My Favorite Conversation.

This is one of those moments that I don't want to forget, so I couldn't think of a better thing to do than to blog about it! I have always thought about when our kids will get old enough to really start understanding the foundations of Christianity that we are teaching them. Well, that time has come and it has been so fun to hear Caleb's questions and see from his perspective what he understands. The Bible says we are to have faith like a child, and what beautiful hearts children have in regard to believing. They think and see things with such an unadulterated view...it's really amazing.

So the other day on the way to taking Caleb to school he asked, "Mommy, if Jesus lives in my heart, then how come I can't see him right now?" And that led to such a sweet conversation with me getting to explain it all to him. It is the most rewarding feeling to see him grasp these concepts and begin to truly understand. Then he said, "Mommy, let's get on an airplane and fly right up to Jesus in heaven!" My heart just about melted. And then Rachel yells out, "Mommy Jesus is in my heart too!" Yep. Melted. :)

Growing up.

So for some reason I am not able to post videos on blogger anymore from my MAC, so I can't show you what the kids are doing live, but I can at least share it on here since it's been a while. Caleb can now count to twenty and sing his ABC's (and other songs like Baa Baa Black Sheep and Jesus Loves Me and stuff like that). He is currently really into playing games on the computer (like Curious George games) and on the Ipod, and is still obsessed with throwing the baseball, tackling Daddy and catching the football and playing basketball after church at the gym with his friends. I think as soon as he is old enough to play t-ball, we're going to have to sign him up! He is fully potty trained during the day (we'll work on the night-time in the near future probably) and now sleeps in a big boy bed! Rachel has been walking for a few months now and is slowly attempting to run every now and then. Rachel's most recent milestones are coming in the form of language development. She is really starting to talk a lot more, saying duck, belly button, wa wa (water), ball, and a myriad of other things. Caleb was a late talker who didn't really start talking until 18 months or so, so it is interesting to us that Rachel is proving to be quite the gabber already! She also has really picked up on the sign language we have been teaching her. She can sign things like please, thank you, more, milk and all done. She of course is following Caleb everywhere he goes and really enjoys playing with her shopping cart/food, feeding her baby dolls and she really loves reading too. They are growing up SO fast! It's hard to believe that when Caleb was the age Rachel is right now (13 months), we were due to have a baby (Rachel) in 5 months. That would be like us having a baby at the end of January! Crazy! No baby no. 3 for us yet, but we're open to the possibility. Maybe sometime down the road, we'll have to see! Now, here are few recent pictures of the kiddos!

I love how much they adore each other!

Caleb showing off his "big boy pants"!

It will be interesting to see when Rachel potty trains. She is very interested the process. Caleb uses the adult potty (he never really used his froggy potty that we got him, he always wanted to do it the big boy way as he called it), so Rachel has tested out the froggy a time or two.

A pretty shot of Rachel after her last birthday party (thrown by her play group friends...it was her 4th celebration...what a blessed little girl)!

And a pic of Caleb right after I took the one of Rachel. Big smile!!!

An update!

So I haven't posted in quite a while because I have been having issues posting videos. For some reason I just haven't been able to do so from our MAC and I have no idea why. As a result, it has made me less apt to post on here, for which I am sorry for those of you who have been wondering what has been going on. So here's a quick snapshot of the last 2 months to catch everybody up. Since Jason finished his school year it has been a non-stop summer filled with fun activities like going to baseball games (we're going to another Red Sox game this Thursday even!), trips to the beach, a vacation with my family in the Poconos and a few camping trips too. And that has all happened since the end of June. Also, Rachel turned 1 on July 24th and we had her birthday party this past Saturday. And the other big news items for each child...Caleb is potty training right now (like a champ I might add) and Rachel is walking like a champ too! Rachel started walking at 11 months and has really turned a corner in that regard. Caleb initiated his own potty training while we were on vacation in the Poconos, and 3 weeks in now I have to say, he is doing awesome! For those of you interested, here are Rachel's 1 year stats:

Weight: 19 lbs, 9 oz. (25 %)

Height: 29 1/2 inches (79 %)

So basically, Rachel continues to follow in Caleb's "body type" path. Like I posted before, at their respective 9 month appts. they weighed only a difference of 1 oz., and following that trend, Rachel weighs 5 oz more than he was at 1 yr (he was 19 lbs. 4oz.) and she is the same height (he too was 29 1/2 inches). Since birth through this first year, they have literally turned into the same exact body type within just a few ounces of each other. I am so fascinated by that! They are both little string beans, but very healthy so we are thankful! In lieu of posting a crazy amount of pics of each event, I'll try to do one or two of each to get caught up. Sorry about the videos as well, I am so bummed that I'm not able to post Rachel walking or signing (she does some baby sign language now), etc. Oh I almost forgot, Rachel is starting to talk too, her favorites words currently are ball, WOW, and belly button! Her first word was "mine", and she said it as she took a toy away from Caleb. Go figure! Ha ha! So the pictures are basically going to be backwards in terms of time, starting with the Pocono Vacation (I'll hopefully posts pics of Rachel's party and our recent camping trip to Maine sometime soon). Here we go!

A group shot!

Matt's new girlfriend Sara and her son Declan (Dex) came to the Poconos as well. Caleb and Rachel loved having another partner in crime to play with!!!

Grammy and Pops with the crazy kids!

One night Jason and I took the kids over to Nora's house for dinner with her family (Nora is one of my best friends and was one of my bridesmaids too)!

We celebrated Rachel's birthday on the trip so the fam could see her eat some cake! She was just a week and half shy of turning 1 at the time.

Proud of herself for blowing out the candle with Daddy!

First touch...

First taste...

She was a fan! Here she was sharing the cake love!

Can someone clean me up?

Uncle Matt, Sara and Dex got Rachel a shopping cart and food! It was a hit!

Some of our other favorite presents...PSU gear (especially Rachel's first cheerleader outfit from Grammy and Pops)!

My favorite pic of the trip of Uncle Matt and Caleb playing football!

Some other fun gifts: a super cute dress from Sara and Dex to Rachel above, and some cute clothes for the kids that Nora got them as well below!

Meme and Pepe made Rachel her very own chair like they had for Caleb too!

Before the Poconos trip, our good friend Todd (and Jason's college roommate) visited. The kids had a ball with him!

These two pics above and below were from the 4th of July. Rachel loved the fireworks (it was her first time!), she was dancing to the music and was quite mesmerized.

I did a fun baseball themed family night for Jason that included tickets for him and Caleb to see a Lowell Spinners game. As you can see, we made baseball cupcakes for Jason too, but Caleb dropped the plate so they were a little messy! It was definitely a fun surprise night for Jason. The game was a few weeks later, and they had front row seats on the 1st base line. Caleb had a blast!

All of the next round of pics were from our family's first time camping. We had so much fun! As you can see, we made a s'mores fan out of Caleb! And doesn't he look so grown up in the pic below? Crazy!

Rachel liked camping too!

Jason got a camp stove and some other things for camping as Father's Day gifts from us, and part of his gift was that I booked this campsite for Father's Day weekend.

I don't know why I took this pic of Caleb, but I just liked his little face in it!

Finally, at the beginning of the summer, Grammy and Pops visited and we took a tour of Fenway in Boston and then went to Hampton Beach on another day. Grandpa and Nana visited around that time too, but we didn't take any pics so unfortunately I have none to post. But we had a great time with everybody!

So that's a recap of the summer so far (with more pics than I planned on posting...thanks for sticking with me)! Like I said, I'll try to post some Rachel birthday party pics soon!

Valetine's Day video from my boys!

I totally meant to post this before, but we were having trouble with the file size at the time and I had forgotten about getting it on here. I finally got it to work though! Yay! The quality isn't that great because we had to make it a really small file conversion from imovie, but it's definitely still viewable (and cute!). For Valentine's Day this year, we thought it would be sweet for each of us to have one of the kids as our valentine since we've got a boy and a girl now! This was part of the Valentine's Day surprises that the boys did for me. They're so sweet!

Rachel praying!

I couldn't help but post this video I took this morning. Rachel now instinctively brings her hands together every time we say to the kids, "It's time to pray!" That's my girl! :)

Sick :(

So we have had a bout of sickness going through our family recently; Caleb was in the hospital for a few days earlier this week and ended up being diagnosed with a viral infection, and now Rachel seems to be having some feverish issues too. Hopefully she doesn't come down with something as well! Caleb had to go to the ER after his reaction to peanut butter about a year ago, but he didn't have to stay over night. This was his first hospital stay where they admitted him. He went in on Monday after a fever of 104.7 and an extremely elevated white blood cell count, and was discharged on Wednesday. The poor little guy had everything from a chest x-ray to a spinal tap to ensure it wasn't something extremely serious like pneumonia or viral meningitis. Thankfully it turned out to just be a viral infection, not something bacteria based. Praise God! We were relieved. So we're home now and Caleb is on the mend, but as I said, our new worry is trying to keep Rachel from getting sick. So now that we're home, I thought I would post a few pics from when Caleb was in the hospital, and then some fun recent videos of Rachel as well. She'll be 10 months old next week already!

Caleb having some tests done on Monday after they put in the IV.

Caleb in his hospital gown (in the hospital crib).

Caleb's dinner one night...not too bad! :)

A special "get well" surprise from Grammy and Pops...a new camera!

And here he was on Wednesday, back at home after being discharged. He was already throwing balls around and tackling Daddy, so we knew that the old Caleb was back!

The first video is of Rachel playing peekaboo.

This is a fun video of Rachel pretending she's a frog while we were killing time at the hospital (she has started doing this ever since she heard the "Jump, Jump" frog song at our library class). Too cute!

And finally, one of Rachel dancing during one of our worship nights (Caleb was dancing too of course)! She likes to bounce that's for sure!