did not want his message to be over!

so put the kids to bed, curl up in a blanket by the fire, turn your Bible to colossians 1, click the picture above, and prepare to be moved.

father knows best

i love the little "daddy" things that brian does with the kids that i would never think of. like apple fries. when ethan decided a long time ago that he wanted french fries instead of apple one day, brian said, "well i have apple fries!"... and he sliced apple in the shape of little french fries. voila! the apple disappeared into my son's body instantly. we haven't had to pull out the apple fries bit for a while, but brian introduced them to caroline this week and it was amazing all over again. instead of apple all over the floor (which was the case 10 minutes prior to the caroline-apple-fries-debut), she devoured the whole apple!

my other favorite daddy thing is the way brian dries ethan's hands after washing them. he puts the hand towel over ethan's hands and then beats them all together (beats in a gentle sense)... and it sounds like a helicopter. which, of course, makes my son's day! now on most days, i am helping ethan wash his hands more often than brian, and he always says, "do the helicopter, mommy". and i will admit that my helicopter is just not up to par with daddy's. mine sounds more like a helicopter out of fuel landing in the middle of a golf course or something. but ethan keeps asking, and i keep trying. and i usually comment that i just can't do it like daddy can.

well, the other day, ethan was standing on a chair to wash his hands at the kitchen sink, and after my helicopter crashed and burned, ethan looked me straight in the eye and said...

"probably you should be daddy!"

oh brian, you are needed more than you know! :)

does your family have any favorite "daddy things"?

a valentine for you...

a quick valentine's blessing for you all today! the kids wanted to say hi, and caroline wanted to show you that she is wearing her brother's shirt from when he was half her age. (i think he weighed more at 7 mos. than she does at 15 months! who'd have guessed that when she started out at 9 lbs?!) we hope you've had a wonderful day today. ethan went to his first valentine's party at mops today, and he could not wait to take his lightning mcqueen & to-mater valentines to mops! i struggled with the whole consumerism idea of valentine's day vs. sharing the gospel and the TRUE LOVE of God...yet i really needed ethan to finally get excited about going to mops! so i gave in and bought the cars valentines and then wrote 1 john 4:19 on the back of all of them. :) so hopefully that will be a blessing to the moms of the kids in ethan's class.

my sweet friend autumn shared an incredibly encouraging message about truly loving our husbands based on the book created to be his helpmeet. i think we were almost all in tears as she shared how the Lord used this book to turn her marriage right-side-up. she encouraged us that we can change our marriage...not by changing our husbands but by humbly changing our actions and attitudes based on the Word of God. the first thing that she had us do was to make a list of 5 things that we wanted to change about our marriage... and then she said, "if any of those 5 are things that you want your husband to change, cross them off!" that was an eyeopening exercise for a lot of us, i think! i own this book, and listening to autumn today made me realize that i need to read it again. autumn shared my favorite quote from the book..."you are not your husband's Holy Spirit!" think about that one for awhile...that is a good one, my friends!! i want to share more but it is naptime, and i feel like i am rambling. aaaaaaand i need to be rested for my valentine's day date tonite!! i highly recommend this book, but be prepared to be convicted!

here's one more picture of my crazy little girl...


...and here's her brother who was pretty busy with his valentines inventory!



remember that we love because He first loved us! (1 john 4:19)
happy valentine's day!

the blog must go on...

so i'm pretty hesitant to post a picture on here EVER AGAIN after sharing hope's awesome photography... my photos will PALE in comparison to hers, but life must go on, and we all know that i really can't keep from blogging for very long. :) i was laughing at myself the other day because i was taking a bunch of pictures of caroline in the backyard. i was thinking, "why in the world am i even trying this? hope has done this job for me!" but of course, i continued to take pictures. i don't know how to be any other kind of mom than the kind with a camera pasted to her forehead!! :) so never fear... the photo sharing will continue. just not at the same caliber as the last 2 posts... and then when i get the proofs back from hope, the awesome photo posting will resume for a brief time. :)