The latest on Joshua

For the last half of this week I've been fighting something resembling laryngitis (I've already called into work sick for tonight because I have no voice!) so there hasn't been too much going on aside from waiting for it to pass. Because next week is Ellie's birthday and the spotlight will be on her, I thought I'd write a bit about where Joshua's at these days, since babies change so stinkin' quickly! (Note: Because I am madly in love with this child, the ranting nature of this post will probably be more appealing to our long-distance family members!)
Joshua is now just over 14 months old. He's not walking yet (which doesn't concern me...Ellie took so long that I don't have very high expectations!) but he's a very speedy crawler...forwards and backwards! He also likes to climb and will occasionally be found grinning on top of the coffee table.

Aside from the random bad teething day (Joshua is STILL working on all four eye teeth) Joshua is a super happy, super goofy, affectionate little guy. He makes all of us laugh all the time, and enjoys a good snuggle, especially before bed. When we're in public he'll still become quite serious and watch everyone else, but at home he often steals the show! I think he has Rob's sense of humor - you only get to see the full, ridiculous extent of it if you know Rob really well. For instance - Joshua loves to tease Ellie by poking her in the face (often she laughs, other times it's hugely offensive) :

Then he notices that we WANT him to do it again, so he decides to make mashed cookies with his forehead instead:And when he lifts his face up he gives us his best goofy grin of all time (click the picture to see it enlarged - it cracks us up every time!):

The other day I was playing ball with Joshua. Suddenly he lifts the ball over his head as if to throw it back to me, gives me this knowing grin, then speed-crawls over to the baby gate with the ball in one hand and throws it over the gate and down the stairs, giggling the whole time. I think he'll make the ideal pesky little brother!!

Joshua enjoys watching videos with Ellie, but isn't capable of sitting safely on a chair yet. So he's adopted the diaper drawer as his new video-watching post:Joshua loooves to talk as much as his sister. It can get awful loud at our dinner table! The only thing is, most of Joshua's words consist of once syllable: "Ahhhhhhh!" in every different tone. He really believes he's telling us a story. Here he is pointing to the cars outside and 'telling' me about them:
He has about 15 actual words in his vocabulary (including "Hiyeee" (hi),"joojoo" (choo choo) and "bapa" (Grandpa)), but his annunciation is pretty terrible, and he mostly enjoys doing animal sounds. He usually gets too excited about what he's going to say to actually say it clearly. It's quite amusing!
Have I mentioned that Joshua excels at temper tantrums? They're short, but they're frequent! When we say 'no' to Joshua he listens, but makes him mad, so he does this quick little yell-and-eat-the-carpet routine. He usually recovers after about 3 seconds and goes on to something else. I'm glad he has a will (it's important for the future!) but I'm also glad that mine is stronger. :)

A few other things Joshua enjoys are:
combing other people's hair (must get that from Ellie):

Drawing (there are pencil crayons everywhere in our house! Yeah, they're sharper than crayons, but at least he can't eat them when I'm not looking) We will often find him laying on the floor drawing all by himself.And he's also beginning to like dressing up, too. :) He put this necklace on himself and was quite proud!
Often when he's really quiet I'll check on him and find him trying very hard to put on his socks or a hat. He doesn't get frustrated very easily, even though he never gets it. It must be a trait of a second-born...he's not the perfectionist that Ellie can be.
Joshua loves to wrestle, he loves to put toys away (and his stinky diapers, too - he suddenly started cleaning them up on his own!), and he still loves to dance - especially while standing in a shopping cart! He's passionate about rubbing food in his hair, splashing wildly in the tub, and sticking his hands in the toilet.

14 month old Joshua sure adds a lot of color to our lives.
We love you Monkey!
(Good job if you made it to the end of this post :)

A Day in the Life of a Flower Girl (Ellie's perspective)

So on Saturday two of my best adults got married - Uncle Tig and Auntie Doris. People kept calling Tig "Tyler", but I don't really know why. I call him Tig. I was pretty excited that they asked me to be their princess for the day! Here's what happened:

First we drove to Winnipeg. I don't really know what Winnipeg IS, so I asked my mom and dad "Are we at Winnipeg?" at least 30 times that day. They started getting grumpy about that question. We went to the hair salon and I ate my lunch while a lady named "Amanda" did my hair like a princess.

Fluffy watched the whole time. Fluffy is one of my best friends. She helped me keep my attitude good on a pretty long, busy day.

Amanda did a pretty good job!
After we went to Uncle Jon and Auntie Dana's house so we could put on our wedding clothes. I thought Daddy looked just like a prince! (I kinda want to marry him one day)

After I got into my princess dress, mommy made me practice my best fake smile!

Then it was time for the REAL pictures. I thought Doris looked like the most beautiful lady in the world! I really like her.

There were lotttts of people dressed pretty! We were all supposed to smile at the same time. It didn't always work.
One thing neat about Doris is that even though it was her most special day in her life, she always took time to talk to me too:

Uncle Tig is the same way. He calls me his 'niece' even though I'm not! I love that guy.
Here's Daddy looking so handsome again. My mommy made a good choice!

Here he is telling me how pretty he thinks I am (and thinking about how hard he's gonna cry when I get married).
Pictures is HARD WORK!

After pictures we went back to Uncle Jon and Auntie Dana's and I had SO much fun with their puppy Dexter that I TOTALLY ruined my princess hair! Mommy panicked a little bit, and then decided that she'd just put it in a pony tail and let bygones be bygones! Then it was time for my most important job ! Throwing flowers on the white carpet! I did my best and I think I even made my Nana and Grandpa cry some tears of joy.
Then it was time for the reception (and by this time I was pretty tired). I spent most of the time practicing my dance moves, even when I wasn't supposed to. I call the dance floor the 'living room'. Me and the ring bearers had lots of fun chasing each other around! Mommy didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I let out my loudest, most fakest yawn during one of the speeches! Daddy and his friends called the 'groomsmen' were REALLY goofy and made a lot of people laugh and smile.

Uncle Tig and Auntie Doris looked sooo happy together. I think they'll have a happy life, and I sure hope they get me some new 'cousins'! Thanks for inviting me to be your little wedding princess, Tig and Doris! I had a blast!

Busy Week!

Hi Folks! Sorry for the late post but this is turning out to be a very busy week. Rob and Ellie are in our friends' wedding this weekend, so it's only going to get busier! We'll post more about that next week, but in the meantime, here's a (somewhat lame) Balfour video to keep you entertained :) Enjoy!

Valentine's Day

Hey All! Did you have a great Valentine's weekend?
Mine was...interesting.

Friday night it began with a trip - by myself! - to the mall in Winnipeg to try and find a dress for an upcoming wedding that Rob and Ellie are both a part of. Perhaps this wasn't really part of Valentine's day, but it's a cool story, so bear with me. :)

My old black dress wasn't fitting quite right since the kids were born, and the only other one I own is my maternity dress. No thanks! So it was high time to find a new dress...something I was not looking forward to. It's not much fun shopping for something that one doesn't really enjoy wearing, you know? ANYHOW, before I left Rob and I discussed my budget and he gave me quite a high number just in case I ended up having to buy new EVERYTHING (underwear, etc.) along with the dress. I told him not to worry, that I was aiming for a dress around $50.

So I got to the mall, asked God to please help me out, took a deep breath, and then hit just about every store that might have a dress in it. To no avail. I tried on three dresses but they all sucked. All the salespeople seemed too busy to help. Finally when I got to the last store I desperately prayed, "Jesus, please send someone to help me! Apparently I don't know how to find a dress on my own."

And then I started at the beginning again, at a store called Smart Set. Wouldn't you know, someone (finally!) came to help me...a young saleslady. I'm pretty sure she'll never forget the look of desperation on my face when I told her my plight. She didn't seem too concerned. In fact, she looked almost excited to help a poor special needs shopper like myself. She led me up to a rack of dresses I hadn't seen on my first trek around the mall and said, "How about this one?" And pulled out a dress that...I actually liked! And in my size (which is almost impossible to find)!
So I went to try it on, and as I hung it on the peg in the wall I noticed the price tag: $50.00. Not $49.99. Nope. FIVE. ZERO. Exactly the number I had told Rob. And I knew that yet again, God had answered His child's cry for help. In buying a silly dress, of all things. He really does care about the small details of our lives.
So, not only does this dress fit like it was sewn for me, but it's MODEST and I won't have to worry about flashing people as I chase after Ellie all day. I also got a camesole for underneath, a necklace, pantihose and new shoes all for about $100. Hopefully it stays in style for at least 10 years, because that's about how often I'd like to go shopping for a dress. :) Unless, of course, the shopping trip goes like this one did.

So Saturday I worked all day selling cheesy white teddy bears holding red hearts to expectant boyfriends and tired husbands desperately hoping that they were buying their women the gift of their dreams. It was interesting taking note of all the different attitudes these men held towards romancing their girls! Some were obviously begrudging the fact that they were in a gift store. Others were downright nervous. The best ones had a twinkle in their eye and said things like "Every day is Valentine's day with my wife!" Okay. There was only one that said that. Anyhow...

I was curious if Rob would have anything planned for our Valentine's evening, seeing as he was preaching the next morning and his sermon wasn't done yet. We don't usually put a lot of effort into Valentine's day, so I wasn't expecting much.

We got home and I found out that Joshua had made me his very own special Valentine's gift - a broken lamp (thanks Joshua)! And Rob had done his best to make a Valentine's meal for the family...a casserole which is now affectionately called, "Fiasco Casserole." You see, the broken lamp incident happened right in the middle of the casserole preparations...resulting in some ginormously overdone noodles, some rock hard ground beef...and well, I won't get into the rest. I totally appreciated Rob's effort. :)

It's an interesting thing, being married to a teacher/preacher. Rob, knowing that he wasn't going to have any time to do anything for Valentine's that night but still wanting me to feel special, quickly threw three old sunflower seeds from the top shelf of our cupboard into an envelope. Then he scribbled, "Happy Valentine's Day" on the outside. He could have just said, "Don't worry, Darling, I have something planned for us for tomorrow". But instead he told me to put the seeds in a cup of water...and that if I was patient, they would grow. (i.e. he had three things planned for Valentine's day, but I'd have to wait.) Perhaps a bit of a half-baked illustration, but I would certainly give him points for effort! :) He is a very sweet guy.

So Sunday I got my first "seed". Rob took me out for dinner to our favourite local restaurant and we had a wonderful time talking about deep and not-so-deep things, and later after we put the kids to bed we watched a movie, something we haven't had time to do in a loong time. It was perfect. Apparently there are two more seeds to come yet, so I'll have to let you know what they turn out to be!

Yikes. This is turning out to be a long post with very few photos. Apologies to my more visually-oriented friends out there. Here's a few pictures to make up for my long-windedness:

Ellie and I spent a lot of time writing out her Valentine's cards, and I was very surprised when (I guess after practicing her name so many times) she suddenly did this:

I had to coach her which letters came in what order, of course, but what a neat milestone to witness her reaching!

I didn't find time this week to bake my all-time favourite cookies, but was super blessed when my mom gave us a whole bag full of them for our Valentine's treat!
The kids were pretty pumped, too.

So anyways, I'll leave you with a few of Ellie and Joshua's 1 and 3 year photos (taken by a friend) that are currently being sent to all you Balfours and Fargeys along with Ellie's valentines!


P.S. comments have been few and far in between lately so I'll leave my quiet friends out there with a question to answer: what was your favourite part of Valentine's Day this year?

A weekend away!

This past weekend Rob and I had our first weekend away from the kids since Ellie was born! A good chunk of the adults in our church (123 people) packed up and went to a retreat centre called Wilderness Edge, in a town called Pinawa (about 1.5 hours away from where we live). There are no words to describe how amazing this weekend was. Even though I got barely any sleep, I came home super refreshed...there's something to be said for having all your meals cooked and cleaned for you, and for not having to worry about feeding anyone but yourself! But besides the obvious refreshment that comes from a little break from parenthood, the most refreshing thing was that God's presence was absolutely tangible the entire weekend. He spoke in amazing ways and touched a lot of hearts, including my own. I have a feeling life might not ever be the same.

Rob and I also thoroughly enjoyed having a whole chunk of time to ourselves.We used our spare time on Saturday afternoon to go for a walk. Rob had it set in his mind that we needed to tromp through a field of snow. "It's too deep!" I insisted. "Look, you can see the grass sticking through the snow", says Rob. "Those are small trees," I says. But being the submissive wife I am, I follow Rob into the snow and proceeded to fall flat on my face because the snow was actually up over my knees. Hehe. That's my body print in the snow behind me in this picture:

This is a picture of Rob being sat on by me in the snow as punishment:

After we warmed up we spent the rest of the afternoon playing games with friends:

This was the "old folks" table. My parents are sitting towards the back. :)

Later we spotted a deer in the parking lot outside. Apparently Pinawa is full of them.
The food was delicious...but there were some mixed feelings about seeing the actual pig before we ate it!
Whenever we got homesick we grabbed a few hugs from the most adorable Ezra Micklefield.
And I think only the people who were on the retreat could have a true appreciation for this photo. This is one of our pastors, Dave, throwing me a chocolate mint. Dave has a thing for chocolate mints. (It hit me on the arm about one second later.)

As great as it was to be away, we were downright excited to be back with the kids again. There's no place like home!