rachel said the clearest full sentence she's ever said in her entire life this morning. now she's been using sentences and semi-sentences for a while now, but most of the time i need to be her translator, but this morning i went to go get her when she woke up and she was showing me how her bed was soaked with her urine (yeah... potty training... not so much). i went to pull her sheet off her bed when she said "my clothes are all wet too." clear as a bell. no words left out. it sounded like there was a 5 year old behind me. it was a little freaky, but i was extremely proud :)

Potty-training?

i've heard all kinds of advice against potty-training your child before you're about to to have another one, but i've thrown up my hands and said "what the hey?"

rachel has been really interested in the potty for a couple months now. she's actually started saying "i wanna pee pee in the potty" when she sees me go. what am i supposed to say to that? no, you can't pee pee in the potty? i don't think so. since i have a 4 day weekend with nothing much to do i thought we'd give it a try. no pressure. no big girl panties yet. just an attempt to land some urine in the proper place.

we had our first attempt tonight before bed. i told rachel we were going to go put her pee pee in her own potty and she shot in the bathroom so fast. i laid out a towel and put her little girl potty on top and stripped her down to that cute little bare bottom. we read her favorite stories and sang lots and lots of songs for about 30 minutes. no pee pee. and her bottom was getting a very red ring around it from sitting on a hole. no big deal. i just wanted to give it a shot and give her a fun experience playing with her big girl potty. now rachel loves to be naked, so i decided to let her run around the bathroom and keep playing for a few minutes (and hey, an accident on a tile floor is definitely not so bad to clean). she wanted to climb in the bathtub and play, so i lifted her in. it didn't take her long to figure out her bathtub toys were pretty boring with no water, so she picked up her washcloth and "cleaned" the tub for me. what a helper. then i heard the tinkling! she peed in the tub! not exactly the potty, but hey, a contained area meant to hold moisture! i really just wanted her to experience peeing with no diaper on to see what it feels like. so i call our first attempt a resounding success.

and it only took 45 minutes.

but when you have such a great little girl who loves to sing her heart out about how God made her, the whole chore part of the process is completely eliminated :)

A Pregnant Moment

this weather sucks! it's giving me hot flashes!

and my right foot is perpetually swollen and painful!

my belly itches!

i can't reach my toenails to clip them!

i want my bladder control back!

there's not enough vanilla ice cream with fudge swirls in the world!

i just want to SLEEP!

shut up!

Leaves and Lights

29 week picture

i'm freakin' huge

"i'm not mad at God. i hate sin. and death is my enemy."

~john cole, father of little lucy

i can't believe i'm typing this. i'm absolutely shellshocked that this would happen again... so soon... in the same sunday school class... to people i know.
please pray for a couple in my class, jon and eva cole. last night their little 7 week old daughter, lucy, passed away in the hospital. i don't exactly know what happened and i don't think she had any ongoing health problems. apparently yesterday she started having trouble breathing, they took her to the hospital, she stopped breathing, and ran to Jesus. that's all i know. i don't know jon and eva very well, but eva was one of rachel's sunday school teachers in her old class and i just saw her and precious lucy at a baby shower saturday morning. lucy was sleeping pretty much the whole time, wearing pink, and eva was carrying her in a brown blanket. this may seem silly, but i've only ever seen lucy a couple times b/c they just started bringing her to church recently and this will be my only clear way to remember her.
i don't have any answers or have any clue what to say... i just wanted to put this put here to get as many people as i could praying for them.