This past Tuesday we spend the evening in the pool! It was so fun! Last year Sweet Pea didn’t even want to put his foot in the water so this was a nice change. It did take a little coaxing to get him in the water, but once he was in he didn’t want to get out. I can already tell this will be a great way for our family to spend time together this summer.

After swimming we found this awesome little burger joint. It was soooo good! Mom we are breaking your diet next time you come just so you can taste these burgers!

This morning Sweet Pea woke up feverless for the first time since last Thursday! Yeah! So hopefully the within the next few days we will get back into our grove  and I will get back into my blog.

You want to know the main reason I know Sweet Pea is feeling better?! He doesn’t want to nap or go to bed at night! While he was sick he was completely ok with curling up in bed and sleeping for hours. Not anymore! I will say the last few days, while a little scary at times, have been restful. Both my hubby and I have gotten more sleep the last few nights than in a long while.

Oh — my hubby added a new feature to my blog. Over on the right you can type in your email address and receive an email whenever I post something new. This way you don’t have to keep checking back just in case I go a few days without writing anything.

Sorry I have been gone for a few days, this week has been a rough one. Sweet Pea has just taken one hit after the other. On Monday we realized that he is cutting all four of his molars. And as with all his other teeth they are coming in SLOW. At this point they are all about half way in. It is strange because we can look in his mouth and see the other half of them stuck inside his gums. So his teeth have made progress this week, but unfortunately that means there are still half of them to go. Needless to say he has been really, really, cranky.

On Thursday we noticed him being a little less energetic than usual so we took his temperature and sure enough he had a fever! He also has his first canker sores in his mouth!

On Friday his fever was low-grade and he was on and off cranky all day. About an hour after putting him to bed he threw-up. And then he threw-up all night. He slept until almost noon today and his fever is still hovering around 102. In talking to the nurse through all this she thinks these are two separate infections/viruses. His little body is doing double-time to get itself healthy.

So he is better than yesterday, but not quite himself yet. Please pray for him to get healthly soon and that his body does what it needs to do to get better.

As Spring has made her appearance, so many of my friends have planted fabulous gardens filled with veggies, herbs, and beautiful flowers! And I must admit, I am a little jealous. I am jealous of their backyards where their kids can play and they can work on growing things for their family to eat. I know, I know. It’s a terrible attitude, and most of the time I am fine. But when it hits, it hits hard. You know?

Anyways. So instead of moping around I decided I was going to turn my apartment balcony into a little garden that we can enjoy. For my birthday a few weeks ago I got these wonderful plants and I bought a topsy turvy tomato planter! This may actually be better than a huge garden seeing as it is the first actual vegetable I am trying to grow. If I can keep it alive and actually make a tomato grow off of it, then I might be ready for a real garden.

The flowers on the balcony have been fantastic. Sweet Pea loves to help me fill the watering can and water “his” flowers. And I know…one day I will have my backyard and be able to plant a fabulous garden.

Four years ago today my hubby and I stood across from each other, proclaimed our love for each other, and vowed to spend the rest of our lives together. In the past four years we have laughed together, rejoiced in each other’s accomplishments and cried together at our disappointments. We have welcomed new life into the world and can’t wait to do it again! But most of all we have grown and matured in our love for one another. We still stumble and sometimes become selfish, but with the Lord’s help we always find our way back to each other.

It’s strange but I feel like I love my husband even more today than I did four years ago. He is the person I want there when I come home and the person I want next to me at night. It’s weird how I spent all those years sleeping by myself and now can hardly sleep a wink when he is gone. He is such a giving person, even when I find I can not be. He will rub my feet and back when they ache, even though he knows I am to tired to do so in return.

Here are a few pictures of us on our honeymoon in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We had so much fun! We spend the week hiking, eating out, and walking through town. Basically we pampered ourselves as much as possible.  Unfortunately our hotel was a disaster! The bed was so uncomfortable we took all the blankets and made a pallet on the floor! But we didn’t care. We just spent the week with each other. And of course only have 11 pictures to show for it. Which means I didn’t have a lot to choose from to show you.

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I love you my dear husband with all my heart! I can’t wait to see what the next few years hold in store!

That’s right everybody. My son is a picky eater. Before I had Sweet Pea, I was convinced that if you had a picky eater it was your fault. Yup. You must be doing something wrong or giving in to soon if your child will not eat what you make for dinner. I will not completely give up this ideal because to often I have seen parents give in and make four separate meals so each child will be happy. But now I do understand for some kids it is their personality.

For his whole 23 months of life he has been weary of putting things in his mouth. In a way it has been nice because I have never been overly worried about him choking on something he picked up off the living room floor. But on the other hand it is like pulling teeth trying to get him to eat anything.

And believe me I have tried everything all books recommend. We don’t buy sweets. In fact, he has had only one cookie in his life and never had cake or ice cream. This way not only is he healthier, but he never constantly complains about only wanting ice cream for dinner. We don’t buy the junk food we know he likes, such as chips, because again we don’t want him to be constantly asking for them.

I have also tried telling him he just won’t eat if he doesn’t eat what I make. And let me tell you what a disaster that was. Most kids would choose to skip one meal before deciding to at least try what mom puts on the plate. But not Sweet Pea. For two days he ate nothing but the oatmeal for breakfast and milk after dinner. And looking back I don’t think he was trying to be defiant. He was and is weary of putting something new or strange in his mouth. Needless to say for health reasons I couldn’t go on doing that. So the groove we have gotten into the past few months is part of our meal is something that I know he likes and the other part may or may not be new to him. And it has worked really well. He gets some good nutrition in his tummy, and he gets used to the sight of new foods.

I have learned that my anger or impatience over this issue will not solve anything. It can be very frustrating when we go to someone’s house or out to eat for dinner. But getting mad at him will not help. I have to be very patient and work with him, not against him. I think with any issue we have with our kids forcing them to do something will never help. If I force Sweet Pea to try something it only makes him anxious and upset. And then we have just taken two huge steps backwards.

Well I write all this to say yesterday we had a victory! My hubby was eating his chicken for dinner and Sweet Pea asked for some. This isn’t very shocking. He is always asking for our food but then just puts it right back on the plate. But last night he actually ate it! And then asked for more! I feel like our patience on the matter is finally paying off. For some reason, he felt secure enough to take a big bite and try it. Hopefully there are more days like this to come. It will definitely expand what we eat at dinner.

A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.  ~Tenneva Jordan

A few months ago Sweet Pea fell out of a chair and knocked out one of his front teeth. Well the past few weeks he has gotten a kick out of storing food or other items where his tooth should be. In the above picture he is holding a peanut. I can only assume he was saving it to eat at a later time. Other things that can commonly be found there: straws, his tongue, his toothbrush, and the list goes on. When asked where his missing tooth should be, he proudly grins and shoves his finger into the spot. Man will it be weird when he finally grows a big tooth in there when he is older. He loves his missing tooth!

Today we had our 26 week check up with the OB and baby girl is looking good! We got to listen to her heartbeat which was awesome. Baby girl wasn’t to happy about being poked by the nurse to be able to get a good listen. She kept kicking her away. She is much more feisty than Sweet Pea ever was. I remember having days where I didn’t feel Sweet Pea moving at all and would freak out. I went to the OB office multiple times with him to make sure he was still alive because I hadn’t felt him in over 48 hours. Apparently he was just really comfortable in the womb and didn’t feel the need to move about. This little one is totally opposite. I have not had to worry once about her because she is constantly changing positions.

We got to talk to our OB at length about our VBAC situation. A few weeks ago I wrote how I was worried we wouldn’t be on the same page. For the most part we are. I can labor at home for a while and then come up to the hospital to be admitted. I can have a heplock instead of an IV so I can still move around the room. This gives the doc and nurses comfort in knowing they can hook me up to an IV fast if need be. She wants me to be hooked to a baby monitor as a precaution. I am not a big fan of this because that doesn’t give me a huge radius of space to walk around in. But I am willing to do this as long as I am not confined to the bed. The back pain I am having during pregnancy is greatly relieved when I am not laying in bed on my back, so I can’t even imagine being confined to the bed with labor pains. Ouch! The only thing that we disagree on is the epidural. I am hoping that I can do this as naturally as possible and an epidural doesn’t really figure into that equation. But my OB is pretty adamant about me having one pretty early on in the labor for her own comfort. I do understand and respect that, but it’s not what I want. I am going to sit on it and pray about it for the next couple of days and talk to my Bradley instructor and see what her opinion is. Hopefully we can get this figured out soon…