3 months

Three months already! They're big on charm and huge smiles...

Joy weighed in at 13.6 lbs right at 3 months! In the last few weeks, she's been a little less chill than she was, but she is still a laid back sweetie.
Blythe was 12 lbs at 3 months. She's become a little more relaxed than she was, so the two of them are balancing each other out!

On tummy time: Blythe lasts little longer than Joy, but neither are too keen on it.

On hanging out on their backs: both dig it and have acquired very feminine bald spots on the back of their heads to show for it!

Sleeping: As you know, this month they have been making it through the night, on average from 7:30 t0 7:30. However, they are individuals here, too: Blythe is a night person and has more of a struggle going down. After she's out, though, we usually don't hear a peep from her until the morning. Joy is oblivious to the world when she goes down, but she's a morning girl who typically needs a paci replaced a few times before it's officially after 7:00 and she's allowed to wake up!

Rolling over? I don't think so, but both have rolled off their Boppys while I wasn't looking. I think that's how they ended up on the floor... poor kids!

Abby Jane is still loving her role as big sister, and the only "rough" things she's done is shared her hard-headed dollies with too much force. This is what I turned around to see this morning- can you find Joy?!

They've discovered their hands and are becoming escape artists from their naptime and bedtime swaddles, especially Blythe! Blythe is also more of a wiggle worm in general. I'll lay her down and she'll be perpendicular to that position in just a few minutes. Joy's pretty much good to go as long as she has her paci.

They both have some talking to do, and it is obvious who's example they are following there! I love my girls!

She's two!

On this day, two years ago, Abby Jane entered our lives! She is the living form of her name: "source of joy" (Abigail) and reminds us by her precious life that "God is gracious" (Jane) to us.

We celebrated on Saturday with a family party. Though we missed my siblings and their families, it was otherwise the perfect crowd and the perfect day! We were going to do it all outside at a park, but it was far too cold, so we moved it to my mom's home.

I spent last week learning my new sewing machine and making her a butterfly dress (with a LOT of help from my mom!) for her butterfly party...

We had butterfly cupcakes that I found in my new Hello Cupcake! book that I am obsessed with!

And here is the big moment, in STARK contrast to her reception of her birthday cake last year (see video at end)!

She was inseparable with her cupcake!

Until it was present time, that is!

Cade and Abby Jane are dear friends, as well as cousins, and I think as far as highlights of the day goes, getting to play with him on her party day was right up there with birthday cake and presents, if not higher.

Blythe and Joy were passed around like hotcakes the whole time. It's really convenient having multiple babies to satisfy the need of multiple adults to hold one!

Now for my thoughts on this precious day...

Abby Jane is ... I've typed a word and deleted it to try again multiple times here because you can't incapsulate her in one category.

She's SO girly and love pink and dolls and tea parties and taking care of Blythe and Joy and must wear a bow at all times, sometimes even to bed.

But her favorite play with Jake is their "kaboom" game where he drops her on her back on the sofa from four or five feet up in the air. She loves to jump and sing and dance and run and build towers with blocks, play with her trains, and yet is very good at offering cream and sugar with your "hot hot tea" when we have our multiple tea parties a day. Reading is the most consistent activity that happens all day. She LOVES her books and will read to herself in bed during the "quiet playtime" that has replaced morning naps.

She speaks very clearly and picks up new words all day long. It's fun to make her say long ones, just because it sounds so comical from one so small. Car rides are actually long conversations, now, with 20 questions and the whole nine yards. She delights in tiny discoveries and comments on everything she sees. She does the praying at meals frequently, and is very decisive in saying, "Dear GOD, thank you for that picture and the salt and Mama's water and Abby Jane's fork and Daddy's salad and THIS button on Abby Jane's shirt..." and the list goes on as she describes the table. Every night when Jake asks her how we can pray for her at bedtime, she includes Ho Ho Ho and "Buckum Palace" (Buckingham Palace is a fabulous old poem that she learned from my mom) on the list.

She loves being a big sister and can't wait to see "Bwhyf" and Joy when she wakes up. She wants to make sure they're going wherever we're going and helps take care of them in the backseat, reinserting pacifiers, telling us which one's eyes are open, etc.

We are dealing with some of the two-year-old issues, like needing to beef up on our strategies for discipline as she test new boundaries and learns her world, but because she is so cognitive, we are able to do some reasoning with her. I'm reading Dare to Discipline by Dobson right now, and I'm really enjoying it so far. She has a tender heart, though, and it is so sweet to be teaching her about the Lord and making the connection between obeying us and obeying Jesus... and know that she is of an age that this knowledge will be taking root. Entering the two's also has been neat as it's given us yet another angle of understanding how the Lord looks at us when we disobey- disappointed and saddened to see our poor choice, but LOVES us ridiculously anyways.

All this is obviously for our records, so I'll be impressed if anyone actually got this far! Today is so dear to us as parents, because it marks the first day of the beginning of the most precious stage that we are in. We are so grateful to be Abby Jane, Blythe, and Joy's parents, and we know that we are totally inadequate to be who they need us to be apart from the grace of God. Praise Him that we don't have to wing this, but that He will give us the wisdom we need to raise these girls!

Happy birthday, my sweet Abby Jane! We love you so, so dearly!

They did it!

We fed Blythe and Joy at 7:15 last night, put them down at 7:30ish at the same time as Abby Jane... and they slept until morning with no middle-of-the-night pacifier reinsertions or re-swaddling!! Until this week, their late night feeding has been getting moved earlier and earlier, but the jump from a 9:30 feeding this weekend to a 7:30 feed was a big one! YEA for growing, progressing little girls!

Sometimes things go differently ...

Than you anticipate! Here is our crazy cabin adventure in 2 minutes and 49 seconds...

Before running out to the waiting car so we could make it home before the roads got bad again...

Bless Uncle Wayne and Aunt Boo's hearts, they were doing everything they could to help us from Atlanta, but I think the Lord just had a good memory-maker in mind for us!

But we still had to show Abby Jane what a s'more is... even if it was over a glasstop stove!

She is a fan!

Getting Away

This week has had some low points (including me paying a hefty fine for a ticket that I might not have had to pay if they allowed cell phones into the courthouse that I could have used to call and say I'd be an hour or two later getting home) and some high points, like dinner with Jake's parents (during which I dumped icewater on my lap) and with our new friends, the Owens. Also in the highlights was the morning I woke up with a bad cold- my first in a year- and Jake went to work late in order to help me get the girls going... and he even vacuumed!

Before all that, we already had planned to go up to Blue Ridge (in the North GA mtns) this weekend to The Cabin. When I was in 1st grade, my family bought some property up there, and my dad designed our Cabin to be built the next year. All growing up, we went up there all the time on the weekends, over Christmas break, for the 4th of July, etc. It is a PRECIOUS and DEAR place where much of my childhood was spent. After my dad passed away, we got up there a lot less, and when I was in college my wonderful Uncle Wayne and Aunt Boo bought the cabin from my mom. It is so special to us that the cabin is still in the family, and Uncle Wayne and Aunt Boo are very generous in sharing it with us kids!

So tomorrow, we're taking these hooligans...

up to The Cabin. We plan to be inside around the fireplace a good bit because it's going to be COLD!!! So we'll be doing some reading...

and a lot of playing... and maybe some in the frigid snow, if we get brave enough!!We can't wait!

It's coming!!

I finally ordered the sewing machine that I picked out for my birthday back in October, and it's on its way!  SOOO, all you fabulous seamstresses, tell me/ remind me where you get your best patterns, etc.  I'm most interested in dresses to start with.

In other domestic news, we made the Sausage and Ravioli Lasagna in this month's Southern Living last night and loved it.  I substituted turkey sausage in for pork and used reduced fat pesto to mix with the spinach, and it was great! You could probably find whole wheat ravioli if you wanted to make it even more healthy.  It was so good that Blythe wanted to sit a little closer where she could have a better view!!

All together again

Jake got home at 7 a.m. on Saturday after catching the red-eye from L.A.  Abby Jane was SOO excited to see him when she woke up and was beside herself about the sign she painted for him! Whenever Jake gets home from being gone, I somehow cannot fathom how I ever lived or parented without him for a few weeks.  Evidence that the Lord gives you what you need when you need it!

This weekend we also joined Noonday Baptist Church, where we have been attending since two weeks before Blythe and Joy were born.  It is very different from Calvary, where we were so blessed in CA, but we feel confident that this is where the Lord is calling us to plug in and serve.  We first heard about Noonday while I was "trolling for friends" (I was desperate- we had no friends!) with Abby Jane at the playground last fall and met one of our new friends, Kristin. I came home and told Jake that I practically accosted this really cute mom at the park with my enthusiasm after she struck up a conversation with me about how ridiculously pregnant I was.  But I'm glad I did, as she and her husband Clint just happened to teach the small group for our age and stage at this great church where we have found a great fit.  (As a side note, not only do Clint and Kristin have a little girl just a few months younger than Abby Jane, but they're expecting next month!  We just had a playdate this morning, and I'm thankful for the blessing of this new friendship.)

We put the little ones in their Bumbos for the first time this weekend, and they did great for a little while... then started listing to their right just a bit...

 I have been really been struck recently by how obsessed I am with my kids.  I so enjoy being their mama, and at the end of a long day, when Jake and I are each laying Blythe or Joy down for the last time in their haven of a nursery, I am just in awe of the magic of their soft, wiggly, smiley, balding, pink little selves.  I KNOW this stage is so fleeting, and that before we know it, they'll be in the amazing stage that Jane is in where they are funny, busy and asking questions and shocking us with their understanding of the world around them and how their minds work.  

Each new season that we experience is so incredibly precious in its own way, and I'm really trying to not be too busy to miss a minute of the profound blessing that they are.  I know there is more to life than my babies, and it has been important to me as a mom to not find my identity in my children alone- to be interested in more and able to converse about more than diapers and breastfeeding (as riveting as those topics can be! :) ) But at the same time, I do not take my kids for granted for one second, and I am so thankful for the privilege of being their mom every day.