minnie mouse all day and no means no

I've been meaning to write an update on our girlies for a long time . . . and many nap-times, I just don't know if I should choose blogging, cleaning my house, running errands, or making Christmas presents . . . ahh!

Well, today I choose blogging!  Actually, Ruthie is the only one who naps these days, but she's a super duper napper at that, sleeping usually 2-3 hours in the afternoon, but sometimes longer!

Gemma is almost 4!!!! *sigh* Her favorite little friends right now are Auna and Nadia, though I'm sure it helps that she sees them twice a week when we do our babysitting swap and at church on Sundays.  She pretends all day long.  All day long.  She's Daisy Duck, any of the various Disney princesses (though she's only actually seen Tangled (which for some reason I always want to call Twisted at first, yikes).  Cowgirls, ballerinas, brides, Emily from Little Bear, and Angelina Ballerina have all been recent characters, too.  She takes her pretending to its logical conclusion by assigning corresponding characters to the rest of us in the family.  I try to go along with this, practicing my Minnie Mouse, Little Bear, and Miss Lillie voices, and she often responds more cheerfully to these characters than she would to mommy.  I always have to stop her from correcting me, though, when I call Ruthie, who has no idea what is going on, by her real name instead of Hen, Webby, or Princess Phoebe.  She loves for me to draw princess pictures for her to color, and usually a corresponding wedding picture of each princess with her prince, flower girl, and baby :).

Rhyming and spelling with her fridge-magnet letters are two other favorites, and I think she's doing a great job starting to learn her letter sounds and how they fit together!  She can read a handful of words from sight.

I'm also very proud of the physical endurance she is building up!  She frequently goes to the gym with daddy and a couple of times a month we walk somewhere to eat dinner, and she has been known to run along and keep up for well over a mile.  She can run about half a mile without stopping.  :)  She just loves being outside and will pretend outside for hours!  She still can't properly jump, even though for a while every time she got to the last step on the stairs she would pause, try, and pronounce "Gemma jumps!" while taking a dramatic leap with one foot landing first.

Ruthie, my little pumpkin, is going to be 23 months old next week.  She still asks for milk once in the mornings and has developed a will of her own.  She does this adorable little jump-dancing thing when she is excited, flapping her arms like wings.  She likes to try to give me hair clips or my phone when I'm in the shower.

She loves to smile for the camera to the extent that it's hard to sneak candid shots of her!  She also loves to put her dishes in the dishwasher and help set the table with the children's plates I hand her.  (She has known for months which ones are Gemma's favorites and which are hers!) Once when I was making dinner, she found her salad and ate the raisins out of it, so I added a few more and put it on the table.  It was not out of reach, however, because when I returned to the dining room in a few minutes, I discovered that she once again had eaten the raisins out of her bowl, dumped the spinach on the kitchen floor and put her bowl in the dishwasher!

Ruthie's favorite baby :)

Ruthie's gross-motor skills are quite impressive--climbing, etc., though she has yet to do anything really dangerous.  Her fine motor skills surprised me, too, since she learned how to unzip zippers and open screw-tops much earlier than Gemma did.

She likes to sit on the potty and prefers to wear a pullup instead of a diaper, so I tried some potty training with her last week.  After three days, however, she still hadn't told me when she needed to go, so we decided to back off on the underwear for a while.  She still sits on the potty a few times a day to read books, however, it's always her idea, and she wants to sit on the big potty now!

And, finally, she has truly entered her language explosion.  Of course she learned the word "no." :) On a Sunday about a month ago, I asked her if she had had a good time in the nursery, and she surprised me with "no."  At the time I wasn't sure if she understood what she was saying, but a month later there's no doubt.

Her only phrase so far is to say "Hi ---" to baby, daddy, or whatever.  (Oh, and she loves to point to her baby and say "baby" and to herself and say "mama" (which comes out as "baba," which is distinctly different from "baby").  It's adorable!)  It's almost all the more amazing since Gemma didn't say a phrase until after she turned 2, and for a while we were quite concerned about Ruthie's speech development.  The ear tubes most certainly helped.  She still puts some words through her nose, however, which makes me wonder if her hearing is still a little funny.  We work on her with it, though, and are mostly thankful for how normal she truly is.  Do you know how unmotivated I was to write an update on her when we thought she was delayed?  All the cute things seemed unimportant in light of our serious concerns, but also it's almost embarrassing to brag on a child who is learning everything late when everyone else is bragging on their child learning everything early.  The Lord has helped me to have an increased love for children with special needs and their families.  Though our world is marred by sin, yet He does all things well, and even genetic abnormalities can be redeemed and used by Him for good!

In which I pretend to be a photographer

My gorgeous sister and her husband are expecting a little boy in February, and we are all thrilled!  She asked me to bring my camera over on a sunny Saturday afternoon recently.  Most of you have already seen these, probably, but I really wanted to share them, anyway!

I know it's horrible, but I was just using the auto setting the whole time.  (Boy, it certainly helps having a lovely fall day and a beautiful couple in love!) Seriously, though, I would love to hear any suggestions for improvement.  Of course there is a ton of info on pinterest, etc. but that takes reading and time.  ;-)

Speaking of pinterest, of course I finally went there afterward, and found many beautiful ideas for poses we could have tried.  Maybe we'll have to do this again, sis?

Can't wait to meet you, baby boy!

The North at Last - Day 4

July 13 - the Lord's Day - Day 4 :)

We took a few more photos of the B&B before setting off that morning.  

[The foyer table and our quaint door key]

"Had a lovely fry on Sunday morning before waking the girls up for pancakes, then we said goodbye to our charming hosts and started the long, long drive from Galway to Dublin to Belfast for church. 

"We arrived late, in time for the sermon.  What a joy to see Jenni and meet Sam; we drove over to Connor, Ballymena for lunch at Jenni's Dad's house.  Met all Sam's family, including grandmother and aunts/uncles, and more of Jenni's family and friends filtered in.  

[I'm not quite sure how we managed to get no pictures at all of the bride and groom-to-be or of Sarah and Logan that day!  But here were a couple of their friends who joined us all for the open-house.

Jenni's outgoing personality combined with her Northern Irish hospitality and the love of Christ have made her an amazing woman.  Throughout the entire week, when another bride might have been nervously absorbed in her own preparations, she was still the self-forgetting hostess and friend she has always been.  Sam has won a real gem for himself!]

"The goal was a cookout, but there was trouble getting the coal grill going.  They had started cooking hamburgers inside when Jenni's uncle Jerry finally took some dominion and doused the coal with lighter fluid! 

[John with Colin, one of the three best men, and Tim, who, along with his wife April are dear friends of Jenni's.]

"It was like coming home; we stayed until evening; Ruthie got a good nap on a floor bed upstairs while Gemma played in the garden, played with Sam's mum a while, and eventually made mischief.  Met April and Tim; Sarah and Logan also arrived late in the afternoon.  

[Gemma with Sam's lovely mum, Liz.  :)  When Derek and I had come to Northern Ireland in 2007, Jenni and her Dad welcomed us to this same home.  Driving up to the same little village and stepping through the same doorway, now with a family of my own, was a bit emotional for me!  Behind us was the same wee garden, the same ethereal view of the sky and wood . . . In reality, they had been renting this house out for the greater part of the seven intervening years.  It was vacant again now, however, at a good time to host Sam's family for the wedding week.]

[We attempted to get some photos of the splendor I remembered, but it was a bit difficult! from our moving car!]

"Then we got in the car again, much to Ruthie's dismay, to drive up to our holiday house in Castlerock--it's a palace!! Right on the coast, and so much better than the pictures."

[We took more photos of the rental later on, but on this day John got a good shot of the (quiet) train whizzing past the sweet rock garden off the kitchen.]

[And a couple of funny photos from the laundry room--the mini fridge stocked with alcoholic beverages next to a tongue-in-cheek sign prohibiting such, and the symbols on the washing machine which were all but Greek to me!]

Galway and the Misty Cliffs - Day 3

Saturday, July 12 -- Ireland, Day 3.  Picking up from our travel journal:

"We slept even better on Friday night and rose and showered before the children in order to get on the road to Galway in a timely manner. We stopped at Tesco again in order to pick up some of the breakfast sandwiches the man at the deli had told us about the day before--basically a baguette with sausage, hash browns and black pudding (heavy with sesame seeds) and butter and ketchup.  Filled our tummies, but still a bit unusual to our taste.  

"We drove first to the Cliffs of Moher, seeing some really beautiful scenery on the way. 

 "Entrance[to the Cliffs] was 6 Euros per adult, and sadly it was drizzling and foggy and we caught maybe one glimpse of the cliffs and sea as the fog cleared momentarily.  Being a Saturday, it was quite busy with tourists nonetheless, and our two water girls were happy on our walk.  

[This is the clearest it got . . . we could just make out a cliff.]

[The very good trail was set down into the earth with a rock wall protecting pedestrians from the cliffs.]

[We read later that this tower was constructed as a visitor center in the 1970s.  It was closed and clearly undergoing maintenance, but the new center was built into the side of the hill in 2007.]

[Where the trail ended, a herd path continued onto some farmland, with instructions to enter at your own risk.]

"We spent a fair amount of time in the visitor center afterward learning about the history of the cliffs and interacting with their technology. 

"We snacked on our Tesco treats for lunch in the car on the way to Galway.  Saw some really beautiful scenery, but it was a long drive for the girls, and of course they wouldn't sleep in the car.  We arrived at the Abbey View Bed and Breakfast and had some tea after we moved in, then decided to walk around Glencoe Abbey and its golf course across the street for a bit.  Returned, met the lady of the house, and she was happy to adjust our room from two twin beds to a "king" plus pack n play after she directed us to the town centre for dinner.

[A train-car-turned-restaurant behind the abbey.]

"We drove to Galway to park at the cathedral as she [our hostess] directed, losing our way only a little, and the kids were maddeningly finally sleeping just as we parked!  We took them out anyway and Ruth slept for a while in the back pack while we walked along a sweet little canal path into the town centre.  

[lovely swans!]

[Galway town centre]

 "John and Gemma became enraptured with a street performer juggling chainsaws and lying on beds of nails...he controlled his crowd well, undoubtedly manipulating others to give him lots of $$ by giving Gemma 5 Euros and another little girl 10.  We finally made our way to an Italian restaurant on a side street where we wrangled the kids while we had a delicious 10 Euro special apiece--garlic pizza bread and spaghetti bolognese for John and salad and shepherd's pie for me.  

[This street performer extricated himself from a straight jacket while on a very high unicycle!]

"Walked back and paid for keeping the kids out so late as they were difficult to put down, but Gemma certainly enjoyed sleeping in the big bed next to daddy and mommy.  :) (She did not so much enjoy having to apologize to our hostess for breaking a terra cotta cat.)"

We gave our hostess a nice tip, feeling badly about that cat.  She was just charming, though--her house was an ordinary family home with lavish gardens and worn-out furniture.  (We shared the hall bathroom, as well.)  I wish we had taken a picture of the crisp linens and lavender on each pillow which greeted us when we first entered the room.  It was our smallest room of the trip, but comfortable and we certainly enjoyed the experience.