A song in her heart

Here is our future American Idol. Featured here is Addie singing "The B I B L E." Over and over and over again. She can also be heard belting out "Sing Hosanna" and "Jesus Want Me For a Sunbeam" all throughout the day at the top of her lungs. We love it.

Outdoors Time

The weather here has been beautiful recently, so we have been getting out and enjoying it as often as possible. Both kids love to be outside, as do their Mom and Dad, so we are happily welcoming springtime...and praying winter weather does not return for another 8 months or so. When we go outside, Addie immediately looks for her neighbor friends. They are outside a lot as well and love to come over and play with Addie (they are 6 and 4). When Addie was a baby, I would take her outside and she would be happy to just sit on a blanket and look at books, play with toys, and watch me do whatever-pull weeds, shoot baskets, etc. Not so with Levi. He hates to be put down on the blanket unless someone is going to stay with him to entertain him. Even then, it's not his favorite thing to do. He loved his exersaucer, so I put that outside for him to play in lots of times. Levi also loves to just watch Addie ride her plasma car up and down the driveway-it makes him laugh...I can tell he is so excited to be big enough to be able to do it himself. Both kids also enjoy going on walks, which we do at least once a day when the weather is nice.
Here is our 7-month-old. Yes, he has been 7 months old for almost two weeks now, but I never posted the picture I took to mark the day. Time keeps on flying by and our baby is growing into a little boy. It's exciting, but sad at the same time. They definitely don't stay babies for long! There is no question now as to whether or not he is crawling. He is into everything, but it also allows him to entertain himself more than ever before, so that is nice. We are just having to baby proof more for him then we did for Addie-our non-crawler.

Our double stroller isn't getting a lot of action these days...Addie wants to take Levi on walks, so that is what we have been doing. Walks take quite a bit longer, but it's a lot of fun. Anytime I try to help, even for a second, Addie immediately says, "No, Mommy!"

Levi now gets to take advantage of the ibert as well-he loves it! I think we may need to invest in a helmet for him, seeing as Addie's is bright pink.

Loving every second of it:

I don't know if people are sick of me posting waterfalls pictures on here. If so, I am sorry. We just really love that part of living in this area-all the great places to hike and see waterfalls! At this point, I think Addie would be very disappointed if we went for a hike and she didn't get to see a waterfall-she has come to expect them. On this hike, we went to "Triple Falls" in the Dupont forest. It had rained the week before, so the amount of water on the falls was pretty incredible. We also liked how there were lots of rocks to be able to walk around on at the bottom of the falls. If anyone lives in the area, or visits, we higly recommend this hike and waterfall. The hike wasn't too difficult (and that's with kids on your back), and the falls were beautiful.

That is where we hiked to and walked around-you can only see 2 out of the 3 falls from this perspective, though.

Cheesing it up:

Playing in the water:

There is the whole thing:

Dottie

As mentioned in a previous post, Dottie came to visit last week. We all had a great time with her, but Addie especially loved hanging out and playing with Dottie. Somehow, she could convince Dottie to hold her, read to her, and play with her so much more than her Mommy and Daddy do. Dottie was also gracious enough to watch the kiddos and allow me to go run some errands, as well as let Bob and I have a dinner date...a rare occasion! It was a fun week-thanks for making the trip, Dottie!

Dottie got lots of great pics of the kids. Here's one she got of Addie at snacktime:

Photoshoot time with Levi:

Singing songs out of a songbook:

Snuggle time with Levi:

Time to say goodbye:

Remembering Madison

One year ago today, our neice, Madison Taylor Snead, was born to my brother and his wife, Josh and Amy Snead. Due to some complications, Madison only lived for 8 hours, then went to be with Jesus. We know it has been an incredibly difficult year for Josh and Amy, but we also know that today is definitely one of the hardest. We are so thankful that we do have hope in Jesus, and that He promises that we as believers will one day get to see Madison again. Although this is the case, we still miss her and wish we got to know her, hold her, and play with her...and I know Josh and Amy miss her more than any of us. Please pray for Josh and Amy-that God would grant them peace and comfort not only today, but every day. Losing a child is something that I cannot relate with, but know has to be so hard. As time goes on, we want to continue to remember them and their loss, as it is something they will never forget.

Is it crawling?

It's definitely not a typical crawl, but he is moving...so for record-keeping purposes, is he crawling?

Haircut

We had a visitor this week...Dottie! More about her visit in another post, but the focus of this post, is Addie's haircut. We have known for a while now that Addie was in need of a haircut. But, we also knew Addie would probably freak out if we brought her to a hair dresser and it would not be a good experience for anyone. So, we decided to ask Dottie if she would be willing to cut Addie's hair while she was here. She agreed, and did a great job! We weren't exactly sure how Addie would do, but she was distracted very well until it was time to trim the bangs. As soon as she saw the scissors cut a little har, she started screaming. Thankfully, Dottie only needed to do one more snip and she was done! The haircut looks great-Addie has another layer in the back from when she had lost hair on the back of her head as a baby. We didn't know how that was going to look with her longer hair being trimmed, but that shorter layer being left alone. As it turns out, it looks like the shorter layer was cut to be that way-we really like it. So, here are some pictures.

Before:

Okay, so maybe this is a better before picture, but I couldn't resist posting the last one:

During (Addie just thought Dottie was brushing her hair the whole time she was in the back):

After:

Indoors

We've been in the house quite a bit the last couple of weeks with Addie not feeling great and all. So, here are some pics from our time at home. I know it is said that normally the second child does not get anywhere close to as many pictures taken of them as the first child, but that theory is not true in this post. Addie is in a stage (and has been for a while now) where she does not want to stand still and smile for a picture. She actually wants to see what the camera sees, so as soon as I get the camera out, she comes running to look at it. So, there are only a couple of pictures here of Addie. However, I have lots of Levi right now. He is making all kinds of funny faces, laughing, and getting himself into all kinds of trouble. He still has yet to officially crawl, but definitely gets up on his knees and lunges forward quite a bit. Levi also ends up backing himself into various places and getting stuck a lot, as shown in the following pictures.

Here he is, stuck under the rocking chair:
A new hobby of Addie's is to find shoes that are much larger than her foot, and try to walk around the house in them:

Our cool dude:

Just started sitting up-not great at it, but doesn't mind when he falls over, so that's good. Apparently, he didn't want his picture taken, though...or maybe it was the bunny ears he didn't like!

Sitting and playing:

Backed into another corner:

a happy boy:

with lots of different smiles

Here she is running for the camera:

Just for a quick update on what is up with Levi these days....he has slept through the night (7:30 PM-6:00 AM) the past 2 nights, which has been amazing. This is something we have been hoping and praying for since he was probably 2 months old! I know it does not mean he is necessarily sleeping through the night for good, but is definitely encouraging. As seen in pictures, he is starting to sit up, as well as attempting to learn how to crawl. He is all-around a happy boy as long as he has been fed and well-rested. He's starting to eat his baby food much better, so we are thankful for that, and assume that has something to do with his sleeping longer at night. We love our little boy and can't believe he is growing up so quickly!

Healthy!

I don' t have time to post pictures right now, but hope to soon. I just wanted to let everyone know Addie has not thrown up again since Sunday night, and is acting like herself, not complaining about her tummy anymore. I heard back from the doctor this morning, and there were no problems with her urine, so she is good to go! Apparently, it was some kind of weird virus she had. Thank you to everyone for praying and encouraging us-we really appreciate it!

Waiting

Addie made it all day yesterday without throwing up, so that is good (I think). I had called the dr. in the morning, and she asked me to bring in a urine sample for testing, then give them a call if Addie threw up again. I brought in the urine sample, then got a all from the dr. yesterday afternoon. They did some kind of test on the urine in the office and found there was a small amount of blood in it. She told me this could mean Addie has some kind of infection (she would not tell me what it could be), or it could be nothing-just some irritation that made her have a little blood in her urine. So, they are sending the urine off to a lab to find out what is going on with that. She told me they should get the results on Wednesday. In the meantime, I am just supposed to call the doctor's office if Addie vomits anymore. We would like to think Addie is all better, but obviously don't know if she is or not. Last time she threw up, it had been a day and a half since the time before, so we will wait and see. We do not hope for her to vomit, but if something is wrong, we would like to know, so we can go ahead and address the issue. Thank you to everyone for praying, and I will update sometime after we hear from the doctor tomorrow. Hopefully I can get some good pics of the kiddos today and have a picture post rather than all these boring, gross posts. Hope everyone had a great Tuesday!