Happy 2010!

Well, I am excited to be updating this blog, and I apologize for it being out-of-date and for my Flikr pictures being incognito. I am working on fixing those again, but it will a work-in-progress for a good while. :)

We had a fantastic time visiting in Georgia over the holidays. We flew to Atlanta on Christmas Day, and the girls did really well with traveling. Overall, I do not think it could have gone better, and I am especially thankful that we all got to sit together on both legs of the trip!

It was a very special present for me to be able to see my family at Christmastime! I cannot believe that it was two weeks ago already! We got to see everyone on the Baldwin side of the family. I wish I had made time to squeeze in visits to my Torbush family, too.

We had a wonderful start back to work and for the girls in their new childcare situation this last week! I have a lot to be thankful for with all of that, and I am looking forward to at least entering one new post each month this year.

By the way, Mackenzie started really walking this weekend. She had been taking a few steps here and there, but now, those wobbly steps are carrying her all over the house. :)

Will write more soon... :)

Time flies... but we are the pilot :)

My wonderful principal mentioned the quote behind the title of this entry the other day before a meeting. And boy, how time does fly... and now that I have a wonderful class of eighteen kindergartners (14 of which are girls!), time seems to zoom by way-too-fast.
Sydney is talking more and more, breaks out into song, 'reads' books to her babies, and laughs all the time while telling me something that we adults would find ordinary is "funny." Mackenzie is almost impossible to keep in one spot, as she now cruises or pushes her walker toy everywhere while making her happy noises. She is a little peanut, but like Ryan said yesterday, she doesn't know that, and nothing stops her.
This picture is from when family was here in July... over two months ago, which is hard to believe. It was like vacation for us, and we loved having them here and miss them all so very much! This picture is at our favorite park, and Sydney was having so much fun that she did not want to stop for a picture, thus the sad girl face!
Well, Mackenzie is crying out from waking up from her nap, so I had better let the beautiful craziness resume! :)

Happy Father's Day!

We are so thankful to have unbelievably amazing dads, and I am also very appreciative of Ryan for being the greatest dad ever for our girls! :)
Here are some pictures of the girls having fun... they remind me of what a joy it is to be a parent. :)

This is a toothless Mackenzie, taken a month ago- she now has two bottom teeth!

Mackenzie laughs with her face contorted like this all of the time, and it makes me laugh, too! This was her first time sticking her feet in the pool a few weeks ago... I cannot find swim diapers to fit her small size, so I hold her while she splashes her feet in the water. She is now all over the place crawling so fast... I have to be careful to keep a close eye on her. :)

Sydney loves playing with the watering cans and fountains at the children's gardens. She gets grimy and soaked, but also very, very happy!

Beautiful Timing

For two school years now, I have not been in the classroom, and it has felt odd after teaching for nine years to have that break. I am so used to the school year schedule as a way of me keeping track of time passing that my regular calendar does not suffice, and I cannot believe it is mid-May. These two years have been so very full as we have been blessed with the two girls, and I have been working on earning a Master's in Curriculum and Instruction in Literacy as well as keeping in touch with the kindergarten team at Dunn as their mentor. My heart has often been divided as I long to teach and know the importance of being at home, too. Well, after a lot of prayer and the Lord opening the perfect doors, things have all worked out in the last week for me to teach a half-day kindergarten class in the afternoons next year at Dunn. My wonderful friend Carrie is going to keep the girls, even pick them up before she picks up her son at pre-school so that I don't have a hectic drop-off on the south side of town and then try to make it on time to school on the north side (she is amazing!). Last Thursday was my interview and hiring and I also doubled up on my last two Master's classes (they are doozies!) so that I will be done with that degree by July... which reminds me, I had better get back to work on my assignments! I have really grown to appreciate stay-at-home moms (and all moms, too), and I am very excited to teach at Dunn again and start my tenth year of teaching in August. :)

April Showers...

...bring FROZEN May flowers!!! We have really been blessed, though, with three snow storms in a row in light of the low accumulation of snow that we had prior to all of this moisture. And with us having nowhere that we absolutely need to go today, I am really enjoying typing this on Ryan's laptop as I am all cozy under a blanket with my foot up and iced. I have been so thankful for how great my foot has felt, and since it is doing so well, I wore the special post-op driving shoe and took the girls out Wed.-Fri. in the afternoons to escape cabin fever. :)

Speaking of the girls, here is our big 5-month-old Mackenzie girl...

She is a roly-poly and does not stay on her back for long! She has started sleeping through the night (woohoo!) and eating better. Kenzie has been taking Zantac for a while, and we also recently did a GI test at PVH where she reluctantly struggled to take barium in a bottle, then a series of X-rays over 6 1/2 hours or so showed the barium passing through her system (thankfully Susue was here to help us or that would have been a really hard day!). The results were all normal, so we are unsure of why she has so many challenges in eating, but she is not spitting up now and feeds fine as long as she can turn her head all the way to the left.

And here is Sydney...

Syd is so entertaining and joyful! She has started using words to answer questions (no-no) or to ask for things (more), and we are still going to visit with a speech specialist in a couple of weeks just to see if there is anything else we can do to support her further. It is encouraging to hear her, and she wants to talk so badly! :)

By the way, if these pictures look better than our previous ones, it is because we have upgraded to a Canon EOS 50D, and Ryan is already working hard at learning how to make it perform its best. He took this one of me a little while ago...

The camera seems to be constantly in action when Ryan is home, so there is pressure to be presentable! Well, I know I have a hungry baby girl to attend to, so I had better stop for now, but with the miasma of picture-taking that is going on, I will post again soon!