Happy Life and kid updates

Generally speaking, this present season of life is the happiest I have ever been. Praise God.

The kids aren't perfect, our house isn't perfect, my husband isn't perfect, I'm not perfect. But together? We are perfect. Sure, not by the world's standards....but by God's? Yup. Things get messy. Fits get thrown. I come down with the stomach flu while my husband is away on business and I have two young kids to take care of. My 2.5 year old gets the stomach flu two weeks later, and then so does my husband. My 11 month old son pulls hair like it's hilarious. He falls down a lot, and currently has a bruised eye and temple. There's not money enough to justify fixing things that could use fixing (but don't absolutely need it, so there's that!), or getting by husband a better truck. I lose my temper far too often. My kids don't sleep as good as they could, and they play favorites at the least opportune time. My husband doesn't always do things like I'd like them done....

BUT.

My husband did all of my weekend chores when he could have been working on the lawn, while I had the kids grocery shopping. He brought me flowers on Halloween. He cares about how I'm doing and listens. He plays with our kids. He doesn't complain when I hide away in the bathroom for a few minutes, er, 15 minutes, of peace. My marriage comes first and it shows. We work on things together. We check in and keep working at it. Without each other, we aren't half the people we are together. That's why we got married, duh, because we were meant to be together. I thank God several times a day for such a blessing in our vocation.
My kids give the best hugs, even if they don't last as long as I'd like sometimes...when they do, I savor the heck out of them. When G says, "I love you soooo much," part of me floats above the clouds. When J lays his head on my shoulder and breathes deep, I feel like I'm over the moon. Tears well up in my eyes when I reflect on how smart they are, and how fun it is to be their mom. I wish I could lay next to their peacefully sleeping bodies and soak in the love...but that'd be weird, I guess.
I love playing with them, and I am working on being more present during the day with them. It's not always easy, especially with working from home and having the type-A personality I do (As far as house cleanliness and organization goes). But by God, my family is worth the effort.

Tonight was great. I had made an eat-clean lasagna about a month ago and froze it. Tonight I served it for dinner and we had plenty of play time afterwards because the clean up was really easy. I think I should aim to do this once a week.

Anyways, just wanted to check in :-)

kid updates,

J -- loves pointing and is super speedy with his push-walker-toy. He's doing awesome in respect to milestones/health. He has a sleep study consult in two weeks and an orthopedic spine doctor appointment in December. He loves eating, and is working on self weaning, which I'm actually bummed about, but he's still nursing about 5 times in a 24 hr period. He can stack two blocks and tries for more. He's practicing shape sorting and likes playing kitchen. He's, thankfully, taken a great interest in books too. He learned to drink from a straw cup after trying for like 3 minutes. He's got the spoon to mouth motion down, but needs the fine motor skills to get the food on the spoon. He is really tough, and is all boy. I think he's really smart, but too busy to focus on it. Oh, and WOW he hates diaper changes.

G -- Holy terror of terrible 2-3-13, you name it. She's a firecracker...and I see too much of me in her. She's ridiculously smart, as in, my parents say she's smarter than me, so there's that. She enjoys Daniel Tiger and other PBS shows too much. She loves books, and we still go to the library every week. She drew her first "family" picture this week, it was awesome. She loves personal attention, and shines when she gets it. She loves helping, and is still the best big sister in the world. She's very well behaved in public and I just can't say enough about her vocabulary. I'm blessed for sure. <3