Wow! What a great God we serve!

The last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy around here. And Micah hasn't had lunch today, unless you count the cheese balls he has munched, but I thought I would steal this moment and share a little about what has been going on with us. And ask you to pray.

1. My cousin Scott died a few weeks ago in a plane crash. He knew Jesus and more people have come to know Jesus since his death. Please pray for his wife and little kids, as well as his Dad. His step-mom is in very poor health and can also use prayer. This has been an extremely hard time for their family.

2. My cousin Naomi had a baby on Sunday. The Lord has just shown himself so strong, and so gracious in the birth of this little one. It pleased him that she be born strong and healthy in spite of spending four weeks in the womb with no amniotic fluid. She was born at 26 weeks 4 days gestation, and squeaked on her way out. She has been on room air with a cpap machine since she was 1 day old. If you feel like doing a little reading about the role of amniotic fluid in developement between 22 and 26 weeks, you will find out what an incredible miracle the safe (and natural) delivery of this little one was! Please pray for baby Hadassah as she continues to grow. She is doing great, but there is a long road ahead of her.

3. Amy is being 'gently' weaned and is about to drive me crazy! Suddenly her need to nurse has escalated to 'constantly.' So far we are only working on night weaning, which is going a little better all the time. I still get visits from a sad little girl around 7 every morning.

4. We are trying to sell our house. It would really help us financially to have little more flexibility and we would like to not be soooo far away from everyone!

We all have grown so much closer to the Lord in the last month, praying for Naomi and Hadassah, then loving on Scott's family in his death. I am so thankful to know Jesus- thankful for his love for us, his death on the cross for our sins, for his resurrection and if we trust him, for ours!

The kids are still growing like weeds, wouldn't you know? Micah is really enjoying Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, except that he doesn't like to read the story in each lesson more than once. So, I think I am going to cut out those extra readings. He now knows enough to be dangerous. We were in Wal-mart recently and he was reading this he saw. He found one word with a lot of letters he doesn't know yet, so he sounded out the parts he did know, "aaaaaaassssssssssssssssss, ASS Mom! ASS!" Oh dear.

Amy has developed an interest in household cleaning and loves to be trusted with big jobs: mopping, cleaning up the movies, and putting the hangers in the clean clothes. She has also started drawing a lot of very detailed people on the magna doodle.  She doesn't typically approve of my drawings, "No, Mooom! That not a dog!" Thanks a lot, kid.

Hannah just woke up and wants to nurse.

HAHAHA, check me out, maybe I'll blog 4 times this year!

I hate typing while I hold babies.

I hold babies a lot.

The end.

Micah started his first bit of 'formal' education last Tuesday. I've decided to take him through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann. We spend 5-8 minutes on it everyday. He complains a lot. It is kind of bizarre. His favorite part is the last section of each lesson which involves writing the 'sounds'. He will happily spend the next 30 minutes writing. I think this must be some kind of indicator of his learning style. Today after snailing through the lesson he sat down to write. He started writing things like m t e and t y e and asking what they spelled. When these didn't turn out to be interesting words he tried on m e and a t for size and was delighted when, upon sounding them out, he discovered them to be real words that he knows! It was really fun. At least I can tell he is learning. I don't think I am actually unhappy with the book. I'm just curious to see how things will continue to go and what sorts of things will pull Micah in more.

Amy is talking a mile a minute now. I guess we all new the day would come, it just seemed like it was a long time coming. We read a book about a little boy who wanted a brother and his parents brought home a sister instead- she latched onto the whole sister idea and has been proudly pointing Hannah out as her sister ever since. Our cat turned back up on our doorstep as well and I was surprised that Amy remembered Sophie, but she has consistantly called her Sophie since her return. I hope Sophie leaves again soon. I was very content not having a pet. Amy started working on our last memory verse. I suspect she did memorize it, but wasn't confident enough to verbalize it without prompting. I'm interested to see if she will fully participate in this one.

Hannah is my cuddly little baby bug. And she is walking! Just a little these days, 8 or 10 steps is about her max. Today she woke up a little from her 2.5 hour nap and self-soothed herself back to sleep by sucking her big toe. I got pictures. She also had her first tomato sauce today. I missed those pictures, but it was glorious, I assure you.

Well, this was nice, lets do it again sometime.

What is wasted time, anyway?

I've wanted to get on here and type away for a while now, but I don't particularly care for typing with one hand. Today I have a held my baby for hours and hours and hours and now she is happy on the floor. I should be cleaning the kitchen and making dinner, but I'm just going to do this instead. I don't keep a journal or diary and this blog is supposed to fill that gap- and it hasn't been for a while now. So, without further ado:

"Uh. . . Me help Mommy!" -Amy today when she saw me clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. As I finished with the dishes on hte counter she brought me all hte ones from the table and then threw away that trash that was there and ate the string cheese Micah didn't finish.

"Mom, what spells my name?"

"M"

"I got that one"

"I, it's the one like a one with a circle above it."

"I got that one too"

"oh, C"

"I already have that. What's next?"

He didn't have the rest, but I was pretty proud of him, even though he actually was writing HACIM. : ) He is very excited about letters right now, so we are siezing the moment and going with it. M, C and this week A are the only ones he consistantly recognizes, but I think it's a good start. We also started learning about senses the other day when a TV show mantioned the sense of touch. It's nice to have him bring me these questions, instead of me trying to figure out what we need to learning now. . .

He just found a tree outside that is like a 1.

I guess I should blog more often. There's no way I can cover all the things from the last few months right now. Micah had pbj and carrot sticks, and Amy had a tuna sandwich for lunch. I wonder what picture I have handy. . .

Uh, where's Hannah?

Oh, there she is. . .