Well, I’ve got my stretch pants on and I’m ready for the feast!  :)  And while the above Thanksgiving table is not my own, isn’t it lovely? (The ever-talented Eddie Ross designed it for Lonny…swoon!)

We are celebrating Thanksgiving up in northern Va with Philip’s family, and as I write, all the cousins (minus Miss Holland who is snoozing away) are having a wild and crazy time playing together!  Grammy & PopPop’s house is full of all kinds of toys, and our kids have been having a ball exploring it all.

Yesterday, we enjoyed a little Thanksgiving feast at Wade’s preschool.  Sometimes when I stop and actually think about it, it blows my mind that I am a mom, who has a child in preschool, who has a Thanksgiving feast….

{Would you believe this was the best family shot we could manage…our children don’t look particularly thrilled!}

Here’s Wade’s beloved teacher, Miss Deb!  We love her!

Afterwards we enjoyed some fun on the playground–it was so mild outside for late November!

somebody was apparently saving a bit of icing {on her upper lip} for later!

my serious one…and then when I ask him to smile for me :

I sure am thankful for this crew of mine.  I hope you’re all having a wonderful day with the people you love!

It blows my mind to think that my wee little babe is now a big ‘ol one year old!  To think that just one year ago, this was my little love:

I am so enjoying seeing her little personality blossom–and how interesting it is to see the ways that she and her big brother are different.  I feel like when you have one child, their particular personality becomes your normal, or the standard.  Adding another to the mix (and I can imagine it gets even more interesting when you add even more) seems to make it easier to pinpoint the unique characteristics of each child, right?

Well, little Miss Thang seems to be quite the extrovert.  She loves to say “hiiiii” to friends she meets while out and about (be they of the canine persuasion or the human-kind  and she is so very verbal!  Her little “foreign language talk”, as we have dubbed it seriously cracks me up.  She loves to point with her little finger and just talk, talk, talk away.  And with such seriousness too!

As I have mentioned many times before, this girl is ca-razy about her daddy.  Well, both of my kids are really.  A little party may or may not be thrown each day around 5:30/6 when daddy arrives home!  And yes, I share in my children’s enthusiasm for the return of my partner in managing the chaos!

{Maggie and Sarah: do yall spy your pictures on our fridge? }

In the picture below, Holland was feeling really yucky and all she wanted was to cuddle with her daddy!

Playtime with daddy is especially fun.  My big girl absolutely LOVES to climb all over her daddy as soon as she sees that he’s fair game.  It is hysterical to watch–she literally plows into him and wrestles her way around.  I’m sure Holland learned some of these antics from watching her brother do the same–and from trying to protect herself form his very physical affection for her (we’ll call it affection here for the sake of preserving a positive memory…)

Holland also loves music and will dance to just about any beat she hears.  She’s likes to stack her rings, and she’s quite impressive with puzzles!  And stickers–it’s amazing to me that she gets how they work!

And for the record, her eating took a nose dive about 6 weeks ago.  She went from eating most anything we’d put in front of her to being really picky and sometimes eating barely anything.  Of course this caused me great concern, mainly because I know the road we’ve walked with Wade….so, a couple weeks ago,  I was able to get her in to see our allergists down in Norfolk, and praise the Lord, she tested negative to all of the major allergens!  Theoretically, she could develop Eosinophilic Esophagitis at any time (even as an adult), but it is a huge blessing to know the she isn’t sensitive to any food right now.  It’s also a big weight off my shoulders to know that if she’s not eating, it’s likely not due to allergy-related discomfort.  We’ve been struck down with a couple illnesses over the past couple weeks, and the little lady is working away at cutting new teeth (she’s got five as of now), so I’m really hoping those things are to blame for her appetite issues.

As a result of the finicky eating, her stats at her one year check-up weren’t particularly impressive…18 lbs, 8 oz (10th percentile) and 29 1/2″ tall (50th percentile).  We still nurse, and honestly I don’t know when we’ll stop (maybe when I grow so desperate for a night alone somewhere?!).  For now, I am savoring that sweet  and fleeting connection with my baby.  I’ll also be honest and say that I’m not always loving the fact that the middle of the night wake-ups are generally only soothed by my bosom!  :) I’m *planning* to wean her off of some or all of the nighttime snacks once she’s consistently eating well during the day and once she’s taking cow’s milk well.  We’ve had some mild success with that, and it’s funny–it’s a completely new thing for us because Wade never drank milk from a cup!

And oh!–I can’t believe I’m about to finish this post without including this–my big girl is now a walking girl!  She took a couple little steps two days before her birthday at the park, a few more the next day, and then she really began to walk for multiple steps at a time on her actual birthday!  Since then, she’s really taken off and now she can be seen walking all over the place!  Philip was just commenting to me the other day how funny it is to see your baby–who you have grown so accustomed to seeing crawling all over the place–standing up and walking around!  She is so proud of her new skill, and I must say I am too  I’ll try to get a video on here soon of some of her first steps in action!

It is so true what they say, I think.  That in this season of life with little ones the days are long, but the years go by so very fast.

Here are a few more from her early days:

I finally bit the bullet and decided to switch to a WordPress site for my blog (please note the new address)!  My reasons for doing this were basically to make blogging easier for me (I’m hoping to do it more as a result!), but I do hope you like the new spot!  And lest you think the new title is a pregnancy announcement or something (it’s not!), I chose it because I feel like it reflects what this season of life is teaching me about myself.  Motherhood has shown me, more than any other experience ever has (well, ok, marriage is a close second.) that I fall so very far from the standard I’d like to meet, and that there really is so much room to grow, if you will.

Before I became a mom, I knew for sure the kind of mom I’d be I was sure that I’d thrive with motherhood as my vocation.  And yet the reality is that caring for two tiny people every day is really hard for me.  Don’t get me wrong, I love and cherish my children.  I am deeply grateful that I get to spend my days with them.  But these two babes show me my sin day in and day out, and there are plenty of times when it just ain’t pretty.  When I had Wade I discovered how desperately I wanted to be in control (of course I can train you to sleep through the night, little Wade, whenever I wish!).  After Holland’s birth and the subsequent continued shrinkage of my own free time, I’ve discovered how very selfish I am.  Really, I want to be a mom and spend time with my children, caring for them, but only when it’s convenient for me.

The honest truth is that I want to be a really impressive mom.  I want to enjoy my children, train them to love God and others, and weather the hard times with grace.  Let me just say that I do not do any of these things particularly well.  But do you know what I am learning?  I am slowly, slowly learning that my primary calling is not to be an awesome mom who trains her children well.  I am called to love God and find my greatest joy in Him and in the mere fact that He has loved me and has called me His own.  That thought does not bring my heart the kind of deep and lasting joy that it should.  I am too easily enticed by so many other things that seem promising.  I’m beginning to see that it’s out of His boundless grace and goodness to me that God is allowing me to see that motherhood ultimately cannot be the thing that fulfills me.  When I find my hope and joy in Christ, only then can motherhood (and any other thing, really) find its proper place.

So anyway, it’s my hope that the things I share here on this blog give a fairly accurate picture of this.  I’ll try to share more of my journey.  Sure, I’ll post pretty pictures and talk about fun things (and I’ll surely leave out some of the really ugly stuff that goes down), but I also hope you get a sense of the bigger things God is doing in me and in our family.  Thanks so much for reading!

And in case you’ve been counting, this one turned one last weekend!  More birthday pictures to come!