Cuddling :)

The boys and I were playing in their room this afternoon and they were being too cute. Stephen is almost sitting up on his own. He balances fine until he gets REALLY excited. :) Boys are so much fun.

Aren't they precious?

C-Sections

The fact that I have to have C-Sections with all of my babies is a constant struggle for me. I know it shouldn't be, but it just tears me up sometimes. I was planning on going completely natural, use the Bradley method and no drugs. Then Caleb stayed breech and even though we tried 2 external versions (turning him from the outside) he would not move. He even kicked the doctor and flipped back one time. It just killed me to see all I wanted going out the window at the time.

With Stephen my doctor gave me the chance to have him naturally and I labored for 9 hours without drugs and all, before the doctor told me that I had stalled out, there was something wrong, and we needed to get the baby out as soon as possible. Afterwards, he told Andy that 30 minutes more and my uterus would have ruptured because it was as thin as gauze around the old scar. Stephen's head was so large that it was not coming down and he was facing the wrong way. They had to break my water to start labor, though I believe that my body tried hard to labor on it's own 2 weeks before.

All of this is to say that I'm heart-broken over this. My body can only handle at the most 6 pregnancies before it's dangerous to me and the baby, so even though I don't want more than 6, I hate that I don't have a choice in that. I have been trying so hard to get past this, and I have a little peace that there is obviously a reason God has set me on this path, but I still don't know how deal with it. I try to be relaxed and tell Andy that now we can pick our kids' birthdays, but that's not what I want and I don't know what to do. It's just hard to understand why this heart's desire of mine was not to be.

2 year olds

Why is 2 sometimes the most fun and other times the most irritating age? It must be because they are learning new things everyday and then use it so much that it drives their parents batty. Caleb is so much fun to watch as he discovers new abilities and words. He is already learning to help me put all of his toys away, though he wants to immediately pull them back out again. He also adores music and dances whenever there is something on. His favorite show is The Wiggles and we also have some of their Cd's. The Wiggles have dances that go along with all of their songs and Caleb has started copying them instead of just bouncing around the room. It's quite cute because half the time he does the moves just slightly off from them and it's hilarious to watch. If anyone gives instructions in a song he can follow along as well and that's a recent thing.

His vocabulary is growing on leaps and bounds and he is learning to speak in sentences. He loves for me to do the This Little Piggy Went to Market poem on his toes and I must do it on both of his feet and both of Stephen's before he is satisfied. He'll also run around saying wee wee all home after I'm done. lol I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but he now knows to run to me and say poop poop and hold his diaper if he needs it changed. I'm not thrilled with this, but am looking on the bright side that maybe it means he'll start potty training soon. Andy thinks it hysterical and I just tell him to wait until he tries to shush Caleb in church and he screams out that he pooped at the top of his lungs in the middle of the pastor's prayer.

Stephen is also growing fast. He can almost sit up, just still has a tendency to get excited and throw himself backward. He adores Caleb and just lies on his stomach and giggles while watching Caleb play. He is also teething already and I can see the teeth in his gums though they probably won't break through for another month. Caleb got his first tooth at 5 months so I'm not surprised that Stephen is on the same track. Stephen is desperate to be moving so I hope he starts crawling soon. He is already sliding himself backwards across the room so maybe he'll be crawling by 6 months.

I'm amazed at how much I can get down around the house with 2 such little children because sometimes I feel that all I do is play with them. I love my life. :D

Praise God!!!

My car is not actually fixed yet, but we have found a collision shop who is really working to help us out. The man who owns it came in and talked to me and found out that we had 2 young children and Andy was trying to finish school with a teaching degree. After that, he looked at the damage to my car and told me that he would give me the parts necessary in order to keep the car from being totaled. That was unbelievably generous of him and we are so thankful that God led me to his shop. He told me that he understood that we could not afford a car payment right now and that my car would be as good as new when they were finished with it. This was an answer to our prayers.

Wreck

I was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot today and hit a car I did not see, even though I looked both ways 2 or 3 times before moving. I would appreciate prayer because we have been just making it financially and really can't afford to have to repair my car. I know the Lord takes care of us, but it just feels like we finally get something taken care of and have a little bit of leeway again and things of this nature happen.

Pictures

We had a family get together this weekend while we were in Birmingham getting the rest of our things from Andy's parent's basement and one of Andy's uncles took these great pictures of my boys. :)

They had just been swimming

Caleb was fascinated by the fountain and kept running back to mess with it.

Marital Relationships

Now before you get scared this is not a R or X rated post... :) Andy and I just had a lot of time to talk on the drive to and from Birmingham this weekend when we went to pick up our stuff from Andy's parents. The main thing we talked about was how do you handle relationships with people of the opposite sex after you are married and what is an appropriate level of friendship. When we first got married we agreed that we were never going to be alone with someone of the opposite sex just to rule out temptation. It has been very easy to apply this rule and have realized that since we got married the only friends we have made have been couples that we both get along with well and when we meet someone think about whether or not both wives and husbands will get along. The issue we were talking about is what do we do with friends from before we got married, or from before we were even dating? How do you handle it when a majority of them are still not married and many aren't even in a relationship? The biggest thing was what do we do about people we were physically attracted to before our relationship, but our partner has become good friends with in the mean time? Do you ask that the friendship be broken off or just be a surface friendship? Neither of us are very good at surface friendships because we read people to well and either really like them, or can't stand them so we decided that would not work. We went back to our first inclination which was that the friendships can continue and grow as they will, but that we would never be alone with people. I don't want to put Andy in a situation that might lead to temptation and could have been easily avoided, or vice versa. Does anyone have advice on this?