The Tale of the Lion and the Chick

Once upon a time there was the CUTEST little chick named Keziah. (Who could resist this plump little bundle of sweetness??)

She was minding her own business as she was crawling along,

And catching up on some reading...

When suddenly she spotted a ferocious beast coming towards her!

It was Micah the mighty Lion!

He was a fierce and angry animal.

Before Keziah knew what happened, she was mauled by the predator!

He tackled her down,

And let out a mighty ROAR!

In an act of desperation, the Chick managed to escape while the Lion stopped to "cheese" for the photographer.

And luckily for the sweet little Chick, Daddy came home to keep the ferocious Lion away from her for good :)

The End

Busy

I realize my blog has been sadly lacking in updates lately. Life has been busy in the last couple of weeks with my parents' visit and family time and the start of our care group (which Erik and I are co-leading this year). We also have a couple of big decisions to make in the next little while. Our time and our thoughts are occupied these days.

I babysat for Caleb a couple of times this week while Doug & Elissa had more doctor and physio appointments. Micah is infatuated with "baby Cay-dib"! Caleb smiled easily for Micah too. Here he is with a little grin for the camera:

Micah enjoyed feeding him his bottle:

My own kids are keeping my days busy as always. Most of the time I am mediating between Micah and Keziah, but there are rare moments when they seem to get along.

Here's Micah feeding Keziah her sweet potatoes the other day. I love how wide his mouth is!


Sharing a puffed-wheat picnic with Bob the Builder:


And this last picture makes me laugh. Lately, Keziah loves to crawl around with objects in her mouth, especially her own socks :)

Weekend Update

The week with my parents is over and they are headed back to Manitoba in the morning. It was fun watching Micah interact with them this time. I observed as he grew more and more comfortable and attached to them over the course of the week. It was also fun observing Micah through the eyes of my parents. They commented on the fact that he's willing to try new foods and eats a wide variety of things - Erik and I took that as a compliment since we're always focused on the foods that he doesn't eat. We also noticed how much Micah sings. He'll get a song in his head and sing it over and over for hours! The favourite this week was "Oh no, you never let go, through the calm and through the storm..." It's a Matt Redman song I think. Anyway, it's Micah's new favourite. He definitely takes after me with his singing. I think me and my sister Erin sang my parents' ears off as kids.

Our trip to Bellingham was great. We did lots of shopping. Sleeping was an adventure as always but at least we had a separate room from my parents. Keziah had some bowel issues and filled her diaper about 5 times a day - not excluding the nighttime.
The kids LOVED the water though...

On Friday night we found out that my brother and his wife finally had their baby boy, Judah Daniel who weighed in at 9 lbs, 4 oz. Congrats to Joel, Laura and big sisters Maddy & Olivia!

Sunday was my 28th birthday - I agree with Kelly that 28 seems like an old number. How will it feel to turn 29? And then 30? I still feel like I'm 18 most days. Erik brought me "breakfast in bed" so to speak. He went to the continental breakfast buffet and loaded up a tray of food for the four of us to share :)

After I snapped those pictures, I figured I needed one of the birthday day girl. So, this is lovely me first thing on my birthday morning:

I have to add, Erik has improved drastically in the birthday present department since we first met. He bought me three great shirts and then let me buy a pair of shoes that I had been eyeing.

The shopping tuckered us all out. Micah had enough on Sunday morning as we were picking up some final things and fell asleep in the bottom of the Sears cart:


Granny had some fun painting Micah's fingers and toes yesterday. Erik wasn't very impressed.


We finally had a sunny day today. My mom and I took Micah to Mill Lake and he had fun throwing rocks at the ducks:


I wanted a picture of my dad with the kids and this was the best I could do (check out Micah's pretty fingers...):

Keziah & Grandpa:

She gets cuter and cuter every day!

We bought a new carseat for Micah and finally upgraded Keziah to Micah's old one. They were both quite pleased and we snapped a picture in our living room this afternoon.

We also celebrated Thanksgiving this weekend with Erik's family. It was pretty low key this year in light of all that we've been through these last few months. Although they are joys for us and things to be thankful for, they all seem over-shadowed by a grief that still feels so fresh.

Now it's back to a normal week for us as my parents head home. I realized today that Micah has kept his underwear totally dry for the last few days. We've been so busy that I didn't notice! That's something to be thankful for since it's been a long haul since the accident in July when everything in his little life went into upheaval. He's also been sleeping better and is way less anxious about being apart from me or Erik. It will still be awhile until we can leave him in KidsQuest (Sunday School) without one of us, but for now we'll take what we can get :)

Anyway, that's enough for tonight. Hope you all have a blessed week...

Gramps & Gran

My parents arrived from Manitoba on Saturday night for their annual October visit. Micah only sees them a couple of times a year and it usually takes him a little while to warm up to them. Grandpa always has some smarties up his sleeve which seem to do the trick! And Granny brought Micah a new play-doh set and some books and that worked pretty well too.



We've had a lot of rain the last few days so we've been kind of cooped up inside the house. My parents brought their laptop and right now my mom and I are both sitting at our screens. I got her signed up on Facebook yesterday and now she's addicted :) We're also anxiously waiting for the birth of the newest Harder grandchild. My brother and his wife are almost 2 weeks overdue with my little nephew! If he holds out until Sunday, he'll share a birthday with me! (Just kidding Laura, I don't want you to be pregnant that long!)

Granny kept Micah busy yesterday baking pies...

I guess we should've put an apron on Micah first.

Making a special "apple pie pizza pop" just for Micah:

Poking holes in it before it goes into the oven:

We are headed into the States for the weekend - to do some shopping while the dollar is so good and to celebrate my birthday. I hope that not everyone else in the lower mainland has the same idea - border line-ups aren't my ideal way to spend a Friday morning...

A rough week for Keziah

Don't let this innocent face fool you!


Keziah has been bruised and battered this week - mostly by the hands of her older brother. The transition to crawling has made Keziah a lot happier, but unfortunately it has made Micah a lot un-happier! He sees her coming from across the room and starts screaming at her, ramming her, crawling on top of her, hitting her... You get the picture. He likes to hug her really roughly or roll on top of her. I know he doesn't do it out of a kind heart, he does it because teasing her like this gets a reaction. From me and from Keziah. And Keziah is SO over-dramatic. She'll start wailing even if he barely touches her. No wonder teasing her is so satisfying for Micah. They remind me of a cat and dog we used to have - Spunky (the dog) would chase and tease Fluff (yep, that's the cat) and she would get SO mad at him. Spunky always had this satisfied look on his face until Fluff got him with her claws or something... I'm secretly hoping Keziah will learn to defend herself soon.

Here's Micah "playing" with Keziah. I know that look in his eye already when he starts heading towards her...

Here Micah is using her head as a drum for his balloons. She thought it was fun until he started playing double-time...

One day earlier in the week Micah got angry with her about something and pushed her down when she was sitting on her knees. She hit her head on the bottom edge of a cabinet and smashed her face into the laminate floor. She wailed like mad but I couldn't see any damage initially. It wasn't until half an hour later that I thought she was smiling kind of funny. Sure enough her lip had started to swell.

I tried to capture her wounds on camera but the pictures don't really do them justice. The first picture shows where Keziah's head met the cabinet and the second one shows off her fat lip.

I'm not sure what to do with him. I feel like this is what I sound like all day, "Micah, Micah! Micah stop! Micah leave her alone! Micah stop rolling on top of her! Micah - she doesn't like that!" I've talked to him about how when Keziah cries, that's her way of saying, "this doesn't feel good, please stop!" We use the naughty corner quite consistently and spankings occasionally and taking away privileges. What else can I do?

Micah in the "naughty corner":


I remember someone comparing children to puppies (sorry for another animal comparison) - that they need to be trained how to behave. It's interesting to see that even at that young age, our natural instincts are to only look out for ourselves. It helps to think of Micah's behaviour as a lack of self-control and so I'm praying that our consistent discipline will eventually help him learn good behaviour. But some days it feels like we're getting nowhere!


Keziah's rough week didn't end there. Last night Erik had the kids upstairs at Grandma & Grandpa's house when Keziah fell into the edge of a bookshelf. Her head immediately started to swell to a red golfball size lump on her forehead. It looked so awful! I didn't take a picture of it at its worst last night, but I took one this morning. There's still a bit of a lump and a large bruise is forming... (You can also see her cute little tooth in this picture :)


Now we're looking ahead to a full weekend. Erik has an early hockey game tonight which means that I might actually be able to take Micah. And my parents are expected to arrive sometime this weekend from Manitoba so I need to get the house in order!

Sunny Sunday

It is a beautiful day in Abbotsford. Erik gave me a nice break by taking the kids outside to play this afternoon. I went out at one point to snap a few pictures.


Erik is saying good-bye to his truck and putting it up for sale. It's not really a sad good-bye though since he will soon be driving around a company truck which is much newer and much more reliable! His job is going amazingly well and the father-son team that he works for treat him like gold. Erik will have to take off the Toews Home Builder decals on the truck which is a little bit sad. If things continue to go well with this new job, he may end up dissolving his business altogether.

Me and the kids - it's SO hard to get a good picture with TWO squirmy participants so this one isn't actually too bad :)


Hurry and take the picture before she pulls my hair...!

Our animated 10-month old. I can relate to Heather's attempt at taking 10-month baby pictures!

Micah lounging on the grass...