Adjusting to Life as a Family of Four

Alright, here's the run down of the past month of our lives. We're adjusting quite well, with the exception of our lack of sleep, which should resolve itself eventually. Here's "baby sister":

(As a side note, we really shouldn't have stressed so much about a name and just named her "baby sister" as that is all she gets called anyway.)

This is how Carly spends most of her days

This is how she spends the rest of her time when she's not eating

On rare occasions, she does this (oh we are so blessed, she is quite a pleasant girl)

This is a really weird picture that makes it look like she's smiling with a ginormous flower on her head. She's not really smiling, and the flower isn't that huge.

Jay is taking his lack of attention better than expected. On occasion he insists that we "drop baby sister" while we're holding her, and often tells us "you not want hold baby sister". On the flip side, whenever she's awake and looking at him, he says "I think she like me...I like her too...I think she like you too mommy!".

He is watching too much TV these days, but the doctor says it doesn't make me a bad mom. He has also learned how to operate the computer mouse and loves playing games on pbskids.org all by himself. When Carly is sleeping and Jay and I get hang out time, we usually bake something, and then the whole family spends the next day eating way too many cookies. We seriously have got to make some friends that like cookies that could potentially contain slobber, or I am never going to lose this baby weight!

Jay and I try to keep busy inside the house most days as we're stuck here without a car. We invested in a fabulous "sit 'n stand" double stroller that we love so we can make the occasional trip to the playground and stroll around the neighborhood. He also enjoys painting and coloring these days and is working on being proficient with a glue stick. He borrows a small circle paper punch I have and LOVES to "clip" hundreds of circles out of paper. We are not combining skills and creating fabulous greeting cards with lots of circles glued on them...watch your mailbox and you might just get lucky and receive one of these cards!

This is a picture of Jay making cupcakes with Grandma Melinda (she's much more patient than I am. When Jay and I make muffins, putting the batter in the cups is a "mommy job".)

One last Jayism to end this post:
The other day I had to chase him down in the parking lot after he tried to run off. I informed him that he would be going to time-out as soon as we returned home. This conversation followed:
Jay: I not want to go time out!
Darbie: Well, then you should listen to what mommy says.
Jay: It's hard mommy, it's hard!

Ike

Apparently Hurricane Ike decided to bring some of the destruction to Ohio. Here's what occurred at my parent's house yesterday:






The last picture was taken after many people (and 3 chainsaws) helped remove the tree from the car.

Sadly, this was our white birch tree. Every year on the first day of school, my parents would take our picture in front of this beautiful tree. Apparently this tree had served its purpose having survived years of first day of school pictures for 4 children, and now its time has come. We'll be burning this tree in our fireplace this winter.

For those of you who know my dad and were wondering:
Yes, his golf clubs were in the trunk.
Yes, he pried the trunk open to retrieve them.
Yes, the clubs survived without a scratch.

(I know I should be posting baby pictures, I'm getting to it, I promise!)

Baby Blessing

This is my first time contributing to the blog so you might have to bare with me. I decided to write this post because I was the only eye witness to the events that inspired it. So without further adieu here's the story of the week!

One morning this week Jay decided to wake up at 5:50 a.m. Trying to keep him occupied while his mother slept in the front room (next to Carly's bed), I brought Jay into our bedroom. After entertaining him for ten minutes or so, my own tiredness caught up to me and I found myself laying face first on the bed. Believing that his father was in some sort of distress, Jay got onto the bed, placed his hands on my head, and said the following: "Bless daddy that he will feel better, name of Jesus Christ, Amen." I really didn't know how to respond. We're not really sure where he learned about blessings. The only time he has been present for one was when Monte and I gave Darbie a blessing about 3 weeks ago. He must of have remembered it (like he does everything else) but I am surpised that he caught what the blessing was for. After all, he was probably running around screaming at the time.

Anyway, that wasn't the final "miracle" performed by our little faith healer. During that day, Jay proceed to give a blessing to Darbie, Carly, and yes, even himself. We are happy that he has picked up the concept, but we should probably have some sort of FHE leason about blessings before Jay begins to offer them to the other kids on the playground.