Meade Family Visit Days 1 & 2

Lots of laughter, late night talks, energetic kids, popsicles, HOT weather, baseball games, the seashore, dress-up clothes, painting, parks, and on and on. Andy's sister, her husband, and their three boys made the trek out to New Jersey and we spent this past week enjoying some good old family fun and making memories that will bring lots of smiles in the years to come.

I have SO many photos from our time together. My head is spining a bit. In order to make things easy on myself, I'm just going to sort it all by days - for the most part. Here we go. . .

Day 1: Saturday, August 8
Everyone arrives just in time for a taco dinner. Well almost. The chicken wasn't fully cooked yet and some of the fixings were still being prepared; but dinner was the first item on the agenda.

When it came time for bed, we bunked the three older kids: Jacob, Bella, & Tyler into Bella's room. Each kid got a flashlight to quietly look at books if they couldn't fall asleep right away. Quiet did not happen. Sleep did not happen. What did happen? Loud talking, toy playing, and furniture jumping. It all ended with a thump and a crying child. Isn't that how it always ends. Bella's cheek bumped Tyler's head. She was sporting a little bruise on her cheek for the rest of the week. We separated the kids after that and everyone finally got some peace.

Day 2: Sunday, August 9

After church, we ventured out to the park. It probably took more time driving to the park than actually playing there since the rain started up shortly after our arrival. The kids did manage, however, to skip a few rocks in the pond and go down a slide or two.
Our rainy day activity: painting on the laundry room floor.Jacob painted a great slide.
Bella said that she was painting the earth and a rainbow.
Tyler said that he was painting a rainbow too.
Charlie thought that the paint looked good enough to eat. So he did.
This mural was displayed on the laundry room wall for all to enjoy. Until it fell down the next day.

Dress up time! This was a daily event. More photos like this to come. Tinker Bell was probably the most popular costume. There were fights over this baby. Turns had to be taken. I know that Tyler will so appreciate this photo of him down the road. One sweet relationship to observe was Charlie and Graydon's. Charlie seemed fascinated with Graydon. "Baby!" he'd often say. He was so gentle and diligent with giving Graydon his paci. Such sweet boys. I think that they'll be good friends.

The look of determination. . .

Spoons & Spiders

You wouldn't believe the effort Graydon used when reaching for this spoon. His little body stretched from the bottom of his left toe to the tip of his right index finger. In the process, he managed to scoot a little until he finally reached the prize.

Bella was in the picture-taking mood; but all Graydon was only interested in savoring his victory. There. That's a little better. Bella and I have been frequenting our library for new books and movies. One particular morning, I spotted "Charlotte's Web" amongst all the movies. This brought me back to my own childhood days at the library with my mom. Whenever we made that trip, I always hoped we'd be getting movies - specifically "Charlotte's Web". I could watch it over and over without growing tired. So now here I am at the library with my own daughter and there is that coveted movie that I loved so much. Two versions sat on the shelf -- the old cartoon that I grew up with and the newer version with Julia Roberts and Dakota Fanning. Not wanting to influence Bella's decision, I gave her the choice between the two. The little girl in me lept for joy when Bella's hands reached for the old cartoon. A girl after my own heart.

We watched it together. And now Bella has a new love for spiders. We had to do something about Graydon's mealtime misery. He would sit in his chair during dinner, eye up our food, grab for it, and feel so left out when we didn‘t have anything for him. And we'd hear about it. He gobbles up his pureed meals, but that only goes so far - he wants solids. . . and he wants to feed it to himself.

I looked up and down the grocery aisles for zwieback toast but couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I found a package of anisette toast. Somewhere on the package said ’Italian bread’. Perfect! Same hard texture of Zwieback so I decided to get it. When I opened the package at home, I realized that I should have paid more attention to the word ’anisette’ and less to ’Italian’. It reeked of black licorice. The whole pantry now reeks of black licorice. I actually like black licorice - when it’s licorice - but on anything else, not at all. Graydon, however, doesn’t mind. He goes to town on these things. And makes quite a mess. (But the mealtime peace is worth it.) It's been a while since I posted a video. I record the kids as often as I think of it, but our camcorder is an ancient Hi8, so I can't upload those videos. I keep secretly hoping that our Hi8 will break so that we can justify buying a new one. But it's working just fine. Oh well. Someday. This video is taken with our digital camera. It got cut short because I ran out of memory space, but it captures a lot of what Bella and Graydon's relationship is like.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Little Reminders

A rush of gratitude filled me as I stood there in the laundry room. I was folding diapers like I do oh so often; only, in this moment, this mundane task transformed from something that I have to do into something that I get to do. The reason that I have diapers to fold is because there is a little boy in this house whose little bum needs them. In that moment, my heart bursted with joy at the thought of my children. And that inspired me. I put on a new lens as I walked through the house after that and looked past what I saw to what it represented: the two little blessings who live here.

Walk with me.

Here’s an outlet right by the kitchen table - covered so that little hands won’t mess with it.
The refrigerator turned art gallery.
Moving on to the living room, handprints cover the TV. Although it doesn’t look it, believe me, I do actually clean that thing.
Then there’s the leftovers from Bella’s “nest” behind the couch.The stool in the bathroom since Bella can’t reach the sink without it.Sidewalk chalk all over the porch.Sippy cup on a plastic picnic table.And the diapers that started it all.What was once viewed as a mess - or clutter - something that needed to be cleaned - or something that was just overlooked altogether became little reminders of the two little blessings we call Bella and Graydon. We are so thankful for them and the little evidences of their presence that they leave behind.

"Every good and perfect gift is from above." James 1:17

Shake, rattle, and roll

I sat in Graydon's room and watched him do this. All his rolling and shimmeying is getting him around. This area under the crib was just waiting to be explored. The crying out began when he realized that this area wasn't all that fascinating and that he didn't know how to get out. Mommy to the rescue.

Here he is trying to get around downstairs. The photo is a little blurry, but he's still cute - even out of focus. :)Big news in the Graydon department: we have teeth! Well, the beginnings of teeth anyway. Little Mister was VERY cranky on Tuesday morning. I couldn't put him down without him screaming. Whenever he seemed extra irritable in the past, my first reaction was to always feel around for new teeth. My search always came up empty. Until that morning. I felt them. Little sharp ridges. My precious boy with the precious gummy grin was about to get teeth. Good thing I am also a huge fan of the adorable two-toothed grin.

Poor Graydon was pretty miserable. Teething is no fun. When nothing was working, Andy propped him in front of the window. Instant calm. He sat like this for a while (with Andy just outside of photo range), watching the cars go by. Bella kept busy this week with Vacation Bible School. Monday was a little rough as she didn't want me to leave her. By game time she totally forgot about me. The music was pretty catchy. Later in the day, she fell asleep during a car ride and woke up yelling, "Son Rock Kids Camp!" (our VBS theme). Crafts topped the favorite list of activities. On the last day, they decorated bug jars and even had fake bugs inside. She loved these little plastic bugs and even took them out to play. There were two. She said that they were brother and sister, like her and Graydon. She was very upset when she lost one. I found it in the couch cushions. Good thing too - it was pretty real-looking and would have freaked me out if found at any other time.

Thursday night was Parent's Night. We listened to the kids sing the songs they'd been learning all week. They gave a great performance.More scrapbooking. Graydon started babbling quite a bit this week. Up until now, it's been a lot of 'ooh', 'aah', 'ow' and stuff like that. This week were heard more 'goo', 'ca', 'ga', 'da' and that occasional 'ma'. I asked him to say 'Mama'. He said 'da da'. Figures.

Getting Creative

A little bit of salt + a lot of flour + some water + a few drops of food coloring = homemade play dough (and fun for hours)! Bella and I made some and it turned out really well. We were going to make more colors than red and yellow; but a certain little boy was needing some Mommy attention at that point. Bella took this dough out several times this past week.
Snow White has re-emerged. This costume definitely rivals Sleeping Beauty as her favorite dress-up outfit. I think Tinkerbelle comes in third. Playing in the puddles. The sun was actually shining in this picture. It rained the previous night and Bella wanted so badly to go jumping in the puddles. I told her that we could in the morning. Well, morning came and all of the puddles dried up. No problem. A few buckets of water later and we saw the return of those glorious puddles. A photo of Graydon - just because. This week he is tackling the skill of sitting up. He’s a bit top heavy and ends up folding in half after a few seconds; but he is just about there. I think the longest he’s sat unassisted is about 10 seconds. I’ll try to get a picture of him doing it sometime. Some new head ware - courtesy of Big Sister Bella. What do you see here? It looks like Bella in a mess of toys. It is really a picture of a bird in its nest. At least that’s what Bella would tell you. This little lady has quite the imagination - I love seeing all the different things she comes up with. There’s more to all this than meets the eye. You wouldn’t believe all of the blankets and toys she managed to stuff behind the couch. Catching some post-bath snuggles with my favorite little boy. I love him so much.
Poor baby had to get more shots this week. He had his 6 month check-up and now weighs in at 17 pounds even, is 28 inches long and his head circumference is 17.5 inches. That means he's gained 10 pounds and 8 inches since birth. It really is crazy how much they grow in the first year.