A Global Perspective

Brad recently returned from traveling the world with Passion World Tour, and we got to see him this past weekend. He brought Ben a bunch of coins from all of the different places he visited. He knew that Ben would be a little bit too young to understand, but also knew that one day it would be a special thing for Ben to have. Here is the conversation:

Brad: "Look, Ben, I brought all these coins back from the places I visited..."
Ben: "Oh, I have some coins, too!" (Ben goes to grab a cup full of Chuck E. Cheese tokens)
Brad: "Those look like tokens. These are coins from other countries around the world. See, this one is from Sweden..." (Brad starts spreading out the coins on the table)
Ben: (Dumps out tokens on the table next to Brad's coins) "And, these are from the Chuck E. Cheese country!"
Brad and Missy: (die laughing)

Lindley is 8 months

Yet another month has quickly passed by. Here is what I want to remember about Lindley on her 8-month birthday:

- She is finally starting to cut her first tooth. I can barely see the pearly white, but it is coming!

- She has become a tummy sleeper. She has started moving around a lot in her crib and seems to like sleeping on her stomach. We used to have her crib elevated at one end because it really seemed to help with her drainage. I had to stop doing that, though, after I found her sleeping upside down the other night!

- She is very aware of my comings and goings, and she gets upset if I walk away from her.

- She still doesn't love her baby food.

- She is trying really hard to learn how to crawl. I can tell she really wants to figure it out, but she just can't make it work!

Here are some recent pictures of our summer fun. By the way, she does NOT like the water!

Hasta La Vista Paci's

I'm a little embarrased to write this post because: 1) yes, Ben is almost 4 and 2) no, we had not taken his paci's away. I'll spare you my excuses for not having done this yet.

Last Friday, Ben came to Lanny and I and declared, "I'm 23 years old, and I'm giving up my paci's." He then proceeded to gather his pacifiers from his bed and handed them all to me. Okay...we'll see how this goes.

He had a hard time getting to sleep that night, but he never asked for a paci. The next night, the kids stayed with a babysitter (that is another post), and was asleep by the time we got home.

We had been talking about giving up his paci's soon, and that we would have a paci party whenever he did. So, on Sunday night, we invited his (and our) neighborhood friend over and had balloons, cupcakes, and fun. He had such a good time, and thought it was his birthday!! At one point, I busted out an old cheer, "We are proud of you, say, we are proud of you *clap *clap..." I later heard him playing with the balloons in the living room saying, "We are proud of me..."

Later that night, he ceremoniously threw his paci's in the trash (that I dug out later just in case), and of course, Lanny wanted to try to save those for Lindley (yuck!). He got a present and went to bed fairly easily.

The next morning he woke up with a fever, felt pretty rotten, and he stayed home with me that day. He never asked for his paci's. I was shocked that even when we was so sick, he didn't ask for them.

So, here we are, no paci's, and he hasn't asked for them yet. What is it like, 17 or 23 days or something, that it takes to break a habit? So, we have a few more days before then....but, for now, I'm really surprised and impressed at this development. Maybe we were somewhat justified in not forcing him...(and maybe I'll eat those words later). Who knows?

Here is a picture of Ben and his friend shooting off rocket balloons at his "party"