Six and Twenty...

Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't blogged in...well, hmmmm....looks like about 3 weeks. Ahem.  Well.  I'm back.

And for your faithfulness, you will have to endure a LOT of words today, but I will make it worth your while with a few photos.

My excuse for not blogging lately?  Yeah, well, I have several actually.  The first...

I know, at least she's a cute excuse, right?  The minute I walk in the door from work every afternoon, she runs to greet me and before I can put my purse or work bag down or even slip out of my shoes, she is in my arms.  Don't get me wrong, I love her and I love it, but I literally don't get 3 steps in the door.

My other excuse...

This girl is kickin' it in middle school, but it's a lot more work than elementary!  After I get in the door, we are usually sitting down to eat within 15 minutes.  Then, I try and entertain Kylie while simultaneously helping Jenna with her homework.  And I love this girl, but homework time is such an unhappy time in our house.  Jenna has started to realize how stupid we are and how smart she is and yet at the same time how stupid all this school work is.  We listen to her complain the ENTIRE time she is working on homework.  Math is, of course, our bone of contention.  I hated it, Steve never really did it and now Jenna hates it too.  Kylie will probably be a math whiz when Jenna has already graduated and Steve and I are too old to care anymore.

Kylie goes to bed at 8pm so by the time I put her down, I have about 90 minutes to do anything else that has to be done.  Most of the time, the housework gets totally ignored (as evidenced in the above picture) and I come to the bedroom to do some Bible study.

As an aside, our Lifegroup started a study on Galatians back before I went to China (March).  It was pretty cool because I was simultaneously doing a study with my ladies group on Romans (and Galatians is like a cliff's note version of Romans).  Anyway, I missed a good portion of the Galatians study due to our trip to China and then Kylie, so I never finished.  So a few months ago, I started over with a self study of Galatians in the same way we had studied Romans.  And then our pastor decided to do an in depth sermon series on Revelation.  And because I wanted to study Revelation in the same format I did Romans and Galatians, I was trying hard to finish up Galatians before we got too far into Revelation.  In the middle of all this, I was reading 2 different series of books that I wanted to finish.  So I'd put Kylie down and then spend the next 90 minutes doing Bible study or reading.  So it just didn't leave much time for blogging.

And honestly, there's not a lot going on.  OK, that's clearly not true.  There's plenty going on, but it's just...LIFE.

Sooooo...how 'bout a quick update?

Kylie just turned 20 months old!  I am about to have a 2 year old in the house.  I don't know if I'm ready for that.  Guess I better get that way, huh?  Kylie is running and laughing and playing all the time now.  I tell people all the time that folks say to me, "Oh, her personality is really coming out now!" when I really think they mean, "Oh my she's really into everything now isn't she?!"  Because she is.

She will sit and watch TV for a few minutes at a time.  She loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (like her big sister used to) and Bubble Guppies.  She also likes Doc McStuffins and Andy Griffith (yes, she is her Daddy's daughter for sure!).

I wish I could say her speech has "exploded" but it hasn't.  It's getting better, but it's not a fast process.  She is doing speech therapy 2 days a week and the therapist is wonderful and says she is making good progress.  She has started saying "me, me, me, me" sounds as well as "n" sounds.  She says "hi" and "hello" when she sees...well anyone really.  I know it's only been a month since surgery and it will take time.  But it will be so nice to have her be able to tell us what she wants or needs rather than guessing.  The guessing game is very frustrating for her and for us.

Kylie has been home for 6 months now.  SIX MONTHS.  I can't even fathom that this is the same child as the one we brought home 6 months ago.  She is sleeping through the night again, at least for the most part.  She will go down without crying almost every night.  Some nights she wakes in the night and cries out and we'll have to go pat her for a second and tell her to go night-night and she usually does.

She is back to eating whatever she wants although I'm still a little leery of giving her anything pointy.  She eats most anything we put in front of her, but she's still learning to use eating utensils so with lots of foods we have to feed her.  From our scales at home, it looks like she weighs about 22lbs.  I'm sure she lost a pound or two from her limited diet after surgery so we are trying to make p for it.

She continues to go to the nursery at church every Sunday and since Lifegroup has started back up she goes on Sunday nights and now Wednesday nights too.  She really really loves it and we are thinking about putting her in daycare for a few hours a week.  Right now, that's unfortunately not in the budget, but we are hoping it will be sooner rather than later.

I guess that's mostly it.  I have lots of other stuff to chat about, but that's a good start.  Thanks to all of you who have asked me whether I'm still blogging.  I am.  It's just been crazy around here since the surgery...

Thanks for coming back.  I'll do better, I promise.