Just a Pile of Pictures

It's been far too long since I updated my blog...I think of it often, but that's just as far as it gets. So here's a whole ton of pictures, and the readers digest version of what you've missed since my last post.

Jeremy bought a disel work van, which has been a huge blessing. We found an advertising set that that seems to be working for us (finally!) and are finally seeing some headway to getting caught up and then even getting ahead with this business of ours. Jeremy's brother Stephen is about to come on full time with us so we'll be able to really kick our productivity into high gear. :)

Laura is now 8 months old. She's eating baby food, self feeding, crawling, pulling up, and generally just about the sweetest, happiest baby ever. As long as she isn't ignored she's good with life.

Anna celebrated her 2nd birthday, and shortly thereafter experienced a regular "language explosion." She can now say several hundred words, but she's just now getting into sentances, descriptive sentences especially. She had her first trip to the ER last month when Reuben
pulled her radius out of socket at the elbow joint (known as "nursemaid's elbow").

Reuben decided this week that he is too big to wear diapers, and it's now a fight just to get him to wear a diaper to bed at night. He on day seven in the diaper free zone, and while he does have accidents he's really doing a fabulous job. His communication skills continue to grow everyday. It's so fascinating to hear what's going on in his little head. He loves dinosaurs right now. A lot.

My last post made it sound like I was super woman - potty training three kids, managing the office for Jeremy, etc. Sadly I can't keep up that pace for more than about a week at a time. My overwhelming weakness has been the theme of my year thus far, but the older Laura gets and the more recovered I am from the last pregnancy, the better I'm able to manage life in general. The Lord opened up an opportunity to do an apprenticship with a wedding photographer out of New Haven, and several various photography opportunities have come up since then.
I don't have the time or the resources to pursue a business like I want to right now, but I'm grateful for the chance to keep learning and growing as a photographer in the meantime.

My family treated us to a visit with them at a lovely log cabin in Tennessee in August. No pictures in this post, but it was a noteworthy event that we VERY much enjoyed, so it should be mentioned at least. ;)

Laura's 3-month baby pictures

Reuben's first Daddy style hair cut...it made Reuben's Mama cry too.

Anna loves taking care of her baby sister.

Much to my delight, my kids finally decided they like books afterall.

Reuben practiced singing the Happy Birthday song all day July 14th, and Anna very happily blew out her candles all by herself.

Laura Leigh absolutely loves her daddy!

Pouring practice - intensely cool stuff if your three years old!

Playing the drums.

Believe it or not, pouring practice really pays off. I've noticed a distinct skill set improvement when we bake cookies together.

After bath time we let Reuben & Anna run around with nothing but their hoodie towels on, flapping in the wind behind them, squealing and laughing the whole blessed time.

Laura really enjoys her "Johnny-Jump-Up". Unfortunately this picture features her laughing at our horrified expressions on discovering she'd had a blow out diaper during her little jump fest.

Every now and then we take the kids down to the Marina to feed the ducks stale bread that I save in the freezer. They get quite a kick out of it, and running around on the dock like little crazy children is pretty fun too.

Yes, he did have help getting up there.

Laura and her older cousin Cole at a little fishing trip we did with Jeremy's older sister and her family.

Reuben was so thrilled to see the fish his cousin Joanna caught, right up to the point that a knife came out to cut it up for more bait. Reuben came unglued, yelling "NO! DON'T CUT THE FISH! DON'T CUT THE FISH!!" "What do you want me to do with the fish Reuben?" "Splash him in the water Daddy! Fish swim away!" (repeated over and over again until Daddy finally gave in and threw it back)

One of several visits to the Roger Williams Zoo in Rhode Island - enjoying as much as we can manage out of our year membership we were given for Christmas.

The Harbor Seals are Anna's favorite.

Reuben is especially fond of the elephants

There was a new baby giraffe this trip.

I think she was pointing at a turtle

Laura, after feeding herself quite a lot of Cherrios

Reuben & Anna's two favorite books are read multiple times every day, one is about snakes, the other about reptiles. If you let them, they will make you read them both over, and over, and over again - without break.

Making hot dogs for dinner at our local park

Reuben has been playing on this slide since he was a year old

Jeremy planning out his day in the office (aka: the kitchen table)

This was the morning Reuben woke up having soaked through his diaper. So he stripped his PJ's and soggy diaper and dressed himself, emerging from his bedroom quite pleased with his accomplishment. That was the day he decided that diapers are for babies, and he won't be wearing them anymore, thank you.

When Laura gets to smile, her face just isn't big enough for it all, so her whole body has to wiggle and squirm to get it all out.

These three kids are really best buds. They love to play together and take care of each other.

This is clean up time after making chocolate zucchini bread to take to Daddy at work.

And you wonder why Reuben and Anna are always causing trouble...Daddy really isn't any help at all sometimes. That's Anna's doll stroller, just in case you were wondering - not even remotely made for 8-month-old little sisters.

A maternity photography job I got to do in August

The engagement photo shoot I got to do just last night. ;)

It Never Rains But It Pours

That old saying seems to be kind of a theme around here lately. Last week Connecticut had more rain dumped on it than it has in a long time. As a member of the local Emergency Management garage, Jeremy was out for over 36 hours strait delivering sand bags, etc. The flooding, extensive as it was, caused no damage for our immediate family. The New England hills give a whole new dimension to flooding that I'm not accustomed to after growing up along the coastline down south.



The Saturday before the flooding hit, Jeremy took the Norwich Police Department"s physical agility test, the one he'd been anticipating for six long weeks that weren't long enough. About a week before the test, he timed his 1.5 mile run, and after thinking it was a great run, found he had come up 13 seconds short. That last week before the test, despite his best efforts, life conspired against him and he didn't get to put in much more training at all, so he was extreamly nervous going into that test. It ended up being a very cool opportunity to see God's hand at work in our lives, because on test day he beat the run time by over a minute.

To follow up that display of God's grace, in the past week Jeremy has suddenly been innundated with more work than he knows what to do with. After going for so many months with next to nothing, and definitely not enough to keep living on, now he's realistically looking at hiring.





Mid March we went over to a friends house for lunch, and while all us Moms were sitting talking in the living room, Reuben came trotting through, tripped on a pillow, and smacked his head on the fireplace hearth. It busted open a 1" x 1/8" hole right in the middle of his forehead, and our hostess (who used to be a nurse) quickly pronounced this injury worthy of a trip to the ER.

They were able to glue it shut as opposed to stitching it, which was a blessing at the moment, but about a week later when the glue had come off it just busted open again. This time we just patched it up at home, and as of today, it's almost completely healed.

Later that same week Reuben busted his head open right next to his eyebrow, and Anna bruised her forehead in two places. I was getting about ready to wrap 'em in bubble wrap and duck tape them to the ceiling for their own safety.



Reuben and Anna are enjoying their baby sister more all the time. Every now and then I'll bring Laura along when we put the kids to bed and help her "give them kisses and hugs" (sorta stick her face close enough she can slime their cheek), or I'll "help" Laura chase them around, which they think is totally hysterical.

A couple weeks ago I decided to start potty training Laura. Yep, three kids at once. Laura was very consistently filling her diaper toward the end of each feeding about a minute after she got all squirmy and red in the face. It finally dawned on me that it was kinda silly not to put her on the potty if I clearly knew she was about to go. It's not taking much extra time, it just takes the extra effort to get up and go do it.

I've been amazed how quickly she's caught on. I'm not aiming for perfection here, just saving her the discomfort of sitting in her own poo whenever I can, and hopefully it'll be easier for her to grasp the concept of taking herself to the toilet when the time comes. It's turned out to be great "bonding" time for me and her too - one of the brief periods we get one-on-one time during the day. Comically enough, Laura sucessfully goes on the potty more than the other two kids combined.



Reuben specially asked me to get a picture of him brushing his teeth, and when I told him we could send the picture to his Honey Bear he was quite excieted and started happily waving and yelling, "Hi Honey Bear! Hi Honey Bear!"



We finally managed to catch Laura smiling, though we still need to get a shot of when she's really grinnng. You never saw such a face splitting grin! It's adorable.



Sadly, most of Laura's waking hours are spent screaming. Over this past weekend I started getting the feeling something was off. She was puking in vast quantities after every feeding, choking and gagging, miserable, not sleeping well, sudden fits of apparent pain for no obvious reason. So, I google searched "excessive spit up" and sure enough, that's not normal baby behavior.



Though I haven't had a professional diagnose it, it would seem my little Laura may be a victim of acid reflux. As one of the causes is a dairy intolerance, I cut out dairy and her symptoms have cleared up almost immediately. She's still pretty grumpy, but she's keeping her food down now.







The day before Easter Sunday Jeremy taught a Basic Pistol class, using our church for the classroom time. We'd pre-arranged for me to order them some pizza and then go pick it up and bring it to the church when Jeremy called for it. Well, that ended up being a bit of a disasterous experience all in itself - a rather hysterical story, but longer than I care to put you through here.

Anyhow, we're at church enjoying some pizza with Jeremy's class and the kids were getting roudy, so I took them outside to enjoy the glorious day we were having. It took less than 10 minutes for Anna to find some left over tar from a basement repair that was in progress. By the time I figured out she was playing in more than dirt, she had it all over her mouth, hands, and clothes.

Tar doesn't come off easily. Just in case you were wondering. One of our friends who was taking the class started scouring the church for any substance that could possibly be of use, while I got her stripped down and into the kitchen sink in some soapy warm water. Ultimately we discovered that Vasaline works wonders, and much to my relief we did eventually get Anna clean.





Several weeks ago I picked up a marketing book while nursing Laura, and as I read God started revealing a pretty glaring blindspot in my life. I've always helped Jeremy with his business, but the truth was I hadn't been totally dedicated to it the way he needed me to be, and his level of success was hurting because of my unreliable level of participation.

So I've started getting myself more organized. There really isn't much extra time in my day with three kids three and under, so each day is set asside for a different category of my varied responsibilities, and whatever time I can muster that day is dedicated to those tasks. So for instance, Monday is park day in the morning and business marketing in the afternoon, Tuesday is grocery shopping day in the morning and graphic design work in the afternoon, etc.

The key has been getting into the mentality that I am Jeremy's personal assistant, and if I don't do my job I won't get paid. Technically I don't get paid regardless, but the reality is that Jeremy's paychecks reflect both of our efforts.

This past Friday Jeremy came home to a one page "Weekly Report" that summarized what I had accomplished that week with the books, bills, and marketing, and what was on the agenda for next week. It has brought me to tears to see just how relieved and happy Jeremy is to have me working with him whole heartedly now, and to realize what a discouragement I had been to him before without ever realizing it.

oh, Anna!

If you could peek into my living room when Laura is nursing these past few days, you would see me re-reading Michael & Debbie Pearl's book "To Train Up A Child". And, once you take a look at these pictures, you'll start to understand why.







Our little Anna is a case! She's been caught standing in the bathroom sink and sitting inside the toilet more than once too, and her latest facination is washing her "softy" (silky blanket) in the toilet and then walking around the house leaving a trail of potty water dripped behind her. She's one of the most troublesome, adventurous, inquisitive, intelligent, adorable, sweet, and precious little girls I have ever met - let alone lived with. She always giving somebody a hug or kiss, always climbing something, always getting into something, and always grinning that impudent, adorable, head to toe smile of hers. She's just a mess.

Speaking of smiles, Laura finally started smiling at me last night. I was talking at her, just like good parents are supposed to do, and she actually started staring in my face, and then started grinning and smiling at me like I couldn't hardly believe - for a good 10 minutes or so. Same thing again today. It's so cool when a baby finally begins to interact and develop some personality. It's especially nice to get smiled at by this little one, since the last three weeks of nursing her has been excruciatingly painful. Makes it hard to love having a newborn in the house when it's all work, pain, and lots of screaming baby in the background. Poor kid, being baby #3 she is so often just left crying because it's physically impossible for me to do everything and keep her happy all the time too.

Anna and Reuben are continuing to bond with her with each passing week. Anna's forever pulling blankets off of her so she can see what she's hugging and kissing, and Reuben very compassionately puts blankets on her when he hugs and kisses her, particularly when she's crying and he wants to comfort her.













Reuben turned three a few weeks before his cousin Katie turned four, so we had a combined family party for the two of them on March 6th. Sadly, Reuben threw up on the way to his own party, fell asleep right before we ate, and when he woke up he still felt sick enough he wasn't even interested in birthday cake or ice cream. He was pretty excieted about his presents though, and has been having loads of fun playing with them ever since.





I used birthday money from Reuben's great-grandparents to get him all set up with some pre-school activities. A whole year ago I got some books on teaching pre-school at home, made great plans, but never actually got the stuff to do it. So finally I made a trip to Wal-Mart and Goodwill, and I am amazed at how totally facinated and engrossed Reuben is with simple scooping, pouring, and pinching exercises. Next we get to do colors, shapes, and matching; once I finish assembling the stuff to do it anyhow. He's gotten so much more interested in books lately, finally! It's so awesome watching him grow beyond toddler to being a "real boy."







Today is the most beautiful day out! And it's not the first either, it's slowly been warming up and turning Spring-like around here, and I'm THRILLED! Right now all the windows are open, it's bright and beautiful outside, and I've gotten to take my kids outside to play several times in the last week or so.







Business has been picking up a bit for Jeremy lately. With the weather warming up we're putting together marketing materials to target houses that have paint peeling off of them. Seems like a worth while plan, just praying that God will bless it with good success. Asside from work, Jeremy's also been preparing for the Norwich PD physical agility test coming up March 27. The Haiti Benefit concert he organized turned out beautifully (or so I'm told, I was home with sick kids) though Jeremy was extreamly dissapointed he didn't get the place packed out. We're also working on a website with one of our town councilmen who is runnng for state assembly. So, keeping busy, which is always good.



You know, I once wrote down a list of things I wanted to do before I died:
-do the Texas Water Safari
-hike the appalacian trail
-become a bush pilot
-etc.
I no longer want to hike the appalacian trail, and I don't even enjoy riding in planes anymore, but I did complete the Safari four times. I don't remember what else was on that list, but I do remember that "become a baby factory" wasn't even a runner up. Yet, here I am...three children in less than three years.

Lately I've been reflecting on just how much my life has turned out different than I expected it to as I was growing up. The wonder of it all, is that the life God has given me is perfect. Not perfect in the sense that it's problem free - quite the contrary. Perfect in the sense that this is what God made me for, and it's hard, and so much of the time I totally suck at it!, but... I can't really put it into words, but somehow the life God is laying out for me is so much better for me than the life I had dreamed up for myself.