Father's day was a smashing good time this year. Due to the pajama nature of our home photos (and not much time to post this)...I'll skip straight to the zoo part of the day. We loved it so much last year, we decided to do it again this year! As always, the zoo was a great place for the kids to be cute and excited so that this mom could take a bunch of pictures. :) I think I may have forgotten to look at the animals.
Waiting for everyone to show up.
Joshua is currently the best poser in the family.
Waiting in line. They weren't quite as patient as they look. :)
Checking out the bears.
One super auntie.
Joshua shows the bear who's boss!
He relates strongly to things that growl.
It'll be a while before they get their drivers.
Hehe...they almost lost their lunches!
Nana couldn't resist renting the safari jeep. I think it paid off, Dad. :)
Regan on the camel she bailed from shortly after.
Josh trying to feed his hat to the camels.
Mr. Independent. Holding hands was not on the menu that day.
Totally captivated by the zebras. Me, captivated by their captivation.
Mr. Smiles (a.k.a. Drew)
Auntie Dana is always good for an adventure...like peacock chasing, for instance.
After the entire zoo, they still had enough energy for jumping high.
You are a wonderful Dad and Grandpa, and we love you!!
Well, it's been a changing week in the Balfour household...for the two littlest Balfours, anyways. There's been three major developments since your last update:
1. As of yesterday, at the ripe old age of 17 months and 4 days, Joshua finally became an official walker! Yes, I know I posted a video of him walking towards the camera AGES ago, but that's about all he's done since then. Not that he didn't love walking. He was quite obsessed with and persistent about going for "a WAW!" (a walk) many times during the day (particularly when outside) but would refuse to do so without my index finger squeezed in between his drooly little fingers. Everyone commented on how steady he was, yet he showed no signs of wanting to do it permanently on his own.
Well, Saturday while I was at work (of course!) the Lord answered a prayer I had prayed just that morning. Early in the day I had asked him for a miracle for each one of us (since God is in the business of miracles!), and for Joshua I asked for the miracle of confidence and a desire to walk on his own. I wasn't feeling particularly disturbed or concerned about him not walking, but I had a feeling he would be over the moon if he had a bit more independence. (The old Joshua)
Wouldn't you know, later that afternoon Joshua began walking by himself at the park! At the end of the day when my little family came to pick me up from Hallmark, my jaw hung on the floor as I saw him walking the hallway of the mall...on his own! Life is already completely different. As I'm doing dishes or cooking supper Joshua tirelessly walks 'the circle' (through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, back to the kitchen). When he enters he proudly yells "BOO!" or "HIYEE!". And as he leaves he yells, "BYE-BYE!" He seriously couldn't be more proud of himself. Today I went to the library with the kids, and for the first time spent a good amount of time chasing after a giggling Joshua, ripping up and down the aisles. I'm going to have to figure out a way to get the child to 'COME'...he's far too excited to listen! (any ideas out there? Ellie always stuck pretty close.)
(The new Joshua)
So, within two days of him walking, he figured out how to walk backwards, run, and walk with a juice cup hanging out of his mouth and something in each hand. He also enjoys walking over obstacles (like blankets) and stepping off small steps. Silly kid! Talk about waiting longer than necessary!
2. The next major development has to do with Ellie's hair. :) On Thursday morning Ellie and I were scheduled to go for a "haircut date" while leaving Joshua at a friend's house. Ellie LOVES going to the hairdressers, so I usually try to make an occasion of it. Well, Wednesday night I was thinking about this upcoming appointment and with a little nausea in the pit of my belly, decided that it was probably time to cut Ellie's hair short. The hair elastics I've been using (the only ones that stay in) have been tearing Ellie's hair, and she's also been harvesting a whole new crop of wispy shorter hairs that don't fit into any ponytail or braid...which leaves her hair in extreme disarray about 20 minutes after I try combing it! So I talked to Rob - and Ellie - and we all decided it was time for....A BOB! Here are the before and after pictures:
(Ellie before)
(Ellie after..she wasn't much into posing that day :)
3. And lastly, and this one was the best thing of all! Thursday afternoon Ellie decided to ask Jesus into her heart! For those of you who might be unfamiliar, "if you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9) Somewhere along the way folks began using the term 'asking Jesus into your heart' as a way of choosing him to be Lord of your life. Well, after being at our friends' house that day (and Ellie heard Auntie Brenda explaining how her son Justice had asked Jesus into his heart) I suppose Ellie thought it was time to make this decision! I was downstairs putting Joshua down for a nap when Ellie got on the potty and sat there waiting for me to come back and wipe her bum. When I came upstairs she called out from the bathroom, "Mommy, Guess what! I asked JESUS into my heart!" My initial reaction was that she had simply been copying what she heard. So I went in and asked her, "What did it sound like?" And she readjusted herself on the potty so she wouldn't fall in, folded her hands and squeezed her eyes tightly shut and said, "Lord Jesus, please come live in my heart. AMEN. Like THAT Mommy!" And the angels in heaven celebrated...because that's what they do whenever anyone makes that best decision of their lives! I pray that little seed in Ellie's heart will sprout into a lifelong commitment to walking close with God, because that is what she was made to do, and there's nothing in the world that compares to the joy found in knowing Him!!
I can see now why they call them WISDOM teeth - because it would be much WISER to keep them in! On Saturday I went under the knife and got all four wisdom teeth removed. I refused to think about what was going to happen ahead of time, and good thing, too. If I had known how hard this resulting week was going to be, I would have been a ball of nerves! My pride told me I was going to be one of those 'tough cookies' that was eating steak the night after surgery. NOPE! Apparently 'Jacki' and 'tough cookie' are no longer synonymous (if they ever were). The picture above was taken the day of the surgery, when my swelling was still minor. I slept most of that day and night, as the anesthetic took a loooong time to wear off.
The following two days I blew up till my cheeks looked and felt like they were going to bust open. I seriously looked like some sort of alien creature, or in Rob's words, "Like you let loose for six months and only ate frosting." Hehe! Someone called our house on Monday and talked to Ellie, who told them mommy was resting at Nana's house because, "her cheeks blowed up." I refused to get my picture taken on those days, because every time I looked in a mirror I felt like crying (and sometimes did). Anyhow, I didn't actually write this post to complain. I'm now on day 4 and am still swollen, but mostly just bruised and sleepy and somewhat drugged up. So I haven't had the space of mind to blog. Excuse number two, in addition to our internet still being on the fritz! Will post more updates on the cute ones in the family when my brain is off drugs!
Sorry about the slackiness in blog posts lately...but our internet crashed. And we're not trying to fix it. Some days it drives me absolutely mental that I can't look up the weather forecast or see pictures of Lisa's gorgeous new baby....but mostly it's been wonderful. I didn't think I spent much time on the internet, but I'm truly getting a lot more done without it! Naptimes are actually more refreshing without Facebook! Huh! Who would have guessed! ANYHOW, I'm at my parents' place now, and I will continue to post from here every two weeks or so until we decide to get the computer problem fixed.
For today I've decided to post all our happiest memories from the last two weeks. If I were to post pictures of today there would be SNOWFLAKES - that's right - SNOWFLAKES in the picture! We are totally experiencing Manitoba at it's worst! But we have had some beautiful days and some beautiful fun. (p.s. I just noticed that Joshua is wearing the same thing in every photo. No, these aren't all taken on the same day! The child can walk, but chooses to crawl. His little track suit is saving the life of all his pants :) Just in case y'all were wondering!)
Enjoy!
A Saturday's grocery shopping trip for picnic food and a morning at the park!
Random fun: The overwhelming enthusiasm of a little boy permitted to play with water! What happens when Ellie combs her own hair. :)
Joshua + Sippy Cup = True Love
My favourite girl on this planet! The messiest boy on this planet!
An evening at Southwood School park:
"Hey there. Like my soother?"
The perfect end to a great evening: Dairy Queen!
Mother's Day wiener roast in Sandilands:
Ellie making Nana eat her homemade pretend soup.
Doing 'guy stuff'. My birthday pie!!! YUMMMMM!!!
Surprise, Nana!!
Writing out Nana's card.
These two are inseparable!
Quite pleased about the Dorito chips!
The adorable Drew!! Ellie conning Auntie Dana into eating her homemade pretend soup. Jon and Dexter.
As Ellie grows she continues to distract us from the fact that we don't have TV in the house - because she is the entertainment! (along with her side-kick Josh, of course. I'm sure I'll be doing Josh-isms any day now with the amount of spunk, humor, and cuteness he is currently displaying).
One of Ellie's favourite games to play (fairly regularly) is Miriam and Moses. Any time she spies an empty basket, the temptation proves to be too much for her. She quickly locates any willing candidate to be Moses (in this case, "Pink Piggy"), drapes her blanky over her head and becomes his big sister Miriam:Another favourite activity is role-playing the story of Zacchaeus and Jesus (from Luke 19 if you're not familiar with it.) Usually it's Ellie who climbs up onto the top of the chair and yells for "Jesus" to come catch her (any one of us will do). In this particular case she decided Rob needed to be Zacchaeus in the tree:
They had me giggling when "Zacchaeus" jumped into "Jesus'" arms.
And some other excerpts from Ellie's journal...
Mommy: "Ellie, what is your full name?" Ellie: "Ellie Joy MRS. Balfour!" Ellie's take on the four seasons: "Now comes snow, then spring, then fall and then GRASS!"
To Rob, upon finding my bra lying on my bed (while I was at work): "*Gasp* Look! It's mommy's BOOBY thing!"
One morning I turned on some praise and worship music to listen to. Ellie asked if I was going to listen to Brain Doerksen (Rob's favourite). "Nope," I replied,"I'm going to listen to Kathryn Scott." Ellie thought about this for a while and then said, "My worship leader is called RAFFI." (Any old Raffi fans out there?)
One afternoon Ellie was playing pretend with Rob, who was feeling rather sluggish and wouldn't get off the couch. So Ellie improvised: "You can be 'Mr. On-The-Couch' and I will be 'Mrs. Mommy-In-The-Whole-Wide-World.'"
One can tell very easily that Ellie is a firstborn girl who has had no exposure to guns. She loves to play camping. And there's always a bear that comes along. Ellie bravely goes out to 'hunt' the bear (having heard the word 'hunt' before), and proceeds to jump around yelling "HUNT! HUNT! HUNT!" She's always a little unsure what to do with her hands. I love it. I wonder how long until Josh teaches her how it's really done? :)
Ever since she received one for her birthday, Ellie has had an unusual way of pronouncing the word "cash register". One day Ellie, Rob and I were all in the kitchen getting supper ready one when I realized that Josh was being very quiet by himself in the living room. "Ellie," I said, "Could you go to the living room and make sure Joshua isn't getting into trouble?" "I'll go see," says Ellie. So she took a few steps, peered into the living room and said, "Nope! He's not in trouble. He's just playing with the CASTRATOR."
We're really sorry we couldn't be there for your party. Instead, Rob tapped into the poet within and made this little video in your honor. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Lots of love, Rob and Jacki and Josh and Ellie p.s. The quality is quite poor. We couldn't seem to get it to run any better.
When I uploaded my photos onto the computer the other day, I realized (to a true blogger's delight) that if I stretched it a little bit (okay, maybe a lot), they all had something in common: HANGIN' OUT. Let me illustrate:
We had a grand total of TWO nice days last week (I feel like I'm in Vancouver again!) but we enjoyed every moment of them. Ellie was ecstatic to be allowed to HANG OUT on our newly snow-free deck... And Joshua was too! There is nothing that quite compares to watching the wonder on a baby's face as they discover a world they can't remember from the year before. Joshua was busy for a loong time crawling in and out of our patio doors, amazed that there was actually a way out of our apartment that he could navigate himself! He, too, was more than thrilled to HANG OUT in the great outdoors:
Lately Ellie has discovered a new favourite place to HANG OUT:On top of Daddy. In fact HANGING OFF of Daddy is just as, if not more fun:
(Ellie likes to called Daddy "Rinky Dinky Donkey" when she rides his back. I can't decide if it's downright hilarious or borderline disrespectful. :)
Last week when our friend Tyler was over, he taught Joshua a skill he'd been trying to master for months: getting on the couch (strangely enough, Tyler was here two years ago when Ellie learned the same thing.) So this is most definitely Joshua's favourite place to HANG OUT:Ellie, of course, also appreciates the couch, but has recently learned it's more fun to HANG upside-down, often pretending to be a bat......but sometimes for a good read, as well.
Lately it's become apparent that I have TWO big fans of dressing up in the house. I guess Joshua is just following the only example he knows - Ellie. Here she is with her 25 cents worth of necklaces from our local thrift store. The necklaces are, of course HANGING around her neck.
It's not uncommon for us to find things HANGING around Joshua's neck quite regularly, like this necklace and headband combo, for instance:
Or his ultimate favourite, a stethoscope:
And speaking of all things HANGING, here's one more to leave you with - the concentration drool. Always hanging! It's the most disgusting when he starts to play with the sticky drool strings.
So there you have it. You're more than welcome to come HANG OUT with us anytime. :)
Hi Everyone! Hope you all had a great Easter weekend! Ours was busy but peaceful...and really fun. My camera battery was dead during a lot of the festivities, but here are a few memories that did actually get captured:
Ellie bought some finger paints with her birthday money from Grandpa and Grandma Balfour and we used them to paint Easter pictures for friends. The one in this photo isn't an Easter picture, but it's the only one where Ellie was smiling for me...sort of. She was too busy concentrating! I hardly heard a peep from her for an hour - finger paints are a new best friend in our home! (Grandpa and Grandma, check your mailbox this week!) Friday we celebrated Easter dinner with my family. My sister Dana made this cheesecake that I not only ate but ENJOYED immensely...changing my opinion about cheesecake entirely! I can now see why it can be a weakness for some people. Like my brother-in-law, Jon, for instance. :)
(I appreciate this guy. He never lets me down when I make him pose for the camera.)
We had a friend from church, Charon, join us, and the girls quickly warmed up to her (anyone willing to read a story is a dear dear friend!) Ellie and Auntie Dana enjoying a moment: Dad barbequed his best chicken breasts and thighs EVER (mouth is watering all over again):
Speaking of mouths watering, Joshua drooled and teethed the whole weekend, as always (2 more teeth and we should get a break until the 2 year molars start...we hope!)After supper the kids got to search for the sweet treasures Nana had hid for them in the basement (Ellie's first ever Easter hunt) and it was awesome to see the girls' eyes bulging at the mass quantities of chocolate eggs that were laid out for us adults.
Saturday I worked all day. And watched a movie with Rob in the evening.
Then on Sunday morning we had an incredibly amazing time at church. The morning started off with Calvary Kids Praise doing their Easter dances. The older kids were amazing but for the sake of time I have left them out of the video. Here's Ellie and her class doing their dance (note how 'out of it' Ellie is until she sees me and her teacher motioning her to put her ribbons down. :) She gets a bit mesmerized by the crowds.)
The best part about the service was all the baptisms that took place. Just three people were slated to get baptized, and ELEVEN ended up getting baptized instead! There weren't many dry eyes in the house. There's no better way, in my opinion, to celebrate that fact that Jesus was raised to life than witnessing others doing the same thing symbolically!
When we got home from church I ran inside and made a trail of paper Easter eggs (that Rob and I had colored while watching our movie the night before) that led the kids to their Easter presents: New placemats! Boy that sounds lame whenever I say it, but they are truly great placemats. :) The kids love them. (And they're not loaded with sugar!)
Do you see what I mean? I no longer have to rush to get food on the table. They're too busy being entertained by their placemats to notice if there's food or not. :)
Sunday evening we had our friends Tyler and Doris over for supper which was wonderful...and that brought us to the end of a very busy, very fun weekend.
So like I asked at Valentines day...what was YOUR favourite part of Easter this year? Did anyone come up with any brilliant ideas for teaching your children the true meaning of Easter while the chocolate and bunnies were dribbling down their chins? Do tell!
Although this has been a relatively uneventful month for the rest of us, Joshua has been busier than ever. He turned 15 months on Thursday, so I thought I'd post an update on his growth in the last 31 days:
He sprouted 6 teeth. That, my friends, involves a LOT of drool (as well as several tantrums and early morning wakeups).
He added more than a dozen words to his vocabulary. You can imagine my surprise when I walked into his room one morning and said, "Hi Joshua!" He said, "HI!" So I said, "How are you?" And he shouted, "GOOOOOD!" He's "GOOOOD!" every single morning now. It's impossible not to start off the day smiling.
This month Joshua grew out of most of his pants. He's taller than any other baby his age that we know.
He also learned to get on Ellie's step stool. He managed to do this before church this Sunday. I couldn't get over how mature he looked...
...combing his own hair! (And lovin' it!)What happened to my baby? Anyhow, the most exciting thing of all that occured this month is best captured on video:
This is a page to keep our family and friends up to date on the adventures in our home and on the growth of our two crazy and fabulous kids, Elianna Joy and Joshua Robert Seth. It is also for myself, that I wouldn't forget the miracles I witness every day, just by being a mom.
Waiting for everyone to show up.
Joshua is currently the best poser in the family.
Waiting in line. They weren't quite as patient as they look. :)
Checking out the bears.
One super auntie.
Joshua shows the bear who's boss!
He relates strongly to things that growl.
It'll be a while before they get their drivers.
Hehe...they almost lost their lunches!
Nana couldn't resist renting the safari jeep. I think it paid off, Dad. :)
Regan on the camel she bailed from shortly after.
Josh trying to feed his hat to the camels.
Mr. Independent. Holding hands was not on the menu that day.
Totally captivated by the zebras. Me, captivated by their captivation.
Mr. Smiles (a.k.a. Drew)
Auntie Dana is always good for an adventure...like peacock chasing, for instance.
After the entire zoo, they still had enough energy for jumping high.
You are a wonderful Dad and Grandpa, and we love you!!
