No way!

No way it has been seven months since I last posted! My sister laughed and said, "Still potty training?!" Well, actually, yes! I took off a few months to give Zoe a little bit longer to "grow up," and have started it again just recently.

A little over two years old now, Zoe is talking in complete sentences, responding well to commands, and growing so big! We are weaning her off of her "passis" (i.e., pacifier), and she is doing alright with potty training. We enrolled her in the library reading program two weeks before it finished, so we read three more books than we would have, and she received two prizes (a toy train and a new Scholastic book). She was pretty excited to go with her cousin to do that. Next year, I'll sign her up at the beginning of the summer. She's becoming familiar with her ABC's and can count to ten forwards and backwards quite well. She likes watching PBS in the mornings and loves finding movies in our room and opening them up to show me the disc inside. She is such an adorable little girl and our lives are so blessed to have her in them!

We have been living with David's mom and stepdad since the end of March while we waited for our tenants to move out of our duplex, and we have been spending three months cleaning it up and getting ready to move back in. We should be ready to move by the end of next week. Having all three of us living together in one room has given me a new perspective on just how little we need to get by and survive (rather happily, I add!), so I plan to go through our stuff and have a garage sale so that I can start out fresh in our "new" place and not worry about all the time and effort it takes to keep things cleaned and organized. Like Ecclesiastes says, what good are things we accumulate except to look at them? (Okay, that was a paraphrase. lol)

So I hope to post more often and keep this updated a little more often than every seven months. lol! See y'all later!

Today

Today the sun is shining bright.
Today the windows bring in light.
Today it's high my sights
Are set.

Well, anyway, it's not a very good poem, but I am trying to get some cleaning done and enjoy this beautiful spring-like weather we are having. The sun streaming in the windows does good for the soul... couldn't help but peek outside and see if the trees are beginning to bud. Lots of organizing and throwing stuff away from a winter of "put that aside until later." It is so nice to begin to see the fruits of my labor as the house is looking a little bit cleaner than it was this morning. :)

Guess I should get back to work. *wink

New Picture

Just now, I tried taking a self-portrait of my ever-growing tummy, using the refrigerator as a backdrop. None of the pictures turned out too great, so I'm just gonna post the one that, to me, looked the best.

We are going to start work on the nursery this weekend, I think - at least, that's the last plan I heard. :) To do that, we are planning to clean out our garage on Saturday, and get rid of a lot of the stuff in there, so that we can put the bed and desk from the back bedroom out into the garage. Then we can start bringing in the stuff we have already received from family and friends (thank you!!!) and start feeling like it's a baby's room back there. :)

I have one more "monthly" doctor visit, and then the visits go to twice a month - I can't believe how fast the next 3 1/2 months are looking to fly by! :) Zoe is 5 1/2 months along already... 25 weeks today. Her kicks are getting much stronger, and more often, but especially when I lay down to sleep at night. She mostly kicks on my right side, and I'm beginning to think she likes to feel Daddy's big strong hand, because her kicks aren't so strong when he tries to feel. :) We have another ultrasound scheduled for the middle of February, which is supposed to give us more "facial shots." This is such an exciting time! :)

Beautiful spring is right around the ko'no! We plan to plant grass in half of our front yard, and I hope to get some flowers planted, too. I'd like to take out the evergreen bush that's right next to the driveway, but we'll see if it's too big to waste time whacking at. :) If all that gets done, it will be quite the transformation out there! And Lord willing, no huge wind storms will knock down any more huge branches off the big tree like last year!

Time to turn the heater down and open up doors and windows! Time to get the house organized and ready for the baby! Time to get excited about a wonderful spring season! :) God is so good to His children, amen?!