Bennett's new trick!

Today Bennie unveiled a new trick.  Be still my heart.  He is too much for me.

Bedtime fun

I Love this boy

 

Three Years Old

Sweet Campbell Rose,

Today you are three years old.  I can't believe it.  Three sounds so grown up.  As I think back over the past year and how you have changed, I am struck by how many you ways you have turned from a baby into a big girl.

Shortly after your 2nd birthday, you moved from your crib to your very own big girl bed!  Mommy and MiMi loved decorating your new room, and you were very helpful in assembling your new bed, which used to be Mommy's bed.  You took to your bed right away and in the past year, I think you have only gotten out of bed a few times, always to get something that fell out of the bed, and you have never come out of your room when you are supposed to be in bed.

In September, you started school.  Even though it was just a two day a week Mother's Day Out, I really struggled with sending you.  After a brief adjustment period, you have done fabulously and now you love school.  It will be sad to say goodbye to your precious teachers next week, but I know next year you will have new, great teachers.

In October, you became a big sister.  This transition definitely presented some challenges for you.  Like most other transitions in your life though, you adapted beautifully after having some time to process and adjust.  You are now such a darling big sister to your baby brother.  Just the other day when Bennie was crying while I got his breakfast ready, I heard you tell him, "Don't cry Bennie, big sister's here".  I love to watch you love your baby brother.

Over the course of the past year, your vocabulary has steadily grown.  Sometimes I feel like I am talking to a mini-adult.  I know all parents think their kid is smart, but people often comment on how articulate you are.  I wish I could take credit.  I think it is really because we let you watch so much TV after Bennett was born.  You talk to me about so many things and remember things so well.

And, of course, in true Campbell style, you decided about a month ago that you were ready to potty train.  You have done a great job and are accident free for the most.  Like every area of life, you had to decide you were ready.  While I definitely felt like it was time and am relieved to have you out of diapers, you seem totally like a big girl now.  It's a little hard for this Mama to swallow.

Lately, you have even shown more independence and less fear.  You have attempted to try things that shock your daddy and I, things that a year ago you would have never tried.  I get so excited every time you try something new, every time you are a little more brave than you were the time before.  You are just amazing, Campbell.
And yet while so much has changed, some things have remained the same, sweet girl.  You are still the cutest, smartest, most hilarious, shaggy-headed girl we have ever laid eyes on.  You constantly keep us entertained and bring so much joy to the lives of those who know you.  You love to sing and dance and are very into your "instruments", your ballet and tap shoes, your "spinny dress", and your Angelina Ballerina video.

You are the most special three year old girl we've ever known.

Love to our best girl,
Mama, Daddy, and Bennie

7 Months Already?

 

Bennie the Bull, today you are 7 months old.

Let the updating begin.

*You were Mr. Milestone this past weekend.  On Saturday (May 7th), you achieved sitting up and crawling in one day.  You don't mess around.  Every day you perfect your crawling skills a little more.  I love seeing you on the move, however in your brief amount of mobility, you have shown yourself to be more destructive than your sister has in her three years of life.  Life will surely only get more interesting from here.

*Clearly I missed posting a 6 month recap.  We can blame that on a family-wide flu infestation.  Here's the highlights: we weaned from breastfeeding at 5.5 months because of mommy's migraines.  Once we weaned, you adapted fine to the bottle and stopped hating it.  At your 6 month appointment you weighed 20 lbs, 12 ounces and were 28 inches long.  At that appointment, Dr. B said you were eating too many ounces of formula a day and to cut out the dreamfeed at night and add another solid meal in the morning.  You FINALLY started doing really well with your sleep, sleeping 7:00 pm to 6:00 or 6:30 am.  Just this past week you started waking up between 5:00 and 5:30 am again, acting starving.  Now we are feeding you lunch too.  I'm not sure what we are doing to do next.  You are basically maxed out on food.  So far you like everything.  Squash would probably be your least favorite.  I've made all your baby food so far and need to make another round of stuff soon to introduce you too.

*You are wearing mostly 18 month clothing.  It seems like you are constantly in need of clothes, but I hate to buy too much, because you have gone through clothes so fast because of your size.  I like buying baby boy clothes so much more than I thought I would.  You look adorable dressed like a little man.

*We had your baby dedication at church on May 1st.  Surely someday I'll get around to posting specifically about this.

*You are a MANIAC in your walker.  You spend all your awake time either crawling/rolling/sitting on the floor or in the walker.  You go all over the house.  Sometimes I can't find you because you've gone in the other room.  You are already at the point that if it's too quiet, I come looking for you.  The other day you had wheeled your walker up to an outlet in the hall and were trying to pull the carbon monoxide detector out of the wall.  You also love to steal the kitchen towels off the handle of the oven and then take off in the walker with them.  You are a darling, mischievousness boy.

*You still think your sister is the most hilarious thing you've ever seen.  I was trying to take a picture of you yesterday and you only had smiles for her.  I don't blame you, she is pretty hilarious.

*You are starting to show some signs of separation anxiety and of being a Mama's boy.  Your dad was getting you ready for bed the other night.  Every time I walked out of the room, you would fuss, then when I came back in, you would laugh.

*As every day passes, I cannot believe how much I love you more and more.  You and your sister light up my days sweet boy.

Every litle thing she does is magic hilarious

Confession: I really kind of wanted Bennett to be a girl.  I had my heart set on a pair of sisters with a special bond.  Not that Campbell couldn't be close with a brother, I guess I just didn't imagine it going that way.

I am, however, starting to get the sweetest glimpse of a very special relationship between my two kids.  He thinks she is literally the most interesting, hilarious thing he's ever laid his huge blue eyes on.  And all she has to do is look in his direction and he laughs. 

And although sometimes she is too preoccupied with her own stuff to stop and pay much attention to him, sometimes she is so sweet with him I can't hardly stand it.  She has lots of nicknames for him "Bennie the Bull, Bennis, Bennie Jack".  She can be so sweetly concerned about him.  She loves to cheer "Go Bennie Go" when he's walking in the walker, jumping in the jumper, or making attempts to crawl.  And she will ham it up big time to get him to laugh or smile.

Case-in-point, last weekend she was messing around with her big, purple ball.  He was laughing so much more than he ever has that I had to video him.  Russ and I NEVER get laughs out of him like this.  I think at one point in the video she even hits him with it and he laughs.

I am so in love with my little man.  I'm so glad the Lord knew what our family needed better than I did.  And so grateful He is answering my prayers for the sweetest of relationships between the two little people I love the most.

Easter is Awesome

Before I started recapping our Easter festivities, I went back and looked at my posts from the past several Easters.  Go here and here to see Campbell's first two Easters.  (I might have just cried.)  My little chubby-cheeked baby has definitely turned into a little girl over the past year. 

We had a great Easter three-day weekend.  Seriously, God bless the inventor of the three-day weekend. And oh so timely.  We are coming off a serious four week wave of sickness in our house.  It has been physically exhausting, but even moreso, both Russ and I were feeling disconnected with each other, the Lord, other people, and life in general.  Our weekend was renewing on so many levels.  We spent much of Good Friday hanging out at home, doing a little deep cleaning, and honing our pottying skills with dad's help.  I had a newborn session that afternoon and in the evening we had dinner at my parents with my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew.  We ate, hung out, and dyed Easter Eggs.  Some people (Campbell) may have done some nude egg dying.  She's taking potty training to a new level.

Saturday morning, I had a few family sessions and enjoyed a solo trip to Target to get Easter basket stuff.  We went to lunch and then headed to our church's FIRST Easter Egg Hunt.  Campbell was way excited.  Russ and I were pretty nervous about an outing in panties.

I snapped some pics of the kids before we left.  My kids are very cute and I can generally get cute pictures of them individually, but they are not at ages right now where getting a picture together is easy.  It's a good thing I have a fondness for candids.

Campbell did GREAT with her first big outing sans diapers.  This is in part due to potty I picked up to keep in the back of the car (thank you Angela McClinton for the inspiration).  The only downside was that C was so excited about the novelty of using the potty in the back of the SUV that we stopped along the side of the road and did it multiple times :)  And then in the middle of the Easter Egg Hunt we took various potty breaks.

Campbell LOVED the Easter Egg Hunt.  She has always been a timid girl and lately we have been marveling at how she is becoming so independent.  This is just the kind of thing that would have sent her into a tailspin a year ago, but she ate it up this year.  She makes me so proud.

Talking strategy

Without a doubt, the highlight of our Easter weekend was church on Sunday morning.  (I didn't realize it until just now, but I wrote a very similar thing two years ago about the church service!  While I'm sure it was awesome, it didn't hold a candle to this Easter :). 

Last year on Easter Sunday, my husband and our dear friend, Jordan McClinton, officially took over as worship leaders of The Waters Worship Band - now called Current Worship.  This past year has been one of growth in so many areas for both of them - leadership, hearing God, relationally, balancing time, musically, and various others.  I could not be more proud of my husband or more impressed with God for the transforming work He continues to do in this man I married and continue to love more and more.  Not only was this Easter Sunday a phenomenal time of worship, it was an emotional time for Russ, as he was doing a lot of reflecting about what the Lord has done over the past year.

It was a beautiful time of worshiping the Risen Lord Jesus and acknowledging that although unnecessary, we are being used to bring forth His purposes here on Earth.

We finished out the weekend with family at my parent's house that afternoon.  It was fun and low-key.  I once again faked domestic awesomeness with an amazingly simple baked beans recipe.  Here's the best I could get of the kids before church.

I dare you to tell me you have seen a boy this cute before.