Bedtime prayers

When we pray with Lilly before bed, we end with the traditional, "God bless mommy, daddy, Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, etc." This goes on for quite some time as we name various friends and family. We've begun to let Lilly take the lead on who gets prayed for, which has yielded some interesting and extremely entertaining prayers. In addition to praying for her play broom and bubbles, the other night she added in various shapes. She prayed for the circle, the square, the rectangle, the oval and the triangle. As for the rhombus and trapezoids, I'm afraid they're on their own.

Clearly, she's not getting enough to eat.

Day after Thanksgiving

Happy day after Thanksgiving! Did you hit the sales today?

Not us. We all slept in until 7:40 (woo hoo!) and then decided to take a trip up to Apple Hill. We've usually gone the day after Thanksgiving and cut down our tree. This year, we have an artificial tree, which I swore I'd never have, but decided to keep the Apple Hill tradition just for the sake of getting into the holiday spirit. It was cool and crisp up there which certainly helps.

They still had the gigantic pumpkin out at High Hill, which Lilly still enjoyed sitting on. AND... Lilly got to ride her first horse! It was a very sweet pony named Crakers at a local tree farm. You can't see it in the picture, but she was grinning from ear to ear the whole time.

Tonight we had Turkey leftovers at Wendy's mom's house, having enjoyed Thanksgiving yesterday with Elliott's family. Now, Lilly is in bed, and we're goin to watch some House on DVD. All in all, a great day of hanging out with my little family!

Oh, and we did put up our PRELIT tree, and I LOVE it! Pictures to follow when there are decorations on it.

Boys and their toys

Need I say more???

Sassy Sauce

I'd heard about it... sassy sauce that is. What is it you ask? Diluted cider vinegar in a small spray bottle. Many moms I know of use it to discipline for "offenses of the mouth" (disrespect, lying, sassing, etc.). It tastes nasty, thus discouraging the offense. So I got my spray bottle ready. We've been having issues with disrespect, a.k.a. the response of, "NO!" So, today I tried it out. I told Lilly that she was not allowed to talk that way to mommy, and that I was going to spray something in her mouth to help her remember. **spray** What did I hear next? "More!"

Okay, cross that one off the list. I shouldn't have been surprised, after all she loves eating lemons.

Thanking God for infertility

Sounds strange doesn't it?

I just had my quiet time and had a revelation. I am SO thankful for the experience of the years of infertility, because I see daily the difference those hard years made in my walk with Christ. It's not that I was "not good enough" and he had to take me through something horrible to make me better (I had those thoughts at the time, believe me), but out of his love for me, he wanted better for me than what answering my immediate prayer would bring.

He knew that someday I would value what infertility brought me so much more than what it cost me. It cost me the life-long dream of pregnancy and childbirth. It cost me the knowledge of what a child born to myself and DH would look like. Do I even care about that anymore? Amazingly and by God alone, I can say a big fat NO. What it brought to me was a complete trust and confidence in God no matter what the circumstances are, an intimacy with him that I hadn't known before surrendering my dream to him, the sweetness and tenderness of his presence in carrying me through one minute at a time, and on top of that, the eventual blessing of my beloved daughter who I could not love any more than I do.

Without IF I would have had a child, but been without so much. Only God knew that in his time, he would fulfill more than what I wanted.

The Great Underwear Mystery

Okay. This is not about Lilly directly, but I just had to share this because it is stinkin' hilarious.

We teach in the 2 year old Sunday School class at church. A friend of mine whose daughter is in our class told me something yesterday that shocked me. She said that the last 2 weeks her daughter Bethy has come home from Sunday School wearing someone else's underwear. I think my exact response was, "WHAT???" I mean, if Lilly came home wearing underwear that were not on her when I dropped her off, I'd be pretty concerned. I knew there was no underwear swapping going on in the class, and of those who were potty training, only one at a time used the little bathroom that was part of the classroom. When she told me that Bethy was arriving at church in a Pull-up and coming home in underwear, we started to figure out what was happening.

Bethy is almost 3 and uses the potty by herself. Every week, I've been amazed by how she just lets herself into the bathroom and takes care of business. What I didn't know was that while in there, she has been rifling through the preschool cubbies and picking out some new undies for herself. Ditching the Pull-up in the trash, she comes out feeling like big stuff, and we've been none the wiser.

The sad thing is that the next time little Suzy or Sally in the preschool have an accident, their spare change of clothes in the bathroom cubbies will be short a pair of undies. Maybe we can get them back to their rightful owners.

I didn't see that one coming

As parents, there are things we say that we never dreamt we'd need to say. One friend of mine tells about her amusement at having to instruct her son, "We don't pee on our friends." Good advice there.

This morning I had my own experience with this. I heard myself say, "We don't put our toys in the toilet." Oh yes. The dollhouse baby went for a swim.

He loves his girls

What is love? A husband and daddy who agrees to sell his beloved motorcycle for the sake of his girls. We are thankful. We are also very smart and offered him a Wii to assist in the decision making process ease the pain of motorcycle loss.

Honest answer?

Tonight grandma and grandpa asked Lilly if she wanted a boy baby (brother) or a girl baby (sister). Her reply? "No thank you."

On a more serious note Elliott was in a motorcycle accident yesterday on his way to work. We are SO grateful to the Lord that he is only banged up and sore and that things were not what they could have been. Discussions are underway in our home as to the future of the motorcycle. I won't name names, but at the time of this writing one of us is praying that the other will come to his senses.

Twick o Tweat

We had a great Halloween. Check out the photos by clicking on the Flickr link to the right.

Elliott's office hosts Trick or Treating for the employee's kids in the afternoon, followed by pizza for the kids and their parents. Lilly got a stash of candy visiting the different offices and cubicles, and got very good at saying, "Twick o Tweat."

In the evening, following show off visits for the grandparents, we went to our church Harvest Party. We were thrilled that Bekah was able to come with us (Bekah is Lilly's birth mom) and we all had a great time! Lilly got to play carnival games (which earned her more candy), jump in the bounce house, and get a balloon doggie. Unfortunately, I spaced and forgot to bring the camera to the Harvest Party. You'll have to use your imagination to picture a sugared-up Lilly inside the bounce house, jumping and smiling like a mad thing and yelling, "B O U N C I N G!" I think she liked it.

The best part of Halloween this year is that she has yet to ask about the candy this morning, and we've been up for almost 3 hours. It's only a matter of time.