Song for my Sons

Song For My Sons by Sara Groves

This is a song for my sons for when they understand it
You know how life is full you know we couldn't plan it
your dad and I prayed for strength and understanding
for things we couldn't see or comprehend

This is a song from my heart a small refrain to hold you
for times when we're apart and I cannot console you
I can't say your life will always go like it should
but I can say that God is always good

and when the cold wind blows like I know it will
and when you feel alone like I know you will
and when the cold wind blows like we know it will

Don't let your love grow
Don't let your love grow
Don't let your love grow cold

This is a song for my sons for when they understand it
You know how life is full you know we couldn't plan it
your dad and I prayed for strength and understanding
for things we couldn't see or comprehend

This is a song for you, to carry in your pocket
take all our love with you in all the paths you walk in
Be honest with yourself and don't forget to pray
and read your Bible everyday

and when the cold wind blows like I know it will
and when you feel alone like I know you will
and when the cold wind blows like I know it will

Don't let your love grow
Don't let your love grow
Don't let your love grow cold

This is a song for my sons for when they understand it
You know how life is full you know we couldn't plan it
your dad and I prayed for your strength and understanding
for things you cannot see or comprehend

How Can He Be This Old?

Levi has now lived over half of his life in Singapore. I was looking through some old pictures and cannot believe how much he's changed. He'll be 4 in a few months! How can that be? (And, yes, this is my 3rd post today. Don't panic. Read through them slowly because you just never know when I'll feel like blogging again!)


My two boys (Levi is about 7 months here and Caleb is 2 1/2)

Levi right after we arrived in Singapore 22 months old...such a sweet face (and still in a high chair)!

Another picture from our first couple of months here (at Dunkin Donuts-not all it's cracked up to be).

Levi now. So big!

Clothing Optional

My boys are always trying to run around in just their underwear or less. Definitely a boy thing. This particular day I was telling them to "at least put your underwear on, please!" so they did what any normal human being would do...took the pillow cases off their pillows and used them as "underwear."

I will say that it's been crazy hot here lately, so I can't really blame them.

Caleb trying to make his "angry" face and punch the camera while laughing:

I can tell you this was not Levi's idea. As my Dad would say, "Monkey see, monkey do."

They're crazy, but I love 'em.

Homeschool-Writing and Other Things

We've been working on handwriting in school. We are not even to the lowercase letters in Caleb's book, but we've been working on writing his name with just the "C" in uppercase. He's doing pretty well.

After that last picture I said, "Can you put your shirt back on so I can take a picture?" They are always trying to run around in their underwear! Boys.

Levi is working on his name as well. I had to make little dots for the "e," but he's doing great. It helps that they both have short names! Notice this day they are wearing the same pajamas. We often do school in our pajamas. I figure it's less laundry, right? :-)

Levi working on Mighty Minds, a shape design activity.

If you look closely, you'll see Caleb is not doing what he's supposed to. He doesn't like it when he has to do something more than once (repetition), so he usually rebels. If I know he's grasped the concept, I usually don't make him do all of it.

People have been asking a lot how homeschool is going. It's going pretty well for our first year and for having a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old with me at all times. It's not easy, but it's definitely what's right for us right now. I've been struggling with Caleb and his reading. Reading comes easily for him, but he hates doing it. He can read simple readers (Level One and Two of Bob Books), but it is a struggle to get him to do it. We're taking a break from that for a while. Since he's only 5, there's no need to push him and I don't want him to have negative feelings toward reading. We try to sneak it in when we can, and we have a reward chart for him where he gets to pick out a toy once he reads 25 books or does a combination of reading lessons with me and actually reading books. We'll see how it goes. We have some friends who are starting to homeschool here and in Texas, so it's always good to have others along on this journey with us.

Dinner Conversations

Tonight at dinner Justin and I were getting fed up with the amount of potty talk going on. (Our kids are 3 and 5...I had no idea it started so early...and it is CONSTANT! They're big fans of using "poo poo" in various sentences and attaching it to people's names. It gets old fast.)

I told the boys that if they said one more potty word they would get into trouble.

Caleb then made a noise that Justin also included in the "no potty talk at the table" rule. Levi told me that Pierce makes that noise all the time.

I said, "I don't care what other kids do. These are the rules for our family."

Levi then, rather indignantly in a stern voice and a frown on his face, said, "We're going to Pierce's family."

I think that's the toddler version of, "I'm running away." Look out, Camille! If you see two little boys walking down Farrer Road with their little suitcases in tow, please give them shelter.

Never a dull moment around here.

Potty Training

It seems that my second child in 2 years is going to drag me kicking and screaming into potty training. My kids pick the most inopportune times to decide they want to potty train. Caleb decided to use the potty full-time the day we went camping with our Life Group and stayed in tents (the bathroom was about 100 yards away). Levi has chosen three days before we're supposed to be on a 24-hour flight and out of our normal routine for 5 weeks to decide he wants to wear underwear. Not great timing.

People who have kids younger than Caleb sometimes ask me for advice on potty training. I always tell them I don't have any because Caleb potty-trained himself. He watched the other kids at Mother's Day Out and then came home telling me he wanted to go on the potty. We did pull-ups for a while, then moved to only at naptime and bedtime, and a couple of months later I realized he was always completely dry when he woke up.

We've been talking about the potty with Levi for a while, but I didn't want to start until after our trip this summer. He decided yesterday that he wanted to wear underwear and was not happy when I put a diaper on him at bedtime. He wants to be like his big brother so desperately.

So far he's doing ok at it. Two accidents, but not too bad. We'll see how it goes over the next couple of days, but I secretly hope he loses interest because I'm not about to let a not-quite-potty-trained child wear underwear on an airplane. That would make for a memorable flight.

Mess

This is what happened yesterday as I was in the kitchen with the boys fixing oatmeal. I was making some lemonade at the sink with my back to the microwave. I heard it "beep" that it was finished and told Levi not to touch it. He was standing on the chair watching the oatmeal, and I think he started to fall and tried to grab the microwave to save him. The microwave that just sits on the counter. It came unplugged, fell upside down, and spilled out its contents on the floor (plus all the stuff stored on/next to it). There was glass shattered into a million pieces all over the kitchen. Thankfully, Levi was not hurt, but both of our hearts were pounding! It was one of those instances where I heard what was happening and could NOT turn around fast enough...like life was moving in slow motion.

Levi's Bloody Lip

Levi fell off a chair and greeted the marble floor with his face.

Not a happy guy:

Right after it happened:

About 20 minutes later (notice the bruising):

Showing you his lip:

I'm so done with marble floors!

Never Underestimate the Power of a Grandmother with Internet Access

(or the alternate title, "Ask and You Shall Receive.")

Remember when Caleb had me pray for this:


Two Transformers umbrellas arrived at our door today. Thank you,Grandma and Amazon.com. The boys were very excited. :-) I finally had to take them away because they are not toys (a phrase Levi has become very familiar with lately).

Caleb and I decided to ring in 2010 by getting sick, so we've had a head cold/allergy/sinus thing going on all weekend. Pretty crummy.

Speaking of Caleb, he's been asking a lot of questions about death and dying. We're not really sure why, but pretty sure it's just some sort of natural phase he's going through. He asks us when he'll die, how he'll die, etc. It's not a happy topic and we try to answer his questions and redirect his energy and thoughts other places. But the other day he did ask something I smiled at. "Mom, when I die will I go to Texas?" :-) No, Caleb, contrary to popular belief in Texas, it's not Heaven. Heaven is way better than Texas.

Levi is talking so much now, and finally speaking real, full sentences. In the car the other day, Justin said amid the loud chatter in the back seat, "Remember when we couldn't wait for Levi to start talking?" Yeah. And now he won't stop.

I'll hopefully get our pictures of Phuket loaded soon and share them with you. It was a nice, quick vacation out of the city.

Singing and Discipline

Here's a video of Levi singing his version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" at the dinner table. You can also see him acting every bit of his two years and being disciplined. We're using "1-2-3 Magic for Christian Parents" for disciplining them...we just didn't pull it out quite soon enough this time. You can see, though, that as soon as I said, "That's one," he sat down. Three means time-out. Levi does not like time-out, which is good for us!

Enjoy!

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star from Jennifer ReflectingHim on Vimeo.

You can also view the video here.

What's YOUR Favorite Food?

I took the boys for their yearly check-ups yesterday. I love our doctor in Houston, and no one will ever compare to the care we received there; our doctor was really special. But our pediatrician here is a good one. He checked Caleb first. He asked Caleb to write his name, which he did pretty well. The letters weren't very close to each other, but they were in the right order! When the doctor said, "Can you write the final letter?", Caleb said, "No, the B is hard." Good enough. He said Caleb is very coordinated, which we knew. ;-)

He also asked Caleb lots of questions about various things in his life. The one that made me cringe and want to crawl in a hole was, "What's your favorite food?" Caleb's answer?

Candy.

I glared at him and made some comment about him eating other foods, but Caleb looked at me and said, "I like candy." Yes, I'm aware. We'll just blame it on the fact that Halloween is just around the corner, right?

Levi also had a good check-up. The doctor asked him how old he was and he told him. He asked me if he was starting to feed himself with a spoon, and I told him he's been doing that for a long time now. I can't remember the last time we actually fed Levi anything ourselves; he's been a self-feeder for over a year now with the exception of yogurt. But even that he's been feeding himself for a while. I cringe every time he eats it because he gets it everywhere.

I kept having to translate for Levi, though. Our doctor here was trained in Australia and his accent is pretty thick sometimes (kind of an Asian meets Australian accent), so Levi had a hard time understanding which body parts the doctor was asking him to point to. :-)

The thing Levi had a problem with was colors. The doctor held up several different objects of different colors. Levi said everything was green. I know this is pretty normal, but I'm always paranoid about it because color-blindness runs in the family. I quizzed Caleb on his colors a lot until he finally learned all the right ones and I knew he wasn't color-blind. I just like to be prepared. :-)

Caleb weighed 15.9kg (35.1 lbs) and was 103cm tall (42.1 inches).
Levi weighed 12.9kg (28.4 lbs) and was 90cm tall (35.4 inches).

They are both around the 50%, so the doctor was pleased with their progress.

Happy Birthday, Levi!

How is it you went from this...


to this...?

We love you, sweet boy! You have such a personality now, and you try to copy your big brother all the time. We think it's so cute when you put your hands over your ears and say, "It yowd!"

You have the biggest smile that makes other people smile, too. Everyone thinks you and Caleb are only one year apart because you are such a big boy!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Levi! You are so loved.

The Things Levi Says

Now that Levi is talking more and saying things we can actually understand, it's only fair I share his quirky sayings. I'll act as translator.

"Umm me, Mama. Bible down." (Come with me, Mama. Put The Bible down. He calls any book I'm reading The Bible.)

"Kayla do that." (Caleb did that. May or may not be true!)

"No sho, Daddy." (No, sir, Daddy.)

"Boo saksy." (Blue taxi.)

"Wowwy, Kayla." (Sorry, Caleb.)

"No, I walk." (He refuses help most of the time, even on stairs. Mr. Independent, indeed.)

Paint The Town...err...Walls Red!

Look what Levi did while I was drying my hair.

The "artist" posing by his work (this pic was taken long after he was punished for coloring on the walls...because he wasn't smiling when I scolded him and sent him to time-out!)

Me, scrubbing the crayon off. (It will all come off, but it's going to take a while.)

Apparently he thought our bare white walls needing some sprucing up. He colored on all 3 walls in the hallway.

Living in a Hotel

Well, we're officially all moved out of the house. It's been a rough week. Caleb's been upset about his playroom tv not making the trip to Singapore with us, and Levi has been just plain cranky all week long. They are really feeling the stress of the move. It's hard since they don't know that's what they are feeling. Every time I take Levi somewhere, he fusses loudly the whole time (it's really more like screaming). I don't know if he's not feeling well, or if he's just not sure what to feel since his little world has been turned upside down.

So, for now, we're living in a hotel. Caleb is sick (he's thrown up twice today and is running a fever), so today has been especially hard. I'm taking him to the doctor in the morning to see if it's a virus, strep throat, or maybe his ears again. If it's not one thing, it's another.

We've been talking about moving to Singapore for so long that it hasn't been real until this week. It hit both Justin and me once the movers started packing up our stuff that this is really happening! (And, by the way, I would highly recommend moving with professionals. They are amazing! And fast!)

Now we're living in this weird limbo phase for the next 12 days. It kind of feels like we don't have a home, which is really weird since our house is only 15 miles away. We haven't sold the house yet, and don't really know what's going to happen in the next couple of months with that. We're just taking it day by day, which I guess is best anyway.

I don't have a lot to say other than this week has been really weird and really stressful, but we're glad that this move is finally here. Oh, and we're exhausted.

We're planning on visiting family this weekend, but that all depends on how Caleb is feeling tomorrow.

That's all. We're just trying to tie up loose ends and get all the last minute things done. The list is still pretty long, but we're checking things off.

No Teeth

Have I mentioned that Levi is 13 months old and has NOT ONE TOOTH in his little head? Seriously, I can't believe he's still toothless. The doctor said that he asked his son's pediatric dentist about it and she said she wouldn't be concerned that a child had no teeth until they're two years old, and only then because the parents would be concerned.

I'm just waiting for the day we wake up and he has a mouthful over night. :-)

Do You Recognize These Kids?

Caleb did this in the 30 seconds his daddy was in the bathroom...

Standing up!

Crawling!

I figure it's been so long since I posted pictures of the kids that you all might not recognize them! Levi is now crawling, eating baby food 3 meals a day, and trying to pull up on anything and everything around him! Caleb is almost fully potty-trained now (yay!) and surprising us every day with his vocabulary. Our current favorite is when he says, "Actually it's a..." He mimics everything we say, which means we have to be really careful about saying things like, "stupid" and "oh my gosh."

Goings On

A lot has been going on here lately...

This weekend we took our first camping trip with the boys. It was an experience. The days were GREAT; several families from our Life Group went and we had a lot of fun. The weather was amazing...cool and not humid!! The night, however, was rough. Caleb woke up at 1:30 crying at the top of his lungs. We're not sure what was wrong, but everyone heard him since we were sleeping in a tent! He, of course, then woke Levi up and he started crying as well.

Caleb also decided that Friday was the day he was going to go on the potty every.single.time. We were thrilled that potty-training has come easy for him, but we were headed to the campground where the bathroom was quite a little walk. So, too many times to count, we headed to the bathroom when Caleb needed to potty. By the end of Saturday, we had convinced him that it was special and cool to teetee on a tree (way closer than the potty!). :-) Only when we're camping! He's had a dry diaper now for almost 4 days and even went poopoo on the potty yesterday. I wasn't ready to start potty training yet, but all his friends at Mother's Day Out are doing it, so peer pressure won out and he wanted to go on the potty, too! Works for me!!

In other big news, Caleb gave up his pacifier about a month ago. One night I was home alone with them and noticed his pacifier had little tiny holes/slits in it (we think he grinds his teeth at night). I told him it was broken and he had to throw it away. Now he thanks God during nighttime prayers for "help me throw my paci away." :-)

Levi is now eating baby food regularly. He took a lot longer to get the concept than Caleb did, but he's eating more than a jar at a sitting.

I'm going in for a HIDA scan tomorrow of my gall bladder. They will inject some nuclear substance into my bloodstream and then inject something else to make my gall bladder "squeeze." I cannot nurse Levi for 48 hours after the test because of the nuclear stuff in my body, so I've been pumping like crazy for the past 5 days trying to get enough milk saved up for those 2 days. Luckily, now that he's on baby food, he's not taking as much milk.

I go in to see the surgeon on Thursday and he will evaluate the test results. We'll go from there. My family doctor thinks it will be have to be removed, but, as a lady at church told me yesterday, "no it won't. We'll pray for that!"

That's our crazy life these days. :-)

Half a Year

Can you believe that Levi is 6 months old already? We definitely cannot.

We went for his check-up today, and Levi's stats are:
weight--19 lbs. 5 oz. (85%)
height--27 1/4" (80%)

Here is Caleb's Half a Year Post. Caleb's stats were 16 lbs. 3 oz.,26" long (25% in height and weight).

What is my big brother doing?

Kisses from Caleb:

What?

Oh...Hi Mommy!

Big boy in the Jumperoo:

Caleb in the Jumperoo.

Our little boy is growing up!

Caleb's been at my parent's house since Tuesday with his cousin, Ava. They are having a great time playing together and going to work with Grandma (she's one brave lady!). I miss him so much...it's been pretty quiet around here! We'll be heading there tomorrow for Easter weekend.

Ever since the time change, Levi has reverted back to not sleeping through the night. Ugh. Hopefully he'll get back on schedule soon!

Happy Easter everyone!

We Turned a Corner

I hated to make this announcement on Monday, but now that it's a pattern...Levi is sleeping through the night! Oh, sweet sleep...I have found you again (except that I've had a sore throat every night, but whatever...)

We've been putting him to bed about 7:30, then I go in around 10:00 to feed him one last time, and he's been sleeping for 6-9 hours past then before he eats again and usually goes back to sleep.

The key is, he's a stomach sleeper. He learned to roll from back to front over a month ago, but he would get really mad when he rolled onto his stomach. We'd flip him over, and then he'd just roll back. He finally gave up and started sleeping on his stomach, and it's been wonderful ever since!

Hallelujah!

And, my mom gave me the gift of having my house cleaned (by other people), and they are coming today. Ahhhhh. I love a clean house! (My house has been the one thing through this depression that has bothered me the most. I just couldn't even get the energy or motivation to keep it straight, let alone clean. And a messy house with a clouded brain do not make a good mix!) Thanks, Mom!