The Front Door

Yesterday, I went up stairs to put some clothes away in Allan and my closet. Timothy was playing contentedly downstairs with his blocks. I could hear him talking about how he was building houses and he even came upstairs twice to show me a picture on a couple of the blocks. I was only upstairs for 5 or 10 minutes putting the clothes away. When I came downstairs I saw he had built a town in the family room and was working on building a new house in the living room. That's when he said "I need more blocks," and proceeded to open the front door and the metal screen door and run out to the christmas deer we have in our front yard. The whole 20 seconds this took, I am telling him "we're not going to go outside right now, the blocks are inside." That's when I notice him trying to pull a block out of his block bag which was sitting next to the deer in the yard. I hadn't even known he had gone outside! Thank goodness he hadn't tried to cross the street on his own to play at the park or something like that. We do live on a quiet street in the back of our subdivision where only people who live back here and the ice cream man pass by, but still a very scary realization. Moral of the story? Keep the bolt locks, locked!

On another note, Timothy has a new bed. Well... not really a new bed. When I put him down for his nap now, I can't get him to sleep in his bed. When I leave the room, he takes his stuffed animals, goes into the closet, shuts the door, and uses his stuffed animals as pillows. Silly little guy.

Wishing for a stoplight

Typically, when I am driving I am in a big hurry to get wherever it is I am going. Getting out the door with both of the kids takes longer than it used to with just Timothy, so I find myself ending up in more of a rush. I'm getting more and more used to it and planning it better, but it still happens. I end up in a rush and I just hope as I'm driving that I get lucky enough to hit all the green lights. Even when I'm not in a hurry to get somewhere I find myself hoping to hit all of the green lights because it's just no fun stopping at red lights.

Today, we were driving home from somewhere and Timothy was way past due for his nap. When he's excessively tired it takes him about 5 or 10 minutes of fussing in the car to get himself to sleep. Melanie was a trooper through the fussing, then within about a minute of Timothy falling asleep, it was Melanie's turn. Her binky was lying somewhere in the abyss of baby seat, and I was just pleading in my mind for her to not wake up her brother who had just fallen asleep. Then, I found myself passing each green light I went through just hoping and hoping one of them would turn red! I needed a red light so I could do the special mommy maneuver of snatching her binky out of the abyss and slyly placing it back in her mouth before Timothy even knew she was crying. I passed green light after green light and had no such luck. It was getting to the point where I really had no choice. I wanted to avoid a rude awakening with Timothy and Melanie's fussing was just stressing me out. So, I did the mommy maneuver while driving. It's not an easy maneuver to do in the first place, but trying to stay between the lines while driving makes it even harder. Good thing I am well coordinated. I bet you thought the story was going to end with me getting into a fender bender or something like that... :o) Sorry to disappoint, but I pulled it off.... this time.

OK. So I tell myself like at least once a week I need to blog more. Especially since the last time I blogged was when Melanie was born. So, I am going to blog today.

Today when I put Timothy down for his nap, he don't go straight down. I fed Melanie and spent some time playing with her and when I came out of my room, I heard him talking. That was about an hour after I put him down for his nap. I have learned over time though, that I can't go in there after I put him down, or he really won't go to sleep. So, I just ignored the talking and let him do what he does.Later, when I went to go wake him up from his nap, this is what I found at his doorway entry.

In his room, I found an even bigger mess. He had gotten into both of his book drawers. The bottom drawer holds all of his board books and the top drawer hold his paperback and pop-ups. I was trying to keep the paperbacks and pop-ups out of his reach so they wouldn't get ruined. Fortunately he didn't decide to tear any of the pop-ups of the page or anything.

And, this is how I found him when I looked at his bed...

The part I thought was kind of funny is that he gave his 3 bears a nice cushy spot on the pillow and he used books for his pillow. He's a silly kid and he has always loved his books!

On another note, here are a couple of pictures I took of Melanie today. She's 12 week old.

Melanie Brooke Merrell was born at 7:23 AM on July 13, 2009. She weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces and was 19 and ¼ inches long. Here’s the story. It was Sunday morning and we were going about our Sunday as usual with Allan preparing to go to his meetings before church since he is the Executive Secretary. We had spent some time debating whether we should go up to Phoenix for our Nephew, Nathan’s blessing which was taking place at church that morning. After pondering it for some time, we decided it would be best for Allan to stay home instead of going since that was our gut feeling about it. Around 10:00 AM, I started feeling my first contractions that seemed to be something more than Braxton Hicks. I told Allan to go ahead and go to his meetings since even if I was in labor, it was going to be a while before we needed to go to the hospital and before the contractions became regular. Boy was I right! Timothy and I got ready to go to church and headed over. It was during Sacrament meeting that I started to think I was in more than just false labor as I watched the clock and was having contractions regularly every 10 minutes. We were sitting in the pews with me watching the clock, Timothy in his umbrella stroller and Allan on the end of the isle when one of the older Sisters in the ward collapsed right by us and Allan jumped up to help keep her from falling to the ground. She had momentarily passed out and the 3 gentleman who caught her, including Allan, walked her out into the foyer supporting her weight. I felt a need to help because I am a wilderness first responder and I wasn’t sure what kind of medical professionals there were in our ward. Fortunately, because it was Johnny Elidge’s mission fairwell that day, there was a doctor from Safford attending our sacrament meeting. He spoke to the woman while I kept records, citing things such as her Dr., what medications she was on, allergies, chief complaints, vitals, etc. Her pulse had dropped down to 40 which is what caused her to pass out. The EMT’s came and took her to the hospital and since Sacrament was nearly over and Allan and I had already decided we were only going to stay for sacrament, we came home. On a side note, I later found out that the woman received a pacemaker and is doing just fine now. When we got home and the contractions were still coming fairly regularly around 10 minutes apart, we decided to go for a walk to try to move things along. Hours later, we decided to take another walk while my mom looked after Timothy for us. Things were just not progressing and my contractions were stuck at around 10 minutes apart so I started to wonder if it really was just false labor. Night fell and around 8:00 I decided to get some rest and went to bed. Three hours later, at 11:00 I couldn’t sleep anymore because the contractions had become more painful. I got out of bed and we began timing the contractions. They were starting to get closer together ranging in space from 4 minutes to 14 minutes apart. Around 12:30 pm we decided it was real labor and because they were getting quite painful and closer together. We prepared to go to the hospital and called my mom to have her come down from Westward Look Resort to take care of Timothy for us. We got our bags together, packed the car, gave my mom the car seat for Timothy and made her a little bed on the couch and headed off to the hospital unsure of whether we would be admitted or not. When we got there, the nurses checked me and I was 5 cm dilated and 60 percent effaced so they admitted me. They gave me an IV to pump some fluids in me in an effort to perk the baby up and move things along. After about an hour, they unhooked me and let me move around freely for a while. We decided we’d watch the second Harry Potter film to try to help entertain ourselves while we waited for Melanie’s debut. I sat on a birthing ball bouncing and rocking as the contractions got stronger and stronger. Allan massaged my back when they came and offered a great deal of support. Later on they hooked me back up to monitoring and the IV for a while, then I came back off, then they decided it was time to check me again. After I laid down on the bed, I could not get back up because the contractions were so unbelievably painful! I was at about 7 cm and moving into transition. I labored into transition for a couple of hours before I began pleading for an epidural. When they put in the order, the anesthesiologist was giving someone else an epidural and I had to wait 45 minutes. I have never felt such excruciating pain in my life. I was just begging and pleading for the pain to go away and asking Allan and the nurse over and over again “why does labor have to be this painful!?” Allan did his best to help me and Dr. Coppola arrived. Shortly after Dr. Coppola arrived, they gave me the epidural, even though I was between an 8 and 9, then they popped my bag of waters and I labored on. I watched the screen contentedly and comfortably as the contractions grew closer together and stronger. I could still feel them, but it was bearable. About 45 minutes after receiving the epidural, I let the nurse know I was starting to feel some pressure and it was time to push! After about 4 pushing sessions, her head started coming out. The pain from that was different than the contractions. It stung really bad and Dr. Coppola was working hard to make sure I didn’t tear this time so there were periods where I had to stop pushing and wait while things stretched out. Dr. Coppola said, “I can see hair. Lots of black hair!” I pushed on and soon, at 7:23 AM, she was out! They put her straight onto my chest and sucked her mouth out with her right there before my eyes. They wrapped her in a blanket and let me nurse her for quite a while. It was a really great nursing session! I was so happy to have my baby here and she was gorgeous and healthy! After I nursed her for a while, they cleaned her up and put her hat on, etc. Then, they let us take some pictures and left us for a while so we could bond. Allan and I looked at her and tried to decide what her name was. We had a fairly extensive list of names that could have been possibilities. Our favorite going into the delivery was Ella Brooke. Some of the others were Ella Faith, Ella Hope, Ella Joy, Acacia Renee, Eliza Renee, Emma, Hannah, and Hayden. We spent some time pondering what we thought we should call her and we both decided that none of the names fit! Then, the name Melanie Brooke popped into Allan’s head and it fit her perfect! So, we were pretty sure that was what we were going to call her, but hadn’t decided 100% yet. After a while they took baby girl to the nursery and Allan went with them to make sure they didn’t give her any binky’s or formula and just to watch. I got some much needed rest, wrote in the baby book, and waited for them to bring my baby back to me. Allan came into the room slightly ahead of the baby so we could discuss the name briefly and we decided we would call her Melanie Brooke Merrell. Timothy, my mom, dad, and Justin all came to visit her briefly. Timothy’s first reaction to Melanie was “baby!” I don’t think he fully realized that Melanie was actually going to be coming home with us. He looked at her, touched her hands, pointed out her body parts, and then decided to run around the hospital room. I do think that he realized that Melanie was the baby we had been talking about that was in mommy’s belly and now she wasn't anymore. After the brief visit, everyone left including Allan so he could take care of Timothy through the night. Melanie and I spent 24 precious hours in the hospital bonding, nursing, and sleeping and were released from the hospital the morning of July 14th around 10:00 AM. My dad got into town the night of the 13th, so he and my mom were looking after Timothy for us when Allan came to pick me up from the hospital. When we got home, we reintroduced Melanie to Timothy. The first thing he did was run to his toy bin and grab one of his waffle balls and put it on Melanie’s lap while she was in her car seat. We thought it was so cute because we have been reading him a book about becoming a big brother and at the end of the book the big brother plays with a ball with baby. He put two and two together and when we brought her home, he wanted to play ball with her. After we told him that she is too little to play ball, he started to point out all of her body parts again. His first reaction to her was very sweet. Between then and now, he has been off and on with her. Sometimes he’s very sweet and loves to give her kisses, and let her hold his hand with her fingers. One time when I was nursing her in the living room, he hit her on the head with his hand though. It was soft and didn’t hurt her, but still un-nerving. I know it will be an adjustment process for him. It has been great having family around to help entertain him and help him have fun during the adjustment phase. We’ve had Melanie home for 6 days now. Physically, my recovery has been very smooth, but I am having a little bit of a harder time handling it emotionally. I am somewhat overwhelmed with the responsibility of being a mother of two. I love both Timothy and Melanie with all of my heart. It wouldn’t be humanly possible to love them more. I want to be a good mother for them and to teach them good things. I know it is my responsibility to do that. I’m a bit anxious because tomorrow Allan has his first day of work and I’m frightened to have that responsibility be mine alone. It’s difficult to nurse Melanie and keep Timothy entertained at the same time. I always feel like I am neglecting one of the children. Since Melanie will only sleep if she is being held, it limits my ability to interact with Timothy as regularly as I’d like to and also my ability to lovingly discipline him when it is necessary. If I try to just put Melanie to bed, she ends up crying and I think she’s too young to cry it out. So, a lot of the time I feel like I’m doing something wrong even though I’m doing my best. I know that we will adjust over time and I hope that with Heavenly Father’s guidance I can recover my emotional strength. One thing I always try to remind myself is that I need to enjoy every moment I can. That is something I have been struggling with since bringing Melanie home, but it is so important. Timothy is no longer my baby. He turns 2 on August 6th. He speaks in sentences now and is an active, rambunctious, climbing, running, jumping little boy. The time has really flown by unbelievably fast since he was a baby. I need to enjoy him in his toddlerhood and I need to enjoy Melanie in her babyhood because the time will vanish into the past shortly. I want to try to be happy and not sweat the small stuff so I can look back with no regrets and with happy memories of loving moments. I need to move forward with confidence and remember that one thing my children will always have is a knowledge of how loved they are.

Quick Post

No birthing story yet! I can hardly catch a minute to myself and when I do, all I want to do is sleep! :o) But, a quick funny story. This morning I was saying prayers with Timothy to bless his food. Here is how his prayer went: "Heavenly Father, please bless this tractor. In the name of Timmy, Amen." It was quite funny.

4th of July weekend in short

We headed out to Casa Grande to be with the family on 4th of July. We were really excited about having a nice central meeting place where we wouldn't have to worry if I went into labor and we could make it a nice day trip. It was great to see the family and Timothy had an especially fun time playing with his Cousins, Ashley, Travis, and Ava as well as their 3 dogs and the 2 puppies they were fostering. We went to the community pool which was a lot of fun and had a yummy dinner. Then, we packed up into the car with Timothy, Ashley, and Travis (we were bringing Ash and Travis back to Tucson to their mom's house). We got about a mile when we noticed the engine temperature was well beyond normal. In fact, it was as hot as it could get with only a mile of driving! We knew we couldn't drive home because we'd end up destroying our car, having an engine fire, or getting stranded at night in the middle of nowhere. So, we called Glenn (Allan's brother up) and had him come help us. We tried adding antifreeze thinking maybe the fluid was low and low and behold, it was leaking out of the car! There was a broken hose. In addition, Glenn helped us figure out that the thermostat wasn't working properly. Both the broken hose and the thermostat were to be a nice, easy fix that Glenn and Allan would work on the next day. While rather uncomfortable with the situation less than a week away from the babies due date, I was glad to be with family and heading home the next day. After a night of no sleep and Timothy waking up in the middle the night, Allan and Glenn headed out to work on the car. They got the parts which we were thrilled only cost around $20.00, replaced the hose like the cinche it was supposed to be, broke a bolt while taking the thermostat off, no big deal because we could just replace it when we got home. Then... broke a bolt while putting it back on! Big deal! Car no longer safe to drive. It being a Sunday, no shops were open and we were stuck in Casa Grande another night! At this point, I was starting to panic a little and was feeling rather exhausted after chasing Timothy around for 2 days in a house without childproofing, running on no sleep, and being near the due date of the baby. Timothy was running on high energy the whole time. How, I do not know! He did not have a nap because when we tried to put him down in the pack n' play in his cousin Ava's room, he climbed out of the playpen and proceeded to empty all of her drawers and pull out all of her toys! The girl's went up to get their swimsuits and quietly opened the door expecting to find a sleeping baby, but were greeted by an enthusiastic "mess!" coming out of Timothy's mouth. And, a mess he had certainly made. When day 2 rolled around, we decided to try putting him down in his Cousin Travis' room where there were no toys he could get into anywhere except in the closet and we didn't think it would be a problem since he's never really gotten into the closet before. Sure enough, I go in there about an hour after putting him down because he was fussing and find him in his playpen with pretty much all of Travis' stuffed animals. I guess he had climbed out and then climbed back in? He also emptied a couple of drawers and poured a bunch of legos out. Thank goodness he didn't try to eat any! Day 3 rolled around and we got up bright and early to make sure we were the first ones at the shop. When we dropped the car off, they told us that tapping out the old, broken bolts and replacing them would be an easy job and would only take a half an hour. Thrilled, we headed out to browse some stores while waiting. An hour later, we headed back and were told it would take another hour. Over 6 hours later, Allan called and they finally said they had it done! I was so happy to be heading home. We drove home without incident and arrived to a toilet of a living room. Literally. The dogs had gotten through the baby gate and used it as their litter box while we were gone. I don't blame them. I expected to come home to a mess, especially since they are clever enough to get into their dog food when they are exceptionally hungry. The sad part was that they unintentionally terrorized the bird for 3 days as a bird in a cage, in the same room as dogs feels constantly hunted. When I put the bird on my finger it was so weak it could hardly step up and probably hadn't slept in quite some time. I don't know if I could sleep with the reak of urine and dog poop and some giant carnivores bread and specially trained to hunt my species lurking around. It sounds like some crazy horror film. The poor bird! After a few hours, it was back to normal and now, a few days later, life is back to normal. I lived, the baby wasn't born, the car got fixed, and life goes on!

Timothy's Antics of the Day

Story #1: I'm not in Relief Society since I spend my Sunday's in the nursery. But, at the end of church today, Shelly was nice enough to bring us nursery folk the little treat that Sister Cooper made for everyone. It was a perscription bottle, filled with jelly bellies. On the way out to the car, I handed the bottle to Timothy as I was talking to some friends. I parked his stroller next to the trunk of the car and chatted with my friends, then when I was through, I noticed he didn't have the bottle anymore. I put him in the car, got the stroller in the trunk and all that jazz and proceeded to look around all over the ground trying to find the bottle. I couldn't find it anywhere and was about to give up when some other friends drove up and asked if everything was ok. I said, "yes, but I think Timothy dropped that pill bottle around here somewhere." They looked at me smiling and said "it's in your exhaust pipe, I can see it." My mischievous little man had slyly hidden it in there. It wasn't just like he set it in there, it was a good ways down there. So, we all tried to get it out and with our luck ended up pushing it even further down there. Eventually, we resorted to parking the car uphill and breaking a plastic hanger we happend to have in our trunk to pull it out. It worked! No more jelly belly pill bottle stuck in the exhaust pipe! :o)

Story #2: Timothy has a tendency to start throwing food once he gets full when we're at the dinner table. Well, tonight he started throwing food right away when we put it down in front of him, so we took it away. He started fussing and we asked him if he wanted some of the cheese. He said "no." Then we asked him if he wanted some of the tortilla and he said "no." So, we asked him if he wanted some beans and he said "no." At that point we started asking him random questions like if he wanted an elephant, or candy, or to be sad or happy, or any random question we could come up with. All of the answers were "no, no, no!" Finally I told him, "Timothy, I don't understand fussing, can you please speak with words?" He replied, "mess." At which point Allan said, "do you want to make a mess?" And he replied "yes!"

Smooth Bedtimes

I don't think there could have been a smoother bedtime than tonight. We brushed Timothy's teeth, and knelt down next to his bed for prayers. After we finished praying he asked to pray again and said the prayer himself. After an enthusiastic "Amen" he started to try to climb into his bed. Allan usually asks him if he wants to go to bed or read stories and he always wants to read stories. But, tonight we asked him if he wanted to go to bed and he said "yes." As he was trying to climb into his bed he said "help you" which really means "help me." So, we helped him get into bed and he layed down nicely and we told him we loved him and shut the light off on the way out. Can it get any smoother than that?

Cute and Graduation

Timothy was sitting down for breakfast and we were chatting. He was naming his relatives and things and I asked him "do you know you are cute?" And he said "yes!" Then about a half hour later I told him, "you are very cute." And he said, "uh-huh." I just thought that was kinda funny.

Allan graduated yesterday! What a happy day that was! He has worked so hard over the last couple of years to make it a reality. He's been attending school year-round and taking a lot of credits (this last semester he pulled off 22) to get it done. He's been staying up hours past when I fall asleep to get all of his homework done. And now he's made it! I am so proud of him. Graduation day is always the culmination of that hard work. Allan's parents came to town with Grandma Smith and took us to a light lunch. Then we dropped Timothy off with Jennifer Twyman. We were so thankful she was willing to look after him because that made it so we could enjoy the event and get all of the video and pictures we wanted without trying to keep him entertained. We found Allan in the crowd and he found us, which was cool. At the end he threw his hat and Allan's dad took us out to El Corral for dinner. It was a yummy dinner! The whole day was a lot of fun and full of excitement. We are thrilled that soon we will be able to move on to the next phase of our life when Allan starts his job with Sears Holding Corp. We feel that we have been significantly blessed all along the way as our needs have always been met and we've always been sustained.

Saying Prayers

Timothy said his first prayer this morning! It's amazing what an exciting moment that is. :o) We have been asking him for weeks if he wants to say the prayer and he never does. It's the typical repeat-after-me toddler prayer, but oh so cute! He finally decided it was time this morning when we were blessing his breakfast. He repeated nearly every single word and I was ecstatic! Yay for cute little toddler prayers.

Letter "W"

Today was our letter "W" playgroup. We finger painted watermelon's with the letter W and played in the water afterwards. We ate wheat thins, whale crackers, nilla waffers, orange wedges, and gummi worms! Good times with the playgroup.
We took Timothy to the dentist this morning. We were very relieved to find out that the marks that have been on his two front teeth since they grew in are not cavities! His teeth just grew in with a defect, possibly caused by all of the antibiotics they gave me while I was in labor with him. He did well at the dentist and was much better for her than he ever is for us when we try to brush his teeth at home. We endure kicking and crying most of the time when we try to brush his teeth and it's a two-person job now that he's so big too. He got a goody bay from the dentist that has a toothbrush, water bottle, some flouride free toothpaste samples, floss pick samples, and berry flavored floss. Plus he got a sticker. Yay for good pediatric dentists!

Reading at 21 months?

Timothy can officially read his first sightword. How on Earth, you might ask, can you tell that a toddler can actually read a word? Well, we were as suprised as anyone who might be reading this. We have a book we made for Timothy that has pictures of most of his relatives. It has the name of the person on a big white piece of paper and then below that it has a picture of the person. It starts with himself, which hillariously, when you ask him who he's looking at... he says "you." Because we always say "who is that? It's you isn't it?" So we're trying to teach him to call himself Timothy instead of "you" when he reads that book. Kinda funny.
The next pictures are of us (mommy and daddy). Then Jake and Chayse the dogs. After that, there is a page that says "poppy" but no picture because we have not yet printed a picture for my dad. Following that page are several more blank pages for Grammy, Grandma, Grandpa, Glenn, Jenn, Travis, Ashley, and Ava because we have not yet printed pictures for them either. Yesterday, when Allan was reading this book to him and he got to the page that said "poppy," he said "poppy!" We thought he must just have the order of the book memorized and knew that after Chayse was poppy. But, later on during the same day, Allan flipped straight to the page that said "poppy" but had no picture of poppy and he said "poppy." Our only conclusion from this experience is that Timothy can recognize the word and knows that it says poppy, thus making it his first sightword.

Funny moment in time

This morning I opened the door so we could go out to the car. Timothy of course was quite excited about this. Every kid likes going outside. I went and put all the stuff in the car while he waited on the curb like he usually does. Then, when I went to go get him, he ran off laughing and smiling. He said "funny!" And I snatched him up and said "oh you think you're funny do you?" He smiled back at me and assertively replied "yes" while nodding his head. He's quite the character.

Those Melt Your Heart Moments

Timothy's vocabulary has been growing a lot lately. It's really enjoyable to communicate with him now. He says two and three word sentences and is quite a laugh sometimes.
But, tonight was one of those melt your heart moments. We said our family prayers and he was good through them and said "Amen" appropriately. I love it when that happends. :o) Then, we read or stories and he finished lots of my sentences in his books because he has some of them memorized. Then, he kissed and hugged his teddy bear and turned off his light. I layed him in his crib and tucked him in as I always do. And, he said "thanks" so sweetly it just melted my heart. I love that little boy! We are so lucky to have him and have so much fun watching him grow.

On another note. Tuesday was playgroup and we did the letter "M" this week for Mother's Day. We ate mangos, melon, muffins, and marshmallows. We colored our letter M's and Mother's Day cards. Then, we played at the splash pad. It was a good time!

The letter "F"

Each week we do a letter theme for our Ward playgroup to reinforce a new letter for the kids. We always do a coloring sheet with the letter and different objects that start with the letter as part of the activity, then we do something different each week. Like for letter "S" we went swimming, for letter "H" we had a hat party, for "T" we had a teddy bear picnic, etc. This week was letter "F". We went to Brandi Fenton park and made fruit loop neclaces out of twizzlers and fruit loops of course. Timothy mostly just ate the twizzlers and fruit loops after attempting to put a few on. :o) We also ate "fruit and fig newtons." Then, we played in the water at the splash pad! It was good times!

Air and Space Museum

On Saturday, Allan, Timothy, my twin brother Justin, and I all went to the Air and Space Museum. It was a great time! Last time I was there was August 3rd, 2007. Why do I remember the exact date? Because that was the day Timothy was originally due, even though he decided to wait 3 days to be born on our wedding anniversary... Anyhow, Timothy loved the Air and Space museum because he loves airplanes, helicopters, and space ships. His favorite part seemed to be the space part. To me, history is always an interesting thing and it comes alive much more in a place like that.
After the museum, we went out to a 50's diner. That kind of stuck with our history theme I guess. We had some great burgers and sundaes.
The best part of the day though, was in the evening. I was talking to Timothy about our day and how we saw airplanes, space ships and helicopters before I put him to bed. I had him turn out his light, which is a normal part of the end of his bedtime routine. Then, I layed him down in his crib, telling him how much I love him and what a fun day we had. As I was tucking him in, getting ready to leave the room, he quietly started whispering "chop,chop,chop," "wshhhhh, wshhhh" "chop,chop,chop." He was remembering our day too! "Chop, chop, chop" are his sound effects for helicopter and "wshhhh, wshhhh" are his sound effects for airplane. It was so cute and sweet!

Funny sayings and baby hiccups

A while back I decided to try to join the world of blogging. Well, I post most of my pictures and videos of Timothy on facebook for Grammy and Poppy to see, so ended up just letting the blog thing slide. I've decided that I'll try to keep it updated better in the future, however this is a technology I have not gotten into yet and I'm learning. So, bear with me.

I have two short stories to tell today.

A couple of days ago Timothy said something that made me laugh and was really cute. We were all getting ready to go out the door together. Timothy and I were set to go and were waiting in the living room. I told Timothy "we need to wait for dad to finish getting ready before we go." Timothy walked over to the door, grabbed the door handle, and said "Dad bye!" He was ready to go with or without daddy! :o) It was funny.

The other story is from today. I was just lying on my bed a while ago taking some time to myself. I had just finished watching a show on netflix and so it was silent. I felt the baby moving around and took a moment to think about her and how she is growing and moving. Then, I started to feel rhythmic movement and realized she had the hiccups. It made me smile. It was one of those moments where things were quiet and still enough that the reality of her existence came to the forefront of my mind. Usually things are so busy and noisy. Taking care of a toddler is no walk in the park. Well... we go walking in the park a lot to keep him busy, but you know what I mean! :o) It's rare that I really just sit down and clear my mind for a few minutes. This baby girl will be here soon and we'll be so happy to welcome her precious little soul into our arms and home!