Making S'mores

Tonight, David and Jonathan built a fire and we all roasted hot dogs for dinner and marshmallows for S-mores. It was a lot of fun!

Elizabeth really liked roasting and eating the marshmallows. She wasn't too sure about the whole S'more combination though. I think it was just too sticky and messy for her OCD personality. So, of course, I was happy to oblige by eating her chocolate for her! Guess that's one more thing we'll have to work on before she heads to camp!







And, here's a picture that clearly shows why we can't tell Elizabeth to smile or say cheese for the camera now:



Guess we're going to have to resort to corny jokes from here on out!

Counting to 10

Elizabeth has been counting to 4 for a while now, but last night at dinner, she found her groove and started counting all the way to 10!

The little stinker had been holding back on us!

Here's part of a video David ran to take. In the video, she gets stuck on 7 for a while (she left off the "s" and I think it threw her off), but she manages to recover.

New minister

Our church (Hill-n-Dale Christian) voted to accept a new senior minister this morning. His name is Phil Roberts, and we all really liked his "trial" sermon today. Elizabeth didn't hear it, but she already likes him, because he comes with "babies" - LOTS of babies! He and his wife have a little girl who is almost 3 years old, plus they have 17-month-old triplets (2 boys and a girl - the 3 survivors from a set of quadruplets). They were able to overcome infertility in a very big way!

Phil's family is moving to Lexington from Savannah, and we're really excited to have him!

Here's a link to the Roberts family's website if you want to read more about their family's amazing story:

http://www.expandingrobertses.com/index.htm

Quick trip to Nashville

On Friday afternoon, David, Elizabeth and I drove down to Nashville to spend the night. Elizabeth did fairly well in the car both ways - David had primed her with lots of talk about watching the "little TV" (i.e., DVD player) in the car. She's already expressed her displeasure that it disappeared as soon as we returned home. But, she continued her tradition of not napping (either way) while travelling in the car.

She did have fun in the hotel room. She liked "calling" and sending "e-mail" to Barney on the spare phone in the room.



Plus, she had a bedful of toys and books to play with, once she dumped her suitcase out on the bed.



We ate dinner with Cousin Robyn at the Rainforest Cafe on Friday night. We thought all the animals and hoopla would be a good distraction for Elizabeth. However, since she was virtually napless that day (except for a few minutes in the car just before we got to the restaurant), the noise just proceeded to mask her fit-throwing during dinner. A very tired almost-2-year-old is not a force to be reckoned with! We even skipped out on the yummy-looking desserts to get her back to the hotel. However, once there, she redeemed herself by playing with Robyn a little bit.



She also continued her tradition of not sleeping well in the hotel room. She didn't go to sleep until almost 11pm our time, then she woke up about every 2 hours after that. Plus, her internal alarm clock went off (as always) bright and early at 6:30am (7:30am our time), much to our chagrin.

On Saturday morning, we took Elizabeth to the Nashville Zoo to meet an online friend of mine, who has a little boy (Stone) who was also born in May 2005. The kids had a blast! The weather was beautiful, and we had a great time getting to know each other and taking Stone and Elizabeth around to see the animals.

We started out taking the kids to the toddler play area, which had a large bouncy floor that the kids could run and jump on. Elizabeth was hesitant at first, but once Stone showed her how he could run, jump, and tumble, she tried it out a bit.



Then, they wanted to check out the rest of the playground, so they spent time on the swings and playing at the sandboxes:



Elizabeth wasn't sure about all the large animal sculptures at the playground. Stone was a brave boy and went right up to touch the huge snake, but none of us could convince Elizabeth to get any closer to the snake than this:



But, after Elizabeteh saw how brave Stone was with the snake, she did decide to hold his hand so he could protect her!

Then, it was off to the carousel, where Elizabeth actually decided to ride the "kitty-cat" - which was a big step for her. She usually refuses to ride any of the animals that move.



Of course, I think Stone's willingness to jump right up on the big elephant helped to convince her.

Then, it was off to check out the real elephants. They both had a great time watching them...although Stone couldn't convince Elizabeth to call them "Zoe" - the Japanese word for "elephant." (Stone and his family just moved to the United States from Japan!)

After that, we decided to break for lunch. Apparently, the excitement of the day (plus the lack of sleep in the hotel the night before) was too much for Elizabeth - she went right into a dead sleep! So, the rest of us looked at more animals while she took a short power nap. After she woke up, we looked at a few more exhibits, then it was time to head home. Of course, she didn't sleep any on the way home either, thanks to that little nap!

But, we had a great time, and the weather was beautiful. It was fun to see Elizabeth really enjoying the zoo and the animals this time!

Daddy's girl

Elizabeth absolutely loves her Daddy. It's no wonder - David is so good with her. We're blessed that he's able to stay home with her, and he is just the most wonderful SAHD (stay at home dad) ever! I've said it before, but I'll say it again - seeing how wonderful he is with her makes me love him even more.

Here's a recent picture of her giving him some loving:



That picture really reminded me of this picture, which is one of my absolute favorite pictures of her with David that was taken when she was 3 days old:



Was she really ever that small? And, when did she get so big?!?!?

More baby play

A while back, we pulled out all our old baby gear in preparation for a large GoodWill visit. While everything was out in the house, Elizabeth had a great time playing with her dolls in the bathtub, swing, and carseat.

Her doll Mary got very clean with lots of bubble baths in the baby bathtub:



And, Elizabeth had lots of fun playing with LouLou in the swing and infant carseat:








She still asks for the carseat and swing to play with, so we have to remind her that we gave them to other babies to use.

And, before Aunt Amy can protest too loudly about the loss of our baby items, let me highlight an ironic recent conversation between myself and our hair stylist. I told her that I was about to give away all of our baby items, and I figured Amy would announce her engagement the minute I did... By the way, CONGRATULATIONS AMY AND NEAL - they're going to be married on June 2!!!

A real baby

Elizabeth continues her obsession with babies. She got the ultimate thrill last week when she got to meet the baby that was just adopted by Gran's next-door neighbors. She's still talking about it! Here are some adorable pictures of the 2 of them together:

Random ramblings

Elizabeth is so funny to listen to now. You can never guess what's going to come out of her mouth. We spend a lot of time laughing at her thought processes and expressions. Here are some recent samples:

Anytime we tell her something is "all gone" now, like food or drink, she'll say "Wal-Mart?" I guess she's figured out on her own that you can get anything there! They were cracking up about it on Sunday in the church nursery because she said it when they told her the goldfish crackers were all gone.

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She's also obsessed with counting ears now. She's figured out that Scar - our poor adopted stray kitty - only has one ear:



While Scarlet - the spoiled indoor kitty who bites - has two ears:



She's spent a lot of time talking about poor Scar and her boo-boo. So far, she's asked me to kiss it to make it all better, and she's told me that Daddy will fix it (of course - can't Daddies fix anything?).

As a result, lately she's started going around and counting ears....
"Mommmy...ears...one-two. Lyra...ears...one-two. Baby Bop...ears...one-two..." Her counting skills are also improving. She can consistently make it all the way to 4 now. And, she got to combine the two skills when she put 4 ears on her Mr. Potato Head, then counted them all.

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Potty update - Elizabeth is still doing really well on the potty. She uses it several times a day, both pee-pee and poo-poo, and will now go as soon as we put her on it. We're still a long way from trained, though, because she still goes in her diapers pretty often.

For some reason, she wanted to talk about poo-poo a lot tonight. We had a whole conversation that basically consisted of repeats of these thought-provoking facts:
"Poo-poo...potty....no mouth...yuck! Cookies...mouth...yummy."
Can't argue with her there!

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Jonathan did really well on his 30-hour fast this weekend. He said he didn't even get hungry. I'm not sure I could have done so well! And, his youth group ended up raising over $5000 to feed hungry children throughout the world. Great job!

He has a project due in Social Studies tomorrow, so he's spent all evening taping popsicle sticks into a replica of the Trojan Horse. I definitely don't miss those days!

He's also trying out for the Track team at school this week. For some reason, I can't convince him to get up at 6am to run with me in the mornings, though.

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Work has been incredibly hectic and tiring for me this month. I've had several overnight trips, and am about to leave on one more tomorrow night. Hopefully, this will be the last one for a while!

The ducks get fat while Jonathan gets thin

Elizabeth actually sat still for some pictures this morning, so of course we had to share them with you! She has really been growing lately. I was out of town for several days this week, and could tell a big difference when I got home. She's even about to grow out of the overalls she just grew into 2 weeks ago - at least in the belly...her legs are still short, of course!



She also has really started putting words together into sentences. She's said up to a 5-word sentence so far, and talks up a storm wherever she goes. David took her to feed the ducks at the local bookstore today. She had so much fun, we had to go back again tonight so she could show me. And, he had to promise to bring her back tomorrow to convince her to leave. She kept telling us on the way home that tomorrow she was going to tell the ducks, "Wake up, ducks! Time to eat!" and that they were going to eat cereal because it was yummy.

On the other hand, Jonathan is going to participate in a voluntary 30-hour famine wih his youth group tomorrow night. Starting at noon tomorrow, they will go without food until 6pm on Saturday night. The purpose of the fast is to raise their awareness regarding world hunger, and to raise money for hungry children. We're very proud of him for participating. Please keep him in your prayers!

Cell phones and computers

Elizabeth is already proving she's a product of a new technology generation. This evening, she pulled out her Barney "laptop," sat down with it in the middle of the floor, started "typing," and distinctly said the word "e-mail." Now, how she knows the word "e-mail", I don't know. I don't think it's a word we actually use that frequently around her. But, she proved that she does know about e-mail, and she knows you type it on computers. Let's think about that for a minute - while most of the rest of us can remember when we first used a computer, and that it was a novelty, she will not ever remember a time when she didn't know about laptops and e-mail. For some reason, that makes me feel really old... I can't even imagine how it makes those of you who are really old (oh, say, those who might be turning FORTY tomorrow!) feel! :) Speaking of, Elizabeth has gotten really good at saying "Happy Birthday, Daddy" in preparation for tomorrow's festivities.

Elizabeth also had fun playing with her purse from Gran tonight. We put on lipstick, played with the wallet and pretended to drive with the keys while we waited for Granddad and Granny Pat to come over for dinner.



As you can see in this video, she's also figured out what the cell phone is for!