AbbyGirl Turns Six

Last month, we celebrated six years of having Abby in our family.

Our Abby has always lived life in extremes.  She was born extremely early, went through major ups and downs during her first months with us, and has continued her roller coaster into her elementary years.  When she’s happy, she beams.  When she’s mad, she’s furious (sometimes so much so that she forgets why she was angry in the first place).  When she laughs, she belly laughs like no one else.  When she hugs, her hugs are tight.  She loves life deeply.


Along with living her life in extremes, Abby is just a little bit crazy.  She’s a bundle of energy and is ready to start running, rolling, and playing hard the moment anyone will join her.  I’ve noticed lately that I can’t let Abby be the one to hold Hannah right after a nap or right before bed, because Abby gets others wound up and doesn’t know how to “settle down”.  She’s full of fun and laugher and silliness that she can’t always manage to turn off when we ask her to.


This makes Abby a terrific team player.  She joins right in with enthusiasm.  She’s also very good with younger children.  Abby is my go-to girl when I need someone to help Elijah or play with Hannah.  In fact, she has started fighting with others when they get to hold Hannah, and, even when I don’t need someone to hold her, Abby often asks.  She’ll also keep her brothers entertained, “read” to them, or sing songs (sweet ones and silly ones).





One way that Abby has surprised me this year is academically.  Lydia has always been so quick to pick up on things without me directly teaching her.  Abby…not so.  With Abby I will walk through something step-by-step for days before she gets it.  I thought this might be a struggle in school, but it turns out, Abby just learns differently than Lydia.  She loves workbooks, flash cards, and repetition.  She is very visual and struggles immensely if you give her verbal directions or read something to her without pictures.  But, put a visual in front of her, make up motions for a song, or show her the letters to a word, and she has no trouble at all.  I noticed it first in how well she’s been doing with reading lessons – even in only five minutes a few times a week, and while she’s basically rolling around on the floor or standing on her head because this girl just cannot sit still, she’s still taken off with reading above her age level.  I noticed it again during Camp Tikva when Abby mastered the motions to the memory song by the second day, even though it took her almost the whole week to learn the words.

Another way Abby has surprised me this year is by how observant she’s become, especially while we’re driving.  We visited a large park several times this summer, and one day we were trying to get there from a different direction than usual.  I missed my turn but thought I was on the right track, when Abby started arguing with me that I was going the wrong way.  After a few minutes, I realized she actually knew what she was talking about, and I had her tell me how to get back to the park.  I’m terrible with directions when driving, so this has turned out to be incredibly helpful.  She’s also really good and finding lost items.  Everyone else will be wandering around with no idea where to look and she’ll run into a room and spot the lost thing instantly.


One thing that has not changed in the past year is Abby’s love for pigs.  She has three stuffed pigs now, and sleeps with them every night.  They are her most treasured toys.  Although, Abby loves to latch onto anything new that comes into the house.  At any moment, you could search her backpack to find all sorts of interesting “treasures”.  This has proved a bit of a challenge to my tendency toward minimalism, when, every time I bring in a piece of junk mail, Abby asks if she can have it to keep forever.



Lydia and Abby don’t have an easy time getting along. They are just about as different as can be, personality wise.  They share a room and are always in each other’s space.  Lydia is an extrovert, Abby an introvert.  Still, they spend so much time together that they are becoming each other’s best friends.  It’s cute to watch them play.  Lydia makes up something to pretend and literally dictates to Abby what to do and say, word by word.  They come up with all sorts of little games.  The interests they do share are ballet, dressing up pretty, and spending time with their favorite teenagers at church.  They also have to deal with their two tougher little brothers, which is turning out to be quite a bonding experience.



Abby is incredibly helpful.  As long as she’s not overtired or pulled away by something really exciting, she loves to be my helper, especially while I cook.  She used to run around gathering ingredients for me, but now she has graduated to being my salad chopper and veggie peeler.  She loves those chores and will sometimes cry if she finds out I did them without her.  Whenever I need someone to do something, she is usually the first one to jump up and run off to be my helper.

This year I’ve realized that Abby’s love language is physical touch.  She loves gifts, treasures them for as long as she can keep them in her backpack, but this kids needs her snuggles.  After anything unpleasant, or if she’s feeling sleepy, Abby will quietly sneak up behind me and lean on my arm.  Or she’ll put her hand on my shoulder.  When I was pregnant, she would offer to “pet my head” while I was laying on the couch not feeling well.  And she will still quietly reach up and hold my hand if we’re walking next to each other.



Days aren’t always smooth when you run through a roller coaster of extreme emotions: very sleepy, super hungry, eager for the day, bored with school, passionately not tired enough to nap, too exhausted to do anything after not taking a nap, excited to hold Hannah, disappointed not to help peel carrots…but at the end of each day, as I reflect on everything that happened and how Abby’s handled it all, the word that sums Abby up is simply: Sweet.  And in my head, I see her with her messy, curly hair belly laughing and lighting up the whole room.

Abby’s 5th Birthday

This month we celebrated Abby’s fifth birthday. (For the record, she has officially told us that she prefers “Abby” over her other names like “Abigail”, “Abs”, “Abster”). Abby chose to celebrate with pizza and ice cream (with Grandma and Grandpa) after a day at the hands-on museum, and then homemade pizza bagels for the “day of” celebration. It was fun to watch Abby take “center stage”, as she usually is shy and quiet and content to sit out of the spot light.

First of all, you all must know that Abby, sweet and quiet as she is, is strongly opinionated. She loves what she loves and lives with zeal. And one of her biggest loves right now is pigs. Real pigs, cartoon pigs, stuffed pigs…pigs. For her birthday, we got her a pig backpack and a big stuffed pig to sleep with. (She already sleeps with her special Christmas doll, her little pig stuffed animal, and her stuffed Elmo – all previous gifts from all different people). Anytime we have any kind of pig sighting, Abby is sure to look over and Dan me with a great big grin. It’s adorable.

Abby is sweet. She has a gift for playing with Little Kids and is my go-to-girl when I need someone to “keep Elijah back while I open the oven” or “see if you can get Elijah to stop crying”. Just last week we were at a baseball game and she came up to me and said, “Mom, you don’t need to watch Elijah. I will watch him so that you can just watch the game”. (She is five, though, so that really only lasted a few minutes, but it was sweet all the same).

Abby is also my little helper. She loves to help me do…anything. Often on days when she naps, she’ll ask me, “When I get up, can I help you do whatever you’re doing?”. And she does! She’ll bring me ingredients from the fridge, put things away for me, or does whatever little job I ask her to do. She also has a daily chore of wiping down the dining room table, which she almost always does quickly and cheerfully.

This year, Abby is tackling kindergarten. She’s technically a little young for kindergarten (by 10 days), but we’re plowing right along. She shocked me last year by starting to sound out words at a younger age than Lydia, so this year she’s learning to read, doing a little handwriting, and beginning some organized math. She LOVES school work, especially workbooks, and begs me to do more and more pages, often more than I can say “yes” to. (On the second day of school, she finished my allotted first three weeks of handwriting!)

Abby is not picky when it comes to having fun. She loves surprises and she loves any outing. Any little gift makes her smile and she keeps her treasures all together somewhere (currently in her new pig backpack) and guards them with zeal. Some of her favorite treasures right now are new sunglasses (in a case), a spiral bound notebook and pencil with an eraser cap, and a couple of toy necklaces she got with her birthday money.

One of the sweetest things, though, that I see Abby do, is play with her siblings. She has a little bit of a peace-making ability, and will usually be the first to give up something to make someone else happy (sharing some of her meal with Elijah after he finishes, sharing stickers with Lydia, and even giving up some ice cream after a birthday-date with Daddy so everyone could have a taste). During the boys (and my) nap time, she loves to play with Lydia, and together they plan weddings and parties, dress up, and pretend travel, school, and restaurant. Sometimes Lydia reads to Abby and sometimes Abby pretends to read to her brothers.

We’ve lately noticed that she’s a little peanut gallery, making hilarious (although, not necessarily on purpose) comments to some of Lydia’s more dramatic episodes. One day Lydia was trying hard not to cry in the car, but she just couldn’t control herself. Abby was sitting quietly, sucking her thumb. She popped the thumb out and piped in, “Try sucking your thumb. That’s what I do.” Then she popped her thumb right back in as Dan and I tried not to laugh (for Lydia’s sake).

Abby has always been a smiler, and she lives her life passionately. When she’s happy, she beams. When she’s tired, she sleeps hard. When she’s excited, she can’t contain herself. It has been so fun to watch Abby grow and learn in the past years, transitioning from a baby who couldn’t eat, to a toddler who couldn’t talk, and now to a spirited five-year-old who is eating, talking, and learning to read!

Elijah’s First Birthday

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Elijah’s first birthday. Although I’ve shared plenty of pictures on here of our Sweet Boy, I wanted to spend this post sharing a little about who our Elijah is.

We call him Lij, Big, Elijah, and sometimes Sweet Boy. He has always been a mellow baby, and very content. When I was pregnant, he didn’t kick or move around very much compared to any of his siblings. He’s always happy to do his own thing: crawl around, eat anything he can find (more on that later), or play with anyone. I think he’s going to grow up to be a relatively quiet boy and eventually become the kind of person who, once he does open his mouth, has very wise words come out.

He’s also very strong. I’ll probably always remember turning around one morning, as I was preparing breakfast, to see one of our children (who shall remain nameless) standing on Elijah’s back. Just standing there like he was a step stool. I yelped, scolded, and got that kid off of Elijah as fast as I could, but Elijah just lay there mid army-crawl, looking up at me with an expression that said, “What’s the big deal?” He was fine, though the child on his back weighed more than twice as much as he did.

Elijah is happy to play with anyone who shows him interest. Abby will frequently entertain him while I’m in the kitchen. She’ll hug him, “tickle” him, and wrestle him, and he’s happy just to have the attention. Just about anyone we let pick him up will find a sweet, smily baby, who is, again, happy to interact no matter who you are. But when Elijah gets tired, he wants Mom. He’ll start crying if he sees me enter the room and he’ll army crawl quickly over to my feet. Just like his siblings, he’ll pop some fingers in his mouth (he prefers the pointer and middle finger of his left hand) grab on to my hair or his own, and become quiet and content once more.

But, Elijah LOVES his daddy. There’s a Frank Sinatra song called “I Only Have Eyes for You”, and, though I don’t actually know the whole song, that one line from the title pops into my head just about every time Lij spots Dan across a room. He’ll stare at him for so long until Dan finally comes over, gives him some attention and hold him. (Abby was the same way.) “Mom’s great when I’m tired, but there’s nobody like Dad!”

As far as food goes, Elijah has recently started to eat a lot. For months we couldn’t get him to eat solid food. Baby food of any flavor makes him gag. He won’t touch bananas. Avocado won’t stay down, and even if it could, we can’t get him to put it in his mouth anymore. The only toothless-friendly food Elijah likes are sweet potatoes, and he loves sweet potatoes. Of course, my one baby to skip the purees is also the slowest to get teeth. The day his molars come in will be a happy day, because Elijah will pretty much only eat what we’re eating. And he’ll only eat it if he gets to feed it to himself.

As we approached the one-year mark, Dan and I were DONE getting up at night, but Elijah wasn’t. We tried roughly a million approaches to get him to sleep better: night weaning, feeding right before bed, waking up to feed right before I went to bed, moving him out of our room, letting him cry, waking him up at preplanned times during the night to eat, and always, always, we just prayed that he’d stop getting us up. Finally, when the weather really got cold, we had to move him into Paul’s room because the room he was sleeping in didn’t have heat. Paul handled the transition surprisingly well (but he did keep asking for us to put Elijah in his crib with him, and could not understand why they had to sleep in separate beds. He also likes to give Elijah things to sleep with: blankets, stuffed animals, wooden tools, toy cars, books…). I gave up on “making” Elijah sleep through the night, and we all survived. Now we are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel as he sleeps through the night more and more frequently (four out of the last six nights, not that I’m counting).

We feel truly blessed to have Elijah in our family. Every child is different. Every personality is unique. Elijah is our strong, quiet, content, friendly baby with only one major flaw. He. Eats. Everything. I know all babies do this. I know I have three others and I can’t watch him as closely as I did the others. But it’s not just that. This boy has a gift. He can find things even if we just picked everything up. He’ll sneak (yes, sneak!) things into his mouth and then hold very still whenever you look at him so you can’t tell he’s chewing (gumming?) it. Rocks, dirt, leaves, small toys, day-old food, pieces of carpet he tore out himself. This summer, the day before we went on a short beach-trip, Elijah got his hands on a small giraffe eraser. Lydia was the first to notice him coughing and ran to tell Mommy (Way to go Lids!). I quickly realized the problem was beyond me and sent her to get Dan, who was, thankfully, working from home that day. He came down and did everything you’re <em<supposed to do. But when Elijah started gasping for air and coughing up mucus and blood, we called 9-1-1.

After a long wait, the paramedics came, repeated everything Dan had already done, and reported to us that Elijah would need to take an ambulance to the hospital where he would probably need surgery. I pulled the mom card (what if he needs to eat?) to get to be the one to go with him, even though Dan wanted to go. Dan graciously stayed home with the rest of the kids and I made a scary trip to Mott’s Children’s Hospital. Lij had missed his nap and fell asleep in the ambulance, which was actually a very good thing, but made for a scary ride. As I was trying to pray, I remembered some words from earlier that week, that an Elder had prayed for Elijah during his baby dedication, “We do pray for his protection. We pray that the Evil One would not be permitted to harm him.” Those words encouraged me. If our elder has been led to pray that only a few days before, and if we had faithfully shared how God had answered our prayers in Elijah’s life, to tell that God really does hear and answer our prayers, surely God wouldn’t intend on taking him from us now.

I prayed that Elijah would cough up the toy he was choking on, and back at home, Lydia was frantically praying the same thing (and that we could still go on our beach trip) with Dan and the rest of the kids. Elijah did cough up the toy just two minutes before the ER team was planning to call in their back-up surgery team (because the first team was busy). After coughing it up, Lij started grabbing all of the medical equipment, trying to pop it into his mouth too, which gave the team a good laugh and caused no one to give me a hard time. Clearly this was a baby who never stops putting things in his mouth. (And yes, we did get to go on our beach trip.)

God has been kind to us in giving us Elijah, and in protecting that Little Stinker beyond what we can do ourselves. When Elijah was born, I had always thought of him as a special gift. Elijah means: the Lord is Yahweh. John, named after Dan’s Grampa, means: Yahweh is gracious. Grace. Gift. Elijah John, you are indeed a special gift to our family. We wouldn’t trade you for anything. There’s no on like you. You remind us, sometimes daily, that God does answer prayer in big and small ways. He has protected you already when we thought we might lose you twice. Happy first birthday, my Sweet Boy. And, please, please, give us a less eventful second year!

Munchkin Update: 3 Years, 2 Months

Lydia is in to collecting things. She collects rocks, leaves, and flowers from outside. Sometime she keeps them in her pocket and sometimes she pretends one of the rocks is her cell phone. She also tends to collect purses. And tutus. Right now the tutu count is up to four.

A few days ago Lydia pulled the blanket off of her bed and rigged a “swim suit” out of a couple of tutus. One of her favorite games now is to put on that “swimsuit” and go “swimming” in her bedroom. If anyone is friendly enough to join her she really likes to get in and out of the “water” and dry off with a blanket each time before jumping back in.

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She is all go, all the time. And if you ask her, she will tell you that she is never tired. For the past few months now she has been in a “why” phase. Her response to almost everything is “why”. Often she genuinely wants to know, sometimes she does it to be silly, and sometimes it’s just out of habit. This morning I was folding laundry and Lydia asked me if I would go “swimming” with her. I told her I could after I finished folding laundry and washing dishes.

“Why?”

“So we have clean clothes to wear and clean dishes to eat off of.”

Her answer was insightful: “So they will get dirty again?”

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Lately Lydia has memorized the books of the New Testament and a large portion of scripture put to song for our Church’s Vacation Bible School. Dan and I also realized that we were emphasizing a lot of numbers and shapes with her, so I decided to start teaching her the alphabet.

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Every morning I pull out some magnet letters and we play with them. Big A and Little A are on our fridge right now along with Big B and Little B. They tell Lydia what sounds they make and sing the ABC song. It’s sort of like a little puppet show every day and she loves it.

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Lydia is always my big helper. If I let her help me make dinner or wash dishes, she’s thrilled. She’s happy go get a clean diaper for Abby or throw away anything we say can go in the trash. She’s also as sweet as can be and frequently asks us to hold her or sing with her. Sometimes she spontaneously comes up and says, “I love you Mom”. We love her spunk and her energy and her silliness, but more than that we love the sweet hearted helper that she is and her precious sensitive heart.

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Munchkin Update: 2 Years, 8 Months

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This month Lydia found her way into Mommy and Daddy’s closet.  There she found, not only some high-heel shoes, but all of Mom’s necklaces.  She promptly put them all on, along with the shoes, along with a pretty dress she had asked to wear earlier that morning.  Lydia loves dressing up.  She loves being pretty.  We’re just trying to teach her not to eat the dress up accessories!

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Every night Lydia asks Mommy or Daddy to lay down on the “green bed” with her. The sheets on her bed aren’t actually green right now. They’re striped blue and purple. However, the original sheets were green, and even when those aren’t the ones on the bed, it is still the “green bed”. Anyway, Lydia loves to snuggle up with Mom or Dad before going to sleep each night. In the morning, Dan lets Lydia sit on his lap and eat two crackers while listening to Adventures on Odyssey online. So, each night we excitedly tell her all that is in store for the coming day and she eagerly asks, “Odyssey!? TWO crackers!?!”.

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Lydia has also gotten quite excited about church and Hope Group (Bible study). Almost every day she asks, “Church?” and if the answer is a no, “Hope Group?”. She is learning to sit quietly through most of the “boring” stuff and then eagerly plays with her other little friends. She doesn’t really understand that it’s not always her turn to talk but we recently taught her what it means to close her mouth. So sometimes we tell her it’s time to “close your mouth” and she’ll make one of her “close mouth faces”. One of these faces is a closed mouth with teeth showing, a bit like a beaver. The other is, of course, sucking her thumb.

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Lydia loves to copy Mom and Dad. Whether it’s feeding her baby dolls, wearing Mom’s clothes, or standing next to us at church and singing along, Lydia loves to be like us. On Sunday Dan was holding Abby in a cradle hold during a meeting at church. Lydia was wearing a headband of mine that she found in the diaper bag. She finished “feeding” her doll and then started holding it with the doll’s head on Lydia’s shoulder. After a quick glance at Dad she rearranged her doll in a cradle hold, just like Abby. It melts my heart to see Lydia wanting to be like us, and is extra motivating for us to be good parents and model our lives the way we want Lydia to model hers.

Lydia also started potty training (again) yesterday, but I’ll hold off any of those updates until next week when it becomes more clear if she’s really ready.