my babies

SO...

As promised, here's the video of Adalei's military crawling skills. Over the past week, she's started pushing up on all fours, rocking back and forth...and then falling--but she's getting very close to really crawling! She is also getting two new teeth, which brings her total to FOUR.

She has a really yucky cold right now...she's doing just like Layla did with cutting teeth. Poor baby! When I went into her room this morning, her little nose was stuck to the sheet and snot had sealed both nostrils shut--except for a tiny little hole where she was getting the smallest amount of air in. She peeled her nose off the sheet and looked up at me...my heart broke for her...she just smiled at me...ear to ear grin and started reaching for my face to give me her morning kiss. She defines happy in every circumstance. That little one is incredible!

Untitled from Black Daffodil Films on Vimeo.

Layla...

Oh my goodness, that girl is as sweet as ever...challenging sometimes as we make our way through some awkward stages--but we are learning. We've had some really good moments and some not so pretty moments over the past few weeks. But she has the sweetest and most compassionate little heart--even during a toddler meltdowns.

Here's a short little video of her. She has these crazy big headphones. She decorated them with Hello Kitty stickers--because without the stickers, she insisted they were boy colors. Let me just say...she sometimes wears these headphones on grocery shopping trips. Yes. I am serious. She's funny....she definitely doesn't take herself too seriously! I think her daddy turns the music up too loud...but she says she likes it loud so she can sing. And, sing she does. Enjoy her rendition of Everything Glorious.

Untitled from Black Daffodil Films on Vimeo.

Scent of a Woman

So a good friend of mine...who works at The Dispatch and who walks at the track where I almost always finish up my runs, posed this very interesting question to me yesterday. I laughed out loud--especially when I thought of why these women may be doing what they are doing....

Why do women spray themselves with perfume before going out for a run? (I think he has found that it isn't a slight scent of perfume, rather a dousing of perfume)

I am sure there are a ton of reasons why that makes perfect sense to a lot of women. For me...there is only one reason. I have been known to wear the same running shirt/bra two or three days in a row. There. Its out. So in order to save those who I BLAZE by (ha!) from my trail of two day old sweat...I sometimes spray perfume on said shirt/bra. Sometimes. Rarely. Maybe I've done this twice (okay...maybe more than twice). I can hardly take it. Perfume makes me gag...I'd rather smell sweat...but I'm sure not everyone feels the same.

SO--I pose this question--anyone out there...do you spray before you run or workout?

QUICK little catch-up on sweet Adalei--

That girl is crawling...full on military crawl. And she's imitating sounds. Agh...they get big TOO fast. Breaks my heart. She's sometimes sleeping through the night (from 7pm to 7am) and sometimes waking up once at around 3:30 and then sometimes on more unfortunate nights :-) she wakes up twice--especially now that she's working on cutting her top two teeth!

I have some video of her I am waiting to upload and will post. She gets sweeter by the day. I think she takes after her big sister!

Bang for my buck

Apparently my words were offensive. The BIG gigantic zero in the comment box sends a clear message :-) Or, like I told myself last night....it could be that my husband did the offending. Yeah...I'll just throw him under the bus.

SO...here's something a little lighter. Okay...a lot lighter..but offensive all the same.

Edy's ice cream. What in the world is up with those folks. My first post ever...okay maybe second or tenth...was about the incredible shrinking Edy's ice cream. They really pulled the wool over my eyes by mysteriously shrinking the ice cream container. Passing off the smaller ice cream as the normal size without even a word. I compared it to turning in a research paper typed in Courier New rather than Times New Roman font--you know, giving the illusion that you typed 10 pages worth of stuff when really you just typed 7.

Well, surprise surprise. I was at the store last night and found the Edy's has now expanded the size of their ice cream BUT they are calling it a bonus buy....20% more free. Really. Boy, now I feel like a winner. I'm finally getting what I paid for. Sheesh.

I sure would like to be in the board room when they discuss these kind of marketing tactics. They must really thing the consumer is a dummy. I guess I am. I bought some. Yep. I did. And for a hot minute, I felt like a winner. Until I remembered that I didn't really find a bargain buy on ice cream. I was just finally getting what was normal two years ago. I finally out grew my mini-Edy's. Great. I feel for it.

The slow churned butter pecan was wonderful, by the way :-) The indigestion after realizing that I wasn't the bargain shopper I thought I was was terrible.

Just like ME

Jesus is just like ME....my buddy...my homeboy...He needs ME....

This is a way of thinking that has bothered me for quite some time now....this materialistic Jesus that wants us to have everything our upper middle class heart desires...this needy Jesus who really REALLY desires to be our friend and wants desperately to know us...this buddy Jesus who we can talk to like our BFF....this watered down Jesus that we take to unbelievers because He somehow seems easier to digest than the Jesus who commanded us to deny ourselves...to know the costs of following Him...to hate our fathers, mothers, spouses and children....to pick up our cross and follow Him.

I could go on forever. The short end of it is this...

I am deeply offended when the gospel is presented in a watered down form. When Jesus becomes our buddy...when its all the sudden okay to sin because He is our peer...its okay with Him because He understands and loves the mess out of us anyway. When its more about me than it is about God. The end result quickly becomes....ME. Sinning just hurts ME and prevents ME from receiving God's favor RATHER than sinning deeply offends a holy God....God loves ME....period...rather than God loves me so that I may make His name known. So in our attempts to make Jesus more marketable and easier to digest, we have somehow have managed to place ourselves at the center of the gospel.

And ultimately...don't ya think if the gospel really needed to be watered down to be digestible to unbelievers...if the intention was for Jesus to be our peer...that God would have spelled it out pretty clearly in the Bible. Just sayin.

While I am not going to go on at length...my sweet hubby did. You can tell that our time together over the past few weeks has been interesting. I love and am so very grateful that Neil and I can be passionate about our Lord together.

Anyway....check out his blog...HERE...and then you can come back to me and comment. I think. :-)