Hearts and Milestones

This kid

tough though he may be

has a sweet heart for God

And he's not afraid to tell you about it.

Father's Day of this year Jack decided to follow Christ as his personal Savior. He's been asking questions about salvation and Christ's sacrifice for a while so his decision came as no surprise to Luke and me. We've known for a long time that Jack had all the head knowledge he would need so we've been patiently waiting for the Holy Spirit to issue conviction on his young soul. It was a great Father's Day gift for Luke to be able to lead Jack to the Christ on a couch in our church's foyer in between services. And so Jack will be baptized August 22nd. We are so excited for him to be reaching another milestone as he travels his spiritual journey!!

Our prayer for Jack --
as God fashions him into a warrior in His image, that Jack would:
hide God's word in his heart that he may not sin against Him (Psalm 119:11) and that when he opens his mouth he would fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel (Esphesians 6:19).

closer to a year...

Grace is 9 months old. Can you believe it? She is closer to her first birthday than to her actual day of birth! Hard for me to comprehend some times!

Here's an update on Miss Grace...more for my record keeping than anything...what's been happening in the last 3 months.

* Grace can crawl. No shock there but I forget to write about it when it happened...around 7 months. She waited all of 2 days after that before she started pulling up on things. Now she's perfected the one knee down-one knee up crawl technique, allowing her to travel at what seems like the speed of light. She is also an expert at pulling up on EVERYTHING and inching her way toward her goal.
* Grace can climb. She started with a couple of stairs, then it was her brother's chair. Now it's just about everything. She will dangle by her arms and inch her feet up if the object it too tall. We had to lower her crib to the lowest setting and take out anything she could use to fashion a makeshift ladder. Seriously...we did.
* Grace has 2 teeth! She cut both within 24 hours at 8.5 months. Those precious little pearly whites popped through the surface and have gone no further!
* Grace can definitely say MaMa and DaDa! She uses them forcefully when she wants!
* Grace FINALLY started eating baby food and table food. After what seemed like an eternity of aversion, she decided around 8.5 months that big kid food is good! It may or may not have something to do with the introduction of powdered sugar donuts to her diet ;)
* Grace is 18lbs (17lb 15oz at her appointment) which puts her in the 43%; she is 26.25" putting her in the 17% (short little girl!); her head is 18" putting her in the 92%.
* Grace has yet to develop any stranger anxiety and usually gives a big toothy grin, complete with a wrinkled nose, to everyone who stops to talk to her.
* Grace loves to swim (and eat mud at the beach!) but doesn't like taking a bath. I'm trying to convince her that a lady needs to smell pretty!
* Grace loves her babies! She passes over the mountains of boy toys and heads straight for her baby dolls -- and sometimes a necklace or two if we're at a friend's house!