Walking and Talking

Holden is just walking all over the place these days. She's still wobbly, but she walks about 50% of the time at home right now. She usually picks something up and holds it before she starts walking- which seems trickier- but what do I know? Her favorite word (and toy) is "ball" and she also says "book" a lot. She LOVES to look at books. And play with balls. She giggles all the time and her most recent favorite thing to do is blow bubbles and make sounds with her lips. She cracks herself up doing it in the car, which is funny. You're just driving along and there is this little giggle happening in the back.

She is such a gem at drop-off, both at school and sunday school. She just smiles and waves at me and starts playing with the toys. We went to Porter's house on Saturday to celebrate his birthday and at one point I sat her down in this little plastic chair...she grinned so wide and just loved sitting there. She was so proud of herself, until her chair tipped back a little and she bonked her head on the wall. She BARELY touched the wall- but it scared her and she started to cry. Honestly, she spent most of the party eating trail mix. I gave her a little cup of popcorn, raisins, pretzels and M&Ms, and she sat there until the cup was EMP.TY. And then she proceeded to eat three pigs in a blanket. She is a little eater! In fact, I handed her a piece of lettuce the other day to see what she would do, and she just ate it right up.

She is such a joyful baby. I don't know of any other way to describe her. I wouldn't have ever described Davis as a joyful baby. In fact, he was a very serious baby. He's grown into a total fireball- slinging his light saber and yelling "COME ON BOYS!" with a texas drawl on the way to school today. It's fun to see how they are different and similar.

Here are a couple pics I took of her after our trip to Fred a week or two ago. Girlfriend was exhausted. P.S. Where did she get her Angelina Jolie pout? Lucky little thing.

Last night, we put Davis to bed at 7:30, which is early for him...but he hadn't taken a nap yesterday, so we figured he would be tired. I laid down with him and when I walked back in to the living room, Bennett was snoring on the couch. So, what did I do? Laid down and fell asleep too. I slept from 8 to 2 and then I was so wide awake, I had to take an Advil PM to try to go back to sleep until 7:00.

Today I have been quite sleepy because I decided yesterday that I am going to give up my daily Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf latte for the next month. The service at church yesterday was just about sharing stories of our church's efforts in Ethiopia, Uganda and the Congo. It was A.MAZ.ING. I have felt, for the longest time, like I have some sort of connection to the work they are doing in Zeway...we really wanted to go on the mission trip there this year, but it was just too tricky with two little people...but I always try to direct my giving to that group, and I am hopeful that we will both go in the future. Any way...I left church feeling so sparked to do something, to take part in some way...and there always seem to be so many restrictions.

Like, do I join a prayer group for it even though I am moving soon?
Do I join a mission team to learn more?

And then it's so easy to just do nothing. So I decided to do something small and immediate- take all the money I would usually use on coffee and give it to the Zeway program. Okay, I know it's not much, but here is the truth: 1) something is always better than nothing and 2) I will think about the African people and what God is doing there every morning when I DON'T go through and get my latte. And as I yawn throughout the day.

Trying to remind myself that it's better to start somewhere. On everything. There are two kinds of people in this world, givers and takers. I want to be a giver.