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Friday, July 31, 2009

About our girls...

It's been a long time since I posted, but in the meantime I've been collecting funny things Annabeth has said, and even have a few stories about Amelia, who turned 1 month old yesterday.

We have been teaching Annabeth about God. For her birthday, she got a book called "Sammy and the Shepherd" from our friends the Junglings. It has a story for each verse of the 23rd psalm. We read it over a couple of weeks at bedtime, and Annabeth learned about Jesus being our Shepherd. One time Grandma Maria said something about Jesus being the lamb of God. Annabeth said, "Silly Grandma, Jesus isn't a lamb, He's our shepherd!" A couple nights later, at dinner, she prayed "Dear Jesus, thank you for being my shepherd, and not a lamb."

Grandma was talking to Annabeth about the books of the Bible, and reading the titles to her. When she got to "Amos", Annabeth heard "Elmo" and asked Maria, "Elmo's in the Bible?" Grandma told her no, it was "Amos", then Annabeth turned it into a joke, and started asking, "Big Bird's in the Bible? Cookie Monster is in the Bible?"

Sometimes Annabeth can be so sweet - one Sunday morning before Amelia was born, I had the stomach flu and wasn't going to church, but she and Maria were going to go with some friends. It was all I could do to get her ready, and I was feeling awful. Annabeth told me, "Mama, you are a special girl to God." That was so sweet, and something that really ministered to me that morning.

Annabeth loves to sing and dance, and especially to sing songs she has made up - she sings about everything! I joke that our life is a musical. We have also gotten into a habit lately of singing part of our prayer at dinner - we'll start with either the Doxology or "This is the Day that the Lord has made" and then finish with a "talking" prayer. Annabeth really seems to enjoy this.

While I was at the end of my pregnancy, I snored and had trouble breathing at night, so I started wearing "Breathe Right" strips to bed. One morning when I got Annabeth up, I still had it on, and she asked, "Mama, why do you have tape on your nose?" "Why" is a question we have heard a lot over the last few months. Sometimes it is hard to get through a bedtime story, because she wants to ask me a question about the story every couple of sentences. :)

A couple months ago, one of my favorite phrases that Annabeth would use was, "In a couple whiles".. as in, "Mommy, can we do that in a couple whiles?"

When my parents were here right after Amelia was born, Annabeth had a juice box one night. She had finished it, and was playing with the straw, when she announced "I'm going outside to smoke." and then went out on the back porch with her straw in her mouth. I was shocked, and couldn't figure out where she got that from - noone in our family or any of our friends smokes. Finally, I figured it out - she had seen the employees at Smith's, our grocery store, going outside on their smoke break.

Here's a proud moment for Pat - we had some baby powder that I was taking upstairs, and she asked me what it was for. I said it was to make things less sticky. She said, "Like when we put M's on our faces?" This is what we do to cheer for Michigan during football season, which we hadn't done since last winter.

For a while, Grandma Maria has joked with Annabeth - she says about her daddy, "He's MY Pat - I had him first." Annabeth's response, which she figured out on her own.. "No, he's MY Pat - I had him last!"

Annabeth likes to pretend to be different animals. We always know what animal she is pretending to be because she'll come up to us and say, "Mama duck?" or "Mama cat?", to which our response was, "Yes, baby cat?," but has recently changed to "Yes, big sister cat?"

Annabeth has been adjusting to being a big sister, and though we had some rough spots early on, she has been trying hard to help, too. One of the first times we rode in the car together after Amelia was born, Annabeth was so sweet. She saw that the sun was on her baby sister, and she moved the shade on top of the car seat and said, "I'm keeping the sun off my baby!"

Annabeth has been working hard to learn some pretty big words, and if she doesn't understand, she's good about asking - "Mommy, what's eventually?", etc. The other day she asked Pat if she could have some "chopstick" instead of "chapstick" - she almost had it down?

Annabeth is also trying hard to make sense of the world, and comes up with some pretty thoughtful questions. Last Sunday, on the way home from church, she was looking at a tube of toothpaste with Tinkerbell on it that a friend had given her, and she asked, "Do angels have feet?" I said, "Yes, I think they do." She then said, "Because if angels don't have feet, then how do they land?"

Another example - We were cleaning out the car the other day, and Maria was holding some plastic water bottles as Annabeth, Amelia and I were getting ready to drive off. I asked if she could "take them to the recycling." As we were pulling out, Annabeth asked, "What car is Grandma Maria going to drive?" Confused, I asked, "What do you mean?" She said, "You asked her to take the recycling." In her mind, taking the recycling meant driving it to the recycling center where we drop off our recycling.

One more story, and this is where Amelia gets in on the action. Last Sunday, we were at a potluck for our church. I was nursing Amelia, and Annabeth was next to me, holding a red plastic cup. She was trying to peek under the blanket at Amelia, and give her the cup. Amelia grabbed onto the cup with her little hand, the only thing sticking out from under the blanket. Annabeth said, "Look, she's holding my cup!" It was really cute to see just her little hand, holding that big red plastic cup.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Baby Amelia has arrived!

Baby Amelia was born on June 30th at 3:05 pm! She was a healthy 7 lb 10 oz and was 18 inches long. (Although a week later they measured her at 20.5 inches at her 1 week checkup so we think they measured her wrong at the hospital.)

Here are a few pictures:


This was about 30 to 40 minutes after birth. Already smiling :-)

Mom and dad and Amelia about an hour after birth by Cesarean.



























I love this picture. She is ~ 1 day old here -- Our little burrito baby..

She loves to sleep :-) soo cute:-)
This was such a funny face she had! Check out all that hair!

Burrito baby with hair showing!
This closeup picture came out great. Isn't she a cutie :-)

Cute lil baby feet . Had to take a photo!

Mom and Annabeth the day they came home

The proud papa
Kudos to Heidi's mom Helen who came and stayed with Heidi in the hospital:-) They said they had a great ladies retreat :-) Heidi's mom is so great with Amelia :-)