September Favorites

Once again, I cannot believe another month has come and gone.  We have had a very busy September full of tons of fun.  We had two birthdays this month (Little R and Trey), traveled to "the farm" and to Fripp Island, had church pictures taken, ate alot of birthday cake, watched the Bulldawgs win some and lose some, and also spent some time sprucing up our house with some things we have been wanting to add for some time.  Here are my top 5 favorites from this month:

1. Poppin' Blue Elephant

Reives received this gift at his birthday party, and it is definitely one of his current favorite toys.  He loves to press the button and watch these balls pop out of the elephant's trunk.  He also tries to stuff all sorts of things down the elephant's trunk.  It is such a cute toy, and I would highly recommend it for any baby 9 months and up.

2. Brach's Candy Corn

For those of you that know me, you know that I absolutely LOVE candy corn.  I am always so excited when candy corn hits the stores each year.  I have been through several bags already this month, and I just cannot get enough of it.  I hope that Baby G #2 likes it, since I sure am eating my fair share :)

3. Georgia Bulldawgs

Go Dawgs!  I LOVE college football season.  The Dawgs got off to a rough start this season, but we seem to be improving.  The rest of the season will tell.  Little R is already learning how to call the Dawgs, and it is so cute when he tries to do it with us.  Reives will be experiencing his first Georgia game this weekend, so I hope that we win (and I hope the little guy survives the craziness of the day!)

4. The Grace Card

Trey and I got this movie through Netflix earlier this month.  Talk about a tear jerker!  This movie is all about how God can work through the most difficult and tragic circumstances to draw people to Himself.  Although when the movie ended, my face was covered in tears, I felt so encouraged and motivated to share my faith with others.  A must see!!!!

5. Pinterest

I have been hearing about Pinterest for weeks now.  A friend invited me to do it, so I finally did a little research to see what it is all about.  I was hesitant to "join" Pinterest because I thought, "Great, another online thing like facebook to waste all of my time."  To me, however, Pinterest is much more something for me than something for me to check up on other people.  Yes, you can "follow" people on Pinterest, but I love it for a different reason.  It is like having your own, personal filing cabinet right there.  You basically save everything such as fashion ideas, travel ideas, recipes, home decorating ideas, etc. all in one spot.  So, instead of cutting out magazine clippings of decorating ideas I like, I can just save them to Pinterest when I come across them on the internet.  It is pretty cool!

14 Weeks....

As I am writing this, I am actually much closer to 15 weeks but better late than never!  I am going to try and do a pregnancy update every couple of weeks or so.  Here is a quick recount of the last 14 weeks to get caught up.  I have felt much more nauseas during this pregnancy than I did when I was pregnant with Reives.  However, I do not think that I have been as tired as I remember being last time.  Thankfully, I am starting to feel like myself again.  I still have the occasional nauseas period in the morning, but it is much better than it was a few weeks ago.  I felt the baby move around 13 1/2 weeks.  I still just feel little flutters like popcorn popping or goldfish swimming, but I just love it!  The movement is not regular, and I probably notice it once every day or every other day.  I notice the movement the most in the middle of the night when I am up using the bathroom.  It seemed that Reives hardly ever moved around at night when I was pregnant with him.  I hope this is not a sign that this baby is going to like to be awake at night....yikes :)

As far as cravings go....nothing too unusual.  I did not want much to do with sweets during the first 12 or 13 weeks, but I am beginning to crave chocolate from time to time.  My belly is growing, but I can still wear most of my regular clothes.  Trey and I can definitely tell that I am pregnant, but I don't think other people notice too much yet.  Here is a picture of me at 14 weeks.  There isn't really much to show yet, but I still wanted to snap a picture to document the belly progression.  I promise there is a small bump under there :)

12 Month Check-Up

Little R had his 12 month check-up today!  I get excited each time we go for a check up, because I love to see Little R's "stats."  I also always have my list of questions/concerns, and it is nice to talk these over with the doc.  Little R is doing great and seems to be right on target with everything.  The poor little guy had to get 4 shots today, so that was no fun for any of us.  Thankfully, his shots have never seemed to bother him too much after the fact, and he has never had any side effects from them.  There is so much controversy out there over vaccinations (autism, seizures, getting too many shots at one time, etc.), so I just pray for God's protection over him each time he has to get vaccines.

The doc gave us the go ahead to switch Little R to whole milk.  As many of you know, he had a pretty bad reaction to milk protein (we think) when he was really little, so I hope that he has outgrown this. He has done fine eating dairy products, so we shall see.  I sure hope he does OK with it because we would LOVE to be free from buying his very very expensive formula!

Little R's stats are staying pretty much on the same growth curve as they have been on.  His weight percentile has decreased some, but his height percentile has increased.  His head is a tad on the small size, but is growing consistently.  (Hmmm.....I wonder where he gets a small head wonders the mother who has to buy kid size baseball hats and has even worn kid size sunglasses recently.)

Here are his stats:

Height-   31.24 inches (87th percentile)
Weight-  23 lbs 8 oz    (59th percentile)
Head-     45.8 cm        (30th percentile)

Needless to say, Little R is growing like crazy!  We are so blessed to have such a fun loving, sweet, little guy as our son.

On a different note, I have been feeling Baby Glendye #2 moving around for a few days.  I was surprised at how early I started to notice movement with this little one (13 1/2 weeks), but it sure is exciting!!!!

Good Morning

Some of you may have heard of Oswald Chambers.  I think he is most known for his devotional book, "My Utmost for His Highest."  I received this devotional book from my home church's pastor, David Haygood, when I graduated from high school.  It has a devotional for each day of they year.  I have read through this devotional book may times since them, and I still love it because it is very deep and challenging to say the least.  In fact, one of my all time favorite quotes comes from one of his daily devotionals, but I'll save that one from another day.

In preparing for last week's youth Bible study, I came across this quote from Mr. Chambers in our leader's guide:

"It is impossible for a believer, no matter, what his experience, to keep right with God if he will not take the trouble to spend time with God...Spend plenty of time with God; let other things go, but don't neglect Him."

I LOVE this quote.  We tell our youth girls all of the time that they can't get to know God any better if they don't spend any time with him outside of Sunday morning and Wednesday night.  Yet, so often I think we believers start to coast along in our faith and somehow convince ourselves that we don't need as much time with God.

As I write this at 8:30 am, my precious little boy is still sleeping!  I can't believe it.  It has been nice to have a whole lot of time this morning to myself, but I cannot WAIT until he wakes up.  Going to get him out of his crib each morning is one of the highlights of my day.  I cannot wait to see his smiling face, kiss those chunky cheeks, and squeeze him to death.  I was thinking earlier that God certainly must feel that same way about us.  He cannot wait to spend a little one on one time with us each morning.  Yet, so often we neglect this time with Him.  I was thinking how I would feel if I went to get Reives this morning and he turned his back towards me or didn't flash me his oh so cute smile!  I would be hurt, crushed, and really, really sad.  Well, I am pretty sure that is how God feels, when we start our day without even acknowledging him.  I mean, I know He understands that some mornings we cannot take 10 or 15 minutes or however long to spend in prayer and in His Word.  But, I do feel that He longs for us to at least come before Him with a prayer, a smile, a heart of gratitude, or a quick prayer of thanksgiving.  He waits for this moment each day just as I wait for the moment my sons greets me in the mornings.

As the quote says, it is impossible for us to keep "right" (close to, in tune with, as things should be) with God, if we neglect our time with Him.  And, I truly believe that it saddens His heart when we don't spend that quality time with Him.  "Spend plenty of time with God; let other thins go, but don't neglect Him."

12 Months

As you all know, the little man is officially 12 months old (as of Sept. 11 at 12:38 pm).  On Little R's birthday, we went to church, came home, played in the backyard, and then had some lunch.  I took some action shots of Little R (that is all I can get there days) while we were outside, and when I walked back into the house, I glanced at the clock on the stove just as it changed from 12:38 to 12:39.  I was so excited that I got to stop and remember that exact time that Little R came into the world.  It was seriously one of the greatest moments of my life!

Here are some things Little R is doing now:

-walking/trying to run everywhere

-pointing at everything

-beginning to recognize objects and point to them when we say the name (cup, balloon, Chip, etc.)

-finally saying the "duh" sound....he has been saying all of the other consonant sounds for months....except for this one....hopefully "dada" will come soon :)

-has said his "official" first word, besides the repetition of a consonant sound (mama, bye bye, etc.).  We are so proud that it was the word "Amen!"  We say and emphasize this word after the blessing and the little guy has just started to pipe up from time to time with his own "Amen" after we say ours.  Too cute :)

-eating pretty much anything we give him.  Some of his favorite current foods are yogurt, cheese toast, ham, beef, chicken, lima beans, butter peas, and strawberries.

-throwing us all off of any type of schedule with his naps.  He seems to be in some strange in-between phase where he still needs a morning nap, but isn't tired again until 5:00 or so when it is too late for an afternoon nap.  So, we really have no type of schedule right now, and everyday is a little different, depending on when he wakes up.  This is not my favorite "phase" for all of those who know how I like to keep a schedule :)

-keeping us all entertained with his mad dancing skills

Here are some pictures of him on his birthday in his favorite UGA outfit (except for the first two which were taken when we went to get him up on his birthday):

Happy 12 months!!!!

The "Happy Birthday Song" (In honor of TC'45)

This video is in honor of three of my very best friends, who happened to be my college roomies.  I have blogged about them before, but we all lived in TC'45 together when we were at The University of Georgia.  This "Birthday Song" was played on each of our birthdays, and I am still likely to hear it sung by one of these three friends on my birthday each year.

Here it is girls:

1st Birthday Fun!!

I cannot believe I have a one year old!  Every month, I have done a "monthly" post, and I cannot believe we are at 12 months....1 year!  Little R's birthday fell on a Sunday this year, so we had a fun filled weekend of celebrating.  We had a birthday party at our house on Saturday with some of Little R's playdate friends.  Then on Sunday, we had a family birthday for Reives at my parents house.  Little R had a BLAST at both of his birthday parties.  He was so excited and was literally ALL over the place!  Here are some pictures from the big birthday weekend:

The Saturday Party-It was at 12 noon at our house.  We grilled burgers and hot dogs and enjoyed the gorgeous weather:

We had so much fun celebrating Little R's birthday with some of his little friends and their families.  Reives was not too happy about his cake, as you saw earlier.  It was too cute!

Here are some pictures from his family birthday.  It was Sunday at 4:00 at my parents house:

Happy 1st Birthday to my sweet, little boy!  I cannot believe how fast he is growing!!!!!