He's growing up. I can't believe my little guy is 3 already. He is learning to sit with us in church and taking it very seriously, at least for about 5 minutes. His vocabulary seems to grow every day, he is so fun to talk to these days. He remains intense, passionate about swimming, the jeep, and anything that has to do with sugar. He still loves his blue blanket and when he's tired he likes to take his clothes off and snuggle up on the floor, chewing his peanut butter and honey sandwich from lunch. Most good parents would just put him down for a nap. He's finally, fully potty trained (hallelujah!) and every time I have a newly trained child I find myself enjoying our bathroom conversations. I wont share too many details of the dialogue but it usually involves uninhibited fascination with the body parts or the actual contents of the potty.
For his birthday party (his first real, solo party) we had a pirate theme and once again I attempted a cake. It turned out pretty cute! I'm not getting any phone calls to make cakes for anyone but that's ok, I'm sure I'll get discovered one of these days :).
Suddenly this little girl has come into her own...this picture captures how she feels about life these days. "I'm right here....pay attention to ME!"
We celebrated David's birthday a few days early because on the actual day we flew to Conneticut for my cousin's wedding. Of all times to experience "travel delays" we got to do it on the day of the rehearsal dinner....and Steven was the preacher! Thankfully my sweet cousin is laid back and even though we missed the rehearsal every thing went smoothly.
Here's the beautiful bride. We grew up together and I have so many precious memories - silly skits during our family beach week at Hilton Head, re-enacting "Price is Right" (those videos could be useful for blackmail), hiding her in our car on the way home from the beach (we got pretty far but got worried about the consequences so we turned ourselves in), and some awesome ski trips. She married a great guy - the only negative is that it looks like they're in CT for good - but we liked it there so I'm willing to travel!
She made all of her desserts at the wedding (they were crazy good) and this one made me cry a little (it says "Grandma DuBose's Caramel Cake") in honor of our dear Grandma - who would have loved every second of Lauren's wedding weekend!
When we got home from our trip it was time for another birthday celebration. My Sadie is 7! We decided not to have a huge party for her this year but I let 3 of her little friends from school come over for the afternoon and that was pretty exciting. They did a little painting and ate ice cream sundaes, then played with her new (used, yay!) American Girl doll.
These are her school friends at their weekly "C4K" meeting, an afterschool Christian group that was an outreach from a local church. It was such a sweet group and it made me cry to go in the last meeting and see 75 kids from public school singing praise songs to Jesus. One of my favorite quotes from Sadie this year was when I picked her up from one of the meetings after school, she told me "I had a bad day at school today because I had to move my clip down, but then I went to C4K and got happy again because I thought about Jesus!" That's it, baby girl, a huge secret to the JOY in our lives. One I pray she remembers.
So I wasn't sure signing the big two up for Swim Team was worth all the trouble - practice every afternoon after school, trying to get 4 kids to leave the pool then get dry clothes on before riding home in their car seats (the most stressful 10 minutes of my day - once they just rode home naked), but after seeing them in their suits and caps I decided it was worth it, after all. My goal is not to produce any Michael Phelps swimmers but simply to have half my kids be somewhat decent swimmers so I can constantly rescue the other half. It's working pretty well and they love it. David gets to swim in the baby pool every day during practice so he loves it, too. Mary Jo isn't so sure of the water yet but she's warming up. She likes it about 2 inches deep. I have the "Mom tan" going on - my shoulders are brown and the tops of my feet - minus the flip flop lines. Long gone are the days of tan (skinny) legs but that's ok, this is way more fun. I do love summer! And technically it's just beginning.....
