Caeden Elijah - 3 months

Given that you were born on the 31st of March, and not every month has 31 days, you are not technically 3 months until tomorrow. But tomorrow is June 1st, and you were not born on the 1st of the month. This bothers the perfectionistic side of me greatly! :)

Weight: 15 big ones!

Height: TBD

Nursing: All is well. You have sped up your eating a ton just in the last 2 weeks. It now only takes you about 10-15 minutes to nurse total, as opposed to 40! You eat at 7:00/10:00/1:00/4:00/6:45.

Waketimes: First waketime of the day is 50 minutes. The others are anywhere from 50-60 minutes. This of course includes eating, so it is a good thing that you eat faster now; you have more time to play!

Sleeping: 3- two hour naps a day. I wake you up from your 4th nap after an hour and 15 minutes so that you can be bathed and fed before bedtime at 7:00. After getting back from Orlando, you reverted to only sleeping 8 hours at night again. When you eat in the middle of the night, you do not nurse well for 'breakfast' anymore. Now a few weeks into this happening, I'm afraid you've developed a habit because you pretty much wake at 3:30 every night. Waking consistently at the same time is a tell-tale sign of a habit. We are now dealing with breaking this habit. :)

New discoveries and other notes: You can roll over tummy to back. You suck your thumb all.the.time. Your newborn hair has pretty much all fallen out except for what I call the "clown hair" near your neck. You are still extrememly sensitive to being overstimulated. Too many people or too much excitement is a recipe for disaster for you. You spend 95% of your time in the quiet upstairs of our house with just mommy or daddy and very small doses of Micaiah. I'm okay with that for now. I know you'll get there and will be able to hang out downstairs around more toddler activity and grandma and grandpa before too long. I also wanted to mention that you know exactly when it is naptime. When we walk into your room, turn off the light, and turn the sound machine on, you begin your protest. You stiffen your little body and fuss and grunt until I lay you down. As soon as I do, you peacefully go off to sleep. It's almost like all you want is your bed at that point. All this means is that you have a generally shorter "calm down" time now than you used to. It has gone from 5 minutes to about 2-3 minutes.

**Update** I forgot to add that you had your first bottle this month! You took it like a champ. You also have started talking to anyone and everyone who will listen. :)

I don't go to church. I am the church.

Scott and I walked away from the Greenhouse training in Orlando with a lot to chew on. This was to train people how to start organic churches. Because I like bullet points, I'm going to just shoot off a few of the things that stood out to me. (This is all through Scott's notes and conversations with him because I didn't attend the training myself)

-The church is not a what it is a who. I love this. We so often forget this. This bears repeating.

-We expect too much in the first year and not enough in the first ten. This was super encouraging to both of us as we reflect on the last 7 (can you believe it's been SEVEN?!?!) months that we've been here in Augusta to do "this". After talking with others, it is TOTALLY NORMAL to be in the shoes we're in right now when just getting on board with organic church. We (probably more accurately, I) have often felt like we're not doing what we should. People ask how it's going, and I feel a slight bit of shame as I say I have nothing to report. But we're normal, all is well, and shame I should feel no longer!

-We are like ants. On the surface, it doesn't look like they're doing much, but they are building empires underground. All the prayer, prayer walking, searching, thinking, talking, and relationship building that we have been doing is just what we should be doing until God leads otherwise. It may not look like we're doing much yet, but we're laying a groundwork and cultivating soil.

-Organic church is just that, organic. It gets rid of all of the man made structures.

-You can't make organic church happen. God does. He is the Lord of the harvest, not us.

-We are to plant the gospel through our relationships with the people in the community to where God leads us. Then we are to let the indigenous people decide where the church meets. The church, as all living things, has a life cycle. It should die to reproduce more. Meeting together as one particular group does not mean that it will remain that same group forever. As new disciples and leaders are made, they too go out into the field to plant seeds of the gospel and begin new churches.

-Any fool can do their best. He who believes in Christ attempts the impossible, and Christ in him is able to perform it! Why should I cower and be afraid? It's not about me!

One last thing that I was reminded about during the trip is something I read several months ago about light vs. darkness. Jesus says that we are the light. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. Gates are defensive. Therefore we should be on the offensive, NOT scared of the darkness, and running straight towards it with our light shining. Growing up in an upper middle class, very white, suburban area, I have a tendancy to be quite afraid of the darkness. Not that there wasn't darkness all around me growing up, it just wasn't the obvious kind. Either that or I am just oblivious (which is equally likely!). This is not to say that we should be careless and walk down dark alleys alone at night. However I have Jesus, and so I should not be afraid. Bottom line.

Huge sigh of relief. We're golden. Jesus is the king. We are to listen and be obedient to his leading.

By the way, no one else we know personally does church this way, so you will find no condemnation here if you choose not to. However we love talking about the simple way to do church as opposed to the 'traditional structure' so if you ever want to talk about it, we would love to talk to you anytime!

Vanilla Bean Scones

Scones have been on my "recipes to try" list for some time. I felt intimadated by them for some reason. After attempting Pioneer Woman's recipe, I see that there's really no reason to be! These are delicious! We've already eaten them for breakfast, snack, and dessert. :)

By the way, I feel like a cheesy imposter....taking pictures of the fruits of my labor to post on my blog. But afterall, isn't that what you're supposed to do when you have a blog?

Vanilla Bean Scones

Micaiah asked if I could please take a picture of his scone too.

My how time flies

I just was thinking the other day how when we first moved here to Augusta the week of Thanksgiving, Micaiah wasn't walking yet. It wasn't until the beginning of December that he took his first steps, and now he's practically running. How did that happen?? God, I don't want to miss a second...

Orlando

We're back from the Greenhouse Training in Orlando with no pictures, two very tired boys, and more to think, process, and talk about than we could possibly do in a week!

Here is some lovely linkage. These are just some articles I like from the CMA (church multiplication associates) website.

Nomad-a church without a home ~ this is just a cool story and what Scott and I want to be about

Sunday mornings ~ this may step on some toes, but I liked it so much that I wanted to post it anyway

What is a missional community ~ this is kinda how we view church these days

Happy Hump Day!

Potty and Thomas

We've been working on potty training lately with Micaiah. He is gradually picking up on the process. We've had a few successes and many accidents. Which by the way, if you use our library, I would think twice before checking out Clifford's Birthday Party. (Enough said!)

At any given point during the day, you are likely to find Micaiah on the froggy potty and this song ringing through the room. He likes to listen to it over and over and over. I'm just glad they have the words on the screen so I can sing along too. :)

Caeden Elijah - 2 months

**I kinda forgot to do one of these for Caeden at one month. I'll have to go back and add it in later. I chronicled Micaiah's first year as well, because I just want to be able to remember this stuff when they are older.**

Weight: 13 pounds 13.5 oz (95th percentile! Chunky little man!)

Height: 23 inches long

Nursing schedule: 7:00/9:30-10:00/1:00/4:00/7:00

Waketime length: You can stay awake for about 40-45 minutes first thing in the morning and 50-55 minutes for your other waketimes of the day.

Sleeping: 4 naps a day, two hours each. You have trouble waking at the 45 minute transition, but if you don't put yourself back to sleep within a few minutes, if we flip you over to your tummy and give you the paci you will usually fall back to sleep for the remainder of your nap. You started sleeping 11-12 hours at night during your 9th week. Yes, that's right folks, I said 12 hours! I'm a little shocked myself. Micaiah didn't do that until 14 weeks. Babywise says that anywhere from 9-15 weeks the average baby has the capacity to sleep 9-10 hours at night, so I would have been pleased with that. But you are capable of more and need the sleep, so have at it!

New discoveries: You smile and coo all the time. Your favorite cooing sound is to say "ooooooh" I love it when you are nursing and you stop periodically to look up at me and smile. You really enjoy your play gym and your swing. Your big brother just adores you and loves to give you kisses. He will sit next to you while you lay under your play gym and "play" with you. He shares toys with you. One day you were laying on the floor next to him while he was sitting on the potty. You started smiling and giggling. Micaiah's face just lit up at seeing you smile. You are great brothers already.

Kitchen cure

Micaiah tends to be very much a fussy foo in the kitchen when I am trying to cook, clean, or prepare a meal. (Since we're living with his grandma and grandpa, he has grown extremely custom to having someone available pretty much all the time to play with him, so when I am *gasp* trying to do something else, he's not so much a fan of it. We're working on this!) He loves to stand up on a chair and help, which he does often. But there are other times that I just want to work a little more quickly. Today we found a cure for the kitchen fussies: some rice, bowls, cups, and a spoon. Instant toddler fun!

CVS

As many of you know, I love a good deal. Coupons+sales are my friends. I get an adrenaline high off of a sweet deal. Especially ones like today when Kroger paid me to buy two bottles of body wash for Scott.

I have tried to play the CVS game 3 or 4 times over the last few years. The first time I gave up because the store was always sold out of the items I wanted by the time I got there. The second time I tried I decided to do my CVS shopping earlier in the week to try and get there before the other crazy coupon ladies of Lawrenceville cleared the shelves. However I gave up again after a few weeks because the workers at "my" CVS store were not very knowledgeable about coupons in general or their coupon policy, so my transactions were not working as I hoped they would. The third time I tried was when we were living on Lookout Mountain. Whereas the store had awesome workers and usually had the items I wanted, it was all the way down the mountain, and I didn't usually have time to go there plus any other errands I needed to run all within the time frame I had before getting Micaiah back up the mountain for his next nap.

I decided last week to try again. Now I may be bragging a little bit, but how can I NOT give CVS another try? Given that I got all of the above pictured items for a mere $6. Especially when you consider that the price of the diapers alone is $8.99 (on sale!). It still baffles me how it works, but their Extra Care Bucks system, when used strategically, really is like their own little land of Monopoly money.

God is so good. I was just thinking recently how our stock of toothbrushes was getting low and how I needed another pack of diapers for Micaiah for a trip we're taking this weekend. And then low and behold what did He provide for me this week at a STEAL of a price?