Happy Friday

Life has been busy these last two days, I always wonder when life is going to slow down, but I guess with kids it never really does. Yesterday was Abbie's jump and shout class and then we ventured to Costco after naps so our day was full of outings. I really like leaving the house but sometimes I think we should just spend more time at home. This morning we made valentines for nanny and pap pap (they are coming over to babysit tonight so my hubby and I can have a date) Woohoo!!! Here are some pics of our valentine craft this morning.

I have been working on giving Timmy more time with me while Abbie plays in her room and also giving Timmy more pack and play time. He loves his sister so much he hates to be apart from her. While I think this is good, I also think there needs to be a balance of him being confident without her. I am thankful he is feeling much better, praise God! Here are some pics of the brother and sister, so opposite yet love each other so much!!

One other thing I wanted to put in my blog today cause I thought it was funny. Timmy loves to play ball, he also loves crawling on top of one as you can see here. Happy Friday everyone!

Valentines celebrations

With valentines day approaching, we have some fun activities planned. Yesterday we made heart shaped cookies and decorated them to take to church this morning. Abbie had a lot of fun helping make them and loved eating them too. Unfortunately Timmy had a horrible day yesterday. He woke up from his nap early and couldn't fall back asleep. He was really fussy and clingy the rest of the afternoon. He is feeling better, no temp and eye has cleared up but he did just get his one year shots last week and the doctor had said it would take a week justation period, so maybe that's what is affecting him. Anyway, it made for a rough afternoon for him and an early bedtime. Praying the rest of this week is much smoother for him. Here are some pics from our cookie making event.

another day another opportunity

Today has been filled with chores, grocery shopping and some play time.  In the midst of all the busyness, my thoughts have been on many different things but one single thought that continually pops in my head is how people get what they want in life.  As a mom, one of my primary jobs is to teach fruitful thinking to my children.  When I say fruitful thinking, I mean thinking that will produce success in their life.  As I go about this job, things come up in my life that I become newly aware of.  For example, if I hear my children blame someone or something, that is victim thinking and it doesn't produce fruit.  Taking personal responsibility and becoming authoritative in changing a situation for the better is fruitful thinking.  If I find my children have victim thinking, where did it come from?  Most likely they learn by watching what their parents do, so I must take responsibility for this.  It is not something that I have done intentionally, but none the less it was done.  (Most of our life choices are actually made by our subconscious) It is one of my goals to step outside myself and look at how I live my life.  How I make my choices and then after I am more aware of how I operate, I can take the necessary steps to improve those choices that aren't producing fruit in my life.

While I am becoming more self aware, I think it is also important for me to find balance and not to beat myself up for any choices that aren't producing fruit in my life.  God wants me to see myself as He sees me, which is through the blood of Jesus.  Even in my own mistakes, I am righteous in His sight.  Part of the victim mentallity which used to live in me (I am currently working on it), is finding a way for something to not work, just because it would be risky for me if it actually did work.  For example, my blog is a little risky for me to be open and vulnerable and sharing my thoughts and it would be easy for me to make every reason in my head why I shouldn't blog, BUT I know that will not be producing fruit for me or my family, so I have chosen to just do it and step out and take my risk.  Risks make life exciting anyway and I don't want to be boring afterall! So instead of coming up with reasons why the success I want in life, can't happen, I choose to come up with why they can.

In the midst of all this thought, I wanted to mention a couple of things about the kids.  Yesterday Abbie complemented my cooking skills, which made me feel good, cause I am not always so confident in my cooking skills, although I am working on it.  We also had some fun outside playtime yesterday and Abbie said, you'll always be my mommy. Well, then she followed that up and said I'll always be Timmy's mommy and by I'll she meant Abbie.  This is one of the other things we are working on.  She thinks she is Timmy's mommy (I guess girls have that motherly instinct in them).  So we are working on letting her know she is the big sister and gets have fun and play with him but not tell him what to do like the mommy.  Another fun thing is Timmy's birthday chair came in the mail.  I'll have to post a pic of him sitting in it soon.  So far he has enjoyed sitting on it and reading but hasn't figured out how to climb on it himself yet.

Well that's all I have time for today, hope to post some more in the next few days:)

thoughts for the day

Abbie and I are reading the book Tangled together since she picked it out on my Kindle when I asked her what book she wanted to read.  It is a chapter book but she actually sits still as I read her a chapter a day and surprisingly she always asks for me to read another chapter.  This girl has a good attention span! Probably better than mine:) Anyways she always asks to read it herself as she does with most things in life being the independent girl that she is.  It is cute to listen to her attempt to read it to me as she talks about Flynn Rider coming up to the castle.  Another fun thing she has been doing lately is getting very excited about dress up.  She has been doing this for awhile but lately is turning into a really girl girl and she always wants to wear what she calls her "dance shoes" which are really just her nice black dress shoes.  Timmy and Abbie have been playing really well together lately which is fun to watch.  Abbie always loves to hold hands with him during car rides and when they are at home she pretends she needs rescuing from the castle and calls out Timmy John come save me and he will sometimes crawl over to her and hold her hand.  That is all the cute stuff I can think of at the moment but I'm sure something will pop in my head later and I'll have to save it for another blog post.  On the sad side of blogging, Timmy has had pink eye this last week but I think he is almost completely over it now thank God!

Timmy's first birthday

For Timmy's first birthday we had a Thomas the train party at our house just with family. It was a lot of fun having Abbie get so into celebrating her brother's birthday. We did get her something small so that she wouldn't feel left out but I'm not so sure we are going to keep that tradition. My dad was able to come which was great to have him around. Tim's family was there too of course. Here are some pictures from the big day!

Timmy's first time coloring

Thought I'd take a short moment each day to record something the kids are doing for memory sake. Today Timmy colored for the first time and Abbie made the letter D craft a doctor Doggie and she colored a steak and finish lines.

All the glory to God

I don't blog very often, but I am feeling the need to do so very strongly today since today has been a monumental day in the growth of my faith. I want to keep this story short and to the point so I will do my best to be as brief as possible as I usually tend to be a little lengthy and have a hard time condensing things.

Let me start this story out with introducing you to my now almost 7 month old son, Timothy. When Timothy was 2 months old, his pediatrician told me that he would be needing a helmet to correct a flat spot on the side of his head. This flat spot was caused because Timothy was positioned head down in a very low position in the womb and was unable to move his head from a rotated position during the last trimester of my pregnancy. When he was born his neck muscles were very stiff on this side since his head was pretty much stuck in that one position for so long. This is known in the medical world as torticollis. His pediatrician at that time had simply said I needed to do stretches with him and that he would definitely need the helmet because his flat spot was very severe.

I left this doctor visit feeling very upset like a righteous type of anger feeling that nobody was going to tell me anything was wrong with my son. I know my God can heal anything and I know that God didn't do this. I have a strong belief that God created us to naturally heal anything that is not formed perfectly as His plan is.

The first thing that I did was called my husband and we prayed. We also had a few friends praying for us and had the pastors at our church pray with us. When we prayed I definitely felt a change, but I knew that the healing was going to be a process that it wouldn't be instantaneous.

In the meantime, we wanted to use wisdom in our actions so we did look into getting the helmet, not knowing for sure if or if not we would end up doing it, we just wanted to get all the information and be ready if we did decide to use the helmet. We also believe that God gave us knowledge of doctors and modern medicine and we don't want to be foolish and not take into account what modern medicine says.

As we looked into the helmet, we discovered that our insurance would not even cover it until he was 4 months and had done 3 months of repositioning and at this point, we would still have to pay a very large amount out of pocket but it would go toward Timmy's deductable.

As the months went on, his neck healed very quickly and I found myself not having to do any stretches with him by the time he was 3.5 months. At this point I saw him turning his head easily in both directions and having no pain in doing it. His head did still have a severe flat spot on his left side though. As I looked at his head everyday, I had faith that God was healing him but as I looked at the flat spot I would always wonder, maybe I should get the helmet also, so that I won't regret anything later down the road. (There is only the time until they are one year old before there head shape stops being reshapeable.)

When Timmy was 5 months old, we decided to get the helmet. He went in for his initial visit at 3.5 months and his head measured 17 mm difference from one side to the other side. When we went at 5 months to measure him for the helmet his difference was 10 mm which the lady had said is pretty much unheard of for a 7 mm improvement without the helmet in a month and a half. She had said some people who are very aggressive with repositioning will get a 3-4 mm difference, of course we knew it was all God.

Now here is the great part of this story, the whole reason I am writing this long post is to give all the glory to God!! After Timmy started wearing his helmet he was supposed to go in every 2 weeks for check ups, but the first week he was supposed to go in after only wearing the helmet for 2 full days to make sure it was fitting properly. So after wearing the helmet 2 days, his head measured at 6 mm, a 4 mm improvement from the previous week. They then told us that when he measured at 3-4 mm he would be done wearing the helmet. For the next two weeks, Timmy wore the helmet 23 hours a day every day just as he was supposed to and we went in for our two week check and he still measured at 6 mm, no change! I was disappointed and as I was talking to God about it God told me that He wanted the glory in Timmy's healing, not the helmet. And so, during the next two weeks, Timmy didn't wear his helmet much, I would sometimes put in on him for a few hours, I think just to make myself feel like I was still following the helmet rules, but in the course of the next two weeks he spent much more time without his helmet on then with it on. I just knew when he went in for his next appointment that he would be done wearing the helmet anyways, and now God could get all the glory!

So what did happen at his next check up you ask? Well, he measured at a 3 mm difference and God gets the complete glory and I am dancing around with excitement all day! Nothing makes me happier than seeing my faith in God grow and I pray this story will build up your faith as well.