As most of you who know my husband and I can imagine, Samantha Grace LOVES music. I mean she even "boogies" to the Free Credit Report.com commercials that come on television. The other day she and I were at Target trying to pick out a birthday card for daddy, and she would just stand up in the cart and start dancing. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I finally saw these three little kids with their grandmother looking at those cards that play music. Samantha Grace can also hear music in a store long before Josh or I can and usually 9/10 times can be rocking to the correct beat. Well, since I teach piano privately from and home and at church, she is constantly hearing that noise. So as she has gotten older it is becoming increasingly difficult to teach from the home. Because she thinks each time someone is playing that it is also her turn to play with them. Therefore, the other day she was wanting to sit at the piano bench by herself and play. (Of course, I stood close by to oversee her every move.) She sat down, turned around to face the keys, didn't move the music that I had been playing from earlier in the day, points to the music and then begins to play. Presumably getting bored with just sitting and playing, she decides to stand, sort of, and play. Then once she held her hands up, signaling to me that she wanted down, she proceeded to creep back over to the piano and blindly play the keys from a standing position. This is all to wonder...do we have a possible musical prodigy on our hands. Well, of course, Josh and I would love to think so, but we are trying our best not to force it upon her. We have dreams of her playing cello someday, but I have to admit deep down inside I do hope she takes up some type of athletic activity. All this is to say that Carnegie Hall might be on our short list very soon....that is our short list in our dreams of course. Until then, "There's a sweet, sweet sound in [our] ears..."Friday, March 27, 2009
Carnegie Hall here we come...
As most of you who know my husband and I can imagine, Samantha Grace LOVES music. I mean she even "boogies" to the Free Credit Report.com commercials that come on television. The other day she and I were at Target trying to pick out a birthday card for daddy, and she would just stand up in the cart and start dancing. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I finally saw these three little kids with their grandmother looking at those cards that play music. Samantha Grace can also hear music in a store long before Josh or I can and usually 9/10 times can be rocking to the correct beat. Well, since I teach piano privately from and home and at church, she is constantly hearing that noise. So as she has gotten older it is becoming increasingly difficult to teach from the home. Because she thinks each time someone is playing that it is also her turn to play with them. Therefore, the other day she was wanting to sit at the piano bench by herself and play. (Of course, I stood close by to oversee her every move.) She sat down, turned around to face the keys, didn't move the music that I had been playing from earlier in the day, points to the music and then begins to play. Presumably getting bored with just sitting and playing, she decides to stand, sort of, and play. Then once she held her hands up, signaling to me that she wanted down, she proceeded to creep back over to the piano and blindly play the keys from a standing position. This is all to wonder...do we have a possible musical prodigy on our hands. Well, of course, Josh and I would love to think so, but we are trying our best not to force it upon her. We have dreams of her playing cello someday, but I have to admit deep down inside I do hope she takes up some type of athletic activity. All this is to say that Carnegie Hall might be on our short list very soon....that is our short list in our dreams of course. Until then, "There's a sweet, sweet sound in [our] ears..."
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Stomach Bugs, Races, Grandparents and the Zoo
So I haven't posted any of our adventures in quite sometime, but one shouldn't worry because there have been quite a few. Almost two weeks ago, Samantha Grace contracted her first viral infection...in the car. Yes, I have never parked my car so fast for fear of her aspirating vomit back into her lungs, which would then cause pneumonia. For she was strapped securely in her car seat at the time of the nasty little bugs attack. Thankfully, we only had one vomit episode and several of what we have name bottom explosions (i.e., diaherra). I do better with the bottom explosions than the other.
Once we thought we were completely out of the woods, we took a short weekend trip to Atlanta to visit my family. The weather did not show off for us that weekend, for like much of the southeastern portion of the U.S., we danced with the rain all weekend long. But nonetheless we had a good time. Consignment sales, outdoor malls, and a must-have trip to Harry's (my favorite organic food store)!
I must add in the midst of all this craziness, I have also made the big decision to go back to work next year; therefore, I am currently in the midst of interviews at a private school in town. Details about this matter will, hopefully, be coming soon!
Follow our trip to Atlanta and thinking we had completely exterminated all of the stomach bugs, I came down with a horrific viral infection much worse than Samantha Grace. By the end of Monday, I was no longer able to pick-up and hold Samantha Grace. Needless to say the doc put me on some nice nausea/vomitting medication which knocked me out for the remainder of the night. Thankfully, this viral infection is only a 24 hour bug. Unfortunately later in the week Joshua contracted a very mild case of the same thing. This bug, however, seems to be hanging its littel fuzzy head around a little longer, for I and Josh are still having some major digestional issues. So we ask for your prayers as eating is becoming quite a chore around our house, not fun.
Following the viral bug, I had the honor to run in a local charity 5K in honor of my friend's precious twins who have been in the NICU for the past 5 1/2 weeks. Their names are John Colvin and Sidney Elizabeth. They are so precious! We have a ministry here in Montgomery and Birmingham called the Footprints Ministry that ministers to families of NICU babies. This is such a special ministry to me not only through my friend but also because Samantha Grace was so borderline to being in NICU. Praise the Lord that my doctor made such wise decisions at the time of her birth. So despite having had a viral infection, I ran the race with endurance and determination. I finished in 25 minutes, which I felt pretty good about since I had not ran pretty much all week like I like to run.
After the race, we enjoyed taking Samantha Grace with Josh's parents to her first trip to the Montgomery Zoo. I have to say we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of zoo that our city has to offer. For those reading that don't know, Montgomery is not one of the largest major cities in Alabama despite being the capitol. It is actually one of the smaller major cities sitting right over 200,000 people. We enjoyed seeing the girraffes, elephants, and one of Samantha Grace's favorites was what we referred to as the big kitty cat the black cougar.
As I mentioned as I opend this blog posting, we have had quite an exciting past two weeks. We are looking forward to celebrating Samantha Grace's first birthday in about 3 weeks along with her first Easter. Yep, all in the same weekend too! Soon I will post pictures from our grand adventures. But for now we will have to say, "Bye! Bye!"
Once we thought we were completely out of the woods, we took a short weekend trip to Atlanta to visit my family. The weather did not show off for us that weekend, for like much of the southeastern portion of the U.S., we danced with the rain all weekend long. But nonetheless we had a good time. Consignment sales, outdoor malls, and a must-have trip to Harry's (my favorite organic food store)!
I must add in the midst of all this craziness, I have also made the big decision to go back to work next year; therefore, I am currently in the midst of interviews at a private school in town. Details about this matter will, hopefully, be coming soon!
Follow our trip to Atlanta and thinking we had completely exterminated all of the stomach bugs, I came down with a horrific viral infection much worse than Samantha Grace. By the end of Monday, I was no longer able to pick-up and hold Samantha Grace. Needless to say the doc put me on some nice nausea/vomitting medication which knocked me out for the remainder of the night. Thankfully, this viral infection is only a 24 hour bug. Unfortunately later in the week Joshua contracted a very mild case of the same thing. This bug, however, seems to be hanging its littel fuzzy head around a little longer, for I and Josh are still having some major digestional issues. So we ask for your prayers as eating is becoming quite a chore around our house, not fun.
Following the viral bug, I had the honor to run in a local charity 5K in honor of my friend's precious twins who have been in the NICU for the past 5 1/2 weeks. Their names are John Colvin and Sidney Elizabeth. They are so precious! We have a ministry here in Montgomery and Birmingham called the Footprints Ministry that ministers to families of NICU babies. This is such a special ministry to me not only through my friend but also because Samantha Grace was so borderline to being in NICU. Praise the Lord that my doctor made such wise decisions at the time of her birth. So despite having had a viral infection, I ran the race with endurance and determination. I finished in 25 minutes, which I felt pretty good about since I had not ran pretty much all week like I like to run.
After the race, we enjoyed taking Samantha Grace with Josh's parents to her first trip to the Montgomery Zoo. I have to say we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of zoo that our city has to offer. For those reading that don't know, Montgomery is not one of the largest major cities in Alabama despite being the capitol. It is actually one of the smaller major cities sitting right over 200,000 people. We enjoyed seeing the girraffes, elephants, and one of Samantha Grace's favorites was what we referred to as the big kitty cat the black cougar.
As I mentioned as I opend this blog posting, we have had quite an exciting past two weeks. We are looking forward to celebrating Samantha Grace's first birthday in about 3 weeks along with her first Easter. Yep, all in the same weekend too! Soon I will post pictures from our grand adventures. But for now we will have to say, "Bye! Bye!"
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Two Teeth
Well, my worries are over. I thought for the longest time that we were going to be celebrating Samantha-Grace's first birthday being toothless, for all of our little friends some who are even 3 months younger than us already had at least 2 teeth. But after waving the magic Tooth Fairy wand each day, they have finally greeted us with their presence. I have to say after the first one came, I learned some very valuable lessons about how Samantha-Grace's body reacts to the changes going on inside. Needless to say our new best friend during teething season is Gripe Water. We seem to have an extremem accidity level in our stomach that does not handle much of anything very well. So a few doses of Gripe Water seems to do the trick each time. I will post cute teeth pictures as soon as they have fully come in and Samantha-Grace shows them off!
Thursday, March 5, 2009
A Nice Change with a Dab of a Miracle
After reading a friend's blog today, I realized I had failed to post a recent entry about our latest adventure. As many of you Facebook faithfuls know, my family and I journeyed to the beach last weekend. This was a trip of both business and pleasure. I was elated that the business part was at the beginning of the trip, so that we could enjoy the remainder of the trip relaxing.
We were so blessed to be given a "condo" for the weekend by some friends of ours in our local church. I say condo very lightly because it was a 3 bedroom 3 bath plus a loft 2200 sq.ft. "condo". Needless to say we were very surprised and blessed when we arrived. We arrived late on Thursday evening, but not to late to enjoy one of mine and Joshua's sinful pleasures, BlueBell Ice Cream. Yes, we stopped at the local grocery store on our way in (the condo is 11 miles from the closest grocery) and picked up two pints of ice cream.
On Friday and Saturday, we literally felt like we were doing nothing. After Joshua attended some dangling business items, we journeyed down to a blustery beach front. Samantha Grace was not too sure about the sand between her toes. I have my fears that we have a prissy girl on our hands. Below is a picture of Samantha-Grace and me exploring the sand just before a large wave pushed in and soaked my shorts.
We also discovered that our friends evidently had the mack daddy of all golf carts in the neighborhood. I will say that it was large (3 rows and off road tires), but we didn't realize it was that fancy. At least we didn't realize it until all the "Snow Birds" (Senior Citizens who "migrate" south for the winter) would stop us in the neighborhood to admire the cart. Samantha-Grace favored driving the cart rather than riding in it. Below is a picture of her trying to find the horn to beep.
After a relaxing and enjoyable dinner at Lulu's (a restaraunt owned by Jimmy Buffett's sister), we dove into an oldie but goodie movie "The Breakfast Club". Needless to say, I was exhausted and fell asleep after 30 minutes. On Saturday we leasurely took our time exiting what seemed like a very relaxing weekend. This is when the miracle took place.
Once back to Montgomery, I sadly handed the keys back to our friend within the same breath she told me she had a story to tell me. She said that Saturday night (around 2 AM) the house next to theirs at the beach burned down. I truly believe it was the good Lord telling us to come home on Saturday and not leave extra early on Sunday for church. The other amazing thing is that with the houses practically being right on top of each other, we figured there would be some damage on the east side of the house; but, much to our amazement and the wonderful work of the Gulf Shores Fire Department the house was left without mark or blemish!
We were so blessed to be given a "condo" for the weekend by some friends of ours in our local church. I say condo very lightly because it was a 3 bedroom 3 bath plus a loft 2200 sq.ft. "condo". Needless to say we were very surprised and blessed when we arrived. We arrived late on Thursday evening, but not to late to enjoy one of mine and Joshua's sinful pleasures, BlueBell Ice Cream. Yes, we stopped at the local grocery store on our way in (the condo is 11 miles from the closest grocery) and picked up two pints of ice cream.
On Friday and Saturday, we literally felt like we were doing nothing. After Joshua attended some dangling business items, we journeyed down to a blustery beach front. Samantha Grace was not too sure about the sand between her toes. I have my fears that we have a prissy girl on our hands. Below is a picture of Samantha-Grace and me exploring the sand just before a large wave pushed in and soaked my shorts.
We also discovered that our friends evidently had the mack daddy of all golf carts in the neighborhood. I will say that it was large (3 rows and off road tires), but we didn't realize it was that fancy. At least we didn't realize it until all the "Snow Birds" (Senior Citizens who "migrate" south for the winter) would stop us in the neighborhood to admire the cart. Samantha-Grace favored driving the cart rather than riding in it. Below is a picture of her trying to find the horn to beep.
After a relaxing and enjoyable dinner at Lulu's (a restaraunt owned by Jimmy Buffett's sister), we dove into an oldie but goodie movie "The Breakfast Club". Needless to say, I was exhausted and fell asleep after 30 minutes. On Saturday we leasurely took our time exiting what seemed like a very relaxing weekend. This is when the miracle took place.
Once back to Montgomery, I sadly handed the keys back to our friend within the same breath she told me she had a story to tell me. She said that Saturday night (around 2 AM) the house next to theirs at the beach burned down. I truly believe it was the good Lord telling us to come home on Saturday and not leave extra early on Sunday for church. The other amazing thing is that with the houses practically being right on top of each other, we figured there would be some damage on the east side of the house; but, much to our amazement and the wonderful work of the Gulf Shores Fire Department the house was left without mark or blemish!
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