baby soon

I'm at 39 weeks pregnant now, and feeling ever bigger and weighed down... harder to get off the couch, tie shoes, etc. :) Since Emily & Katherine were each a week or so late, I'm not counting on the baby coming on time, and actually I hope he doesn't, since neither my mom nor mother-in-law will be here till my due date. At my visit today, the midwife said everything sounds fine, looks fine, etc. Praise the Lord - and I learn to leave in His hands what I can't control. Maybe every mom fears problems with the baby or delivery, but He knows.

Kid News - April 2008

Here's an update on our girls from the past few months...

We got some snow on February 14th. We don't get much here, and I think that was our last snow of winter (we had a little snow a few times earlier in the year). Emily doesn't like walking in it, so she stays on the driveway or sidewalk. Katherine loves the snow, though.

tasting snow

We were happy to see our favorite squirrel Notch back (picture is from March 13th). She's been visiting only sporadically the last several months, and every time she don't see her for awhile, we wonder if she has died. The first time we got a picture of her was in the spring of 2002 (as an adult), so we assume she was born in 2001. She got an ear wound as a young squirrel (hence the name), which is the only way we can identify her. Well, that, and the fact that she will climb our screen door to get our attention ("Feed me!") and will eat sunflower seeds put up on the railing for her. We'll be sad when she isn't around any more. She has actually come quite regularly this spring.

On April 8th we got to go to the Asheboro Zoo with a friend (Susan Davenport) - something I had wanted to do before the baby's born, and finally arranged a day to do it. She insisted on pushing the stroller all day, and was a big help in many ways. Here are a few pictures from that day.

We ate lunch after we arrived (before going into the zoo), and the Canada geese were coming up behind us begging for food (sorry geese, we're eating it). The kids weren't too thrilled about their honking unexpectedly, but they liked seeing them.

Mountain lion

"Miss Susan" pushing the stroller

Kids' play area made of things that looked like bugs and plants

Probably the girls' favorite thing to see was the sea lions, since they would swim and play right in front of our faces at the window. We stayed there awhile watching, and were even there when they got fed.





Then there was the "Kid Zone" where kids could do various things. Here is the puppet show gazebo with puppets to try. First it was just me and Katherine (with Emily watching from the stroller), but then she wanted in on the fun too.








The Kid Zone also included a nice sand play area, which both girls enjoyed very much. In God's providence, not very many other children were there, so they had the place to themselves most of the time they were playing.





We also got to see the zebras, giraffes, and ostriches, which share a habitat. I had never realized how enormous the ostriches were (their backs probably taller than the zebras) or how tall the giraffes were (I think a zebra could almost walk under the giraffe). It was fun to see in person.



Here we are trying to see birds in the aviary. They had several scarlet ibises (sorry - we didn't get a picture of them though), among others.

Meerkat

The elephants share a nice big habitat with rhinoceroses, kudu (see second picture), ostriches, and maybe something else that I can't remember. The zoo had just finished and opened this new habitat area several days before we went.

Emily:
Current favorite phrase: "right here" - which applies to everything... pointing to buttons on Mommy's clothes - "button right here." "Sit right here." Her spoken vocabulary is growing rapidly, not just in number of words, but in ability to string them together into longer phrases and sentences.

She loves to do whatever Katherine happens to be doing. Favorite library book: "Daisy's Favorite Things" which includes a page of Daisy (a duckling) bouncing on a lily pad; when she gets to that page, she will say "Daisy boun, boun, boun".

She knows that lots of words refer to colors, but doesn't seem to know what words go with what colors; so she'll bring over her bead necklace and say, "puple-blu?" or "geen-lellow?" to ask you to tell her what ones are what color. But sometimes she seems to repeat the wrong word on purpose (after telling her a few beads, she might seem to deliberately say a different color than the one you told her it was).

Grandma (who visited over Easter) showing Emily the colors of the beads on her necklace

I had to get a token picture of Emily wearing this dress. It was given to my Mom for one of my sisters when they were little (they were given matching dresses).



Katherine:
Chronic mispronunciations: "moffering" (offering at church). "stomp" (tree stump at the end of the sidewalk - marking the turn-around point of our walks). A recent one was "Mexican tape" (masking tape).

Favorite library book: Sector 7 by David Wiesner - a story of a cloud that takes a boy with him to the "cloud dispatch center". That has led to Katherine's calling a blanket of hers, her "friendly cloud" which goes on adventures with her, "takes care of her", plays with her. Cotton from packing material becomes "clouds" and gets strewn all around the living room. Other blankets of Katherine's become other "clouds" to go with her "friendly cloud." Emily even calls the main blanket the "cloud".

Katherine with her "clouds"

She also likes me to take pictures of various things she does, like Lego creations:

decorating a boat with Lego man heads...

Katherine enjoys playing with bubble wrap. Here she is with a path of bubble wrap, stomping on it to make them pop:



Both Katherine and Emily enjoy playing outside, and many times I have thanked God for a fenced-in back yard, such that they can go out and play by themselves without my needing to keep an eye on them as much.

They enjoy playing with sunflower seed hulls, dry leaves, sticks, dirt - and especially water, mixing it with stuff to make "mustard", pouring it on the plants and into bottles, etc. It's a blessing to have a window of springtime when the mosquitoes aren't active yet, the weather's not too hot, and they can go play out there when they want to.




Well, I'm sure there's more to say, but I can't remember at the moment. Kids grow and change so much. It's hard to capture in a few words what they are like.

the Perfection meter

Still I struggle with relating to God by works rather than by the work of Christ. Living as if there were a "perfection meter" in God's eyes; the fuller it is, the more He loves me, and the more I am happy. The lower it goes, the more I feel guilty, and the more angry God is.

But for those in Christ, it is His perfection meter that is referred to. His meter is full, perfectly complete. He has fully satisfied God's justice and His law. God is perfectly satisfied with Him, and His love for Jesus never fails or diminishes. And Jesus' Perfection meter is laid on top of mine, so that when God looks at me, He sees Jesus only. He loves me as He loves Jesus (wow! - I cannot comprehend that... Jn.17:23). And therefore my joy can be full! (Jn.16:24).