On November 10th we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary.

Photo credits: Angelique Photography

If you need a great photographer for your family photos I recommend Angelique Photography! She is great to work with, awesome with kids and we loved the way our pictures turned out!

It’s been a journey of good times and hard times, but I can honestly say I wouldn’t change a thing!

Even tho the hard times are anything but easy, it is those times that draw you closer as a couple, those are the times when you see the worst side of each other, but every time you choose to love your partner at their worst, I can promise you, your marriage will be stronger for it.

I think my best marriage tip would be this:

Love your partner for who God created him to be, not who you want him to be! 

It is so easy to think our partner should be this or should that, and yes there is always room for improvement but most times we need to simply lay down our pride and love each other unconditionally. We need to simply accept each others flaws and choose love amidst the annoying little quirks. 🙂

Sometimes, it isn’t even flaws or quirks that we find annoying about our life partners, sometimes it is simply that their personality is different then ours and we of course think they should see or do it the way we do! (so selfish!)

So let’s just accept each other the way God created us because different is good! It often means your weaknesses will probably be his strengths and his weaknesses will be your strengths. So you see, that creates a pretty strong team! 🙂

Pray for your marriage.

Daily. It is so important.

This is one thing that God has highlighted quite a bit in my life. Prayer is the most important and most valuable thing I can do.

When it comes to my kids, what I teach them matters, but if I end up getting it all wrong, they will still be ok if I make praying for them a top priority, daily.

The same goes for my marriage. If I make praying for our marriage a priority, we will be ok even if we mess up repeatedly!

At the same time prayer changes ones heart so I will probably fail a lot less if I’m praying often! 🙂

We often pray that anything the devil tries to use to tear us apart would only make us stronger instead and we have literally seen this prayer be answered.

Now let me just rant about the awesome guy I got married to for a bit. 🙂

He is amazing! 🙂

Every time we have a baby he jumps in and makes sure things get done that I would normally do.

He puts in a long day at work, then comes home and cleans up the house, washes the supper dishes and hangs out with the kids. I get to care for the baby without thinking of all the things that need to be done yet.

He even changes diapers. Even the yucky, smelly ones! Yes he is that awesome! 🙂

He is an awesome daddy to our kiddos! The sound of the work truck coming or the garage door opening (whichever they hear first)  is the highlight of their day. 🙂

Six years down and it keeps getting better! 🙂 So, here’s to many more years of dreaming, raising our family, learning, growing in our faith and simply living life together!

 

 

 

Photo credits: Angelique Photography

This little guy turned two.

In October.

Due to our busy schedule, I simply didn’t get around to blogging much this year but now that life has slowed down a bit, I’m going to try to catch up!

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again…

Our first two kiddos couldn’t be more different.

Even before he was born I knew that Kynaston was MUCH calmer then his sister. 🙂

However, that hasn’t stopped them from being the best of friends.

Kynaston takes after my family when it comes to personality. He’s more quiet. Not as much a people person like his daddy and sister are.

However, when it comes to his likes and interests, he is definitely his daddy’s boy.

My dad bought a new work truck, which Checkers had the privilege of driving home a few times, and if you know Checkers, you probably already know that getting to drive a brand new vehicle is a pretty big deal!

Well, me and Kenz didn’t really see why this was such a big deal, but Kyna…

Yea… he got it.

While Checkers was giving us a grand tour of this new truck, Kynaston wasn’t content just looking at it, he wanted to ‘go in it!’ and wasn’t satisfied until he got to sit on those shiny new seats.

His favorite toys are match box cars and tractors. (Just like his daddy.) 🙂

My brother Mike told us (jokingly) we should bring Kyna to one of his ballgames to expand his interests.

Well, we did end up at a ballgame soon after that and Kynaston spent the entire time with his back to the ballgame so he could watch the big trucks in the parking lot behind us. 🙂

Scooping dirt is one of his favorite pastimes. Yes we have a sandbox. No it isn’t good enough, not when we can destroy the flower beds and dump dirt all over the sidewalk. 🙂

He LOVES to tease his sister. He’ll proclaim, “This is MY doll!”

She falls for it of course, “No Kyna, that is MY doll.”

And so the argument ensues with Kenz getting more and more irritated and Kynastons grin getting bigger and bigger!

One time I was giving Kyna his vitamin and Kenz asked for one too. Kyna looked at her with the most serious look on his face and said: “No. Kenz not eat one, me eat kenz’s.”

I know that he knew he would never get away with that but of course she went of the deep end trying to set him straight which is exactly what he wanted of course.

Like the time he wanted more of the blanket and pulled it off her. So, she complained, “Kyna stop taking my blanket!”

He looked at her, pulled the blanket off a bit more and said: “La, me take your blanket.” Then he looked at me and said, “You take Kenz’s blanket off.”

(La means yea. It sounds nothing like yea so I have no clue where he pulled that one out of, but thats how he says it! 🙂 )

You probably have to witness it to see the humor but it really is hilarious because she gets all feisty and determined to set him straight but he just ‘calmly’ keeps saying the same thing over and over with the most serious look on his face while totally enjoying the reaction he’s getting.

He is quite thrilled with his new little brother and can’t wait till Myles can scoop dirt with him. 🙂

For lunch one day he didn’t want to eat his sandwich but I told him he has too. After eating about half of it he came to find me and said, “Me threw sandwich in trashcan, you can’t get it out.”

The look on his face was so serious that he almost had me convinced that there was no possible way I was going to succeed in getting that sandwich out of the trash!

When he toots, he proudly proclaims, “Me burped!”

He absolutely loves his family and that includes his grandparents, aunts and uncles. He knows all their vehicles and knows the moment we pull into my parents driveway which vehicle is missing and which person will be missing.

He loves his maumy (my mom) and if he gets in trouble or doesn’t get something he wants he’ll start whining to go to maumy’s house.

He’s pretty strong willed and once he has his mind set on something he is not easily distracted! 😦

I must say tho… he has brought so much joy to our lives and we love every inch of his teasing, stubborn little self. 🙂

 

 

Easier then the first or the second child. At least for us this has been true so far.

I heard it said already the more children you have the easier it gets.

I had a really hard time believing that tho because seriously… Kid’s are a lot of work! They’re awesome and they’re the best thing that ever happened to me but that doesn’t change the fact that they can take all of your time, energy and even your sleep!

I’m pretty sure children are God’s favorite cure for selfishness. 🙂

In other words I never realized how selfish I was untill I had children!

Trust me on this: if you don’t have kids you’re probably more self focused then you realize. 🙂

Ok, moving on to better things now that we got that out of the way.

When we had Kynaston the adjustment was pretty hard on all of us and it felt like quite some time and a bit of a rough journey to find our new normal. So when I thought of trying to find that new normal again after adding the third…

Honestly it scared me a bit senseless!

Maybe even more then a bit. I mean think about it… We as parents would now be out numbered!!

As usual my fears were bigger then reality and…

Here’s what I learned:

I was already outnumbered with the second.

Because for most of our kids’ waking hours Checkers is at work and it’s just me here to take care of the kids. So if they both needed attention at the same time, there was only me, only one person to cover both their needs.

So, yes, by adding the third I’m even more outnumbered but here’s the part I hadn’t considered:

My first child is much more independent.

There is so much Kenzie (almost 5) can do for herself now. When we are headed out the door she can get her own shoes and jacket on (with a little bit of help straightening, tying and zippering.) 🙂 When Kyna was a baby she still needed help going to the bathroom or getting a drink and for some reason it seemed the minute I sat down to feed Kyna she had to use the bathroom or needed a drink. (trust me, that is stressful!)

Now she can do all that for herself and she can help Kyna with small things like getting a drink or reaching things that he can’t.

I have a little helper.

She is also very helpful in caring for the baby. If I’m taking care of Kyna and the baby cries she can actually keep him calm for a couple minutes untill I’m ready to get him. (or seconds if he’s hungry!) 🙂

If I’m taking care of the baby she can do all kinds of small things to help Kyna when he needs help, so feeding the baby is not stressful at all!

She can help out with things like getting a blanket for the baby, getting me a drink while I’m feeding the baby, and lot’s of other small errands that seem insignificant but actually add up to a lot, which makes a huge difference in helping me not feel overwhelmed.

There’s also lots of household chores she can do, like fold and put away laundry, make her bed and clean up toys. She can even wash the dishes and sweep the floor. And it’s so much fun encouraging her to do these things because I feel like I can literally see her self confidence blooming because I’m ‘trusting’ her to do these ‘grown-up’ jobs.

They say kids that grow up doing chores are happier and more self confident then kids who don’t and I believe this because for some reason doing chores seems to give a child purpose and a reason to believe in themselves because they realize that they are actually capable of doing these things!

The first child has very little experience with sharing.

And that means with everything. Kenzie didn’t need to share us (her parents) with anyone, she didn’t need to share her toys, her routine or anything really. Life in this house pretty much revolved around her. If she had a need I could take care of it right away most times. If she wanted me or Checkers to hold her or read a story, there was no other little person to interfere with that.

And then we had Kynaston and her life changed drastically. Sometimes she had to wait till I’m done feeding the baby before she could have a drink. Sometimes I couldn’t hold her because I was putting Kynaston to sleep and at two years old she simply didn’t understand why this little person had the right to come in and seemingly just take over her life. I mean life pretty much revolved around him now. If he cried, I responded, even if that meant the game I was playing with her or the book I was reading to her was put on hold.

Kynaston on the other hand… he knew all about sharing (and fighting) 🙂 at a much younger age then Kenzie did. Because he never knew a time when Mom and Daddy were all his and only his. All he ever knew was sharing us with Kenzie.

So when Myles came along the adjustment wasn’t quite as big for him. He did have one week that was a little rough on him because there was still an adjustment and he too has moments when the baby comes first and he has to wait when he usually wouldn’t have had to but over all I feel the adjustment was easier for him then it had been for Kenzie,

As for Kenzie… She is so in love with our newest little guy that she barely seemed fazed at all by the changes he brought to our home.

I’m no longer an unexperienced first time mom.

Which means I no longer freak out at every little thing! 🙂

Which is nice, it helps me feel much calmer. 🙂

With Kenzie, if her blanket ended up on the floor, I got a clean one.

With Kyna, Kenzie played with his blankets and I used them anyway.

With Myles, sometimes I pick up a doll blanket off the floor to use because said doll is using Myles blanket and we wouldn’t want to ruin the doll or the doll’s mama’s day! 🙂

My point being… I’m much more relaxed with baby number 3 then I was with baby number one.

Yesterday a dog licked my baby’s face and I even managed to keep my cool!

Ok, I’ll admit I barely kept my cool because dogs’ tongues’ are just way too gross to be touching my cute little baby but obviously not everyone shares my opinion so, you know I just ‘calmly’ freaked out on the inside and reminded myself that it is not a life or death situation! 🙂

And that is why I think adding the third is easier then adding the second. 🙂 There is a few other factors that play a part as well tho…

1. Kenzie is almost 5, if your kiddos are closer in age you might whole heartedly disagree with this blog! 🙂
2. My first two babies weren’t the best sleepers and this little guy already sleeps for 3 to 5 hrs straight at night, almost every night, so getting a decent amount of sleep helps.
3. Kynaston has a much more laid back personality then Kenz, so I think that played a part in how well and quickly he adjusted.

Yay for 3 kiddos! Sometimes I look at my family and I can barely believe how blessed I am!!