What I learned over the weekend...

I had a 4 day weekend and it was packed full! On Friday I learned I had too much baby stuff and it was overwhelming. I decided it was time to let go of the stuff we were not using anymore. We haven't 100% decided to be done forever, but we are pretty sure we are done. We will decide our final decision when Ryan is around 3 years old - it will be time to do it or be done for sure. The risk factors are higher the older I get, we don't have space in our house or car for another baby right now, and our lives are not ready for a third child. However, there is still a part of me that wants 3 kids, I just don't know if it is in the cards for us. We plan, God laughs - so who knows!

I have never sold any of the kids stuff. None of it. I have ALL of Noah's clothes since he was born and he is almost 4! So, I had about 10 tubs of his clothes and 5 of Ryan's - plus the infant car seat and stroller, jumper, swings, tummy toys, bottles - SO much stuff! I was beyond overwhelmed with storing it and it is nice to be able to sell it and use the money to buy the next season of stuff they need. We still have not gotten rid of any toys yet - Ryan is still playing with most of the ones Noah is too big for and we took some to Meme's house to play with. Toys are so hard to get rid of - but I think I will soon be overwhelmed by them too and the sale will begin.

I also learned how amazing the United States service men and women are. Friday night Nathan and I went out to dinner and a movie with friends. We went to see Lone Survivor and it was an amazing story! I bit all of my finger nails off and it had my stomach in knots - but it was something I needed to see. I live in my happy little bubble and often forget about what all is going on to protect my freedom. There is so much stuff going on with our troops that so many don't know about - and that is not totally a bad thing. I will just continue to pray for them daily to all come home safely - that is all I know to do.

I learned Saturday that Noah loves his train track that Santa brought him. Yes, sadly this was the first chance we got to put it all together and play with it. Of course he had to have his dinosaurs chase the train down and make it derail :) I kept telling him to be careful not to bump the track. He came running to me while I was in the other room and said he forgot to be careful and bumped the track and wanted me to come fix it. I went in the living room and the T-Rex had destroyed the track and it was all in a pile and I swear I saw smoke coming from the pile :) Forgot to be careful huh? That kid cracks me up!

Sunday I learned that I like shrimp when Nathan cooks it a certain way and Ryan loves corn on the cob! She ate 2 pieces and said "mmmmm" the whole time she was eating it! I have never been much of a seafood fan at all but started liking catfish when I was pregnant with Noah. Now I tried shrimp in the crawfish boil that Nathan made (it had corn, potatoes, sausage, and shrimp in it) and it was really good! I have tried it a few times before and didn't like it but now I do - so strange.

On Monday Noah learned he loves You Tube! He is obsessed with watching little dinosaur videos (a lot of which are educational). He can turn the computer and internet on all by himself and we have to load the website and he takes it from there! He just amazes me!

Now, on to something we hope to learn about soon. Ryan has her genetic appointment at Arkansas Children's Hospital tomorrow. We are doing this strictly as a precaution and do not expect to have any genetic abnormalities in her results - but we are totally ok with it if there are. There are a lot of genetic disorders that kids have that are never even diagnosed because their symptoms are not very extreme and the child never shows the extreme ones. This may just give us an idea of something that could happen with her development in the future. She is already moving way faster with her therapy than I thought she would when she started after her evaluation results. She has not gagged in months since I started making sure her food was more size appropriate for her. She will even put too many pieces in her mouth and still is not gagging so I really think it is just something that happens when she takes too big of a bite or is sick and has drainage issues. She cried less than she was happy during the last few therapy sessions so we are making progress there. Her therapist did teach me things to do with her at home to help her brain remember to use the left leg more and all I have to do is say "Ryan give me your foot" and she scoots over and give it to me and she laughs and smiles while I do the therapy. So, we are asking for extra prayers tomorrow as we get the testing done and peace with the results so we can just go on with her therapy and get her running!