Charlotte

I started this blog a year ago with the birth of our third child. Charlotte turns one year old today. I look back on our lives and I hardly remember what it was like before she was born. I remember her birth and her first cries; she sounded a bit like a donkey...hee-haw, hee-haw. She is such a wonderful child. She is almost always happy and smiley. She is thoughtful and contemplative. She likes to dance and she especially is fascinated by teeth.

She loves her sisters to pieces and there is nothing that can get her to smile faster. She follows them through the house on their adventures and adores it when they talk to her. Abby calls her Charlotte Grace. Don't really know why. They love giving her kisses goodnight and Abby loves to hug her...She also like to sit on her and smoosh her down when she tries to take steps. Oh, well. I suppose that makes them sisters.

Speaking of steps...Charlotte starting taking more of them this week. She is practicing a lot. I figured that she'd be walking before her birthday and she is. She's even turning and taking more steps after. There is still a lot of falling going on, but she gets a little better every day.

She prefers Aaron to me and it is the most beautiful thing when Aaron comes home from work. No matter where she is or what she's doing, when the key turns in the lock, Charlotte races to get to the front door and climb up Aaron's leg. She has to be picked up and if for whatever reason, Aaron's hands are full when he gets home, she'll cry until she gets picked up. She loves her daddy.

Charlotte is changing into a little girl and not so much the baby anymore. It's kind of sad, but also exciting to see what kind of little person she'll develop into. I wonder what her voice will be like. I wonder if she'll also inherit my curls and if she'll be the one that the red hair will stick with.

The time has literally flown and I known that one day, I'll turn around and she'll be all grown up, driving, and leaving us, but for now, I shall enjoy her as she is and treasure this time. :)

Happy 1st Birthday, Charlotte!

My Bucket List...Not Yet Complete :)

Aaron and I watched a movie recently called, 'The Bucket List.' We both thought it was a great movie. I've had a life list or bucket list since forevers and have been thinking I'd share parts of it here with you. There are certainly some things that are more personal that aren't on this particular list, but it'll give you an idea and maybe encourage you to make your own.

"Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart" Psalm 37:4

Celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square
Observe High Tea in London
Go on a cruise
Learn a foreign language
Ride a motorcycle
Watch a play at The Globe theater
Visit the Great Pyramids in Egypt
Kiss my husband on the observation deck of the Empire State Building
Learn to play the violin/fiddle
Ride in a NYC taxi cab
Graduate from college
Read the complete works of Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Dickens, Thoreau, Rousseau, Conrad, Hemingway, Twain, Burroughs, Tolstoy, Longfellow, Keats, Poe, Bacon, Whittier, and Emerson
Become familiar with the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Ibert, Mendelssohn, Lalo, Liszt, Rimski-Korsakov, Respighi, Rachmaninoff, Paganini, Stravinsky, Toch, Tschaikosvsky, Verdi
Marry and have children
Type 50 words per minute
Read the Bible from cover to cover
Visit the Great Wall of China
Travel along the Via De la Rosa
Pray at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem
Publish something in The New Yorker
Write a book
Learn to ski
Go on a missions trip
Visit the Grand Canyon
Climb a mountain
Take a carriage ride through Central Park
Vacation in New Zealand
Run for office
Save a life
Go skydiving
Ride in a hot air balloon
Sing Karaoke
Drive a convertible
Meet someone famous
Go skinny dipping in a mountain pond
Buy a lottery ticket
Learn to fence
Ride in a gondola in Venice(While I'm there, wouldn't it be cool to see the library that had the big “X” on it from the Indiana Jones movie?)
Take a photography course
See the Aurora Borealis
Act in a Shakespeare play
Visit every state
Touch a potentially dangerous wild animal
Swim in the ocean
Go on an African Safari
Spend the night in an honest to goodness castle
Participate in some kind of re-enactment
Eat at “The Brown Derby” and sit where Lucy sat
Learn how to Kayak and go white water rafting
Visit St. Peter's Cathedral, The Sistine Chapel, Westminster Abbey and the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris
Attend an Opera at the Sydney Opera House
Go on an archealogical expedition
Pan for gold
See a volcano erupt
Get a hole in one
Kiss the Blarney Stone in Ireland
Fly somewhere on a whim
Go on a roadtrip without a predetermined location
See a broadway play
Eat a hotdog at Coney Island
Eat something from a street vendor in an Eastern country
Drive across the USA
Drive an Indy Race Car
Learn to identify all the major constellations
Memorize an entire book of the Bible (it always amazes me when people can rattle off these scriptures passages-when I was a little kid our pastor told about a professor that he had in seminary who had memorized the entire Bible...well-maybe one book at a time)
Discover something new/ invent something
Spend the night in a convent
See a shuttle launch in the flesh
Make a quilt
Get a graduate degree
knit a sweater
Create a mosaic table

It's tough being a woman

This is a response to my sister's recent blog entry. I tried to respond there, but I found there was just too much to say inside her little comment box. So, I am responding to it here.

Of course, as a normal Christian mama, I worry about many things, too. As a rule, I am not a worrier. I am married to a worrier and as we all know...only one worrier per household is truly workable.

1. I think its tough being a mother of small children, born so close together. Its tough sometimes to trust that God knows what He's doing when He builds your family; to remember that He'll never give you more than you can handle. There are days when you'll be nursing, cooking dinner, disciplining, playing a game, singing a song and sweeping the floor(well, you'll be sweeping the floor. that's just too much for me) all at the same time, and you'll feel it all start to well up on you and you'll think/pray this is just too much. Then God will send you a blessing to remind you that He's in control. Perhaps your lovely sister will call and remind you about how bad a day can truly be, and you'll smile at your children as you hang up the phone.

2. Thankfully, I have never had serious issues with my weight or self image; either one extreme or the other. I really just want to be healthier and know that I'm not there currently, but can't do a whole lot about it in my current "condition." (Oh, how I hate that word).

3. As for all that a woman has to get done in a day, I am so not the average woman on this. I don't stress out about that. I grew up around lists and therefore hate lists. The only lists I have ever made are the books I want to read, the occasional grocery list, the things I want to do before I die and educational lists--as in what I needed to accomplish for a said class and now what I want my children to accomplish. I appreciate and admire the woman who can operate that way, but I am not one of them. I learned early on that I had certain things that were important to me to get done in my day and cleaning out the fridge or wiping down the bathroom sink did not make the top of that "list." This brought strain to my relationship with my sister growing up because one of us is a Mary and one of us a Martha (bet you can't figure out which one is which. HA!). But, I have learned that each personality is a gift in it's own right. I have learned things from her about making and building my home. I would hope that she could say the same about me.

4. The sheer awesomeness of our responsibility--this is one that my sister didn't have, but one of my own. If I worry about anything, this is it. I feel a great responsibility in being a wife and mother. I have the responsibility to guide and shepherd my children's hearts...to steer them in their relationship with God and understanding. I worry that I'm not doing enough. Am I echoing the steps of the Savior closely enough that they'll see Him in me? I worry that because of some deficiency on my part, I might cause my children to stumble later on. The thought of that, in and of itself, brings me to my knees...both literally and figuratively.

I worry that as a homeschooling mom, I won't be able to handle their academic needs. Even though, education and learning plays such a huge part in my own life, will I be able to develop that love for learning that I myself have. Will they see the importance in, not just being able to read, but in being able to read good books?

Will they be women of quality and substance? Am I showing them how to live their lives in such a way that they'll want to mirror me and ultimately Christ later on down the road?

Am I being the helpmate for my husband that God would have me to be? Do I serve him and love him as God would desire me to do? Am I submitting to him as God commanded me to do? That old stinky head of feminism is just as much a part of my thinking as any other woman in my generation. I have to remember that God placed my husband as the spiritual head and the leader in my home.

Whoa! Kind of heavy there, but those are my worries. These are where my heart lies...where my prayers tend to go.

I'll pass the question from my sister on to you; what are your worries? What makes your heart, as a woman, bleed?

A very eye opening question.

Growing

Charlotte's feet can almost reach the footrest on the highchair. Waaaaaa!!! WWwwaaaaaa!!! My baby-baby is changing so much. She's loosing some of that baby look and changing into (duh-da-da!!) a toddler. Her hair is growing longer. Her legs, a little less chunky monkey. Her little face is developing more, too. She has started standing on her own without holding on to anything. I think she might be walking before her first birthday at the end of the month.

Right now, we're in that beautiful "building our family" stage of coupledom. We hope to have many more children before our family is complete. Charlotte is the first baby that I've really been able to watch closely as she went through the "change" from baby to toddler. With all the others, I was either extremely pregnant or already had a newborn in my arms. It's a sad and beautiful process. It makes me wonder how it will affect me when I know that there will, in all likelihood, be no more babies. Waaaa!!!! WWWwwwwaaaaaaaa!!!

I suppose though, since the women in my family are generally able to have children into their early forties, that by the time I'm done having children...Anna will almost be old enough to get married and make me a grandmother. Hmmmm. :)

Back to School

Some of you may already know that I transferred my college credits to IUPUI. Well, I've taken the next step and have registered for a class this semester. I will be taking my Senior English seminar on James Joyce. The class will be on Wednesday nights for about three hours. Major thanks to my hubby for being understanding about my need to finish and also being willing to work his schedule out for it as well.

Please pray that I haven't lost too many brain cells to mommy-itis and will be able to actually perform well in the class. :)

All Things Disgusting

This has been a week for the parenting books. Never have I dealt with such yuckiness in such a short span of time. Abby and Charlotte were each fighting some sort of stomach bug. Anna, thankfully, was spared, and Charlotte seems to be over it. Poor Abby though just can't seem to get a break. She's been waking up in the night off in on with either vomit or bad diarrhea. Diarrhea is most definitely worse to deal with. Yuckity-yuck-yuck. So we've been doing lots of extra laundry. I can't imagine what our water bill will look like this month. :(

We've had a bit of a break and hope to be able to go to church on Sunday. We'll see what happens.

A FULL House

Amazingly, we were able to fit another entire household into our house for the new year's holiday. My sister and her family stayed with us for just a couple of nights, but it was so much fun. It's a lot more fun having them stay with us, because we get more time to visit since they don't have to travel to a hotel room to put their children down for the night.

We hosted dinner at my house on the 30th. Dinners at mom's house on the 31st and 1st. On New Year's Eve we even stayed up until past midnight Arkansas time playing Mexican Train Dominoes. :)

It was crazy having eight girls 4 and under in such a small little space, but we made it work and all the girls had a great time. It was certainly noisy, but it make me thankful for the space I did have and made my girls seem not so loud when they all did leave. :)

Unfortunately, their family won't be able to come again until this summer, but there is a possibility that they'll be here for the birth of our baby. Because of the distance, she's never been here for the births of one of my children, so that would be very exciting for me. I was blessed to be able to watch their firstborn, Alexis, when their second daughter, Raegan was born, and was able to see her when she was just a couple of hours old.

I'm really looking forward to them moving closer. The possibility of a day trip is super-exciting.