inflatable duck + water = TONS OF FUN

well this inflatable duck you are about to see is really for little babies...it's supposed to BE the bathtub...and what do you do when you get to big??? you turn it into a RAFT! yep...a raft that is entirely too big for the bathtub, but nonetheless a blast to play with. so thank you to uncle case for this amazing duck...it quackes as well...so that makes it even cooler. the greatest thing about this video is watching him hit the sides like he's riding a horse...you spur the horse to get it to go, and for levi, you hit the side to make mom and dad make the duck go. he's a quick learner :)

new words

levi is a true texan. of course, i knew he would be growing up in lubbock, but i didn't think i would see it so soon. he has started saying "bye bye" and when he says it, it sounds like the most hickish bye you have ever heard...and when he says it he waves his little arm as frantically as he can. i love it! it is so cute...and it's so weird to hear my BABY forming words!! and now he also says "ball." you can ask him in the bathtub to find his ball, and he gets his little basketball in all the commotion of dinosaurs and boats and ducks and airplanes. I LOVE IT! it's like the last 10 months of teaching and loving on this little guy is finally showing fruit!!! it's so much fun! he knows what "dog" is, but has a hard time saying it still...but we'll get there i'm sure! 

we are excited about spring break next week! this will be the first year since we have been married that we are not taking a trip with the youth, so we are having family week next week!!! i can NOT wait! so our plans are a-plenty! we are hoping that the weather will be good enough to go swimming (matching trunks for the boys :), a day of play at legacy play village (it's this amazingly huge playground that kids flock to), clayton and i will have some dates of our own...movies, drivein, ect. so i am so excited!!! it is so exciting to think about planning "family" things for spring break. anyways, it will be posted about next week as we go through it all!!!

clayton, levi and i went to the hospital this afternoon to see one of our friends who had just had her second baby. the MINUTE i saw the babies in the nursury, their tiny noses, toes, fingers and mouths...i lost it. this HUGE emotion of wanting to have another little one to hold came over me. and then as i walked into her room and saw baby ethan swaddled and asleep in her lap, i got teary-eyed.  i can't believe how much levi has grown out of - the little cooing noises, the jerky yawns and movements, the inability to stay awake for 30 minutes :)  -  he just seems worlds apart from that stage. and he is, of course, but it's hard to believe that in only 10 months that levi went from that newborn to who he is now...it just goes so fast. i guess that's why people keep having kids :) 

i just couldn't resist.

haha!!! can you count the wrinkles?? 1,2,3,4....
hey...what's up mom?

:) close up :) this just makes me smile.

"i'm too sexy for my pants. too sexy for my pants...."

i just had to put these WAY sweet pics of levi's "highnee" (not sure how to spell that one) up for you to see. i don't know why, but i think baby bottoms are SO cute...now this amount of cellulite on any adult would be absolutely nauseating to look at (i mean, hey - NO judgement here..that's for sure :) but on a munchkin, it's precious! so other than not posting in a while, we have been doing relatively good! because it's spring, and because we live in lubbock, the weather has been RIDICULOUS!!! stopped up noses, sinus headaches, sore throats...they have all been present at our house this week. so needless to say, i am ready for the sun to come out and stay out! and for the snow NOT to mix in with all our warm afternoons!! but it will come soon i hope...and aunt kelsey is coming to town next week!!! YAY! she can't stay long, but we will take what we can get! levi is SOOOOO excited! (ok so we all are :)

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!!!