I don’t know what it is with toddlers and their words, although well-intentioned, coming out very crude. Last week it was eyes. This week – salt. I got out the big Greek salt shaker today, and she started saying in a very staccato, loud tone, “salt! salt! salt!”. Except that it didn’t sound like “salt” much at all, except for the first and last letter. I don’t even know where she learned what salt was – I don’t remember telling her. I guess Mom and Dad taught her “salt” this past weekend – I’ll blame them for her poor pronunciation.

Well, today was a fun walking day. She was skittish about it when she first woke up, but the longer she was awake, the more comfortable she got. Then after she took a nap, we had to start all over! But it was fun. I love having a walking child!! She did get her first walking injury today, pictured below (it was actually a lot worse looking and much more swollen before her nap):
She has a habit of kind of “diving” into our arms when she gets close, and she thought she could do the same thing with the coffee table and it would catch her. . . well it caught her. But I was so proud of her – she didn’t let it scare her from walking! She can tend to be rather easily scared from doing things, so I really thought it would be a setback, but it wasn’t! Thank goodness.

Tonight we had her walking back and forth between Chris and I feeding us Skittles. One of us would have the bag, and she would get a skittle, turn and go to the other person, put the Skittle in their mouth, turn and walk back to the Skittle-bag-holder. It was teaching walking, turning, sharing, and not stealing other people’s skittles!! She got a few of her own in there too, but only when we put them in her mouth – she never tried to eat the ones she was taking to Mommy or Daddy!!!

Here’s a picture of her on the go:

And, if you ever thought God didn’t answer small prayers, here’s a copy of the “prayer card” that I started to ask God to help Ali start walking a couple of weeks ago: Come to think of it, I’ve never blogged about my prayer cards, so I better explain them (off the subject of walking, but hey – it’s my blog!). This is how I keep up with prayer requests – I write them on the top of an index card and pray for them for 40 days. I LOVE it because that way I can track answered prayers (notice my excitement in writing the answer to the side), and unlike a prayer request list, it never gets unwieldy and huge and I quit doing it out of frustration, because the prayer requests “roll off” after 40 days. I always try to remember to start one of these cards every time someone asks me to pray for something or I tell someone that I will pray for them so that I don’t forget to honor my commitment.

I have been amazed at God’s answers to my prayers when I pray for things for 40 days – I know there is nothing magical in the number, but it’s still neat. Such as after trying to get pregnant for two years, I wasn’t ready to start the fertility treatments that we had prepared for, so I asked Chris if we could set aside 40 days before we started treatments and pray first – and we found out that I was pregnant the week after those 40 days were over!! Another time, I had a relationship that I desperately wanted restored. God put it on my heart to pray for 40 days about it, and He gave me the complete confidence that He was going to answer, and before the 40 days ended, that person contacted me – after over a YEAR of not hearing a single word from them!

So, yes, I know – my prayer card method is a perfect example of my overly objective personality coming forward (I can hear several members of my family laughing at me now) – but I love it – and I love tracking what I have prayed for and God’s answers to those prayers.

So, back to the me praying that she would start walking, I suppose that God said “well, if you want her to walk right now. . . “, and so He let me get deathly ill, go to the doctor twice, get sent to the ER, pay $250 in copays and prescriptions, and not be able to walk across the room without almost fainting so that Ali would stay at Mom and Dad’s for three days and Dad would finally get desperate enough to teach her to walk that He would sit her down and have “the walking talk” with her. Thanks, God, for answered prayers. :)

p.s. – it was all worth it!!

I was reading a friend from Church’s blog last night, and I got very wistful. All of her recent blogs are about ways that God has spoken to her through different random things in her life. It reminded me of times in my own life when I was extremely focused on and close to God, and that amazing feeling of knowing that God, the Creator of the Universe, just took time out to speak directly to ME. I still spend time with God daily and He still speaks to me, but not as often as during those times. As I was reminded a few weeks ago when we did spiritual graphing in LifeGroup, all of those times of extreme “personal revival” were during harder times in my life – times when I was over my head in work, school, personal issues, whatever, and I needed God desparately. I would have two, sometimes three bible and prayer times a day just to keep afloat, and so of course I was much more focused on Him and able to see Him speak to me through everything in my life.
Although the past couple of weeks have been pretty rough, in the big picture, my life is so perfect right now. I have the best husband on the planet hands down, I am LOVING motherhood (I made it through the rough first few months, and now it really IS fun!!), I have the perfect work setup – I work from home while Ali naps doing only those things that I love to do, I have great friends, wonderful family, the list goes on and on. . .basically, I have no ongoing hardships in my life right now. But yet I find myself missing those times of amazing revelation into the scriptures and intimacy with God. I certainly don’t miss the circumstances that drove me to Him, but I also would not go back and trade them and miss out on those awesome times with God.
So what I am pondering today: the scriptures say that God draws close to the needy. Does God really speak the most to us and draw the closest to us only when we’re needy? Or is it that I am not as needy, so therefore I am not clinging to Jesus as much as I did, and am not as tuned in for God to speak to me? Is it me or is it God? And how do I get back there? But please, preferably without the hardships!!

I am feeling MUCH better this morning – still not 100%, but getting there. At least I can walk across the room without about blacking out. Speaking of walking. . .

My Dad called me this morning, and I could tell in his voice that he was QUITE proud of himself. And he had every right to be! He told me that he took Ali upstairs this morning – just the two of them, and got her attention and had a focused, serious conversation with her. He told her that she needed to walk, and that she would make her Mommy so proud and Mommy would say “yay!”, and that she could be a big girl like AJ. He told her it was time to walk now, and he stood her up on the floor, and – she walked across the room!!!!

Now, this is the child that is so scared of even standing up without holding onto something that even though she has perfect balance (being that she’s SIXTEEN MONTHS OLD!!), she won’t do it – and now she’s completely skipped the stage of standing without help and is walking! And doing it pretty well too!!

My Dad gets the Grandparent award of the month for sure! Actually both of them get an award for keeping her all weekend while I was sick, but he gets a definite special award for this!! Here are their videos of her walking:

I think this definitely proves that we have an analytical, cautious child just like us – instead of being adventerous and exploring the world of walking on her own, she had to wait until someone made a logical argument with her of why she needed to walk and that she needed to do it now. As long as something is reasoned out, why not try it?

Chris is picking her up tonight on his way home from work. I can’t wait to see her walk in person! This almost makes it worth it to have been sick all weekend!

Sounds fun, huh?
I was only getting worse today – was up through the night again, and my fever was getting higher, and since most stomach viruses only last 24 hours and then it had been over 48 hours, we went back to the doctor. He sent us to the ER to get checked for appendicitis. The doc at the ER didn’t think I had appendicitis, but they did rehydrate me. While I was getting rehydrated, they gave me some sort of super IV med that knocked me out within 5 seconds. So, for the 2 hours we were there, I was completely unconscious, and poor Chris had to just sit there – at least they have nice flat screen TV’s in ER rooms and he was able to watch a whole movie.
Luckily for us, my parents are wonderful and STILL have Ali – what a blessing! I miss her a ton though, but I CERTAINLY don’t want her to get this – that would be horrible!
I’m trying to figure out a way to make this blog more amusing and entertaining, but I think I’m still fuzzy from that medicine. Oh well, sorry – it is what it is. I’ll try to be more entertaining later.

Ugh. I hate being this sick. my whatever-i-have turned into a stomach virus overnight, and so I didn’t get much sleep last night, but I went to the doctor this morning, and they gave me a phenergan shot, and I have slept on and off all day. We had to cancel our plans of having a big Mother’s Day lunch at our house tomorrow for both of our parents and my siblings, and I obviously won’t be going to church tomorrow. I’m praying that this is only a 24 hr bug, and that Chris and Ali don’t get it. Ali is still at Mom’s, staying an extra night to avoid exposure. She is having the time of her life. Chris went and took her some extra diapers, milk and clothes, and she went to him for a minute, then reached for my mom, looked him in the eyes, waved, and said “bye-bye”. I don’t think she is too sad not to be coming home yet.

I woke up with a headache this morning (odd – I NEVER get headaches, and when I do, they really get to me), then not long after that, started feeling nauseous. Ali and I drove out to Pell City to visit with Ashlie for a while, and I just got to feeling worse and worse – my skin started hurting. I dropped Ali off at Mom’s on the way home (she’s spending the night), and by the time I got home I was really feeling bad. So I took my temp – over 100 degrees! Wierd. I took more ibuprofen (had already taken some this morning), and it helped all the aching, but my fever is still high. I guess I should take some tylenol. Anyway, since I have some sort of odd sickness, I better stay away from blogging about anything too intense – the fever might take over! ;)
So here are a couple of pictures from our week instead. . .

Ali using her new sidewalk chalk. . . that heart is impressive, huh? ;)
Swinging on the front porch last night – waiting for Daddy to come help her to fly!!! “jumping” to Daddy – what a look of total glee!! Too bad there’s not a Father’s Day photo contest. What love for Daddy!!
Chris was late getting home last night – and Ali was not happy about it, and let him know!! She started looking for him around 5:15 – she knows he always comes home around the time she is eating supper, so she started saying “Daddy” and pointing toward the window. I didn’t know he was going to be late, so after her dinner, I took her to watch out the window, as usual. Then I found out he wouldn’t be home yet, so I distracted her with playing in the living room. When he got home at about 6:00, she gave him a look of complete disdain and said, “UH!” in her most disgruntled voice (She sounded just like she had her hands on her hips!!). She gave him the cold shoulder for about 5 minutes, then she forgave him, and the above moment of complete joy and glee was made possible.

Well, Ali didn’t embarass herself (and me) by pointing out anyone’s eyes at the mall, but she still did embarass herself (and me). We were eating in the food court with Ashley and AJ, and there was a table with a guy and two girls behind us. Ali was staring intently at the guy (which she has a habit of doing), and I heard one of the girls say “wow – she’s really staring at you – look at her! What beautiful eyes!” As soon as the guy looked her way, she very intentionally pulled her shirt entirely up, while keeping unwavering eye contact. Yup, she flashed him. They all laughed. I was mortified. My daughter is never going anywhere near a Mardi Gras Parade.

Baby language is a funny thing. Ali says around 150 words, and a lot of them are as clear as a bell, but most of them are her version of the word. As long as you have the secret decoder ring, you can understand her perfectly. Such as:

ou-die = outside
on-na = all done (sounds a lot like ou-die, but no d)
eeeeeee = eat
amah-ama and adah-ada = how she says Momma and Daddy sometimes – it sounds totally Arab.
maam = milk

Anyway, you get the point. Another interesting thing about baby language is that she says these words “her way” very consistently. You can always count on her to say maam for milk, and know exactly what she means. Every now and then, however, a word will “evolve”. Sometimes it will become closer to the actual word, but sometimes it will go farther away from it.

Today, the word “eyes” evolved. She is obsessed with eyes – she points them out in pictures, on her toys and baby dolls, in books, and on people. She calls them “ice”. It excites her very much to point out ice. If you remember, she even associates her future baby cousin eli with ice. Everytime we say “Eli’s”, she points to our eyes and says “Ice”. Today, however, “ice” evolved in to an extremely clearly enunciated “ass”. She was pointing to all her toys this morning and saying “ass” in her usual excited voice. I don’t know if she’s developing an early southern drawl or what, but I can’t wait until we go to the mall today and she points at everyone’s face and enthusiastically says “ass!!”

I don’t remember the last time I’ve gone on a Girl’s Nite Out, but I did last night! I went out with 6 friends last night to The Melting Pot for the first time ever – wow what an experience!! I would have been totally lost looking at their menu had one of the girls not known what we were supposed to do. It was by far the longest meal I’ve ever eaten – it took over three hours!