*sigh*

Noelle is getting so big. She says Daddy all the time now. It's so precious. She calls for him and says it to get his attention now. (She says Mama a bunch now, too, but it's just really cute when she calls for her Daddy). :-) This morning we were playing and I was stacking some of her blocks and they would fall over. She watched me do it once or twice and then she took over playing with them.

She has several new words popping out: chair, "hoh" (help), "eeee" (eat). I'm so glad she can now say "eat." She can tell me when she's hungry - I love it. Her teething seems to be going a little better - she's really not ever that fussy. I just hate it when she wakes up at night just whimpering in her sleep. Last night she woke up as we were getting in bed around midnight so I took and rocked her for about 5 minutes and she went right back down. I've been giving her a little Motrin and some Triaminic for the perpetually runny nose and I that's has helped her sleep better. She took a couple big naps yesterday so I think we're starting to kick it. She even went down for a bit this morning which is good - even if she just naps for about an hour it will make a huge difference.

We have stuff poking up in the garden! Travis spotted it last night - it looks like some of my green onions are through the soil. Pictures will be taken but not today - it's rainy and bleah outside. At the moment I have a chicken stewing on the stove and the house smells so yummy. I'm going to freeze the meat and the broth for some recipes and then I need to cook a 2nd chicken later this afternoon. It's so much cheaper for us to buy whole chickens and me stew them instead of buying either the boneless/skinless to stew or buying it canned. We do buy some of the boneless/skinless, but I can make them last a lot longer if I don't waste them on chicken salad and stuff. Plus, you get such great flavor from the stewed chicken.

I've updated my books list recently - fyi. I'm going to try and cut back on fiction (specifically Christian) a bit. I've been binging on it while I've been sick and Noelle's been sick and that's never good for me. God so convicts me when I read too much Christian fiction. I don't know if anyone else struggles with this, but I start to read these good Christian fiction books and romance novels and then I find fault with everything my husband says and does and how I respond to him. The characters in so many of those books are WAY to perfect. The man always knows when flowers are needed and is the perfect husband - down the best massage and mushy card that he slips his wife/girlfriend. And the woman always has the right Godly counsel to give another woman in her time of need, while solving whatever mystery/love triangle/problem contained in those 350 pages or so and looks good doing it. (And she gets the guy in the end). < /soap box > Anyway, they mess with my mind. Not that it needs any help... :-)

We're going to get out in about 20 minutes to meet my Mom and sister for lunch today at Jason's Deli. I love lunch there because I can get soup and salad. Very Weight Watcher friendly. We have to run by Lifeway, too, and pick up Bible study books for the ladies' group at church and the Bible for our one high school graduate this year. The women are doing When Godly People Do Ungodly Things by Beth Moore in the Fall. (Why am I ordering the books so early? I needed to get one for the woman that is leading it and I went ahead and just ordered them all so I won't have to worry about them being in stock later.) :-) I did this study last spring with some of our youth girls and it was eye-opening for me. Satan is the master at deceiving and luring believers into patterns of destructive sin and you CAN guard yourself against him. I cannot handle sin on my own - there is no way humanly possible to do that - it will beat me ever time. But there is a DIVINE way to beat sin - Jesus Christ. Can I get an Amen?! :-)