Goin' to Carolina

Tomorrow morning Maddie and I are headed off to the wonderful state of North Carolina for the next five weeks!  Yeah, that's a long time!  We are going to the beach for a few days for a family girls trip (always memorable and exciting! ; )  )  then we'll be back in Raleigh for about two weeks.  If you are my friend and you live in Raleigh and you read this then we should hang out while I'm there!  Then we are headed back to the beach to hang out with some college buddies, and then Brandon will come meet us there later that week.  I'm not really looking forward to being away from home for so long, especially since I just got back from India a week and a half ago.  But Brandon will be busy studying for finals, and that's usually stressful for everyone!  So I'm sure I'll have more fun hanging out w/ friends and family!  

While I'm gone I have to make sure I am working out, because in September I'm running a 5k and at the rate I'm going  I'll be coming in dead last...like everyone would have already packed up and left dead last.  So make sure to ask me if I've kept up with the training!  

My baby's not a baby anymore:(

I haven't posted much about Maddie lately, and since she's been so busy growing up, I thought people might like an update!  We have officially entered into toddlerhood!  She is taking about 6 steps, so she's not walking around all the time, but she's getting close!  She has now been crawling for half of her life, so it's about time that she get motivated to stand up and run around.  She loves to walk around holding your hand, and it's so cute to watch her and her daddy doing that, she seems so big!  She loves to watch Sesame Street and especially Elmo.  In the mornings she watches that sometimes while she's eating breakfast.  

We have also officially graduated from the bottle to the sippy cups!  She's been drinking juice from the cup for a while, but for whatever reason would not drink milk from it.  Oh, that's another wonderful thing, she is no longer on formula (praise the Lord!  $25 a can was killing us!)  She's on soy milk b/c of her sensitivity to dairy when she was little, but we're mixing it with whole milk now, so we'll see how she does on that.  I am so excited to not be washing any more bottles, or mixing any more formula, it's so wonderful!  She eats all table food, and loves chicken and peas.  We have to save the fruit for last b/c she goes crazy over it and that's all she'd eat if she could.  

We have put away the baby car seat, and she's now in the foward facing toddler seat which everyone loves!  She is much happier being able to see us, and see the world.  

Currently she is very attached to her binky and her dolly.  She carries her doll around with her everywhere, and when I try to take it away when she eats she gets quite upset.  We'll be working on taking the binky away in the next...hmmm...year or so?  I'm dreading that.  I definitely don't want her to be 3 or 4 still asking for a binky.  But I also don't want to deal with sleepless nights again!  She really only has it for sleeping, and even now wakes up sometimes crying b/c she can't find it!  I don't know what the ideal age to start taking it away is, but as the last 14 months have taught me, when the time is right, she'll be ready.    

She is also currently OBSESSED with books!  Not so much really reading or looking at them, but just taking them out of her book basket and bringing them to me.  We do this for a large portion of the day.  Sometimes she wants to look at the pictures or listen to me read one, but mostly just piling them on top of me!  She doesn't really play with many toys.  For whatever reason she is just stuck on this!  

I also think she's starting to become a little like her BFF Hazel, and obsessing about shoes.  Any time she sees them she says some version of the word shoe, and insists on putting them on.  

She's got quite a few words.  Juice and fish being some of the latest.  She points to your eyes, nose, mouth, toes, belly button, and sometimes ears.  When you say "p-eww"  she hold her nose...it's so cute!    

Well I could write tons more, but that's enough for now.  Maybe I'll try to find the latest pics of her to post later!

Back to life....back to reality

So coming back to America this time was much easier.  India is still on my mind, and I'm still processing everything I experienced and learned, but it's definitely not as difficult as the other two times I went.  Maybe it's because I'm older, and have my home and my family, or maybe it's because I knew what to expect .  I think when you go to a place like India for the first time you are totally shocked and taken aback by the extreme poverty and filth, and the apparent indifference of most of the people living there.  And you want so badly to be able to do something, but feel almost completely helpless.  You know giving a beggar kid a few pennies isn't really going to help for more than that moment.  You know that being loving, and putting a smile on somebody's face isn't going to provide them with all their needs.  But as Andy told me, if you can't help a hundred, help one.  So this time I went focused on what I could do, even if it was for just a few.  I also came back focused on what I could continue to do to help the ministry with future groups going over, and knowing that I would back as often as I could.  

As I sat in church this Sunday I was faced with the stark difference between the American church and the International church.  Specifically churches who face persecution.   We all get so stuck on our own struggles and what we're going through that we fail to see the bigger picture.  I think a lot of Christians need a huge reality check.  We need our eyes opened to what really matters, and what it really means to suffer for Christ. 

 While we were in India we got to know an 18 year old bible college student who was imprisoned for 3 months when he was 16 for reading a book about the lies of Hinduism.  Just because he checked out a book and read it!  And he continues to love the Lord, and to study and learn about the Bible so he can go back and tell everyone about Jesus.  To look in his eyes you can see the strength of the Lord, and the grace and wisdom and peace only He can give.  I don't know too many 18 year old American boys that could have gone through that.  

Just being around him, and many other kids who have been persecuted for their faith gives me a boldness to be more outspoken about my faith.  It seems like a lot of us are so scared about what another person might think, or if we'll say the wrong thing and offend them.  But if that's the worst thing we have to experience through sharing our faith, I'd say we're pretty lucky.   

That's my rant for now...more stories to come.

Back home

Well I got back from India on Wednesday, and I'm still trying to catch up on my sleep.  It was an awesome trip and I am so glad I got to be a part of it.  We went to help clean up the orphanages, but it turned out to be a lot more than that!  I'll post more about what happened on the trip after I'm not so tired! I'm only able to sleep when Maddie sleeps, so that's where I'm headed in a second!  I wanted to post just a few things I am now more thankful for after being in India!

1.  Paved roads and traffic laws

2.  Buuurrrgerrrr

3. Trash cans and garbage men

4.  Clean water

5.  Cows that stay in the fields

6.  Drivers who don't use their horns 

7.  Toilets and sewage systems

8.  Cold milk

9.  People who don't stare at you 

10.  Electricity that stays on all the time and AC!

I hear my pillow calling me....check back later for some more stories!