people let me tell you bout my BEST friend...

today levi had his friend carter come over for a playdate and they absolutely had a blast...they probably weren't as excited about it as diana and i were, but it was still fun! carter is about 5 weeks older than levi, but levi thinks he's just as big as carter (he is physically, but you get my point). levi kept watching carter walk around all of the tables and chairs, and carter would watch levi crawl around the living room. maybe they will teach each other the skills they've mastered by hanging out. :) anyways, they came over, we had lunch and then went on a walk since it was so nice outside today. so here are a few pictures from our playdate with levi's buddy carter. and the video is -well-priceless. carter is giving levi HUGS and if you look close enough, levi is trying to give carter KISSES...but kisses by levi's definition is just opening your mouth and sticking your tongue out...so watch for that if you can:) then they get a little agitated at diana and i for making them do it over and over...but it was just too cute to only see once! it was such a fun day so THANK YOU to diana and carter for coming over and playing!!! we can't wait for "guy time" again!

levi showin carter all the toys

sweet little men!

"look carter, i'll show you how - you just push this"

these poor little boys were tired of all the lovin by this point, but it was so sweet!

thanks for the lovin' carter!

levi's first........

yes, STEPS!!!! this morning he took about three steps all by his big boy self! it was so exciting! he immediately fell head first into the ottoman afterwards, but HE TOOK HIS FIRST STEPS!! we were so excited. and it was so great because he did it while clayton and i were both around, which is wonderful that clayton got to see it. so it has been a big day for us, and we have been sitting around with the camera ready to see if we can get it on tape. cheezy, i know, but i'm a mom - that's what i do. and he is still trying new food. whew. green beans is the flavor all over his face in the picture...so we are doin work at our house this week! yay!

lets see - what else. ummm. i don't really know. all i can think about is that i am about to have a little boy that can walk all by himself and it seems like i just had him a couple of weeks ago. when i was putting him to bed last night, i just started crying thinking about how fast it's all gone by. it still doesn't seem real that i am a mom to this little baby boy...that he is mine and that it is my responsibility to raise him (with clayton of course, but this is SELF reflection :) i want him to cherish his childhood and love clayton and i because we loved him in a way that shows him who christ is. i want to teach him character and integrity. i want him to be gentle in the way he loves other people, and loving in the way he stands for christ. i want him to desire more than anything the relationship christ has for him. i'm praying that God would teach me how to teach him. that he would show me how to display grace for him and other people in our lives. more than anything, i want levi to grow up in a home that is about christ, and not church. i want him to understand from an early age that he cannot EARN christ's love, but that in the actual relationship with christ there is so much love already given. and in writing all these "goals" that i have for levi, i know that i myself am still learning all of these things. i still am learning to desire christ above everything else. i STILL have to remind myself in the business of ministry that life is about christ and not church. and the most humbling lesson that i learn over and over and over, is that i cannot, in ANY way, earn my saviors love. ugh. there are days and weeks where all i want to do is DO enough things to make him love me. love me more than he did before, to make him love me enough that he will forget about all my mistakes. it is so hard to accept that in the greatest relationship ever offered to any man, that the reason the relationship is so amazing has absolutely nothing to do with what i bring to it. there is nothing about my relationship with christ that I can take credit for...and that, in my human nature, is hard to accept. my prideful self wants to receive some kind of glory for how great this connection is, and in no way is glory due to me. how humbling. how freeing. how incredibly unfair for christ, and so incredibly beneficial for me. when God teaches this system of grace again and again, my heart is revived with a love for him. with a love that recognizes the true sacrifice of the cross and the unexplainable desire to follow and obey. to be so free in his love for me that i desire to submit to his authority. to know that i cannot earn his love, but to still live to honor him with my life. i can't wait to see him one day...and i can't wait for levi to know him. man...

he is so excited about this new talent!

really, he's about to take off and RUN!

making sure we're watching ;)

friends forever

such a helper.

i'm not kidding...he was so excited to find this dryer. jackpot i guess!


look at that handsome man!!!!

here's a full length shot...the reason i look so confused is because i thought my mom was taking a picture of the floor. :) she wasn't.

:)

i never thought levi to be the sentimental type, but today has proven otherwise. he was such a helper this morning while we were getting ready for church first of all. he decided to help me unload the dryer all on his own initiative...and then tried to climb in! it was pretty great. he is becoming SOOOO mobile. and its fun for him because he thinks he is such a big boy! so along with all this mobility, he has started being so cuddly!!! he has this little bunny that he drags along with him every where he goes (adorable!) and he LOVES to give him kisses! sentimental..im telling you. he's actually sleeping with him right now. so with all this cuddling and sentiment we have seen in the last couple of days, it peaked tonight at church. we took him to the nursery and he was fine. he went right in and started playing (he didn't even look back to see if we were there anymore). but when clayton went to pick him up after the service, one of the workers was rocking him in the rocking chair and levi was crying SO HARD. like the kind of cry where you can't breathe and you just keep sucking in air... :( so she told him that he was happy all night until his friends started leaving after church!!! she said when their parents came and got them, he started crying because he didn't want them to leave!!! it was so sweet but it was soooo funny!!! this little boy must have made some serious friends tonight and had some serious fun!! he was defin. trying to tell us about it in the car too. anyways, i guess forever friends can be made in the nursery, right??

and we did dress up last night and had a blast! here we are in our fancy clothes :)

update: levi is doing much better. we have no fever and are almost finished with our antibiotics. hopefully there will be no more ER visits anytime soon. and BIG NEWS..... levi has eaten all of the following: apples and cherries, orange and banana, chicken and apples, applesauce, AND a cookie (gerber ones of course!) isn't that exciting!! we are just hoping that he keeps it up!!!

first trip to the ER

well...this week has been quite an adventure. we woke up sunday morning to take clayton to church early (he came in town late saturday night and forgot to get his truck from the church) and while i was getting levi dressed, i noticed something on his arm. on the underside of his left arm, there was this big, red inflamed spot that just looked horrible. the skin in the middle looked like it was disentigrating almost. so i took levi to my  mom's to see if i was just being paranoid and when i got there, we decided to call the pediatrician. she sounded concerned and said to take him to the ER and that we shouldn't wait until tomorrow to bring him in....so we did. we took him in and waited for about 2 hours and they told us he had developed cellulitus...sick i know. basically, he had a scratch on his arm that had gotten infected, abcessed, and then spread. the infection had moved to his bloodstream which is why he has had fever. so they gave us a topical and oral antibiotic to clear up the infection and told us to keep him on tylenol and motrin to keep the fever down. so that is what we did. however, sunday night, his fever spiked again to 103 and at one point was over 104 and he became VERY lethargic. when doctors ask if a child has been lethargic, i've always thought..."that's the stupidest thing i've ever heard. how on earth are you supposed to tell if a sleepy infant is acting unusually sleepy?" well, after seeing levi that night...there is an ABSOLUTE difference in being sleepy and being lethargic. he wasn't really moving at all. just sitting. kind of looking around, but just staring mostly. not crying. not growling. not moaning. just sitting. he kindof dozed off for about 5 minutes but when he woke up, he didn't fuss. he just sat there. i have to say...this scared me much more than the ER. i have never seen him like that. so lifeless. usually at bedtime he's off his rocker tired and so ready to go to bed that he gets a little wired right before we put him down...so this was very unusual for him. so again, we called his pediatrician and she told us to put him in a lukewarm bath (just like my mom said :) and then to check his temp again. so we did the bath and put him to bed. his fever finally broke on tuesday, and we have been pretty healthy ever since! yay! we have one more day on the antibiotics and then we will be through!! 

so thank you to everyone who prayed and helped out today. thanks to mom, granny beth and bill for staying with us in the ER!! we love you guys. i have to say though, having a little boy i envisioned our first ER visit to be much more tragic and dramatic than this, so i am very thankful that infection was the name of our game today and not broken bones or bleeding of any kind :)

on a lighter note....we are going to get all fancied up tomorrow night and i am SOOOO excited!!! there will defin be pics of us in our pretty clothes!!!

birf-day fun!!!!!

well there are a lot of pictures from the big weekend from kelsey and tanner coming to town so we're just doing captions. hope you enjoy!!

"papa...are you as bored as i am? i'm tired of pretending to be interested."

NANNY!! they are TURQUOISE!

boots and shorts....nice!

sooooooo cute!


how great is this...
this is the BEST family portrait - maybe one day levi will be that sweet with us...

all smiles....

and def all laughing!

levi always makes fake lips with his toungue.. :)

so sweet...holding tanner's hand and chillen in keley's lap.

what a weekend.

changes since friday...

bob and larry. larry the tomato has weird leg, tomato-body perportions

1. kelsey and tanner came to visit, and have now gone back. it was SUCH a good weekend. happy birthday kels and papa!

2. we went to see bob and larry from veggie tales. levi loved it!! he just kept staring at them (notice in the picture. he almost broke his neck trying to see them from that angle). he kept tightening his little fists and chirping when he got excited. it was so much fun! and small side note, i have blonde hair. mixed reactions from fam...but it's growing on me.

3. we have again found out how much we love our little munchkin. he now will blow you a kiss, but only if you put your hand to his mouth :)

4. levi took a shower....not so much fun for him...(but in my defense, he wanted to get in there.)

5. clayton and i have def. got the nosiest neighbor ever...very long story and really aggitating.

6. i think we might be on the verge of getting those tough stomach teeth through. poor levi. these have been the worst by far.

7. clayton is no longer allowed to vacuum due to our electric bill and for the common welfare of our home. i don't want to have to buy new carpet because he vacuumed the fibers out of the one we have now. :)

8. i learned how to spell "vacuum." in an earlier post i was spelling it with 2 "c's" and 2 "u's". i'm telling you, have a child makes you stupider. :)

9. God is teaching us an incredible amount right now...how to have patience and how to step out in faith...and i believe that because God is moving, the enemy is on the move as well. prayer has become an absolute LIFELINE for me as of lately. but i am so thankful that i am learning how to function only after time spent in intimate, close, unexplainable prayer. God is so good to give us closeness with him in exchange for a trial here and there (although it seems like they have come to stay sometimes)

10. and finally, seeing pregnant women makes me do the '"ah...i miss that" kind of face. we'll see what happens with that :)

geez..

what a man...

ok. let me preface this blog with how much i love my husband. he is so much fun to be around and when i need him, i know he'll be there. SO, with that said, i can now inform you all of what has been going on at our house for the last - literally, hour and a half. my sister is coming to town this weekend and is staying at our house, so today has been a day of cleaning, preparing, ect. nothing out of the ordinary except that levi is getting yet 2 more teeth and is clingy to say the least...so cleaning and getting anything done is rather difficult with his condition. and on top of that, i have been working on a gift for my sister for the past 2 weeks and i HAVE to finish it today before she gets here....so my hands are a little full. so my sweet husband decided to help me out today....well. kindof. we have so much going on today, but i made myself stop for 5 minutes so i could record/remember what he is doing in the living room right now. he volunteered to vaccuum for me so i could work on kelsey's gift (i know, so sweet right) - and i thought to myself, "oh that would be awesome. he could vaccuum real quick and then clean the kitchen." um WRONG! we just got a new vaccuum that has an "intella-clean" system that lights up when spots on your carpet are really dirty, and then it lets you know when that spot is sufficiently clean...so cool, huh? well, there are 2 problems with this little gadget. 1- i'm not really sure that it's all that accurate...the lights kindof do their own thing. and 2 - if you know my husband AT ALL you know that he is an absolute perfectionist...not a good combo with an intellaclean vaccuum. he has LITERALLY been vaccuuming our living room - just our living room, for the past hour and a half....moving maybe 2 steps every 5 minutes to ensure that the lights on the vaccuum say "clean" before he moves on. :) really i had to blog because the humming of the vaccuum was driving me crazy :) anyways, i thought you might enjoy the sanity that is our life...and if your married to a man who will pitch in every now and then, steer clear of the "intella-clean" system. ;) it will actually make you wish you were the one that volunteered to to the vaccuuming.

he has 3 months to prove himself.

this is the "can you stop taking pictures of me in a cabinet" face.

this is the child who doesn't eat...can't really tell, huh?

we went to levi's 9 month checkup on monday and the good news was that he didn't have any shots. he is in the 95th % for his weight and height so he definitely isn't going hungry. he's crawling and is developing well - all except for his eating. you might know, but levi has never really eaten any baby food or solid food. the only thing he eats is oatmeal in his bottle. we've never really thought anything about it, but his doctor said that if he still hasn't started eating by his 1 year appointment, we would have to take him to a speech pathologist for a condition called "texture aversion." so right now, levi has 3 months to start enjoying texture!! this isn't a huge deal, but we really don't want to have to go through the weekly appointments or the money that would be involved if we have to go to a pathologist, so please pray that levi would eat big people food!! :) we would really appreciate it! on a lighter note, aunt kelsey and tanner will be in town this weekend for her birthday! yea!! we will also we going to see bob and larry from veggie tales so hopefully we will remember to take pictures! we can't wait for them to be here! see you soon kelsey and tanner!











and and fyi - i found THREE of my bangle braclets in levi's pajamas again last night. i'm still not sure what's going on around here....