easy as a-b-c…

we’ve recently begun using My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God’s Word in Little Hearts with mikey and allie as part of their bedtime routine.  it’s been really great so far, especially for mikey who’s at the age where he can memorize things so easily and has lately been very interested in what things mean.  i’ll usually read the story a couple times during the week, the first time i read the story, i say the verse three times and have the kids repeat after me.  the rest of the nights i’ll say, “mikey, ‘a’ is for ‘a soft…'” and then he’ll go on to rattle off the verse complete with the text reference.  we go through each letter that we’ve covered so far like this.  and then i have allie say them, too.  the plan is to cover one verse/story per week (or two, depending on how well they know the verse).

it’s been so sweet to see God’s word being hidden in their hearts (as well as phil’s and mine too!), and to begin to see the fruit growing from it.  like the other day when i was reminding allie that she needed to obey mommy the first time, mikey piped up with, “hey!  that’s like our verse, ‘children, obey your parents'” (thoughtful pause), “for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.”  (another thoughtful pause).  “mommy, what’s that mean?”  so in that teachable moment, i was able to explain to mikey why we want him and allie to obey their mommy and daddy– so that the Lord would be well-pleased with them.

so far, we’ve gone through the first three letters:

• a — “a soft answer turns away wrath.”  proverbs 15:1
• b — “blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.”  matthew 5:9
• c — “children, obey your parents in all things for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.”  colossians 3:20

i can hear mikey’s little voice saying these verses as i type them out.    moving on to ‘d’ next– “do all things without complaining or grumbling”.  definitely something i need to have hidden in my own heart!

in other news, i took mikey, allie, and lauren in to the doctor’s office this morning.  yep, that’s right.  all three of them.  by myself.  and i survived!  though at the moment when i was changing allie on the high table out of her poopy diaper and in mid-wipe heard mikey say that he needed to pee-pee and see him begin to do the pee-pee dance and rush him around the corner to the bathroom only to find it was locked with someone in it and have to rush him back to our room and just have him pee in a little pink kidney-shaped bowl and pour that pee into a urine sample cup because they wanted a sample from him and then return to finish putting on a new diaper on allie all while the nurse lady looked on, i seriously had doubts about my odds of survival.  ha.  but survive i did, even after mikey and allie both got their flu shots and i had to hold them both on my lap to comfort their tears away, promising a toy for them both for being so brave.  though the toy will have to wait til daddy gets home because i’m not brave (read: crazy) enough to haul them all into a store to pick out toys on my own yet. 

the doctor appointment was mainly to get flu shots for them both but because they were new patients, they each had to have check-ups first- which included complete separate histories for each.  apparently the info from one sibling can’t be cut and pasted into the other sibling’s, so we had to cover the same info twice.  sigh.  lauren just came along for the ride.  whew, the whole ordeal took two hours!  but we’re very happy with our doctor and so glad the wait has always been super short (as compared to the obnoxious wait time to see my ob/gyn–45 minutes every time!).

so the findings for my petite kiddos:

mikey is now 38 inches tall (4th percentile) and 32.5 lbs (10th percentile).

allie is now 33 3/4 inches tall (10th percentile) and 27.9 lbs (45th percentile). 

the doctor said allie was in the high-normal range for weight, but still normal so she’s fine.  i wasn’t worried about her knowing she’ll continue thinning out as she grows, but was glad to know the doctor wasn’t worried either.

now all three kiddos are sound asleep upstairs and i think i’ll go join them too.  i’m pooped.