Jude...you make it better!

My sweet baby is turning TWO!  I can't believe it.  I'll probably say that every birthday that passes, but it seriously seems IMPOSSIBLE that he's that big.  Big enough to say how old he is.  Here are some things that make our Jude...OUR JUDE!

He has the sweetest hazel eyes that come directly from his Daddy.  They melt me.

He is definitely a man of many moods.  Which is why we often call him "Moody Judey."  And I can take full credit for that ;-)

Jude LIVES BIG.  I say this a lot.  Meaning, he's fearless.  Nothing scares my baby boy, which means that everything he does terrifies me.  Seriously, I see medical bills in our future.

He has the cutest baby words.  Penn didn't really have a whole lot of baby words, so I really love hearing Jude say things like, "Tank choo (thank you),"  "Wootsh (oops), "Sowy (sorry)," and "Too (I love you, too)" among many others.  He didn't talk for a long time, but now he's saying new words every day.  He also loves sign language, so I try to learn new things to teach him as often as possible.

He's scared of noises like dogs barking at night, airplanes or jets, and motorcycles...even if they are far away and we can barely hear them.  And he runs straight for moi when he hears them.  I eat up every second!  Yep, he's a mama's boy:)

Speaking of eating, he loves vegetables and grains and eats WAY more than Penn.  Meat, not so much.  He likes the idea of meat, but will chew it up for a while and then spit it out.  It's pretty gross.

Baby Boy plays hard!  He is constantly on the move, usually trying to do something dangerous or making the biggest mess possible in the shortest amount of time.  No joke.  I've never seen a kid that can make a mess this fast! 

He's a flirt!  This kids LOVES girls.  It makes no matter whether she's 8 days or 80 years old.  And they seem to love him (it's those eyes, for real!).

Mr. Independent.  He has no idea that he's any younger than his big brother or the grade school daredevil boys that live in our neighborhood for that matter.  And if you try to tell him that he's not big enough, he'll show you the biggest tantrum he can muster!

He sleeps!  After he actually STARTED sleeping at 9 months, he has been the perfect little boy at night.  If he and Penn didn't share a room, he would never wake up in the middle of the night.

He wants to be just like his big brother and he cries for Penn more often than anyone else in the family.  If we want him to do something and he's reluctant, we tell him, "Do ____ just like Penn!"  That usually does the trick ;-)

He is so unique.  For so long, he seemed like Penn's twin (not that twins can't be different...).  It was so hard NOT to compare the two look-alikes!  Now, God's creativity is clear.  Jude is a masterpiece and we are having so much fun getting to know this little boy.

Our sweet "Baby Jude" makes our family so much better. Simply put...HE'S AWESOME, and I'm so thankful to be his mommy!  Happy birthday, sweet boy!

P is for Patience.

Week one of "home-preschooling" is over!  On Monday, we started this simple little curriculum I bought from Laura Coppinger at www.heavenlyhomemakers.com, called, "Learn Your Letters, Learn to Serve."  It's as simple as it sounds and I loved it as soon as I saw it because it gave me an opportunity to try out homeschooling without dishing out tons of cash for a preschool curriculum that was totally unnecessary.  I also loved that I could take this and run with it completely or just use bits and pieces of it that would fit into our days.  I am all about using someone else's good ideas:)  And who doesn't want to teach their children to have a servant's heart???

I was going to tell you all about it...how I bought it, what we did day by day, why I chose not go linearly through the alphabet...you know, stuff you're probably not that interested in.  Instead, I'll tell you this story and you will hopefully see the heart behind the lessons.

Day One.  We talked the Letter "P" to death.  Penn really liked the idea of "school" so I thought things were going pretty well.  Then, we tried to think of people that we could pray for that started with "P."  Unfortunately, we could only think of four people (bet you can guess two of them...).  It suddenly occurred to me that "penny" starts with "P" and when I worked in a public school, we took up a collection for "Pennies for Patients."  That sounded perfect to me!  I told Penn that we would be on the lookout for pennies for a while and that we would give them to sick people in the hospital.  Shortly after, I found him in his room, dumping out all of his money from his banks.  He was separating all the pennies so he could give them to the sick people.  I think I might have cried.

I see a ton of lessons about serving in that face right there...and I'm the one who needs to learn them.