Well, once again I've been wanting to blog for at least a month now but never got around to it. Life is so busy keeping up with just the normal routine of things. We are all starting to get excited for the birth of the newest little Turnbull whoever that may be. God's perfect plan will bring another amazing creation-miracle into our family and home. I'm doing well. A bit tired as it's getting harder to sleep of course but I haven't had a migraine in about 3 weeks! Praise God! I've been wanting to post an update on Hudson for quite some time now... I don't even remember where I left off. He got his first top tooth in a couple weeks ago after a very long process with lots of messy diapers! ;-/ The other tooth is also taking its good ole' time... Otherwise he does this hilarious "scooching" in sitting position all over the place to get around. I've never seen anything like it and it still cracks me up all the time. He has started to be more on his knees and loves to just stand while holding onto one of us. Kyle converted our excersaucer into a walker and he gets around pretty good in that. We are also thrilled that he finally decided to start feeding himself although it's still not the norm. He'll only put his favorite kinds of food in his mouth i.e. cheese cubes, graham cracker pieces, and sometimes cheerios. I think he's just spoiled in that we all cater to him more than necessary. Boy is he in for a rude awakening - poor guy! :0) Hudson is on a pretty good schedule now. He sleeps through the night most nights but is up maybe 1/week. We had put him in the big boys room for a week or so and it worked out okay but they would wake each other up and then finally it was getting too hard for me. So, he's back in his own room in the pack n' play. We had to move him out of the crib because he moves so much in his sleep that he kept bonking his head at night and wake up crying. Also my sweet mom sent me a giant box of exclusively German things. It contained a "Schlafsack" = sleepsack. It's made for older babies, and toddlers. This really helps with his moving around while sleeping. Because Hudson and the new little one will be so close together a sweet young lady from our church will be coming to help us out for a couple weeks after the birth. Grace is 18yrs. and eager to learn anything about being a mom as she's the second-youngest of seven siblings. The kids really like her and she's already been a big help as she's coming 1/week till the baby's here. We made some freezer meals in advance, washed all the baby clothes, etc. What a blessing to have her as well as many, many other girls from our church offer to help out. Each Sunday during church these girls take turns holding Hudson and keeping him happy. It's been hard these last few weeks as my back hurts more. I can't hold him for long without sitting down. So I'm very thankful for these eager, cheerful young girls to help out. Hudson is definitely my most difficult child yet but I know it's largely due to my lack of consistency in training him. I pray that God would grow me in this area and that I would obey him when prompted even though I may be busy with other things...
We are in such an awesome church. The preaching is phenomenal and I'm convinced we have the most humble, caring pastor out there. His family is also incredible. They are expecting their 11th child in June and are an amazing testimony of Christ in their everyday walk with Him. What an answer to prayer to bring them here that we may follow their example as they follow Christ! Praise be to the Lord!!
Timothy is doing good. He's been struggling a little with whining lately so we're working on that. Other than that he's such a cute, loving, funny almost-six-year-old. He will be 6 on Thursday and is counting down the days. Timmy lost his first tooth earlier this month and was thrilled about that. Today at church he sadly bonked heads with a little girl and now his top tooth is loose. Thankfully it's a baby-tooth but it was QUITE the DRAMA. If you know Tim - you know what I mean. He screams extremely L-O-U-D anytime he gets hurt in the least. We have been trying to teach him more self-control but it's not really working. Oh, and if there's blood that he can see he completely falls apart. I think he'd do better with a broken bone than a dot of blood on his hand! Anyways, he's progressing with reading and loves little picture books. He can't wait to read better and loves it when any one of us reads a story to him. He's always following in Titus' footsteps eager to learn anything Titus will tell him. He adores his big brother - it's so precious. They play G.I. Joes and legos mostly. Tim still enjoys being outside but since that's not Titus favorite things to do I find them inside more now. It's been raining a lot here so that's understandable. Some of Tim's chores are to empty the dishwasher each morning, clean up all the shoes, hats, coats; clean up the room, clean up baby toys, vacuuming upstairs, taking garbage out, cleaning out the car with Titus, etc. He's growing in leaps and bounds and much bigger than Titus was at his age. One of his favorite things to do is acting like he's an animal. Everday he's either a tiger, a coyote, a hyena, a wolf, a cheetah, or ....?!? He climbs our banister and stairs and couch and Hudson loves to be entertained that way. Sometimes it gets a little loud so mom can't handle it for too long ;-)
Titus just turned 10 last week!!!! Double digits, one decade old - I CANNOT believe it! Time has flown by and yet I feel like it's not slowing down one bit. He's a great kid. He's doing excellent with school. His favorite subject is science since we switched over to Apologia Science curriculum.
He's reading his textbook that's full of pictures a lot and is constantly talking about what he's learning. We're all learning with him because it's so fascinating! He still loves to read and just discovered the G.A. Henty books. Now it's hard to stop him from reading. He's saving his money so he can buy every last one of them but they are rather expensive. For now a friend of ours has a few of them and he's just borrowing them. In his freetime after school and chores Titus loves playing with legos and thanks to Aunt Kelley and Omi and Gpa he got quite the new collection of them for his birthday. He's still very creative and I love how he comes up with great ideas of what to build without having the "set" for it. I'm also very glad and thankful that we don't have a TV or videogames in our home. It seems better that way for our family. The boys love to play and interact with us and it's good. Of course sometimes it's a little hard when they are loud and wild in the evenings but I wouldn't exchange it for anything. Another fun thing we got Titus for his birthday is a compound bow and arrow. Kyle built him a great target/backstop and he loves being outside rain or shine practicing with it. He's having fun getting better at it each day. Titus is also progressing well with piano and thoroughly ENJOYS it. He loves practicing and learning new songs. His teacher Jesse is only a few years older than Titus and I think that's part of why he enjoys it so much. Timmy can't wait to learn piano himself. Just a quick list of some of Titus chores for the record: sweeping daily, putting the dishes in the dishwasher, raking leaves, exercising, feeding, taking care of Maya, sweeping the walkways outside, vacuuming the car, dusting, etc.
Kyle's been working a lot more lately. He's been stressed and tired a lot. I'm trying to help where/when I can but there's only so much I can do. All the stress has taken a toll on his body and he's now seeing an allergy-specialist doctor to see if we can find the cause for some of his discomforting symptoms. The doc has taken Kyle off of wheat and dairy for the next month so it's been interesting learning new recipes and being careful not to accidentally add flour to the gravy... In a few weeks Kyle will get his blood test back and find out which of the 90 foods tested he is indeed allergic to. I'm praying that that will help us change our eating lifestyle to a much healthier, fitter one and most importantly that it will make him feel much better. Otherwise Kyle's been enjoying some outdoor work like chain-sawing down un-needed trees in the back and chopping wood, as well as just keeping the place looking decent during these mucky winter months. It's so great to live out on the 5 acres!! I love going outside but sadly have very little time to actually be out there. The other day when the rain stopped we all took a nice long walk and it was great! There's hardly ever a car on our road so the kids can ride their bikes and the dog can run. Hudson does okay in the stroller for about an hour or so. Then it's time to head back home into the warmth. Well, I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of things but it's getting late and I'm getting tired and was hoping to still post some pictures. Thank you to those of you who are praying for us. We really appreciate it! The next post will be of the BIG news coming up in approx. 2 weeks or so...
