Dear Ains [Week 22]

Dear Ains,

This week I have but one thing to tell you about that I have observed and become so, so obvious over the past week: You LOVE your papa!

Papa's Girl!

Seriously. It makes my heart melt to see you two together. You have such a wonderful Papa who loves you, and me, so much! He cares well for you and loves to love you! On several occasions this past week I’ve been in a different room in the house and hear your papa explaining life to you or suddenly I’ll hear cackle and know Papa has gotten you! Other times at nighttime, we’ll be lying in bed and you’ll be nursing just fine, focused on that milk like a lion honed in on its prey, then all of a sudden you’re smiling and lost focused. It never fails, the moments of distraction is caused by just one thing—your papa’s smile! It’s in these times that I just want to hit life’s pause button and savor the moment forever. You smile at others, but there’s just something different when you’re looking at Papa. J

On one other note [I know. I know. I said there’d only be one thing this week!] we put you in the nursery at church. You [usually] aren’t fussy during church but as you are growing you’ve just become louder so we decided it was about time to let you stay in the nursery. After filling your belly and your contact card, we were assigned call #3 and I headed to the main service. I knew you’d do fine in the nursery, but Papa and I, we weren’t as content. Baby Girl, you have no idea how much I was wanting “3” to pop up on that display! But it didn’t. And you were snoozing away when I went to pick you up after the service. And you’ll likely go back next week. And I’ll likely long for “3” for a few more weeks!

5 Month Photoshoot

Just love you lil’ girl!

-Momma

Drumroll Please!

Oftentimes when I blog, I catch myself checking my stats and wondering who's reading my thoughts through what I punch out on the keyboard. I look at my followers and see "9" and wonder where all the other pageviews come from. It's kind of interesting how Blogger categorizes the stats what information you can learn.

Well a little over a month ago, I noticed people visiting my blog through a friend's blog. Clicking back, I saw that I had received an award. Honestly I was surprised as I didn't even realize there were awards out in Bloggerland.

Then just this week, I received a second nomination/award so I decided that I just needed to hunker down, fulfill the requirements and pass on this award!

The requirements, so to speak, for this award are:

1. Bring to light the person who nominates you by thanking them.
2. Post on your site the wonderful Liebster Award stamp.
3. Find 5 of your blogging friends to nominate who have less than 200 followers but deserve to be recognized with praise!
4. List them below these instructions so others will find their blogs and read them. [Don’t forget to let them know they have been nominated!]

So without furtherado, this award was passed on from my friend Amber on her blog "A New Chapter to Write".

One of the first pics in our friendship

Amber and I have been good friends for about 6 years--whoa! I had no idea it had been that long! Oddly enough we had lots of mutual friends and were commonly drawn together in times that we both felt akward and out of place! In a time of figuring things out for ourselves, we developed a friendship that has since lead to being in each other's weddings and sharing some of our most vunerable parts of our hearts with one another! If you want to be challenged to love Jesus and your spouse, Amber's blog certainly does that!

Additionally this week, I received recognition from my friend Leslie on her blog.

Leslie & Me with our handsome hubbies

Leslie and I met by circumstance, namely that we fell in love and married best friends and I am so glad we did! Of course because we both married great men, and we received each other as great friends. Double score. Leslie has been a great friend over the past 4 or so years! When I am not sure where to turn, Les is always a text away and can lighten my heart! I'm excited to continue to "do life" with Leslie and her husband over the next several years decades regardless of our locale! While reading Leslie's blog "Show the Wonder" you are sure to have an insight to Les' heart and her passions which will undoubtingly push you to have a better heart and live life more passionately!

Now to pass on the blogger-love, here are 5 blogs that I frequent that you should as well!

My sister-in-love: Joie on http://notyouraveragesmalltowngal.blogspot.com/ 

My college roommate: Deb on http://debinmemphis.blogspot.com/

My friend: Beth on http://hodgepodgeheartstories.tumblr.com/

My Twink: Leanna on http://leannamt.blogspot.com/

A complete stranger who encourages my heart!:

Molly on http://ellieandaudrey.blogspot.com/

Hope you continue to stop by my blog as well as all the lovely, lovely ladies' blogs linked in this post! :)

1st Gift of Christmas

Because one of my goals was to make a gift for everyone I gave a gift to one year for Christmas, I thought it only appropriate to blog about the specific gifts I made for Christmas this year!


The first gift that I made, and the first gift to mention on here, was a onesie for my nephew Stuart! It was super easy and pretty quick--the perfect gift to kick off this goal!


I got the idea from Pinterest. [You're going to wish you had a dollar every time I say that!] My sister-in-love has a board title "Stuart Richard" and captioned a onesie with sewn on suspenders with, "He needs this... Gpa Clum always wore suspenders...and since he was the long awaited Clum great grandson..its only fitting"

You see my dad is one of 5 boys in his family, 3 of which are boys. The three Clum men of that generation went on have From there, those three boys had 5 Clum sons. There are 16 grandkids. Well after my grandparents had 16 great-grandchildren they still didn't have any Clum boys to carry on the name from Grandpa Clum. And then came Mr. Stuart Richard Clum to carry on the name! He was a long await Great-grandson, garunteeing the name would be passed on at least one more generation. Grandpa, and Grandma, are certainly deserving of their name being carried on! So sine Joie made this comment on Pinterest, I knew I had to make it!


The process to make this was quicker/easier than I expected. I found some ribbon that I saved "just in case" in my sewing box that [I thought] was the perfect combination of cuteness and boyness--light blue with white polka dots. After cutting the ribbon the desired length of the suspenders, I simply stitched down both sides of the ribbon attaching it to the white onesie. Remember that you don't want the suspenders to go to the bottom of the onesie, but rather as if they would go to where the lil' one's pants would be. The top part of the ribbon was tucked under the folds on the onesie and the bottom part didn't need to look perfect either as it was then covered with a button. After the ribbons suspenders were attached, I sowed matching light blue buttons on by hand. [Note: I have seen some that aren't sewn all the way down each side of the ribbon, but I was pretty sure Stu's curiosity would ruin it in less than one wearing if it weren't sewn all the way!]

The suspenders aren't crooked on the right, just the angle it was laying! ;)

That's it! Gift was good to go.

By the way, I promise other Gift Making explanations will be more detailed, but [thankfully] this one was pretty easy-peasy! :)

Dear Ainsley [Week 21]

Sweetest Baby Girl:

This week was another week of small changes that, I belive are foreshadowing some big'ins!

You've continued to have some food this week--a bit of rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and sweet potatoes/applesauce mixed--and you've seemingly enjoyed them all! We've also slipped you a bit of a green bean and a green pepper that can back out after some gumming, but I'm sure it won't be long for some more!

Despite new food adcentures,
one day you decided highchair = nap chair!
Papa's looking forward to when you
fall alseep while eating! :)

Although for forever quite a long time you have been wailing in the car at night, but the last week and an half *fingers crossed* you've been much more pleasant! When we first noticed the issue, Papa and I tried out all sorts of tactics to calm you and eventually we discovered that a certain toy seems to help a bit. You have one lil' bee toy that vibrates when one of its wings is bent. Well when we would vibrate it on you, you would calm. The problem was contorting my arm while driving to bend the wing so it'd vibrate to concole you. So when Grandpa Clum asked if we had any solutions for quieting you in the car, I explained I think I knew exactly what would work--a cattle prod! Kidding of course, Princess! Anyways, I was telling Grandpa Massie about this conversation and immediately he suggested a frog back massagers of their that has an on/off vibration switch. Perfect! Yet you have yet to give a chance to test it out since you are doing so well now! That's perfectly okay, lil' one. We don't need to test this out, you can just go on being good in the car!

Hopefully this never becomes a reality!

Other little changes lately that show you're growing is at night usually I would cuddle you to sleep and then you'd lay on my arm as you slept the night away. The snuggling to bed isn't working so well for you any more so as you've become fussy aka ready for bed, I simply put you on your belly and let you grunt yourself to sleep quite quickly.

Belly-down-put-yourself-to-sleep-nap!

It's exciting that you are growing and learning and changing, but baby girl, it's okay if you slow down just a bit!

Love you always as you grow and change daily!

Momma


P.S. Sorry for dropping the alarm clock on your head the other morning. It was early. I was half awake. You're a champ! ;)

This was NOT after dropping the clock!

Friday

This made my Friday worth it.
Thanks Tonya!

Whose kid is this?!

One of the most common questions we receive about Ainsley [likely only second to "Is she a good baby?!"] is "Who does she look like?!"

For a while we weren't really sure, other than I thought she had Chris' eyes. We didn't see much of either of us. Of course others had their opinions and on any given day we'd hear, "Oh my! She's a mini-Rachel!" and then the next minutes, "Oh! That's Chris there!" Honestly it's a bit fun and humorous!

This past weekend I took a pic of Ains on my phone and immediate recalled a pic that we got from Chris' mom that would show just how similar their looks are!

What do you think!? I definitely see some similarities.

Chris and Ainsley
Both 4.5 months old.

 Mister and I ended up looking through the small stack of baby pics we have of Chris and then I got out my book looking to see if there was any similarities between Ainsley and me. I mean I carried her for nine+ months, I had to give her something!

It took sev.er.al. pages of my baby pictures, but finally, I found one with some resemblence.

Wait for it...




...




...



Brace yourselves...



...



...



...



...

Rachel [~3 yrs.] & Ains [4.5 mo.]

Was it worth the wait? I'll take what I can get! ; )

Happy Methuselah Day!

Last Tuesday when I arrived home from school as I entered our house, I sighed a breath of relaxation as the house was tidy and had a fresh aroma. (Some of the things on my makes me happy list!) Anyways there was two oddities: Mister and Ains were in our bedroom--and I hadn't heard a "hey babe!"--and our journal was right inside the door.

After putting my bags in their designated spots, I scooped up the journal, wondering if the two afternoon oddities were connected. I read the most recent words from Chris. A sweet note that ended with, "So we dressed up to show you how much we appreciate you. P.S. Happy 'Methuselah' Day!"

Wondering what the heck Methuselah Day was, I made my way back to the bedroom to see these two cuties!

My coordinating cuties!

I asked Mister about the meaning of the day and he in turned asked how old was Methuselah when he died?

My response of "really" wasn't accurate enough and I soon learned that just as Methuselah was alive for 969 years, Chris and I had been married for 696 days! So to celebrate--after doing a run around to get a new phone--we headed to OG to celebrate with a shared appetizer, a shared entree, and of course a shared dessert with a drink!

I may have failed at Bible Trivia, but I certainly didn't fail at marrying a man who creative loves me even when I'm unloveable!

Dear Growing Girl [20 Weeks]

Dear Ains,

Just like Momma mentioned, we did end up giving you some "food" this week! [Fear not, the term food is used quite loosely! There's lots of delicious things to come!] You did very well with the rice cereal even though I completely disregarded the directions! One part cereal to three parts milk?! Ha! That consistency was thinner than your spit up! You're a champ and can handle more than that, so it was more like three parts cereal to one part milk! Still the same ratio. Close enough, right?! Just don't tell my students we can mix up those ratios! :) So you had a few days of cereal and since we had a couple sweet potatoes and got a new blender for Christmas, we decided to make some Sweet Potato puree for you too. You seemed to really like it as well! Way to go girlie! I'm excited to introduce all kinds of concoctions for you in the future!

This weekend we also went out to Grandma & Grandpa Massie's because you aunt to be was visiting for the day. Now baby girl, you have officially met all of Papa and my immediate family! [Sadly, I forgot to get my camera out for this meeting so we'll have to wait until next time!] With Grandma Massie's surgery, you haven't been out there as much, so when you are, you really brighten up the day! We traced your lil' hand on Grandma's cast with your cousins prints and you played a bit of peek-a-boo--one of your new favorites guaranteed to generate giggles!

One last note, Friday morning, Momma was fortunate to have a snow/ice/windy frigid day off from school. So as the three of us slowly woke--one of my favorites!-- you were laying in the crook of my shoulder on my arm. You then turned your head towards me and blew raspberries in my armpit. A bit gross? Perhaps. A lot funny? Definitely! You made better gas noises in my armpit than I can! [Papa will have to be the one to teach you to make gas noises in your armpit!]

Love you princess eating machine!

Sweet Potatoes

Our lil' Sweetie enjoyed Sweet Potatoes for the first time tonight! :-)

CDs For Sale

So in hopes to actually finish the task of cleaning the room that we "started" to pick up 3 months ago, we're hoping to get rid of a variety of things!

First we rearranged the junk valuable items we can't seem to part with, so that we could take a pic of our corner desk, take it apart and start to organize! After posting the desk to Craigslist and as long as this contact doesn't fall through, it was sold within an hour!

So the next big thing[s] to get rid of? Mister's music collection! So below you will find a big ol' list of Chris' cds.

Anyone interested in increasing their Christian music library?! We'd like $2/CD or let's play "Let's Make a Deal!"

Here's the CDs we have. All are in their non-broken case and play! :)

Title	Band
Sacred Revolution	Passion
God of this City	Passion
Everything Glorious	Passion
Our Love is Loud	Passion
Intermission: Greatest Hits	dcTalk
Welcome to the Freak Show	dcTalk
SuperNatural	dcTalk
Solo	dcTalk
Jesus Freak	dcTalk
Empty	Tait
Almost There	MercyMe
Spoken For	MercyMe
Moments for the Heart	Ray Boltz
Favorite Songs of All	Phillips, Craig, and Dean
Let My Words Be Few	Phillips, Craig, and Dean
Let The Worshippers Arise	Phillips, Craig, and Dean
Restoration	Phillips, Craig, and Dean
Best Ones	4Him
Sonic Praise	Sonic Flood
Sonic Flood	Sonic Flood
Offenders	Third Day
Casting Crowns	Casting Crowns
Devotion	Newsboys
Facedown	Matt Redman
Hello Love	Chris Tomlin
A Collision	David Crowder Band
Favorite Songs of All	Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir
Shout! Hymns
Celtic Hymns	Maranatha!
WOW 1998
WOW 1999
WOW 2000
WOW 2006
WOW Worship	Yellow and Blue
WOW Orange
Send Me An Angle	Heather Miller
Another Journal Entry	BarlowGirl
The Other Side of Something	Sara Groves
Lay It Down	Jennifer Knapp
Greatest Hits	Geoff Moore and the Distance
A Different Man	Clay Crosse
Second Hand Clothing	Eli
I Want to be Like You	FFH
Share the Well	Cardmon's Call
Oxygen	Avalon
The Absolute Best	Carman
Kirk Franklin	1NC
Thankful	MaryMary
The Rebirth of Kirk Franklin	Kirk Franklin
Talk About it	Nicole C. Mullen
New Music Sampler	Simply Groovy
Great Music	Simply
Hear the Music Feel the Heart	Pulse
With Open Hands	Artists in Worship
Let Your Glory Fall, The Year of Worship	Revival Generation
Go Out With Joy	Various
Listen Louder	Various Artists
Together in Unity, Faith and Hope	Let's Roll
WWJD
People Get Ready
Exodus
The Birthday Album	Ten
Songs Deom An American Movie Vol.One	Everclear
Minutes to Midnight	Linkin Park
Glow	Keith Conner
Invade my Soul	By The Tree
One and Only	Big Daddy Weave
Reach	Warren Barfield
New Season	Israel and New Breed
I Am Free	Ross Parsley
Once Upon a Shattered Life	Seventh Day Slumber
Stay	Jeremy Camp
The Beautiful Letdown	Switchfoot
Mezza Morphis	Delirious
Cutting Edge	Delirious
Obvious

Gotcha Back

Ains may have gotten me with spit up, but I got her back when she laid her head on my shoulder, I got her back!

Oh the joys of parenthood!

Goal #44 Identify 101 Things that Make Me Happy! :D

So last week was a Murphy’s Law kind of week, well at least for a girl who doesn’t really have anything to complain about in her life! I thought about how I want to blog about a phone that took a crap, trying to activate a phone that didn’t work, being "right on time" 3 out of 4 days, having to find different babysitters each day, lots of red lights, cancelled spin class after waking Ains from a nap to go to it and enough ants that could have carried our house away meaningless complaints! But on Friday morning as I grumbled to work, I decided instead of having a “woe is me” kind of attitude, perhaps I should be a bit more optimistic and in the process, accomplish another goal. Instead of dwelling on what wasn’t going how I had hoped, I decide I should needed to make a list of 101 things that make me happy/smile/I enjoy. So without further ado, in no particular order—at all— Goal #44.

1.       School delays

2.       Ains’ morning smiles

3.       Overhearing Chris explain things to Ainsley

4.       Family

5.       Accomplishing a goal

6.       Blog post comments

7.       Students’ light bulb moments

8.       Finding our journal

9.       Clean bill of health

10.   Creative projects

11.   “You made that!?” comments

12.   Girls Group

13.   Stuart

14.   Sondra

15.   Silas

16.   Micah

17.   Sweet Tea from McDonalds or the taco stand across from the sheep barn at the fair

18.   Kewpee Ice

19.   Co-ed Softball

20.   School Spirit

21.   Timely Advice

22.   Love Book Deposits

23.   Wednesday Night Church

24.   Green lights

25.   Clean house

26.   Job that I love

27.   Chris’ jobs

28.   Marriage

29.   Date nights

30.   Parents

31.   In-laws

32.   Friends’ willingness to watch Ainsley [Note one of my meaningless complaints]

33.   Generosity

34.   Excitement of expectant parents

35.   Grandma Clum’s wit

36.   Make others’ lives easier

37.   Ains’ laugh

38.   Ainsley :)

39.   Clean dishes—no dirty dishes in the sink!

40.   Laying under the stars

41.   Snow days

42.   Saving money

43.   Creating an effective budget [Gotta love number crunching.]

44.   Snow—without ice or slush

45.   Allen County Fair

46.   Peanut Butter/Chocolate combination

47.   Inside jokes

48.   Couponing

49.   Learning

50.   Respect

51.   Stopping at a stop light and the car next to me singing along to the same song

52.   Others’ eyes lightening up with talking about their passions

53.   Correct Jeopardy Answers

54.   “Small World” moments

55.   Shoulder/Back rubs

56.   Dairy Haus’ Frozen Bananas with Krunch-Kote

57.   Frozen Grapes on a hot day

58.   Forgiveness

59.   Teaching Others

60.   Reading friends/families blogs like here, here, here, or here.

61.   Teaching Learning from others [Chris caught my duplicate! I guess teaching just makes me real happy! ;)]

62.   Solving a problem

63.   Children’s innocence in mispronouncing something

64.   Timely songs

65.   Winning

66.   Hosting

67.   Reflecting about how things were growing up

68.   Pushing a peanut butter cup from Moose Tracks to the bottom of my waffle cone so that I have a perfect final bite that tastes like a Nutty Bar

69.   A good workout

70.   Waking up rested

71.   Handwritten notes/letters

72.   Coming up with creative ways to show love

73.   Receiving creative love

74.   Tyler Perry Movies

75.   Witty answers from students

76.   Blog followers

77.   Watching the Biggest Loser

78.   Pumpkin Cheesecake

79.   Meaningful Gifts

80.   Bed-sharing with Ains and Mister

81.   Snooze button

82.   Supporting bigger causes

83.   High School Football games

84.   Shorts and sweatshirt weathers

85.   Summer nights with fire

86.   Surprise dates

87.   Family Traditions

88.   Compliments

89.   Tuesday Night Questions

90.   Being snowed in with a cozy fire

91.   Hawaiian Ices

92.   A captivating book

93.   Having my idea/box expanded

94.   Being able to comfort Ainsley

95.   Weddings

96.   Mister aka Cakes aka Papa Bear aka Ba-scottie aka Chris!

97.   A candle lit when I wake in the morning

98.   Mister’s kiss

99.   Head massager

Source

100.  Being asked for advice.

101.  My little family J

What makes you smile/happy/enjoyable?!

Dear Ainsley [Week 19]

Dear Ainsley,

I've already blinked way too much! You've grown so much right before our eyes even though we are trying to embrace every stage of your life!

Other than some adjustment getting back to a regular routine with me being back to school, there wasn't any other rough patches! You're night times have regressed a bit, but I'm crossing my fingers that it is just a result of adjusting back to our routine. I hope! Really even with the waking, it's bareable, it's your now screaming instead of whimpering at night that is unwelcomed. Ah, well though, you've been such a good baby, this still doesn't come close to others' horror stories!

In other exciting-only-to-a-mother news, you ate some banana for the first time this week! [Technically your grandma gave you some when she was watching you, but I guess you just squished in around in your mouth and then spit it out.] Your papa gave you some on Tuesday and then Sunday morning we gave you a bit more. We've been talking about when to start you on cereal--the internet advice experts say 4-6 months is typical--but we've also read that you can start with other "real" foods so we shall see. I'm guessing though, baby girl, within a couple weeks, you'll have more than milk and nanners! Papa and I will definitely be showing you the ropes to yummy food!

And to end this note on a quick funny story from today: We went to Sunday School and church this morning. [Confession: only the second time of going to Sunday School since you've been born because of the whole not wanting to use a bottle.] Anyways between Sunday School and church I slipped into the nursery to nurse you before going to the main service. Within a couple of songs after your belly was full your eyes got heavy and you were out for the count. You woke towards the end of Pastor Charlie's sermon. During the "charge" at the end of the service when everyone was standing, Papa was holding you and all of a sudden you had projectile spit up--thankfully it was the milk like spit up, not the chunky spit up! Since we were all supposed to be praying with our eyes shut, I quickly grabed a blanket and wiped it up off the pew/seat in front of use, and the coat of the guy in front of us. Then I had the giggles about how he'll never know! Way to leave your mark baby girl!

Love you lots lil' one! You are my second favorite person in the whole world, only second to Papa of course!! ;-)

Momma

Dear Ainsley [Week 18--4 Months]

Hey Sweet Thing! This week was a rough week! There were definitely balloons like Christmases, New Years and meeting family members for the first time, but there were some bricks like your first cold and your 4 month shots!

Christmas Day you were a bit snotty and then on Monday you had become a full fledge snot faucet! It was gross, especially since I hate boogers/snot, but it was doable. You didn't seem too uncomfortable with the congestion but rather more annoyed than anything else. Well then Tuesday came around, you gave your cold to me, and we had your 4 month wellness check-up. You weighed in at 15 pounds, 8 ounces and measure 25 inches long and everything looked good! I asked about your squishy outie and she said not to worry about it unless it got a lot bigger or you seemed to have belly aches because of it. Eventually your muscles will strengthen and your belly button likely will no longer be herneated. We'll keep an eye on it, but not be worried. After your well-being checks, the nurse came back in with needles in hand to give you your shots. Two pokes in one leg and one in the other was enough to cause you to shrill and your papa and my hearts to break! Papa confirmed that was the same response you had for your 2-month shots and I was thankful again that I missed that! We quickly cuddled you until you were consoled and then dressed you before leaving the office.

After a couple stopes we headed home. You weren't particularly cranky at first, but you definitely weren't your usual happy self! After a couple hours you would just cry for no known reason so for the first time we gave you some medicine. Even in your sickness and discomfort, you were so cute and cuddly! We've just been doing lots of nose wiping and "booger surgery" aka Momma using a q-tip to clean out your nose!

Thankfully even though you are still a bit snotty, you seem to be getting over it and back to your usual self!

On the upside of this week, you met your Uncle Paul and Aunt[to-be] Kambria for the first time this week! Since they are currently stationed in California they haven't been home since your birth, but were very, very excited to meet you!

Grandpa Massie, Uncle Paul and Aunt-to-be Kambria

 You are very loved little girl!

Love,
Momma