So much happening

Our little family never has a dull moment! Right now Talitha is trying to cram her tiny body inside a plastic shoe box that the "bumpy legos" go in that her brother and sister are building with. She is having fun playing more and more, and can ask for some of her favorite activities--like the "boosh" game with Daddy flips the kiddos upside down with his legs while he's sitting in the recliner. She wants to do everything the bigger kids are doing--like when Daddy drew smileys on their hands she threw a fit till Daddy did it for her too. Then a couple nights later she swiped his pen from his shirt pocket and tried to draw on her hand herself. When she hears it's time to go, she'll run to retrieve shoes and point at her jacket on the hook till we're all ready to go. If you even whisper the word bath in conversation she'll start to run to the tub and bang on it waiting to get in. She loves to climb and talks all the time, though still only has a few words that can be understood consistently. She wants to walk down the stairs all by herself, but her cute little legs are the same height as the steps (just about) and she still needs lots of help.

Hannah is working on using the potty, rather than pull-ups. It usually goes better when we're out than at home. Just too much going on here to want to stop and use the potty, much easier to just go where she's playing. But if we're out she'll say she has to use the potty because then whatever we're doing that is uninteresting becomes about her rather than about anyone else. She loves doing schoolwork just like her big brother. Though sometimes he finds her activity more interesting than his own handwriting practice. Pretty soon she'll move to a big girl bed rather than crib since we'll be making room for her baby brother.

Nathanael is all boy still. His little legs and elbows are all bruises from his "cool moves" that he loves to do. He likes to just throw himself on the floor or do a flip and crash on the ground. We're thinking maybe a gymnastics class would be a good way to harness that energy and still get to do "cool moves" safely for his body. He still loves to do schoolwork too, and doesn't understand why on Saturday or Sunday he doesn't always have to do any, and will ask to do some. Hopefully if Laura can keep some reserve school activities for those Saturdays at least he'll continue to love to do schoolwork later as much as he does now. However, on Sunday, we all take a day of rest, just like God did after creating everything. Whenever possible we all take a nap on Sunday too, though the girls don't always let Mom and Dad. Nathanael doesn't take a nap every day now, just those days he shows he needs it, like when he's sick, or didn't get enough sleep the night before and is having a hard time remembering to obey. So rest-time is not so much of a struggle for him lately now that he is a bigger boy that doesn't need a nap every day. He really knows his body too. After being on asthma controlling medication, he hasn't gotten a cold that required him to have breathing treatments. Until last week he woke up saying he needed his medicine to breathe better. Sure enough he had a slight wheeze and began coughing regularly again. The fever later proved it was a sickness inducing the breathing difficulties, but he realized he needed the medicine. Now he's just left with a bit of a cough but he is "all better now".

Laura is getting so big now in pregnancy that several people have commented on her size. In one week she had three random people ask if she was having the baby in the next few days. Unfortunately for them she was only in her 28th week of pregnancy at the time, and not anywhere close to the due date at 40 weeks which is May 19-ish. For quite some time Laura has been saying this baby feels bigger than the others, but in reality he's not probably any bigger. She's just been in her maternity clothes so often that they have shrunken, maybe. Oh, and from behind you can't tell she's even carrying a baby in there, it's not till she turns around that you realize, "wow! she's pregnant!" Exactly like Nathanael's pregnancy, just a basketball in her tummy, not like the girls where weight was gained everywhere. So for our family, the old wives tale is holding true.

Forest has almost got us a house! We should close on it the 22nd!! That is the most exciting and stressful thing he's been working on lately. We ended up not getting the house we posted pictures of. A friend at church was called to a new church in Georgia and needed to sell their house, and it happened to be move-in-ready (minus a couple buckets of paint to make it our own) and a great size for our family. The only thing is, it's in Indiana. For those of you who are not familiar with our area, we live just south of Indiana, separated only by the Ohio river. We often eat out and shop in Indiana, actually, since where we live in Kentucky is close to the river. So even though we're moving to another state, it still feels like we are just moving across town, with the exception of becoming Indiana residents, rather than Kentucky ones. So with Laura 8 months pregnant, we'll be moving to a new home, and changing over all our information to a new state. Should be fun! We love it here and look forward to moving for the last time. We've had 5 homes already in our almost 6 years of marriage, 3 of those just in Louisville.