Festivities

A few pictures of Mommy and Emma trying to finish up some decorating in between sick days. She was cracking me up bc all or a sudden she started acting like she was chomping down on the berries! She is so crazy; I don't know where she gets it! ; )It was fun to have my little girl decorating with me even if she did put all the pics bunched up at the bottom. A phrase we often hear these days, "No! I do it! I do it!"...or, "Do it myself, Mommy!"...still little miss independent! I don't know if I'll get more pictures up, but the other day, she left me and went to the kitchen...heard her in the pantry assuming she was helping herself to a snack as she likes to try to do but didn't find her there. I found her in room by her cradle with babies with a can of meat sticks and a spoon, trying her hardest to get the jar open. She said, "feed baby, Mommy." It was so cute; what a little helper I'll have when Bryson comes! At least it was a spoon instead of a fork! The bottom pictures are from Rock Hill's Christmas parade. Ben and I took her last Friday night, and she loved it! The boat and tiger were two of her favorite things. She also loved every mascot, train/trolley looking car, and any animated and/or lighted thing. She definitely lost attention a few times and had to do some running, but she was not ready to go when we left. It was too cold for Mommy and Daddy, and it was our first time; we didn't know to bring the thermos of hot chocolate and tailgating chairs! : ) We couldn't believe how people were camped out and settled when we got there. We should be more prepared in the future. The next night, we went out to dinner and then to Journey to Bethlehem, a live walk-through experience of the story of Jesus. A local church, St.John's UMC, puts it on and does a wonderful job. There are a few scenes at the beginning that narrate the birth being foretold to Mary, then Joseph, and then the visit with Elizabeth and a look at the inn...you then "pay taxes" as you enter the city gates where the city is alive and busy with prophets, animals, travelers, markets, etc. As you walk out, you make your way to the nativity scene. We have enjoyed it every year we've gone, and Emma loved it this year. They had lots of live animals that she got to pet and get a close up look at, definitely her favorite part. Rock Hill has Christmasville every year now which has lots more great events that we hope to do more of as Emma gets older. We headed to my sister's for a Christmas party last week-end, then I helped put on our annual youth Christmas party for a local projects community, and this week-end, we have our Christmas party and then Christmas with Ben's parents. I LOVE this time of year and the joy it brings to be with people and share with others! It's hard to balance activity and being still enough to prepare our hearts as we celebrate Jesus' birthday, and it's been a little harder this year with all of our sickness. I am trying to really slow down these days, especially with Emma. I so badly want our children to be able to "be still and know" better than Ben and I do! We get caught up in the busyness of life way too often, and I am hopeful we can continuously re-evaluate the activities we do to be sure we are not subtly teaching our family that we always need to be on the go and that activity is more important than just being with each other and growing as individuals and family.

Christmas Tree

As is our tradition, we got our Christmas tree and decorated the day after Thanksgiving. We had hoped to go to the mountains and pick one, but the weather was not going to be so great, and we had plans to go to Clemson Saturday so we didn't want to be in the car so much in two days...so off to our usual lot down the road. Emma still had a great time playing in the trees and collecting rocks and dirt. Really there probably wouldn't have been much difference to her. : ) A sweet little boy gave her two candy canes, and she is definitely a fan of those now! She loved putting the tree in the house and as you can see was all about helping Daddy. We had fun decorating the tree, and she actually did pretty well putting the ornaments on the tree. We haven't had many issues with her messing with them since either. We didn't end up making it to the wonderful defeat of Carolina Saturday because we had colds, and they were calling for colder temperatures with rain. I was so sad to miss being at the game with my family, and it was the first Clemson v. USC home game I've missed since we started getting season tickets. We went to Ben's parents' so he could watch Georgia suffer an ACC defeat as well. I watched the Clemson game in another room by myself. Occasionally Ben, Emma, or Mikayla would come watch a few minutes with me. As it turned out, I woke up throwing up with an awful stomach bug around 4 Sunday morning...not sure a little cold rain could have made me sicker! I'm not a virus fan (not that anyone is), but I now know it is way more awful to be pregnant and get sick. UGH! As if throwing up from hormones and an already sensitive gag reflex hasn't been enough for the year! It wiped me out for a whole week; I just couldn't regain energy, and it was really hard to eat for a few days too. Ben got it Monday morning and was awfully sick as well. Unfortunately, that was one of his busier work weeks and he "had" to go in Tuesday. I did convince him to at least go in late and give his body a little extra rest. Thankfully, Emma was spared...until this week. I'm still grateful though because I just didn't know where I would get energy to care for a sick child. At least I was able to recover first! I had a doctor's appointment a week later and found out my iron was really low too, which I'm sure contributed to my struggle to regain energy and strength. It was pitiful to have my little girl sick! She had quite the will power holding back vomit. I kept telling her to let it out, and she would just hang over the toilet crying, "No Mommy, I don't want to!" Oh, it broke my heart! She now knows what "I sick" means and almost immediately got to where she would go straight to the toilet to get sick. Much less mess for Mommy at least! She did manage to get sick in her bed about midnight Thursday, and it was awful! I was gagging walking into her room; thankfully, Ben finally heard us in her bathroom trying to get her and her linens rinsed enough to try for more sleep. He came and rescued me as I was gagging over the sink rinsing her pajamas. To sum things up, the virus hit us all over a span of 2 weeks or so, and, between our sick nights, I spent way more time on the hard floor than I ever care for, much less when I'm already so uncomfortable from pregnancy at night. The Lord was gracious, as always, though, and we will hopefully now be healthy for Christmas this year (last Christmas we were passing around a virus!). It has taken me longer to finish decorating and to get the few last minute gifts on our list, which I have not enjoyed, but life could be worse.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is always so much fun, and we surely have more than enough blessings for which we are thankful! One of the most important being family, and we were blessed with a day filled with time with both of our families. We met most of my family at Pa's that morning to enjoy the outdoors and let Emma and Will play in the leaves. They both LOVE the leaves as you can tell in the pictures. We ended up taking a walk in the woods as well. It was so nice to be out in the fresh air and able to take a leisurely walk and catch up with family. We headed on over to my grandparents for lunch from there. My grandfather has been having trouble with his health on and off, and that was not a great week for him, so we were all pitching in cooking and getting the food out to try to help my grandmother. Lunch was quite the feast as usual, and then the kids and some of the men headed out to the yard to play ball. I was hoping to play around some, but I started getting some pains from being up on my feet too much so I had to take a break. We headed over to Ben's parent's from there. Emma fell asleep in the car, so I sat out with her a while to let her get a decent nap. I wasn't up to getting back on my feet yet anyway. I ended up going on inside to sit while the men and kids played ball there. Unfortunately I didn't get back on my feet in time to get some pictures of them out there. We had a wonderful time catching up with everyone there as well as another great feast! Later in the evening, we bathed Emma and headed on home for the evening. What a great holiday set aside to enjoy our loved ones and reflect on God's many blessings in our lives!

Refreshing Days

This slide show is from a couple of "Refresh" Thursdays, first a day at the park, second, a baby bash for some of the girls. I love taking Emma to the park, but she scares me so much. She takes off and wants to spend the majority of the time on the big kids playground. Being there with friends is much easier because there are a couple of older kids who can help her a little if she needs it, and there are lots more hands and eyes around the place. She gets braver every time and went down the biggest slide that particular day. I thought she'd be too scared, but she just followed her friends Kayleigh and Drew up the steps and decided to go down right behind them. She actually loved it and did it several more times; I was so scared she was going to fall over the edge or something. I was much more at ease with our time spent on the toddler part where everything is much smaller. One her favorite things to do is "swing", and there is a "swing bar" as we like to call it on that part of the playground so she was loving that. She is such a little monkey and climbs and swings on anything and everything. A few things around the house she holds onto and lifts her feet to swing by her arms...our desk top, the kitchen table, the bar on the oven door, the fridge door bars. Last night she actually grabbed onto the bar on the back of my seat in the van, lifted her feet, and started saying, "swing, swing"! Wondering if she'll be a gymnast...
Our Refresh baby bash was lots of fun as we celebrated four moms and their babies. One girl had her first in August, and the other three were pregnant with their second; one had hers the day before Thanksgiving, the other two are actually overdue at the moment. My poor friend Stephanie was the one that was overdue with her first while I was with Emma. I'm praying I don't go so long this time. She at least has made a LOT of progress, so we're hoping and praying the baby will come VERY soon! Aimee wrote a fun mad libs kind of story with lots of lefts and rights in it. After getting the girls to fill in the blanks, she read it aloud and they had to move whichever direction came up in the story. They got the gift bag of baby "essentials" that was at the seat where they ended. It was cute; I didn't get great pictures because I was feeding the baby while I tried to take pictures. Anyway, lots of fun to be with some great women, as always!

Growing Up

Emma loves to do whatever we do...the first picture is of her after I found her in my mascara. Actually, we were together, she wandered off, I called her name, about 20 seconds later she was coming out of my bathroom with the mascara open, putting it on as she came to me. Apparently she'd been waiting for an opportunity to get her hands on it!! She is getting into dress ups more, and my sister gave her the outfit in the picture. Boy does she LOVE the heels with the fur toes!! She has actually worn them out in public once already; yes, she is my child! "Build fire, Dada" is one of her favorite phrases and activities as well. She loves to get down and blow on it to help get it started since the first time she saw him do it. So precious! Still painting her nails when she can sneak off long enough; her fine motor skills have really gotten pretty good, so I let her finish it the day I took these pictures. It's not too bad now that she can keep it on her toes and not the floor and clothes. The picture of her with her babies and hats on is what I found one afternoon when I went to make sure she was still napping. I looked at the clock and thought it had been a good while for her to still be sleeping...well, who knows how long she'd been up and content by herself! : )

Fall

So fall is just about over, but we have been enjoying it immensely! I love the changing leaves, and Emma and I have had fun talking about the colors and watching the leaves fall off the trees. The cooler weather was definitely welcome as the heat was extra hard being pregnant and already sick feeling, so I finally started taking Emma back out a little more. I got some pictures of her playing with Tanner one day; one of her favorite pasttimes is poking sticks through the fence, saying, "here Tanner, here!". It's so cute to watch even though Tanner loses interest after 2 or 3 sticks. She has loved gathering treasures from the yard and on our walks; sticks, rocks, pinecones, pine needles, leaves, etc. I got a picture of our house and yard because it has changed soooo much in 2 short years! Ben has done such a good job with the yard and been so patient with time and our budget; it's much harder to keep up an acre as opposed to our former .18 acres!! : )

Rod of Correction

We've been going to a Sunday School class on the book that I posted about a while back, Shepherding a Child's Heart. It has been one of the best Sunday School classes I've attended in a while, probably because it is a topic in which we are engrossed every day as parents. I've been wanting to post not only to share what we're learning but more so to try to put my thoughts down on "paper". We are doing the video series and have a great teacher leading very constructive and insightful discussion following each segment. I would HIGHLY recommend the video series for anyone, but especially if you have a small group or Sunday School class that it can be offered to. Tedd Tripp, the author, is so practical, gives great analogies, and is one of those who doesn't pretend he got it all right or has all the answers. In several of his points, he even brings up how many people differ in opinion. Anyway, you can ask any of my friends around here, and they can tell you that I LOVE the class and am learning so much!
The number one thing I've taken from this series is that the purpose of discipline is to bring up the gospel...and that it is NEVER too late to start! No child is too old, too far gone, or suffered too many of our mistakes. Our teacher has talked about how we can always get back to a situation in which we "failed" by just saying, "remember how Mommy yelled at you about picking up your toys earlier...well, Mommy was wrong to yell at you, and I'm sorry"...then you're back to the situation and can address the heart of the issue, whatever sin it was at that point. Obviously, they have to hit a certain stage of development to be able to remember that far back, but there aren't too many years where they can't. We're already getting to have conversations with Emma about the day's events, and she hasn't hit 2yet. Another point I like is that our goal is not to raise little "pharisees", or rule followers, rather children who understand the justice, grace, and love of our Heavenly Father and who learn the honor of their identity in that place. I'm convinced that the only way to "ensure" our children walk with God all the days of their life (aside from God's grace and election : ) ) is to somehow instill in them a love, respect and understanding of God and who He is...that they will think about glorifying Him in their decision making process rather than doing what Mommy and Daddy said is best. I know I'm raising sinners, but I so desperately want them to avoid a lifestyle of sinning, and that is my goal in parenting. I don't care if my children are scholars or athletes (though we definitely hope for athleticism!); I just don't want to have to watch them walk away from the covenant blessings of our Savior, and oh, how I wish I could force it on them!!! : ) A topic often discussed in our sessions is that Formative Discipline must come with Corrective Discipline...our children need the thought process with the physical correction. We need to ask questions and have conversations that help them process what went wrong, not just spank them and move on. A couple of times I have actually popped Emma w/o warning, and I can see such a difference in her reaction. It is one more of fear and shock than one of understanding and repentance. Hopefully I won't be guilty of that too often though I'm sure it will probably happen again. Something else I really took from his 8 steps in spanking was of course making it a private issue and to talk to your child about why the spanking is coming and how many licks are coming. I think the preceding talk and telling the number of licks really makes sense bc it is letting your child know ahead of time that you are not disciplining out of anger or lack of self control. My favorite part of the process that we've been doing for a while is reconciling and praying with Emma afterward. Obviously you want to cuddle and play with your child before "ending" so they know it is an act of love. We are hoping that by praying every time there is correction, our children will have confessing sins to the Lord immediately more so than we. It is the most precious and rewarding thing to hear my child pray in my lap asking God to forgive her for disobeying Mommy. We have definitely gotten tons of insight and wisdom from the class and Ben even mentioned going to it again when it gets offered again (they seem to offer it every few years). I could seriously go on writing for pages, but hopefully it will just be with me so strongly that it will come out daily in my parenting.

Emma Live

A few videos of Emma these days...the first one is of her in the moonbounce at our Fall Festival. The others were Saturday evening after a day of Christmas shopping and fun at Chuck E. Cheese--one of her FAVORITE places, even though we've only been there 3 times! After a busy morning Friday at the doctor and then to city hall, I was trying to put Emma down for a nap. She was on my back, I went to her bed, sat down, she started to climb onto her bed and then started screaming and crying. She kept saying, "My arm hurts!" and pointing to her wrist. She screamed every time she or I touched or moved it. After 5 minutes or so of her still crying on and off, I knew I needed to call the doctor...she hardly ever cries and NEVER for long at all. They sent us on to the orthopedic bc their office doesn't do x-rays...long short of it...she had nursemaid's elbow...her elbow had popped out. As the doctor was moving her arms around, I guess he could just tell, and he popped it right in as he was moving it, and boy did Emma scream and cry! I didn't even feel the pop, I was holding her. He told me what it was and what he'd done and then sent us down the hall for x-rays to confirm nothing else was wrong. She had already quit crying and was calm...and then, I had to leave her with strangers. Why did pregnancy not cross my mind when I was taking her with intentions of having x-rays?? I had talked to Ben several times but had said I shouldn't need him, oh, I could have kicked myself as my heart was breaking hearing my baby scream when I left her in the room! The x-ray techs were great though and said it popped one more time as they placed it for the x-rays. As we walked out of the office, Emma was proudly swinging both arms with a sticker in each hand as if she'd never been in pain. And I was praising God that nothing had broken! The dr. said nursemaid's elbow is actually pretty common with children under 5 and then showed me how to relocate it if it happens again. Not so sure I could stomach that one or trust my untrained self, but I was happy to hear it was fairly common (even though I've never heard of it before!). So, it was quite the busy and emotional day for Mommy...Christmas shopping and Chuck E. Cheese were the perfect follow-up! : )

Baby News!

With nausea worse than my pregnancy with Emma and carrying the same way, who would've thought our ultrasound yesterday would tell us that we are having a healthy baby boy, Bryson James Howell! In my last post, I wrote I thought I was having a girl, but I had a dream Thursday night they told me boy. I was not sure if dreams or "intuition" would win out...maybe I should pay more attention to my dreams, huh?!? ; ) Emma was saying his name with a huge smile yesterday morning. It was so sweet. She was a little confused at the doctor's office when Ben told her to look at the baby and pointed to the screen. She had the funniest look on her face and kept looking back at my stomach. I guess after several months of telling her the baby is in Mommy's belly that would be a confusing concept. The nurse said he has big feet--here's hoping that's the only big thing about him, at least until he enters our world! We're very excited, Ben can't stop beaming anytime he mentions "boy"! We were out Christmas shopping this morning, and I was about to fall apart looking at baby boy clothes. All of a sudden I'm feeling a little emotionally unstable. I don't know if it's just hormones or just how much more real pictures and a name make it. It's hard to imagine sharing our time with another child though I know we will love it. I think it's hard too knowing that I'm about halfway there; he's coming so quickly! Of course this time of year is so busy with Thanksgiving, Christmas and Emma's birthday hitting all within about 6 weeks or so! Anyway, we were so happy and relieved to hear above all that our baby boy is healthy and "normal". I have been so anxious about every appointment with this pregnancy. I don't know if it's just because I have watched so many loved ones suffer with losses in the last few years or just because I know more this time around. Who knows?!? Either way, I know the anxiety is from Satan, and I keep trying to quote Philipians 4:6-7 to myself as I also know it is all in the Lord's hands and plan. How trying and stretching parenthood is even from the very beginning!!! We are continuing to quiz our doctors on the VBAC delivery as we're trying to get well informed from a number of different perspectives. I so want to have a VBAC but am trying to prepare myself for the safest delivery for me and Bryson. Ben's not so fond of the risks but is being supportive. I am finding that men and women have very different outlooks! : ) It seems men are more about the most direct and efficient way to get it done while the women seem to look more at the "journey". All else with the pregnancy is going well, measuring on time, weight gain on track, no swelling or blood pressure issues, etc. I still have some nausea but most days feel pretty good after I slowly get moving. I am not sleeping so well which is a little discouraging considering how much longer I have to go, but I'll take that over throwing up any day! I love sleeping on my back, which is not possible at this point in pregnancy, but I sometimes end up that way, waking to a faint feeling...for those who don't know, the pressure on some artery can cause restricted blood flow and is what made me all but pass out during my ultrasound with Emma. Life is wonderful though, and I am excited I'm starting to feel Bryson move more regularly and more strongly. What a miracle I can never appreciate enough!

The Guessing Game

We're having our ultrasound this Friday! I am a bit nervous as I have been about every appointment this time around for some reason. We've decided this just might be our "difficult" baby as we had a scare early on with some spotting where we had to have an ultrasound and then at my last appointment the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat after what seemed an eternity. As she turned off the machine and was telling us we were going to need an ultrasound, my head was swimming with fears and emotions while I tried to contain them praying for our baby. Thankfully, she decided to give it another try, and after much pushing and prodding while I was praying desperately, she finally found the heartbeat. The baby was just hiding it seemed. I was overjoyed every time we heard Emma's heartbeat, and it has gotten no less joyful this time around. What a precious sound, and after these too scares, the sound has been more relieving than ever. I do not understand how any one can purposely terminate such a miracle...how absolutely selfish and heartless it seems. Yet, I cannot imagine the kind of sad, lonely, depressed, and hopeless state one finds herself in to be able to do that. How eternally grateful I am that God chose me to know His hope and heart!
Anyway, we are finding out the gender if all goes well and the baby cooperates. I'm thinking it's a girl, Ben's saying boy. Of course, we'll both be happy either way. I think I'm finally "out of the woods" with "morning sickness" as it's coming up on a week since I've taken any medicine. The last few times I've tried that, I've gotten worse every day. I had a couple of hard days last week, but I feel like I got over the hump. We'll see. I just realized this morning that I hit 17 weeks last Thursday, and I was sick 17 weeks with Emma. Hopefully this one holds to the same pattern!! Hopefully I'll be posting a gender this week-end, but we're not giving the gender without a name, so we'll see! The name thing wasn't looking too good, but we seem to be making some progress. The problem is Ben has a test this Thursday so we don't have a lot of time for names. Feel free to take a guess at the gender. I know most of you don't see me much, so you probably don't have a clue (or even care for that matter!). I'd love to hear what people think; I was just thinking that I don't think any one's had a guess for me. It's always everyone asking us what we think we're having.
As always, we covet your prayers for mine and the baby's health!

Fall Festival

Emma was the cutest little lion ever this Halloween! I was an oven...I had a bun in my oven; Ben was the "bun maker". I thought it was a cute idea (found it on-line), but Ben was worried it was too suggestive. We ended up going with it after talking to a few other "adult" friends who didn't find it offensive, and I have no idea how many people at church have pictures of us floating around. It didn't seem to offend anyone, just laughs. I hope that was the case for all!! We helped our youth host the annual fall festival in our church gym Friday night (they really did all the work!) where there were lots of games and fun! Ben thinks we're getting too old to dress up, but I think it's more fun to act like a kid and join in the dress up game. It's always fun for me to see other adults at church a little out of character. We love the festival even more now that we have a child...no fear of traffic, weather, crazy people, inappropriate decor, or tainted candy. It's nice to be able to fellowship with others and not be worried if Emma runs off. We definitely try to keep up and be responsible for our child, but it's nice knowing the teenagers will take care of her if she gets away. She had a blast! Stayed at the pool with ducks a lot of the night, which she did last year too! Once we got her to try some other activities with us, she branched out a little more being sure to visit the ducks frequently. She wasn't so sure about the whole putting the treats in a bucket instead of her mouth thing, but she got used to it. I split a couple of treats w/ her throughout the night too. : ) She loved the moon bounce. I'll have to see if any of the videos are good enough to post.
Ben and I were trying to really think through the Halloween thing this year and be sure we weren't subtly sending wrong messages to Emma. She was so young last year that we didn't really think much about it. We agreed on leaving out the "evil" things such as witches, ghosts, monsters, morbid things, etc. I was having a hard time with deciding as to what was acceptable being that the holiday has much evil and demonic practices behind the origination. We landed on just being sure we're not participating in any part that would send our children mixed messages. I read a few articles by some well-respected Christian authors that were really for participating minus the "evil" as it's a great opportunity to be light in the darkness as we are called to be. The church festival seems like the perfect grounds for us...we don't have to worry about the evil being mixed, and it is an event through which we (as a church) are supposed to be reaching out. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on the holiday. This was probably the hardest one for discerning boundaries for us.

Pumpkin Carving

The first picture is of Emma trying on her lion costume and practicing her "Roar"! It was a little small, so I was working on lengthening it in the crotch, arms and legs. She was such a good sport to try it on for me several days. We carved her first pumpkin this year. She was very disgusted by the pumpkin "guts" but helped us a little. It was a fun evening teaching her about pumpkins, and I cleaned the seeds and cooked them a couple of days later. She loved them, but definitely chewed all the flavor and gave me the remains. ; ) One morning, she asked for the pumpkin, so I brought it in and lit it up for her while we played in the living room. I got out the camera, and she was actually willing to pose and "cheese" for me. I love the one with her hand in her pocket. She went and stood beside the pumpkin and said, "hand in pocket, Mommy".