Two weeks by the Sea

We had a fabulous trip. We learned a ton and were so refreshed.

We were ready to come home and dive back in, with a LOT more focus and a plan.
It feels great.

We were so thankful to be in such a beautiful place for 2 weeks.

Sometimes I miss beautiful places. Where we live has a different sort of beauty. Sometimes it's harder to find, but it's here too.
I'm talking about places with green grass, that's cut with a lawn mower, not with a sythe or a weed eater.
Places that look nice on the outside and not just on the inside. I loved jogging around this little summer home neighborhood in the evenings. Everyone was out eating on their patios. One day I even saw a bunch of women shaking mulberries out of a tree. Jogging felt like a lot less work there.

Of course the pool was great. It was filled with salt water. It was strange how easily you floated.

Turns out Calvin's part fish.

Although he wanted nothing to do with learning how to properly swim. He declared he already knew how.
He wore two floaties most of the time. The boy wanted to wear them everywhere. We drew the line on that one.

Calvin loved school. He's still singing all his songs and talking about all his friends.

Our room had a balcony that looked right out to the Sea.

Since we had work to do each night Marvin and I enjoyed our evenings listening to the waves crashing into the shore. Sometimes even spotting some dolphins.

Being amazed at the colors of each sunset.

Stunning.

I'm a beach girl at heart living near the mountains.

But I'm okay with that.

But I do want to go back. 

Sometime.

Picnicking in the foothills

 

Marvin found a great picnic spot just outside of town on the edge of the forest. So we decided to give it a go and squeeze in a picnic while it wasn't too hot.

We had some great wind, and Calvin enjoyed using his kite. Although I think the adults loved it more than he did. Micah enjoyed figuring out the grass.

The weather was great until it rained.

Which happened to be right as Marvin got the fire started. So he got soaked while cooking the food.

We were so thankful we brought our tent and set it up. It worked perfectly to keep us dry and was the perfect place to set up our table and eat free from the rain.

Calvin was itching to go outside and the second the rain stopped he was off.

We wore out our kiddos and they all fell asleep so we put them in their car seats while we enjoyed some time by the fire. 

Unfortunately it was pretty cool and none of us were really prepared for cold. We only had one blanket and my nursing apron. So the fire felt really good.

We're thankful we were able to squeeze in this little outing. It looks like it will be a while before we can do this again with our friends. They welcomed another little girl to their family this week.

Ahhh Rescue Pack, coming to the rescue

We had a near tragedy last month. Calvin used the money he earned to purchase a pair of binoculars outside the polyclinic. It was love at first sight and helped him forget about the blood that was just taken.

Unfortunately they are the second rate china type of toy.

You see we don't get the good china toys here we get those ones that won't pass inspection in the states.

They are guaranteed to fall apart the next day. Sure enough they did and every possible piece fell apart, thankfully this toy was an exception and repairable.

Despite our fixes the lenses kept falling out. His favorite thing to do with his "potting cope" is to perch himself at the balcony window and greet all his friends and neighbors.

Well low and behold after countless warnings. He tipped his beloved binoculars out the window and a lens fell off onto the roof of the entrance.

He was an emotional mess. Hysterical would be a better word.

I called Marvin.

Calm was restored.

With the help of the van and a broom he now has binoculars with two lenses instead of one.

Dads are awesome.

They're also good a preventing future tears with just a tiny bit of super glue.

Not my imagination

As a mom of two boys, some things just become the norm. Like their activity level. Both are very active and go and go and go, until they sleep and both boys are also very active sleepers, meaning they move a lot during the night.


 
The past two weeks we've been blessed to have a sweet group of people from the States take care of our boys while we could attend some meetings. I think everyone in their group has told us at least once, "Wow you have two active boys."

 
I'm so thankful that it's not just my imagination.

 
But I can't imagine my life with out them.

Just the Start

Calvin's found that his little brother shares in his passion too. I cannot imagine what these two will come up in the years to come with a simple rope.

Confession of a 30 year old

Marvin and I have had 2 dates since last July.......two. One of those was sort of unplanned. While we were in the capitol city we needed to pick up some new books for our teacher, so my parents watched the boys while we went in search for this book store together. We realized on our way it was the first time we'd been out without the boys since Micah was born. Guess it's time beef up those stats.

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I entered into a new decade, I'm officially a 30 something! The fun of my birthday this year was that we were able to celebrate in one of our favorite cities, yippee! Due to the start of our meetings we celebrated a day early. Thankfully some sweet friends were also in town for these meetings and staying just down the street from us and they gladly watched our boys while we headed to a restaurant we'd always wanted to go to, hence date #2.

It was so much fun to eat, without multi tasking, in such a pretty and quaint setting while enjoying some amazing food. 

We even ran into a few friends at this restaurant while we were eating, one of whom was moving back to the states the day after my birthday. That was such a gift from the Lord, and so wonderful to get to see her before she left.

Earlier in the day we enjoyed a play date with some sweet friends at one of our favorite parks in town. 

Then we took a boat ride across the Bosporus to pick up a few requests and some coffee to take back. My sweet husband let me pick out yet another Turkish plate for my birthday. (I may have a slight obsession.)

This new decade is off to a great start. I'm so thankful for the blessings.

Take Off

Here are Micah's new moves in his airplane.  Pretty sure he's almost outgrown it.

gr8t

 

 
 
What a busy month we've had with this little man.

This month Micah's figured out how to sit up from being on his belly.

2 days later he started crawling

5 days after that he pulled himself up to a stand

Now he's cruising furniture and even letting go for a few seconds at a time, often times falling, sometimes not.

His bottom two teeth are in.

His sleep patterns have been RANDOM, he's slept through the night and woken up 3 times a night in the same week. It's been strange. At this point I'm ready for him to only wake up one time a night, most night's it's twice.

We've heard new sounds from his mouth, some great motor boat sounds to the ear piercing screech.

He's loving food, and is a much better fan of oatmeal than rice cereal. He's loves pumpkin. He's also had a chocolate cookie this month too, thanks to his nanny, I'm learning that these things aren't a big deal.

For a while I was convinced he was saying mama, but hasn't done it in a week.

He's stayed at 21 #s this past month but grew a bit to 28.34 inches.

I love that little smile of his and his ability to soften up all those we meet.

Here’s the Deal

In case you are wondering things have been a bit better in the behavior department. Our nanny came the Monday after my post of exhaustion and said, "What did you do?" To which I responded, "PRAYED."

We started a new little system which seems to be working great and he understand the concept of earning privileges and how behavior directly has a hand in that, so we're running with it. We've also made sure we've been intentional to spend some quality time with him and do fun things together, which has helped.  But quite honestly praying has been the key, both with himand apart.



His latest thing has been asking, "What's the deal?" Meaning what are my options. He often creates his own deals. It's pretty funny. Sometimes it's not, but most of the time it is.



I couldn't love this kid more.



A few things that he's done that have made me smile recently:

He hasn't been able to watch many shows recently (we feel it directly correlates with his behavior. With that said I rarely say no to him wanting to do an exercise DVD. (It's been so helpful during these days when it seems to rain 5/7 days a week.) So most days I hear from his 3 year old little voice, "Mommy can I do Total Body Time crunch today or maybe I want to do Cardio, Cardio, Cardio?" It cracks me up every time.



We pulled down the 200 games box and I'm pretty sure Calvin could make that into 2,000 games. Most of his games have very fluid rules, so it makes for a pretty interesting game. They also have very interesting names to them.

He's been glued to the balcony window recently and he's quite the greeter, he's very good at telling our neighbors hello when he sees them. In the last few weeks someone moved the soccer field to a more accessible place, rather than in middle of tall weeds, to the edge of the weeds where they can actually cut it. The kids have loved it and Calvin has enjoyed playing with a few friends. One of the kids' names is pronounced sue-lee-mon, this is what I hear from the kitchen last night, "Silly Man, Silly Man, Sillyyyyyyyyyy Mannnnnnnnnn." What a goof, but way to try. Yesterday we had to run to the little store by our building to buy some bread and he saw him and told me he had to go say hello. He ran right up to him said hi and shook his hand. It made this mama very proud.



The other day we meet a couple of new ladies and one of them touched his head, which everyone here does and Calvin very much dislikes. After they left he said, "Mama, that lady touched my head and I didn't yell at her." Progress folks, progress!



I also love the random I love yous I receive during the day. Today I was hanging up laundry and Calvin came in the room and said, "I love you Mommy", then went back to playing blocks.

Camping

We finally took our first family camping trip. 

We gathered a few friends and enjoyed our time in the foothills of the mountains. It started raining as we pulled out of town and poured the whole drive.

We didn't have the greatest weather, but it was a perfect escape and we did see the sun between the rain showers. Micah slept in and I got to take a nap, which in my world is worth more than gold.

Calvin had a blast with his friends. Micah even had a little pal to play with, or more realistically, he was able to chew on some new exciting toys.

We had some yummy food.

 

Calvin was wet the majority of the weekend. He loved it.

The water guns we brought were a big hit.

The boys went off roading in the clouds in the Tabletka. The little ones had so much fun and so did the big ones. 
 

They came back with stories of huge boulders they drove over, and how many times they hit their head on the ceiling. Perfect boy fun.



We camped beside a river, so we had our own natural noise machine.

We were able to put our kids to bed and come back to the camp fire and have uninterrupted conversations. It was beautiful.

Camping isn't so bad after all.

 

I can't wait to go again.

Projects Piling up

I've been itching to create lately; unfortunately I haven't had too much time to do so. BOO.



In my very limited time I've managed to cross a few off of my long to do list.


Bunting for the boy's room. I love big happy polka dots!

A crib bumper

Laminated covers for the kitchen chair cushions

Embroidered drawing for Grandma and Grandpa.

Currently I have a few projects in the cue ready to be sewn

1 skirt

1 dress

A couple Spiderman backpacks.



Does anyone else wish there were more hours in a day?

Loving all that strong will

Ohhhhhhhhhhh my sweet perceptive, tenderhearted Calvin. I do love him so very much. He's such a sharp one, and constantly amazes me with his creativity, his ability to problem solve and he NEVER forgets anything. It's quite amazing actually.

Last week was rough and I've went toe to toe with his strong will day in and out. Thursday I had finally had enough, in tears I called Marvin and asked him to come home 30 minutes early. I'm so thankful he did.



I was exhausted, mentally and physically.



I was heartbroken over the sin I was witnessing in our little three year old's heart.

Frustrated that nothing I tried seemed to be working.

Feeling like my child was ………… (dare I even whisper it?)………….a monster

Feeling like a failure as a mom.



Thankfully shortly after Marvin got home and I was able to verbalize some of this, of course accompanied with tears, my sweet husband led us to the cross and together just poured out our concerns to Father. I had been praying, but it's amazing what happens when you pray with your spouse, I'm so thankful for that gift.



It's hard stuff, parenting a strong willed child. (Mom I'm so sorry for all the grief I gave you through the years. Seriously, sorry.) But we love this little guy too much, and plan on trying to figure out what works with him.



You know if you have a strong willed child, it doesn't take long to figure it out. Maybe you don't know what I'm talking about, here's just a little example: I usually give Calvin two choices every morning at breakfast: a green cup or a blue cup and 99% of the time chooses yellow or something that is not a choice. You may be thinking, "Oh not a big deal." But it's like this every. Single. choice.



Being strong willed myself I completely understand this and after being so exasperated I dug out a stack of books, Thanks E! I flew threw Cynthia Ulrich Tobias's "You can't Make me" and it was so good. It was a good to hear someone define a strong willed child and some of their traits.  It made sense how he operates and the importance behind the rules, having a good answer to the infamous why question. Being strong willed myself I say she did a faboulous job writing this book. I highly recommend it to anyone.



So here's where I seek your advice. I know several of you are parents to strong willed children, parented a strong willed child, even are strong willed yourself. Please I'd love any advice I can get.

Burning some carpet

Micah started crawling on Monday, a huge milestone and he's thrilled to get to the things he wants. He still has the elephant crawl going on, I love that high centered little bum, but it gets him places. I've already heard several times, "Mommy, make sure Micah doesn't get my stuff." Let the fun begin.

When it rains.......

........and it pours our streets become rivers.

We never appreicated storm drains while we were in America.

Here's to more soggy shoe soaking spring weather!

About that boat

About a year ago, we were eating lunch at the lake and Calvin saw some boats on the tiny lake.

For some reason he became convinced that his Uncle Aaron was going to buy him a boat, a real one. We tried to bring him back to reality but nothing we said convinced the little guy. Fast forward to this year, my parents brought some gifts from my brother and guess what Calvin got?

A boat…well a pirate ship lego set. Once I pointed out to Calvin that Uncle Aaron did get him a boat afterall, he said, "He did get me a boat, he did." He was pretty pumped Uncle Aaron. Thanks for the other gifts too. Micah loves his Huey, it was perfect. (Growing up my bro had several imaginary friends, Huey, Duey, Louie, and Philip, so this was an extra meaningful gift.) Of course Marvin and I loved our gifts too. Thanks for being so thoughtful and way to go with the boat.

Suitcases of surprises

My parents brought us a new toy. It's been fun to play around with it.



I haven't had too much time to read my list of tutorials on photography but I can't wait to learn how to take some beautiful pictures that will capture our family memories.



My parents also were our mules and hauled 3 suitcases of stuff to us and a car seat. (I think they were very thankful to lose the extra baggage on the way home.) They mostly brought clothing I ordered for the boys, and some I had left over from when Calvin was a baby. But they did bring us some unexpected surprises. We devoured the twizzlers, and reeces and they also brought some Dr. Pepper and 2 bottles of Squirt, which happens to be my most favorite soda. Mom brought me so much felt; I can't wait to do a few projects that require felt when I have some time. Thanks mom and Dad, you saved us a TON of money by bringing clothes for the boys.



Thank you Harry and Kathy for once again loving on the boys. We love all the new books; Calvin's been busy working on his new coloring book. I can't wait to take our new game outside this summer; it's been a bit too wet on our playground to give it a try outdoors yet.

Lacey thank you for loving us with your gifts. I loved the fabric and Calvin adores his new shirt. He had to wear it on Easter, the day after we gave it to him. Also the shirt you got for Micah has helped clothe our boy who is rapidly growing out of all his long sleeved clothing, and we're not quite to short sleeved weather yet. Thank you so much. You're such a thoughtful friend.



Grandpa and Grandma thank you so much for the cowboy hats. They are already worn daily. Thank you also for the books and clothes for the boys. You've blessed us so much.

7 times as sweet

How can it be that Micah is already 7 months old? It seems like just yesterday we were just getting to know this little man and today I know so much about his likes and dislikes.

He's certainly an active baby; he does not stop moving until he falls asleep.



He's sitting like a champion now and even lunging out and getting on his hands and knees.



The boy desperately wants to crawl….forward that is. His attempts usually get him the opposite direction but he's getting SO close.



He loves to stand and is very, very close to pulling himself up to a stand, he can already pull himself to his knees.



He loves bath time. Today he almost lunged out of my arms to get to the water, like I said he's a squirmy one.



He got to celebrate his ½ birthday by meeting grandpa and grandma T. They loved his little kissable cheeks as much as we do.



He also showed them his happy tongue. He generally sticks out his tongue and smirks when he's having a good time.



He devoured his first taste of baby cereal, and so far has loved bananas, pears, and carrots. He's not sure what to think of avocado.



He loves his jonny jump up. Loves it even more when his brother is dancing in the living room and he's in his jumper.



Started saying "Ba, ba, ba, ma, ma, ma" when he wants to be picked up.



As wiggly as he is, he still loves to be held and walked around.



His hair is starting to grow.



Finally he's topping the scale at 21#s and 28 3/4 inches long.



I'm savoring this sweet little 7 month old.