Ivar's little laugh

first laughs from Becca Groves on Vimeo.

wonders never cease

My sister-in-law Lisa gave me this amazing gift for Christmas. It was in my stocking that was filled with all sorts of other great things, but this gadget here might be my favorite new ease-of-life-innovation. Behold the Peanut Butter and Jelly Spreader. Never again will one find jelly in the peanut butter or peanut butter in the jelly.

It's so perfect because since the moment Ivar was born, I cannot get enough peanut butter and jelly toast. I craved nothing while I was pregnant with him, but now that he is here and I have no real excuse for crummy eating, this insatiable need for pbj toast will not go away.

Literally, I never had pbj toast while pregnant, but it was the very first thing I ate after delivery (probably five hours after Ivar was born) and ever since it has become this crazy comfort food. And now I have a device to help me with my craving. Merry Christmas to me. Thank you, Lisa!

tummy time

This weekend I remembered about tummy time. I guess it just slipped my mind until I read on babycenter.com that "your baby may be able to prop himself up with his arms by now..." and I realized my neglect. So this morning Ivar had some time on his belly. He was a bit concerned, kept looking at me with a confussed look like surely I had made a mistake and gave little grunts and sighs as if to say, "I don't enjoy this, so whenever you'd like to flip me over, that would be great." And when I flipped him, he was much happier.

Today I put him in his new jeans! I had a gift card to gap kids and found these jeans on the clearance rack. They're still too big for him, but I couldn't help myself this morning (plus, he had nothing clean to wear...) I thought the John Deer blanket from my Uncle Carl was a good selection to go with his work pants.
I was with my Grandma last week and told her I got Ivar his first pair of jeans and she gave me a look of disgust like I have never seen. She even made an audible disapproving sound! This is unheard of from my agreeable Grandma. But she has always had a thing about babies wearing adult clothes. She believes baby clothes should be soft and cuddly. And I would say I absolutely agree Grandma!...until I found these jeans. Then I made my exception. Ivar will just be sure not to wear them in her presence.

He's so cute, isn't he?!! :)

Christmas and a baby

My friend Beth wrote a great blog post yesterday that I think you'll enjoy. It made me laugh hard as not only am I trying to right my habits after Christmas cookie season, but I'm also trying to get some sort of plan together in order to 1) work off this extra baby-love on my body, 2) get a shower in each day and 3) to change out of my pajama pants by suppertime.

Click here to read Beth's post entitled: Breaking Up is Hard to Do

a good kick in the pants

I read Beth Moore's blog and I love it. It continually encourages me, redirects my thinking, realigns my priorities and sometimes it just plain offers a kick in the hiney to get back in the Bible, to memorize God's word and to start talking to Jesus again.
Well, I just got a swift kick. I read on of her posts on Saturday night and it stopped me in my tracks, got me to open up my Bible before I went to bed and to pray again like I mean it.
I think you should read her post from Saturday night. It got me excited to be a part of God's family and made me want to dive deeper. One way to dive deeper is to memorize scripture. On her blog, Beth encourages her readers to memorize one verse every two weeks. This way, by 2012, we should have 26 verses memorized. Completely doable.
I have trouble figuring out what verse I should memorize, but in her comments each week people from all over the world write the verse that they are memorizing and somewhere in those comments I find the verse the stands out for me and my circumstances.
This is a New Years resolution that I feel really committed to. There could be nothing more fruitful than to meditate on God's word! And I'm so excited to grab hold of my personal walk with God again. So I'm starting with Isaiah 2:3. I hope you join me!