HOUSE SOLD!!!

We got an offer on our house after 14 days on the market. The buyers accepted our counter offer yesterday and it is SOLD!!! YAHOOOO!!! We are so excited! We can see God all in this especially because the buyer has requested to close on April 30th, but letting us rent back for almost 2 months afterwards. So many prayers answered! Thanks to those who were praying with us through this process! Thankfully, we do not have to keep the house in showing condition 24/7 anymore! Whew... glad that is over. Alex said today when playing with David, "we can make a mess now." ha!

10 months old, Fellowship, Zoo, Daffodils, Pajama Preschool

Thanks to Graeme for taking such great pics of the kids at one of the Thursday family fellowship nights. We love eating dinner with our friends every Thursday night...sweet times.

"I'm 10 months old today!!!"

our precious David

Teething wood feels good

"Yes, my hair is getting too long in the back and by my ears. Mommy said that we'll cut it now that some recent pics were taken."

Jason and girl kiddos - Alex, Reese, Gracie, and Reagan

Wendy entertained the kiddos for ages with the bubble sticks

our precious Alex

fun times!

David had his first fast food meal tonight - KFC...hence, the green bean on his face. He devoured some of my green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken (skins off), and biscuit. Then, he was still hungry!

Daddy got off of work early last week for us all to enjoy a beautiful afternoon at the zoo

"I know there is a beautiful giraffe over there, but look at that huge rhino!"

or maybe he's just chewing wood again!

Alex and David loved watching the lions as they were so active. They both laid close by, then roamed around.

Whassuuuupppp???

doll stacking... this has become part of Alex making her bed and she loves to do it. She did the above stacking by herself, but often wants mommy to help. We started this as we have to leave the house in showing condition every time we leave as it is for sale. Alex has been a huge help. However, it is sad because Alex always asks if we are having a showing even when we have to run an errand because we have had to leave 10 times the last 12 days because of showings.

David checking out Alex's food...

We enjoyed a beautiful morning and picnic lunch at the daffodil farm at Wye Mountain this week. Our photographer was there to take David's 9mo (almost 10 mo old) and Alex's 2.5 yr old pics. Can't wait to see those pics.

"Alex isn't looking. What is she drinking?"

Alex and Evan (photographer's daughter) shared flowers and leaves together. You can pick 12 daffodils for $1.

one side of the daffodil field

A girl from Moms N More (my weekly Bible study) told us about Pajama Preschool with her kiddos. Alex and I already do some things, but this girl introduced a whole lot more for us to do with/teach our kiddos. Here, Alex is practicing pouring with this child sized pitcher and cups. (check out www.forsmallhands.com for some items and ideas - site can be dangerous. you'll want to order it all!!!)

"I love playing with water!"

Having fun with a funnel, measuring cup and bowl.

Play dough time... Notice her polished nails; we had glamour girl morning this week in which I painted her fingernails and toenails, put lipstick on her, and she decked out in my heels with her sleeping beauty dress. Too bad I didn't get pics of that morning.

A couple of months ago in our Pajama Preschool, we painted an egg carton various colors and sorted different colored items into each color. She mastered this very quickly....meaning she got bored with it much quicker than mommy wanted!

This activity is called spooning. Yeah, she was so beyond this that she got bored so quick that she started making up her own games and making a huge mess in the process.

Alex cleaning up her mess

Great Help and Unexpected Haircut

I'll start with the good news first. Chris' parents came to visit this past week/weekend and helped a ton in getting the outside of our house ready to sell. His mom brought some flowers from MS to help give the yard a face lift and did most of the work in planting them as I juggled kiddos. Chris and his dad sealed the deck. After all the final touches were done, the house officially went on the market today (and we already had a showing today with another scheduled :) Praying for the right buyer at the right time with the right offer.

Mimi and Grandaddy always bring prizes for the kiddos to open.

David and Alex love their Grandaddy and Mimi

Helping Mommy bake always results in licking the spatula and beaters. Yum Yum!!!

Whasssssup?!?

The not so good news is that Alex cut her hair :( She watched a friend of ours give a toddler boy a haircut at a family fellowship we went to last week. Alex was fascinated by the haircut and talked about it constantly. She asked tons of questions about it like, "what was jacob's mommy doing?" "what did Mrs. Becky do to that little boy?" "did it hurt?" etc.... I guess her curiosity got the best of her and she wanted to experiment on herself what she observed. So here's how it went down... Chris was looking through our desk drawers when Alex asked to cut some paper on the floor next to him. He situated her with her little scissors and paper on the floor next to him and then continued to search the drawers. A few minutes later Alex came to me in the kitchen with the scissors held up to her hair and she said, "Look, mommy" as she snipped randomly at her hair. I panicked and screamed "No" which caused her to run. I was screaming for Chris to catch her while I ran after her. After stopping her, we found 2 other snippets (or clumps) of hair that she had cut out. Later, she grabbed her hair and another clump came out. :( This was not how I wanted her first haircut to go down. Thankfully, she snipped from the side with the fullest amount of hair, so you cannot even notice! It could have been worse - front and middle, but it wasn't. I don't think she will do this again as she was threatened!

Some of the hair she cut out :(

On the Move...

“On the move” perfectly describes our last month so much that I have taken a hiatus from blogging and taken hardly any pics this past month. In getting ready to move, we have been busting it to get our house ready to sell. We have taken our first trip to MS already looking at neighborhoods, houses, preschools, etc. David is also on the move in many ways. He went from pulling up on comfortable places to relentlessly pulling up on everything. He went from army crawling to crawling on all fours. His 3rd and 4th teeth have moved in on the top front. Verbally, he has added tons of more sounds to his vocabulary like ba ba, ya, ya, ga ga and my favorite, ma ma. And yes, he appropriately uses “mama.” I love it!!! He often says “ma ma ma ma” with urgency when he wants more food or often when he is standing in his bed waiting for me to come get him. I asked David if he could say "'sister" one time. He said "sisa." So cute!

We have been on the move so much that Day Day (David's nickname) turned 9 months on us and I had not even scheduled his 9 mo check up. He got in the next week thanks to a cancelation. He is still our "lil man" according to his stats but no concerns as he is following his growth curve appropriately.

And this past Friday, I took my first trip alone to Louisiana with the kiddos 3 hrs one way and back for the wake of my 25 year old cousin :( The kids did great overall but mommy got very tired on the way home. Don’t plan to do that again anytime soon! (no pics...didn't even take a camera)

We have had a full on February and March so far. Hopefully, it won’t take me so long to update the blog again. The below pics are in no organized order, but just from the last month....just glad to have them uploaded. ha!

Getting faster every day...

Back when David first learned to pull up, he loved standing and reading at the fireplace.

If you click on this pic, you will see tons of drool. That is the norm these days with what seems like him breaking teeth constantly and having several buds about to bust. We are shocked by this as Alex popped her first 2 teeth out at 10 months old and her 3rd tooth at 13 mos!

Don't know if you can see in this pic, but David has a ton of hair. It is getting so thick and coming over his ears. I think he'll have a haircut before Alex and she is almost 2.5!!!

Day Day often stands with one hand to reach other toys. We have only seen him free stand a few times, but never have a camera near...especially since we lost our pocket digital - ugh! Since the lil digital camera is missing, I can't post any videos yet since I haven't tried to figure out how to upload our video camera videos yet.

"Sister, will you share your bread with me?"

Alex loves to go with me to get Day Day up from his morning nap

the smoothie mustache...

Alex is growing up more and more. Her questions and comments are so good and often hilarious. We often marvel at her incredible memory and association skills, too.

Here are just a couple of her random questions I can remember:

Where do eggs come from?

and

While driving past neighborhoods, streets, or stores off the interstate, she often asks "how do we get over there?"

I must tell Alex "just a minute, I am ____" often as she has started to tell me the same when I ask her to "come here." She then tells me "just a minute, I am ____". She hasn't learned yet that it doesn't work that way. One of her latest statements was, "Just a minute... I am not going to come. I am reading to my kiddos." Despite these statements being disobedient and us having to discuss this, she is so cute saying it as she is seriously trying to take care of her dolls. I refer to my "kiddos" multiple times a day so Alex calls her dolls "kiddos" now. It is cute.

"I love feeding myself!"

Short overnight stay at Grandmother's on way to Jackson a couple of weeks ago

(the above and below pics are the only ones we have from our trip to MS...sorry other family and friends. We will have to do better next time.)

So glad Aunt Robin and Amber were at Grandmother's, too

Mommy's helper... doing yard work with kids can be a challenge so I included her in the process some so she would let me work at all. Ha! Of course, it took longer, but we had fun. She rode to the woods to dump leaves and then back many many times.

the kiddos supervising me raking... after a few rakes, I often ran over there to give them a push as Alex constantly wanted to go higher. David looks a bit puny here as he ran a fever earlier today.