The Dog Days of Summer...

TRUE STORY:

so, ive been teaching the girls scripture put to songs. we usually listen to the cd @ breakfast or lunch & they bebop to it. we have motions for the main one we are working on...psalm 17:8 "keep me as the apple of your eye"...we point to our eye...the other day, listening to the cd zannah points to her eye on cue when we aren't even pointing to our eye! haha. i was like, wow! she's getting this even tho she can't even talk!!! one day last week i was grocery shopping alone with delia and all of the sudden she starts singing "be patient with everyone, zla, blah, zsha, da da. five, teen" and i was like, that's right baby girl! "Be patient with everyone." 1 thessalonians 5 verse 14. :) then today...no music is on and we are close to finishing lunch...suzannah starts to rock in her high chair and sort of grunt the beat of the psalm 17:8 song & points to her eye! she KNOWS the verse even if she can't say it! yay! so sweet! if nothing else good comes from reading the duggar books, then this does! she started teaching her babies Bible verses as young as two...so i decided to try and bought the cd "songs for saplings" off amazon, it is an MP3 download...and it is working! it has a song for each letter of the alphabet and then all of the main Christian holidays and mother's day and father's day and one about the ocean, harvest, and the seasons. i highly recommend this cd. and really, i just don't even know if your baby is ever too young to start filling their minds and hearts with the Word of God. :) we all know what Dog spelled backwards is...God...so we are having the God days of summer in the Wooten house!

this is what makes every single day that seems like it will never end worth it. this is what makes the isolation of motherhood of wee ones worth it!
this is what makes the night time wake ups, the high fevers, the tantrums...worth it!
this is what makes my heart smile and rest and look to the Father and say...i am so so so blessed.

i will take a video when we get a new memory card for our camera. i promise. bc it is too good not to share.

Blueberry Fields Are Forever!

Today we went blueberry picking in Bryson City...about 30 mins away. I'm not sure what I expected, but since I have been strawberry picking in Plant City, FL...I expected something similar. NO WAY! This was better in most ways. Mostly bc we have a little helper that is so cute. I hope I hear her little voice for a long time in the future saying, "I coming mommy. I coming." as she tramped behind me with her bucket. she mainly helped daddy as he was able to reach the really good blueberries. she was so cute as she kept just getting the blue ones. there was a big mound of mulch off to the side and when she saw it she stopped and yelled "LOOK! LOOK! A mountain!" I said, yes...it is a mountain of mulch. :) her new thing is tell you to LOOK! at whatever it is she finds super exciting. Either a tree, a car, a bug. Zannah tagged along wanting to pick blueberries, but obviously she is inable to differentiate between the blue ones and the pinkish ones. This was a fun outing. it is nice to make sweet memories as a family.

a fire in my soul....

so, do i dare share that i am seriously struggling in my life right now? i mean does anyone even read these posts? if the answer is no, then heck! share away nothing gained, nothing lost. if people do actually read these posts...then i fear you may think less of me. but honestly...i just don't care anymore. i have always been a fan of transparency and authenticity and i feel i haven't been either of those lately. maybe this is why i am struggling. i just feel lost. i feel out of place. i have a love hate relationship with my life. i have always wanted to be a mom and stay home with my kids. i have always had homeschooling in the back of my mind. i have always looked at large families and been in awe. there was always this idealistic notion i had when i looked at them. but maybe i was looking at it from a child's perspective...the idea of having lots of friend and buddies to play with and hang out with. sisters and brothers who i could grow up with loving and having lots in common with. this is bc most large families have a love and passion for Christ. when the duggars came on tv at first i thought, holy crap! that is one big family and they all dress like a bunch of mormons. ewwww...no thanks. but then i watched a few episodes. and i fell in love with them. but back to my struggle. i never really looked at this from a mom's point of view. the laundry, dishes, someone always needing you, never seeming to have time for Jesus, or yourself. when your alone time becomes a trip to the grocery store without kids rather than sitting in a coffee shop reading a magazine. your entire life becomes one nickelodeon episode after another rather than CSI or Law & Order. when cereal for dinner was a legitimate option rather than no option at all bc you have a hard workin man who wants a hot meal and the other two people in your family can't manage to bring a spoon with true liquid to their mouth without making a huge mess. i remember the days where i used to have a job that i loved and even when i was tired and needed a break...i felt like i was ministering to teenagers and maybe, hopefully, possibly making a difference. i remember planning retreats, beach trips, backpacking trips. now the only backpack i carry is one filled with diapers and sippy cups. i know that i am ministering to my small kids, but i don't feel like i know how. how do you share Jesus with a 2 year old? much less a 1 year old? i feel like i have lost my passion. i miss Jesus. I miss my girlfriends from back home. the ones i could cry to and tell that right now, today, at this very moment i don't know what my life is about and i wish i could disappear and none of them would judge me. they would just hug me and say it'll be ok and then we would go get a cup of coffee. that was actually HOT the entire time i sipped it. there are days i long for a big city...going to a movie theater with 24 screens, out to eat, to the mall, etc. now i live in a town with a theater with 4 screens and no theater seating. none of the coffee shops are open past 5pm unless you count mcdonalds as a potential coffee shop. the closest mall is an hour and a half away and i have no money to spend anyways. sorry for the whine fest. i just feel like all that i used to be and all that i used to do...is gone. i don't know who i am anymore it seems. i am not even sure what i like to do. i used to like movies, hanging with girls, the beach. now???? i don't know. i love my husband. i love my kids. but i need a break sometimes. i can't even take a legit bath bc our tub is so shallow that the water won't even cover my body. :( or maybe i am just too fat? probably a combination of the two. *sigh* i need a haircut...usually that solves a lot of my issues. but i don't feel like i can get the haircut i want...so why bother. i look like some overweight trailer park mom. boo hoo! and yet...i love the kisses i get in the morning from my girls. the smiles on their face when i sing to them as they wake up. i love the sense of awe and wonder they have with butterflies, ants, and wind. i love the look on their sweet faces as they pet the cat. i love watching them play nicely together. i love the look they give me when the meat dept lady takes a lobster out of the tank for them to touch, the look that asks "is this ok to touch mom?" i love when i get to laugh with my husband, who for decades i longed for. i love when the Holy Spirit gently reminds me that this is what i longed for...and i am blessed...and to just shhhhh for a minute and enjoy...don't worry about the laundry, the unmade beds, or my exhaustion. back to the duggars...michelle duggar inspires me. she makes time for the Lord, she loves Him more than anything! she is patient and kind and her children are kind and love the Lord as well. she is an example on the earth of what kind of mom and wife i yearn to be whether i have 2 kids or 22 kids (that won't happen....unless i become one of the oldest women to give birth. haha). i truly do feel caught in a whilrwind. but i am encouraged by nahum 1:3 "The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet." it gives me great comfort that he is slow to anger. that He is not angry at me for being such a slacker about quiet times, but that he wants me to get off my butt and seek him. that he is great in power and has it under control. and that ultimately he will have his way in this whirlwind i call my life. so i suppose as long as He is in control, i will just hang on.

Gosh! am i the worst blogger or what? *sigh* i just don't know if i am just not that into blogging or if i am lazy or if i just have a million other things on my mind and my to do list and i just never quite make it to the blog. but i just looked at a blog that a friend follows called Savvy Little Women. This woman has 6 kids including two sets of twins and she somehow manages to blog. nothing long. nothing overly newsy. just little blurbs here and there with tidbits of wisdom and sharing her insanity. haha. so i figure i need to make a better effort. maybe i should set a reminder on my phone for a once a week sort of blog...start off small and then hope to grow into a more frequent blogging??? i don't know. but for now...a quick update.

summer has been fun for the most part and very full already. we started off our summer with grandiose plans to hit the park every tues. and the library for story time every monday and then a playdate with various friends on either thursday or friday each week...that lasted all of one week. we went to the park and delia just doesn't want to play in the fountains. the bigger kids who are so used to the fountains run and scream and have a blast and i think she is overwhelmed and just doesn't want to get run over. so instead she runs all over the big kid playground and wants to play on the equipment that is really too dangerous for her. the result is zannah winds up sitting on a towel and is left with whoever i came with while i chase delia all over creation. we have to slather on tons of sunscreen and by the time we leave a mere hour or so later everyone is hot, sweaty, and their cheeks are bright red. baths are a must as soon as we finish snack time in order to cool down and get the chemicals off ourselves. i just decided...no more. it was stressful and my poor friends were stuck babysitting zannah. not that she is high maintenance, but that is not what they came to do. the library was a total fiasco! i had very high hopes for mondays as delia loves books. but it was crowded with kids who were mostly school age. mine was practically the youngest one and she had not been to a story time in her life. she didn't want to sit on the round rug bc there were so many kids and no space for her. so she sat on a chair next to me and kept getting down and talking loud. there was a puppet show and at one point she was so into it that she actually fell off the chair onto a kid. she said "sorry" and patted him, but i felt like i was at story time with a fish out of water not the child i see at home every day. the icing on the cake was when she threw the biggest tantrum of her life as we were leaving. she screamed like i was tearing her toenails out all the way out the door, all the way to the car and even up until the car started moving. i decided we aren't doing THAT again! they have a story time during the school year and i am sure it isn't nearly as crowded and hopefully it will be geared towards toddlers rather than preschoolers. so instead, i broke out our little $7 plastic swimming pool, chris cleaned out the car port and we suited up. no need for sunscreen bc there is no sun in our car port. we get a nice breeze through there too (unlike the park!) and delia loves the pool but not as much as our splash monster...zannah! delia's favorite thing is to get in and out of the pool with her water shoes and slosh about the car port. :) it is too rowdy in the pool with zannah anyhow. as of late tho, zannah doesn't splash as much without her big sister in the pool and gets upset that she is alone for the most part in the pool. :( alas. we have been using our bucket of sidewalk chalk, unfortunately we also discovered that when you drop chalk, it breaks and can't be repaired. no matter how many times you tell mommy it is broken.

we are trying to keep on schedule, but with the fun things like VBS and the 4th of July...it has been hard! but our days are packed with errands, swimming, fresh beat and dora. the girls both celebrated their birthdays and they got a ton of fun stuff. so we play in our kitchen and w/out helicopter as well as watching some of our dora dvd's. we had a combo party at the park and just held off opening presents until we got home. we opened one a day for several days and then VBS hit and we paused and just resumed. we have one more bag to go through. i did post a few pics...but i find this blogger not user friendly for photo uploading. grrr. facebook is way easier, so for those of you with facebook...you've seen all the pics...for those of you without...they will be new for you to look at.

sorry i am such a terrible blogger! i will try to be better. hopefully.

Zannah Banana!!!

for those of you not on facebook...or who rarely check facebook...i am putting this on my blog for you. so, i made this song up when zannah was itty bitty...i sing it to make her smile or to distract her from crankiness. Tonight she was so tired quite awhile before bedtime...so i started singing this to her at the dinner table and she chimed in at the right times. i thought it was just a fluke, but chris didn't think so. so we waited and sang it again...she chimed in. then we paused in the right spots and she did the "ha". so i videoed it. she is just too cute! i love her.

retreating

So, this week has been a little hectic getting back into the routine of things. Why?? Because last weekend I went on a retreat with my church. First off let me say that i have a love-hate relationship with retreats. I love them bc I get to get away and be with friends. I hate them because I am away and most of the time I'm around a lot more people that I don't know, than people I do know. So, when I initially said yes to go on this retreat I felt a little talked into it, but was excited and apprehensive all at once. Then as we got closer I began to dread it. Knowing all the prep I would need to do before leaving and then just the being gone and carpooling and all that jazz. Then it was as if the Lord heard me...bc then I asked a good friend if she was going, she hadn't decided...about a week before the retreat I asked her again and she made arrangements to go! YAY! And we were roomies! Then I was a little stressed out about the carpooling situation because I didn't want to leave as early as everyone else seemed to be leaving. I couldn't take my car because we only have one vehicle that car seats fit into. So then a friend from church just offered up her extra vehicle. YAY! So I drove my friend and I to Ridgecrest, which is just outside of Asheville. The theme was "On The Move" and our speakers were a mother/daughter team who are both missionaries. Let me just tell you that our church is part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance...so our primary focus is the great commission...so all of our speakers were missionary wives...and all of them were wonderful. Anyhow...all the sessions were fabulous and I had a few take away nuggets. The first being that the mom speaker was at least old enough to be my mom...she had been a missionary to Brazil for 30+ years and you could just tell she absolutely loves Jesus and LOVES the people she served all those years...she talked about life, following Jesus and how she still blows it almost daily in the areas of trust, obedience, her temper, etc. The normal every day things we all struggle with and the things I really get down on myself for! My take away...if this woman who has served the Lord twice as long as I have been alive and has been a missionary for more than half of her life, doesn't have it all together, then why on earth do I expect myself to have it all together? I am so hard on myself and really need to spend some time in deep meditation on the grace and mercy of God. My other take away is when she was talking about her father...and how growing up her dad considered the little conjunction "but" as back talking. He didn't want to hear it and there were consequences for using it. So when we say "but" to God, we are in actuality back talking the Lord of hosts. The Almighty. The one that the scriptures say "the hills melt like wax at the presence of the Lord." The one who opened the ground and something like 600+ sons of Kora fell in and died bc of their disobedience. And the one who poured his wrath out on Jesus so he didn't have to pour it out on us. WHOA! Zip my lip!!!!! When God asks me for my attitude, I can't say "but that person made me mad." When God asks me for my time, I can't say "but I have so many other pressing things to do." When God asks me for my mornings before the rest of the fam is up, I can't say "but I'm tired." I mean I CAN say them, and I DO say it...but not without consequences. So, I don't give Him my attitude and I wallow in my anger and feel pain in my body and lose sleep. So I get my to do list done, but not usually without bitterness. I sleep in an extra 30-45 minutes but then have trouble seeing God in the dailyness of life. I wouldn't say I learned a whole lot...but what I did learn was great! I also learned that I can trust my husband to respect the schedule and keep the girls on it. I knew he could do it before I left, but I didn't know if he would do it. He had all the dishes done before I got home, the girls were happy and Delia even had pigtails for church that morning. Amazing! I also learned that it is fun to interact with new people for an entire weekend and I laughed alot. Would I do it again...heck yes! One of the best parts is that a widow who has been on my heart for months was on the retreat, I got to interact with her just a little bit so she knows who I am and I invited her over for Easter dinner and she said yes! This retreat was totally totally worth it! God is good. All the time!

groundhog day!

well, i have to say that i feel like our lives are not boring, but i do feel a little like the movie groundhog day. we don't have much variety in our lives. we eat breakfast at the same time, snack at the same time, nap at the same time, milk at the same time, dinner and bed at the same time. a bath thrown in here and there and maybe a trip to the park. since we were all sick life has gotten back to normal. delia has her alphabet down pat (uppercase...she still gets confused on some of the lower case) and her numbers 1-10 too. zannah is a scootin machine and is getting up on her knees and starting to rock. she has definitely discovered the cats and this is serious motivation to get across the room as quickly as is possible. our main news is that delia is no longer in cloth diapers. the first straw was that i was having trouble getting them fastened tight enough around the legs so that she didn't have huge pee leaks. we were having accidents almost every day at least once. this is very frustrating bc i would have to change her clothes and her diaper wasn't as wet as it could be, but needed to be changed. so my laundry was nearly doubling! laundry is one big bane of my existence. i don't mind doing it if i had a folding fairy, but i don't. so i really despise doing laundry. the final straw was when we had a warm spell here in NC...it has been a long long time since it has been warm here! we've been in sweat pants and jeans and long onesie pajamas for months and months and months! so we had this warm spell and put on shorts. well, the legs seem to gap open on her and one night she comes walking over to me and hands me a little round nugget of...POOP! uh...gross! she had pooped and it came right out the leg hole. i thought this was maybe a fluke but then it happened again and she basically knelt down and all the poop rolled right out of her leg holes! i changed her diaper and put a disposable on her and that was that. i have such mixed feelings about this. for one thing...this was my main contribution financially to our family...saving us money by using cloth. but it is a lot easier to only have half the number of diapers to wash every day. i know i need to potty train her, but i just envision being in the grocery store with her and zannah when she announces she has to pee. zannah is NO WHERE NEAR walking...having to wrestle them both in to the bathroom and help delia get her pants down and do her business while trying to hold zannah...uh...no thanks. i think i will wait until she can walk. ugh. is this the right thing? i don't know. but for now it is.

other than that we are still praying for chris to find a job in franklin that can support our family and just watching the girls grow. i have been cross stitching christmas stockings and am about 2 hours from finishing delia's and then i can start suzannah's. at this rate i should be able to finish all 4 by christmas this year! as soon as i am done, i will def take pictures and post. but for now...here are a few of the girls!

a long week!

Well, this week has been spent cleaning up vomit and diarrhea. It all started 9 days ago and after the last two nights i think it is safe to say we are NOT out of the woods yet. This is like the virus that just won't go away. I have bleached toys, i have put the stuffed animals in the dryer, i have boiled bottles and pacifiers. Argh! Luckily i am better and chris is almost better. one of the side effects of this illness (for us adults anyways) is that it is making our body throw proteins out into our urine causing our kidneys/backs to hurt like crazy! To the point that we both feel like we have thrown our backs out. Mine only lasted two or three days and now after lots of water and some cranberry juice...i feel normal. in fact i feel like my normal everyday self. so this is good. let's hope the girls follow suit very soon!!! i am tired of stripping beds, doing a million loads of laundry, and watching my sweet nuggets feel miserable. i will say tho that my husband did at least a half a million loads of laundry in the beginning of the week when i was still sick and the girls were throwing up all over the place. so a big shout out to him!!! :)

the other thing this has done to our household is that it has made it so chris has been unable to job hunt. he has been out of work for about a month and things are starting to get pretty tight and even a little scary. i know God has a plan and i am trying to trust him, but this is stressful. chris has applied for every job opening in town he knows about and goes to the employment security place a few times a week to see what else is available that is only posted through them. so we aren't unemployed for a lack of trying! ugh. please keep us in your prayers.

nothing else eventful has happened...in fact i think i am ready for a downright boring week. haha.

BEWARE: contains explicit bodily functions :)

Phew! so when i wrote that last post i thought i was getting better from being sick for 36 hours. uh...nope! and not only was i not totally well...both of the girls got sick. and i don't just mean sorta sick. we stayed home from church on sunday just in case we had a bug going through our family and those of you who attend church with me...you should thank my husband for his wisdom! :)

so, here is the setting...it was the perfect setting for all hell to break lose in the wooten home. because as you all know...hell never breaks lose on you when it is convenient (i.e. when nothing pressing is happening or when you have the time to clean up or on linoleum!) haha. so, it is 5:52 PM...8 minutes before dinner...the stuffed shells are just being taken out of the oven, the veggies are steaming nicely on the stove top. delia has had her afternoon sippy of milk and i go in the living room to retrieve her for dinner and as she is standing there she coughs once, then hurls. yep...you guessed it...all of that nice milk that she had drank about an hour and a half earlier...nice and sour and funky! all over the carpet and the side of our couch. for those of you who know me...i hate vomit more than i hate anything else. i would rather have my own eye gouged out than to throw up or clean someone else's puke up. so i immediately start freaking out! FREAKING OUT! you would think someone just dropped a nuclear bomb in my living room and in fact they sorta did. haha. this of course bothers my husband and he thinks i need to calm down! which may be true! but come on now!!! so, chris is a better person than i am and he cleaned up the nasty while i cleaned up the kid. she was acting fine and i actually thought maybe she just got a hold of a raisin or something and choked a little. bc she was happy to be in the tub and playing and in good spirits. in other words...not acting sick.

so we sit down to dinner. i am not eating bc i am still feeling not quite right. delia doesn't touch her veggies and rice (no red sauce for her...just in case!) when she throws up again at the table. back into the tub. again...she is in good spirits and thinks that it is just fabulous that we are using the take down shower head. which for those of you with toddlers and no take down shower head...this is a must! PJ's on, sippy of watered down juice and we are watching the Backyardigans when Zannah starts retching. sooooooooooo...she goes into the tub and daddy is cleaning up. Poor girl didn't have a clue what was happening to her. So, this started at 5:52pm...and every 20 minutes delia threw up. literally every single 20 minutes. it was the craziest thing. she was happy, watching dora, hanging out, she would stop, puke, get wiped down and resume activity. by this point she was in a diaper and pajama bottoms, which of course she thought was great! in the last month she has discovered her little nipples and thinks it is great that they are different from the rest of her skin. we ran out for pedialyte, called the women/children's unit at the hospital. finally at 10 pm when she hadn't peed in four hours, couldn't keep a sip of water or pedilyte down and had gone from dry heaving to throwing up while she was sleeping on a towel on the living room floor...we were more than concerned. by this time zannah was back out of bed bc she had thrown up in her sleep. chris made the decision that this simply was not getting any better and delia was looking very scary and we were afraid that dehydration would set in. this whole time she was not crying or freaking out but was just looking at us like, please make this stop! so chris loaded her up and took her to the ER. i was left home with zannah who was playing on the floor. of course after he left for the hospital, she starts retching again! *sigh* but then fell asleep so i put her in bed.

they gave my sweet pea zofran (anti nausea) and some stickers and sent her home with chris. that stuff is amazing and as a result she was able to drink like 10 cups of pedialyte yesterday and play and was in good spirits! of course about ten minutes after we got her settled into her bed, i began to throw up and was sick until last night just before bed.

i am happy to report that we have had no puking today but the girls are exhausted and delia is sort of in a zombie state and she ate her breakfast but is pale pale pale (in other words, not just pale...but extra pale)! we stayed home from Bible study today and will just continue to lay low for the next few days. i do hope to make it to Kindermusik on friday. there are times when i truly do feel like i live in a whirlwind. i am just glad that i have Jesus to hang to through it all and try to remind myself of 2Corinthians 4:16-18 "Therefore, we do NOT lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes NOT on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (emphasis mine)

Time flies!

So here I am standing in the kitchen (the only way i can get on the computer now...is standing with it out of reach! haha) with one child running through the kitchen waving a fly swatter at the air and the other next to me in the bumbo chair on the counter. it just simply amazes me that another 8 months has gone by without me blogging. i am truly amazed by my friend sarah who has four little ones and she blogs every consistently! i am making the decision right now to make time at least every week to blog. not that i think our life is that exciting, but we do some fun stuff and if im not gonna journal, then i should blog so i have some record of the fun stuff. :)

the most exciting thing that has happened is that in the last month we have become aware that delia knows her alphabet. i don't mean her abc's. i mean she can look at a letter and knows which one it is! we discovered this when she had a box of barley in her hands and was shaking it and then out of nowhere she points to the b and says "BEEEEEEE!". my mom was over and we both looked at her like, for real? then i said it was probably just a coincence. then a few seconds later she points to the y and says "WHY!!". then we handed her something else and when she saw the o on the label, she pointed and said "OH!". so then i got curious and we went through a bunch of letters and as of today she knows them all! if you take her etch a sketch and draw a letter on it, she can tell you what it is. she makes a few mistakes here and there, but she gets it right 99% of the time. i bought flash cards and we work on them every couple of days and a friend just got her some bathtube letters. they will all be floating and she will say "I" and pick up the i and stick it to the wall. so exciting! not saying she is a genius, but this is pretty exciting for a 20 month old and i didn't even really work with her on this. and she doesn't watch that much tv either! so i think she just picks up on things super fast. which makes me say "uh oh!" i better start watching what i say around her! haha. for those of you not keeping up with me on facebook (which stays very current), i am posting pictures of our life over the last 8 months. :) starting with the birth of Suzannah (aka Zannah) Grace. :)


June - July 2010

August 2010

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October 2010

November 2010

December 2010

January 2011

Feb 2011