Chloe is 2!

Okay, so our sweet Chloe is two and a half!!  In September she turned the big 2 and so far the two's have been a hoot!  I am so thankful she is in our family as she keeps me laughing and smiling and she definitely keeps me on my toes!  
In September, we celebrated two years with cupcakes at Splash Park.

At 24 months, Chloe weighed in at 23.8 lbs, moving her up on the charts from the 3rd to the 10th percentile, finally!  And she was 34.5 inches tall, moving her from the 25th to the 75th percentile!  

She said 2-3 word phrases at 24 months... her favorite question was "what's zat?" Those phrases have now turned into 5-6 word sentences and beyond.  She is very verbal and loves to ask questions, point out everything around her and sing songs.   She also counts to 10 and is learning her "baby C's," better known as the "A B C song."

Speaking of songs, Chloe LOVES Miss Pattycake!  Several times throughout each day, she says, "Mommy, all day, all day!"  which comes from the lyrics, "All day, all day, all day long I will give You praise."  This makes me smile, because it's like she really is praising God all throughout the day.

Some of my favorite things she says...

"big gull panties"

"hey bodies!" which is "hey everybody"

"um on" for come on, as she motions to you with a backwards wave.

Anytime we call her "baby," she responds..."I not a baby, I Choe. I a big gull."

Instead of washcloth, she switches the w and c, so it's "cashwoth."

She used to call Esther, "Sissy" but has just recently changed to calling her "Esser."  Both are sweet, but for some reason, "Sissy" was endearing.

Apparently I have called her "silly goose" one too many times, because now she calls me that, which is really hard to keep a straight face with when she's so serious.   When asking her if she needed to go potty, her reply was, "I no go potty, siwy goose."

And I'm happy to say that Chloe is potty trained!!  She wears big girl panties 24/7!  Even before she turned two, she was sitting on the potty and then it turned into her taking her diaper off and sitting and actually going potty all by herself.  Yes, the poor child basically potty trained herself.  I knew whenever I started with her I'd have to be consistent, and honestly, starting homeschooling, plus taking Esther back and forth to school everyday, I just kept putting the "training" off until finally Christmas break came and I knew I had to be intentional about things.  She has done awesome!  It's so nice to be out of diapers and we did pull ups for a while at night, but then realized they were breaking her out, so we just went straight to big girl panties for naps and even at night and she's done fabulously!  Her reward for going tee-tee was to get a Smartie, just one.  When she went poo poo in the potty, we were so happy, she got a whole pack of Smarties and that's all it took.  She loved getting her "mawties" and was not afraid to ask for a "pack mawties."  Thankfully we're now beyond the "you get a treat every time you go" and she's satisfied with a "woohoo" or "good job!"

Here she is back in the fall before the official training began...

And here she is wearing 7 pairs of big girl panties, yes 7.  When needing a clean pair of panties, she'll occasionally come out wearing as many as she has on her shelf. 

Chloe's afternoon nap... although she can sometimes easily go without it, I'm hoping to keep it around for quite some time.  I had to get a shot of her with all her buddies... she loves all her stuffed animals and babies... I think we counted 12 in her crib one time.  (the Pink Panther was Woody's!)

She got her first haircut back in December.  She went in with Arden and I to get ours cut and she happily climbed in the chair and wanted hers cut too.  It needed some shaping up and thankfully Danielle, our sweet friend that cuts our entire family's hair, let me use her iphone to get pictures.  Chloe was so proud!  And it just made her curls even more springy-I could just eat them up! :)

This is Chloe talking on the phone with Papa... she LOVES talking on the phone (and she LOVES her Papa!).  She was having a real conversation in the picture, but it's not unusual to hear her having a pretend conversation with Papa and G.G. or Nonie and Dagan or Gabe, Ezra and Titus, her best buds, on a pretend phone, usually her hand.

Chloe also loves climbing, dancing and doing whatever her big sisters are doing!  She has so much personality and makes the funniest expressions, especially with her eyes...add to that things that she says and it really is hard to keep a straight face with her!  

She's such a fun two-year-old and we love her tons!  

ballet

Arden and Esther have taken ballet/tumbling for the last couple of years and loved it.  After some thought and prayer on the subject, we decided it was time to move on from where they were taking and find a new place that provided more formal training and would teach them how to honor the Lord with their bodies and dancing.  The Lord provided a wonderful ministry that does just that!  We have been really pleased with the training the girls are getting and the environment in which they are learning.  It is a beautiful thing to see your girls dancing to songs of worship and giving thanks to Jesus for their class!  

Here are pics from the first day of class... 

side note-I have gotten a lot better at doing buns! :)

The girls' class is a pre-ballet class, and for their last class before Christmas, they combined with the beginning ballet class for a special time of celebrating.

taking joy

The weeks leading up to and following September 11th, marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9-11-01, and also the due date of our baby were hard.  Not only was my heart hurting for the family of those lost on 9/11 and my mind kept going back to my classroom at TFA where I heard the news from a teammate and turned on the television to see the second plane... but my heart was and honestly, still is recovering from losing another baby.  If you aren't sure where I'm coming from, you can read here for a little background knowledge.


In reality, the seven months leading up to this date had many hard days in them.  It has been a little over a year now that we found out we were expecting... our seventh pregnancy.  Seven pregnancies in seven years.  Seven babies. Three here on earth.  Four with our Lord.  It's a lot to swallow.  When I wrote about this fourth miscarriage a couple of days after the D&C, physically, things seemed to be going okay.  As it turns out, this was the hardest one on my body physically.  Emotionally, I believe it has been the hardest.  I had "down" days for weeks at a time, this moved to a couple of days a week, to one day a week, to one day a month, where I would just cry.  One day Woody asked me if I was in a dark place, and thankfully by God's grace, I could answer with a confident no.  I was just. really. sad.  


A good friend recommended a book to me, that though was emotionally hard for me to read through at times... (it's hard to read when your eyes are full of tears!), it was such a rich source of encouragement, that I didn't want to put it down.  The book was One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp.  If you have not read this book or if you're not familiar with Ann Voskamp, I would highly recommend getting familiar with both!  Ann writes a blog, A Holy Experience, (I have it linked on my sidebar) that provides daily encouragement and grace to its readers, no matter who you are or where you are in life.  As I read through One Thousand Gifts and realized that giving thanks to God in all aspects of life, even the very smallest of things, brings joy, I began writing these "gifts" down.  It seemed silly at first, making this list, but as time went on, God used it and continues to use it to bring about joy and thankfulness in my life and to heal my heart.  
I have been writing these gifts down for about 10 months now, and have not been consistent with it by any means, so I was elated to see this Joy Dare on Ann Voskamp's blog back at the beginning of the year!  Count 1000 gifts in 2012.  Make a habit of taking joy, just 3 gifts a day.  And no, it's not too late to start-I dare you, take the Joy Dare!  


The Lord used the following excerpt from One Thousand Gifts to minister to me during the first few weeks and months after losing our fourth little one...


"What will I believe is greater today?  My problems?  Or God's provisions?  What this moment holds is always His provision and He never leaves nor forsakes.


Because this is it:


The needs of our day are great but our God is greater and we call Him Providence because we believe: He is the One who always provides.


And when God provides, He should be praised and if God always provides, shouldn't praise always be on the lips?


We are the people provided for and praise is our song.  God has made provision.  So we will make praise.


I have everything I need.  Not what I think I need.  But what He knows I need.  I can trust His love.  I can trust what He gives.  I can trust His provision of this moment."

while we're homeschooling...

I forgot to mention that homeschooling would not be complete without having Chloe around!  Here are a couple of pics from our first few days of adjusting to homeschooling...

She really has done pretty well with things and most of the time she wants to do school with us, so she's right in on the action.  And no, I don't usually allow her to sit on the table, much less dance on it, but what can I say, she was just too cute. :)

homeschool?!

Over the last few years, I have thought about what school would look like for our girls and since I taught Kindergarten for six years before having Arden, I dreamed of their Kindergarten year and all that it would hold.  Homeschooling our girls never crossed my mind until the last couple of years, and when it did, I would dismiss it pretty quickly.  Our city has a large homeschool following and the majority of families in our church homeschool.  I have close friends here who homeschool, but still, it just really never crossed my mind as something that our family would actually do.  This last Spring, I was really struggling with where Arden would be going to school in the fall for Kindergarten.  The Lord kept putting homeschool on my heart, but I wrestled with whether this would be the best thing and stubbornly, I would say no.  The wrestling and struggling continued... looking back, I'm not sure why I fought it so much, but when I relinquished what I thought I wanted, peace abounded immensely!  When I said, "yes, Lord, we will do this," His peace reigned and everything fell into place with ease and joy.  The first few times I said out loud, "we're going to homeschool" to others, I think I actually laughed out loud!  It was very surreal and "am I really saying this?!" entered my mind a lot.  The whole process of beginning this journey has been exciting and overwhelming at times.  I am very thankful for friends who have gone before me and graciously offered their time and advice in getting started!  I'm also very thankful for all the support and encouragement we've received from family and friends in making the decision to homeschool.  

Now, with all that said, can I just say, I love homeschooling!  I know it is not for everyone and that the Lord directs each family in how/where to educate their children.  For our family and the place we are in right now, this is what He has for us, and it has been such a blessing!  

Starting in August, we began homeschooling Arden in Kindergarten. 

Here's a pic from her first day!

 It has been a joy and a delight getting to teach her and see her mind at work! Arden and I have bonded in new way through this experience and I am thankful for how the Lord is using this to build our relationship as mother and daughter.  

Over the last few months, we've definitely had moments where Woody and I look at each other and say, "we're officially a homeschooling family!" and we have a good laugh.  For example, we were traveling through GA and Woody and I were singing the history sentence from Arden's memory work trying to get the girls to sing along..."come on girls, let's sing about the Boston Tea Party!"  Um, yes, we are that family-ha!   The way I think about things and our days has changed and I'm always on the lookout now for a good field trip! :)

(And yes, call me crazy, but I will admit that getting all the curriculum in the mail and doing lesson plans is fun to me!  Having kept my K files, I've also enjoyed being able to do things with Arden that I did with my Kinder students.)

 Now, backtracking a little bit...something that got me excited about the possibility of homeschooling was attending an informational meeting for Classical Conversations, a Christian homeschool community that has local communities across the U.S., as well as in other countries.  I loved the mission and structure of CC and thought, this makes sense.  Fast forward a few months, and our city now has a new CC group that started in August.  We meet once a week and I am actually tutoring a class of 6-7 year olds.  Arden is in her own class and loving it.  Each week, the students learn new memory work, do a presentation, a science experiment, a fine arts project, as well as review past memory work.  It has been a privilege to tutor/teach my students and build relationships with other homeschooling families.  And it has been really exciting to see all that Arden is learning in Foundations.  The way God has wired her little mind to learn and memorize is sometimes well, mind-boggling, and we look forward to all He has in store for her!  

Here is Arden meeting her tutor for the first time

And giving her first presentation...

getting caught up...

Okay, so I know it's been quite a while since I last blogged!  I had hoped to get caught up with 2011 before 2012 began, but as you can see, that didn't happen.  I'm going to attempt to get caught up on everything in the next couple of weeks, so please bear with me while I reminisce over the last few months of 2011!

Esther's first day of school. ever.

Two weeks after turning four, Esther started VPK (K4).  Up until now, she has always stayed at home with me and after the way swim lessons went this summer, I was pretty sure it would not be an easy transition for her.  I will say that she's been excited to start school and be like her big sister and as you can see from the pictures, she had a great big smile on her face before leaving the house!   

Here are the very girly, sparkly, light up shoes I mentioned in her birthday post.

 To my surprise, Esther did not shed one tear when I left her in the classroom that first morning, she kind of gave me a sad face, but was fine once she started playing at the table.  I honestly had envisioned the teacher having to pry her off of me, so I was relieved that she did so well.  I had a little teary moment leaving her, but did better than I was expecting.  Well... when it was time to pick her up, Woody stayed in the car with the other girls, so I could go in by myself to get her.  She sort of had a smile on her face walking towards me.  As we're walking out of the building, I'm all happy and asking her if she had a good day and if she liked it, and she shakes her head no.  I ask again, and she shakes her head no, begins crying and says, "it was really scary."  Okay.  My heart is breaking wide open at this point and I pick her up and carry her the rest of the way to the car.  She's sobbing by the time we reach it.  This is sort of how the first week went... she would reluctantly walk into the classroom, no tears, have a great day according to the teacher, and then by the time we would get to the car to go home, she would lose it.  We decided she could hold it together during school, and then when she got to me, she would release everything bottled inside.  Exhaustion and a hungry tummy also contributed to these "meltdowns."  These continued the first few weeks, happening at least 3 times a week.  And they were hard.  The meltdowns would show up in different ways, like tantrums... several times, I had to pull over on the side of the road to try and calm her down.  So... because she is a very young 4, I decided to give her until week 6 of school to see if we could work through this, and if not, I was going to take her out.  Although she was doing great in class, the after effects were really hard on all of us.  Well... I am happy to say that beginning with week 5 and since, there have been no tears!  I don't know that I would say she loves school, but she definitely likes it now.  It just literally took 5 weeks!  And just in the last week or so, she has begun singing new songs, reciting poems, etc. just out of the blue that she's learning at school, and she's so proud to share them with us.  I don't get much feedback from her when I pick her up, but by dinner time, she starts sharing information about her day, which has been really fun to hear!  She really likes Chapel and she also likes her Spanish class.  I'm really thankful that she is enjoying school now.  I'm also very thankful for her sweet teachers and those who do carline that make a "big to do" over her and make her feel special... my sweet middle one!

We went ahead and celebrated Esther's birthday at school that first week.  Fridays are "casual days," so she wore her new favorite color, pink.  A friend in her class, that we'd met this summer at swimming lessons, has the same birthday.  I'm glad Ms. Lisa let us go ahead and celebrate 2 weeks after, instead of waiting and celebrating in June, 2 months before!