Good Article for Parents

Another great article from Desiring God Ministries...

Parenting Means Wrestling Demons

Cousins!

 Generally part of every afternoon the cousins come over includes computer time- Star Wars, Minecraft, Dora...

 Not really cousin-related, but we've started the seedlings for the garden!

 Bombur counts as a cousin.

The Vaughan boys spent the night and woke up bright and early for some cartoon watching!

Linguistics

I think moms should get honorary master's degrees in linguistics. Besides learning to understand what a toddler is saying, once they learn how to write...it's a whole new deciphering challenge!

Translation of Berea's packing list and then her to-do list:

Sleeping Bag

Pillow

Water bottle

Two pairs of socks

stuffed animals

Wake up (soon? sing?)

Eat breakfast

Brush (toothbrush)

Toothpaste

Wipe table

Get dressed

Play

Take naps

Bangs and Baby Chicks

Our two-week old family picture is officially already out-dated. No lip scars and no bangs. But here are my lovely girls as they are this morning!

And the new babies! I ordered 15 females (layers) and I got NINE extra males to keep the girls warm on the trip. So while Berea announced to the post office man that we are not going to butcher these ones, we may need to revise our plans... But we have time to figure that out, since we won't even be able to tell gender for at least 4 weeks! They're so darn cute right now! Surprisingly, Bombur (the parakeet) doesn't even seem to notice their peeping- must be a completely different language. :)

End of the Story

So we went to the "regular" doctor to get Tirzah's stitches out- Monday. He was able to scrape away glue and snip stitches- T did amazingly well I thought. Until. There was one pesky stitch left that didn't come out with the scissors, so he pulled out...THE TWEEZERS. Tirzah does not have happy memories of tweezers. Like the time she had a huge splinter in her foot that was getting infected and we had to hold her down screaming...Yeah.

So the doctor pulls out these ginormous tweezers (literally like 6 inches long) and Tirzah FREAKS out. He even had me try to pull this stitch out, even though it was pulling her skin with it. I got so dizzy. Long story short, we couldn't get it and he sent us home with instructions to use hot washcloths and ointment and hopefully it would loosen up enough for us to get it out. If not, report the next day when Peter had his appt. (different story). 

Well, the thing wouldn't budge. Daddy even tried pulling it to the point where it started to bleed a tiny bit. Not cool. I called our neighbor Janet (the NP) and asked her if we could just leave it to work itself out. She promised to come over the next afternoon (Tues.) and check it out. 

Tuesday came, I took Peter to his appointment and left Tirzah and the rest with Auntie Yaya. I just couldn't bear the thought of what I thought the doctor might do- pull out the lidocaine shots, yank out the stitch flesh and all...I could almost hear Tirzah screaming and bleeding. Ugh. Nope, not doing that.

All afternoon my stomach got worse and worse with worry to the point where I thought maybe I was just getting sick! I couldn't concentrate on anything, so finally I said to myself, "Fine. At least sit down and do your Bible reading while you're waiting for Janet, even if it is only in Exodus (not known for it's amazing encouragements...)." I'm reading through the Bible chronologically in a year- hopefully- and I happened to be in Exodus 14. The Israelites have just escaped Egypt, but have just seen Pharoah's army coming after them in the distance. They are freaking out. vs. 13 "Moses answered the people, 'Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. vs. 14 The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." That last phrase "You need only be still" went through my thick head one more time. That exact moment, there was a knock at the door- Janet! 

To shorten the story, Janet says the stitch hasn't actually been clipped (what?!) and that's all it should need. She holds Tirzah, I clip the stitch with nail scissors and it comes out SO easy just with my fingers! Wow, thank you God!

And so the end of the lip saga!

Stay tuned for pictures of all the girls with bangs, and the new baby chicks should be showing up any moment!