How was your day?

Sheinah's vocabulary is really starting to take off. On Friday, she asked Melissa "How was your day mommy?" on the way home from daycare. It was completely clear and understandably (which we can't always say about all of her sentences). Tonight, she asked both of us "How was your day." We would reply something along the line of "it was good, how was your day" and this time she said "my day was really really good." How cute is that? It was so cute that we recorded it on Travis' phone, but Blogger doesn't let us attach files to postings (at least we haven't figured out how to do it). If you want to hear, drop us an email...OR...if you know how to attach something in Blogger, let us know that too!

Reading Material

Sheinah has developed the habit of "reading" on the potty (wonder where she learned that one...hint: it is the hairiest member of the Bums). She'll use her stool to climb up on the potty and then promptly ask us to either read to her or leave her alone so she can read her book on her own. She usually says something like "stand back, I reading." This morning, we couldn't help but snap a photo of it. Once we took the first few pictures, Sheinah decided that the puppy needed to be in the picture with her. Such a silly girl!

Thank you Jesus for mine owie

We've been meaning to post this story for awhile now, but we've just never gotten around to it. We've tried really hard to teach Sheinah that God can heal her "owies" and that she doesn't always need medicine. Apparently, Sheinah has learned that lesson. When we were in Tennessee, she fell off the slide and kind of hurt her knees. She immediately asked us to pray for her owie....again, and again, and again. Later on that trip, Melissa was having some of her typical tummy troubles and Sheinah asked if she could pray for mommy's owie.

The best example though, came just last week. For whatever reason, Sheinah decided that mommy had an owie when we were driving home from daycare and asked if she could pray for it. From the backseat, her little voice said "Thank you Jesus for mommy's owie, make it better, amen." Then she said that she had an owie and prayed a similar prayer "Thank you Jesus for mine owie, make it better, amen."

At first glance, it may be easy to just chalk this up to a child's misunderstanding of how to pray. However, if you think about it, it seems that Sheinah might have a better understanding of praying that we grownups do. In Philipians 4:6: Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Sheinah's prayer was the perfect example of doing that...whether or not she meant to.

Thank you Jesus for mine Sheinah and her child-like faith :)

Who's the boss?

To those of you who have kids, you can appreciate what it is like living with a two-year-old. Sheinah has turned into a bossy little girl (wonder where she gets THAT from). Some of the things she tells us just makes us laugh hysterically and sometimes we want to send her to her room forever. One of Melissa's favorite things is when Sheinah holds up her pointer finger and kind of pouts her lips and says "Just a minute mommy." Tonight, she was arguing with Melissa about something and Melissa said something to the effect of "I'm the boss of you." Sheinah replied, "you are not the boss of me mommy!" so Melissa asked who was the boss of her and she said "Daddy is the boss of me" :) Travis then explained to her that as the boss, he could make mommy the boss too. Ah, the joys of toddlerhood.

Big Girl Underwear

Sheinah decided that she was ready for big girl underwear on Sunday (yes, we had a discussion with her and let her decide). She made it all day Sunday and Monday without a single accident. We created a chart on the fridge where she gets a sticker when she goes all day without an accident. For each day with a sticker she gets a "special treat" and if she goes seven days she gets a big treat (don't know what that will be yet). Unfortunately, she had a little accident today when Melissa picked her up from daycare. Thus, we don't have to figure out what the seven day prize is yet :)

Copyrighted photos?

We ordered an 8X10 of our favorite picture from our Christmas vacation to pick up at Walgreens (see image on the left). Melissa had ordered it online so it was in her name but Travis went to pick it up. When he got there, the cashier looked at him strangely and asked him if he was the one who took the picture. Travis was thinking that they weren't going to let him pick it up since it was of a child and his name wasn't on the order. It turns out that was not their concern at all. There was a big note on the front of the envelope that said "Copyrighted" with a question mark. They thought the photo was taken by a PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER and that we were trying to get it printed at Walgreens. How's that for a compliment? Travis DID take the picture with our little Canon. He has been 'studying' photography tips from an online site and has done special things to the camera to make it take much better pictures...as evidence by the copyright scare. This photo has not been edited in photoshop. It is the picture as taken by Travis on Christmas Eve. Needless to say, Travis is getting a big head now about his photo skills :)

Big girl bed

Sheinah decided that she did not want to sleep in her pack-n-play throughout the entire two weeks of our Christmas travels. Instead, she slept in a big bed (surrounded by pillows of course). Each morning, she would wake up around 5am and one of us (read that as Travis) would lie down with her to get her to go back to sleep for a little while longer. Thus, when we returned home we faced two problems (1) Sheinah was no longer fond of her crib (2) she wanted to sleep with Mommy and Daddy. We decided we could solve the first problem by simply buying her a "big girl" bed. Four stores and two hours later we found one at Wal-Mart. However, we should have realized that it would be best to first convince her to sleep in her own room BEFORE we tried to switch her to a "big girl" bed last night. We ended up putting the pack-n-play back in her room (because it would take forever to put the crib back together). After waking up three times and crying for too long to remember, Sheinah figured out how to get out of the pack-n-play. Yes, she somehow climbed out, opened her bedroom door, ran down the hall, and burst into our room...crying at the top of her lungs the whole time. That's a wonderful way to wake up (in case you've never had the pleasure of such an experience). We were at a loss since we didn't want to put her in a crib as we were worried about the large fall she would experience if she climbed out of her real crib. Travis finally came up with the idea of letting the puppy sleep in her room and it seems to have worked...Samson is snug in his crate next to her "big girl" bed and she's been asleep for three hours. Check out the video of her when she actually liked her bed (before she figured out that we were going to make her sleep in it).

Sheinah's First Kiss

This is the first of what are sure to be several postings from our crazy Christmas travels. This is totally out of order but so amazingly cute that we had to post it right away. Our last stop on the four state tour was for a mini college reunion with the folks from Lee University in Tennessee. Steve and Dee Sena have a 20-month old son named Strader. He and Sheinah were saying their good-byes on our last night there and decided to exchange a kiss. Strader liked it so much that they just kept hugging and kissing. We finally decided we should break them up because we felt like our 2-year-old kids were making out...

Enjoy the video...