A much-needed update

I am finished with school for the semester (yay!) and am finally taking some time out to update my blog. For those of you who don't know, we are now living in Waco! It seems like that's been a long time coming, but we are enjoying our new house and trying to find some time to open up all these boxes and put things away where they go. It is quite an ordeal (to say the least)! I don't know how some of you do it/did it right after having a baby. Wow--that's impressive! We are in a real convenient location and it only takes me 10 minutes to get to work. What a difference!

We have lived here for about a week and a half now and are slowly getting settled. I realized late last week that Christmas was fast approaching and only then did I get to begin my Christmas shopping, which is really late for me! But living in a city has made Christmas shopping much easier.

Shane and I have been preparing for our transition from Gatesville Church of Christ to The Grove Church--the church we are planting here in Waco. Shane's last Sunday preaching in Gatesville is the Sunday after Christmas (only two weeks left--wow!), and then we will shift our focus to the ministry here. We are sad about leaving the church and our friends there, and I'm mostly sad that Elizabeth will be leaving her little buddies (and that they won't have her around either). She and her friend Aydan are really close, and she's going to miss him a lot. We are really excited about the new possibilities here, though, and are looking forward to getting started on something we've been dreaming about and praying about for almost two years now. Keep us in your prayers!

Baby #2 is doing well, although he is measuring three weeks ahead of where he should be and might turn out to be bigger than Elizabeth. I'm not someone who wanted to wait until the baby came to find out what it is (since we don't necessarily have to anymore), and I have enjoyed calling him by his name. I'm not sure I've posted what his name is going to, so here it is: Peyton Poe Alexander. Peyton is Shane's middle name (and Elizabeth is my middle name), so our kids will each have our middle names as their first.

Elizabeth is doing well. She is now sleeping in a big girl bed and doing very well with it. I honestly thought it would be the most difficult feat for her (and for us!) since she had been sleeping in a crib for so long, is a major squirmer while she sleeps, and loves having walls surrounding her. But she has done quite nicely with the new bed. Only a couple of times have we had to be firm with her to stay in the bed. Now every morning I wake up to a little girl tugging on my sheets saying, "Momma, can I get out of my bed now?" :) Um, well, since you're in OUR room asking me this question, you already are out of your bed, but yes, you can get out now.

Here are some other Elizabeth notables:
1. The first morning Elizabeth's crib was set up in the nursery (Peyton's room), Shane found her jumping in the bed. He got her out and reprimanded her and she came running up to me (who did not know what had happened), stopped just short of my belly, and yelled, "I was jumping in your bed, Peyton!!!"

2. Elizabeth is still saying to me, "I want Peyton to COME OUT!" I do, too, honey. Just not yet. We still have a little over 3 months to go.

3. Elizabeth is now "daytime" potty trained, and let me say, "It is wonderful!" It's so nice not to have to change diapers and smell poopies. It took her a while to go poopy on the potty, but now she has the hang of it, lets us know, and makes it to the potty just in time. There is one downside to having a potty-trained child, though, and one that I never really considered: when she and I went Christmas shopping last Saturday, every store we were in (sometimes two or three times), she always had to go potty. And since you can't bring your unpaid merchandise into these restrooms, it really became quite a hassle. But not too bad, since most of the time, I had to go, too!!

4. Whenever Elizabeth meets a new person, the first thing they always say about her is, "That girl really talks a lot ." To which we say, "Yes, she is a very verbal girl." (Sidenote: I really like how much she talks because you always know what she's thinking, but it's the volume of her talk that is a bit disturbing because she only knows one level!) People also always make the assumption that she's much older than she is and when we tell her that she's two, they say, "Wow, she knows a lot of words and speaks very clearly for her age." To this I usually say, "She gets a lot of practice!" (To those of you who know Shane, she is his daughter in this way (a talker), and since I love listening to him, I love listening to her, too. Her daddy has had a bit more of an adjustment to her constant talking than I have."

5. Like I said earlier, Elizabeth loves to talk. The other day we were in Marshall's and she was singing her ABCs at the top of her lungs. Several people gave me those "knowing grins" that people give when they want you to control your child, but one nice woman came along and talked with Elizabeth a long time and was very nice to her--despite her loud singing.

6. Elizabeth says words that I didn't even know she knew: "breakable," "batteries,"Cinderella." These are the ones I can think of right now.

7. Elizabeth has this much-loved bear that Aunt Kellee and Uncle Anthony gave her while they were living in Chicago. Elizabeth named this bear "Cago" (the word "Chicago" is engraved on his chest), and today she was feeding him from her pretend high chair. I asked, "Cago, what are you eating?" And she said, "Momma, Cago doesn't talk. His mouth won't open."

8. Elizabeth's favorite TV shows are Dora the Explorer, Miss Spider's Sunny Patch, and Go Diego Go. She rarely watches The Wiggles or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse anymore. It's nice to learn about new shows!

9. Ever since Elizabeth was born, my dad has been on TV quite a bit and since we don't get to see him very often, we always like it when she can see him through the tube. We try to catch him on TV whenever we're home, and whenever he appears, Elizabeth runs up to the TV and waves at it, screaming, "Hi Teddy! Hi Teddy! That's Teddy!" I wonder what she thinks about seeing him this way. Is she impressed that Teddy is on the same TV that Dora comes on?!!

10. Elizabeth is really big on saying, "Remember when...." and then filling in the blank with one of her recent happenings. Her most common "Remember whens" involve going to the zoo, playing on the playground at the school, throwing up in the car on the way to Austin for Thanksgiving, living in the apartment, filling up her sticker charts, and hurting her knee. I find it really interesting that she has memories at this age, mainly because she won't remember these memories in a few years.

11. One day we all went to Fuddrucker's for lunch. We ordered the sliders (the new mini-hamburgers they have). Elizabeth ate one all by herself, and then there was one left over. That evening, I had an event with my department and Shane fed her that leftover hamburger for dinner. The next morning, I fixed her some oatmeal and when Shane came in the kitchen to see what we were doing, she yelled, "Daddy, I didn't have a hamburger to eat!" Was she excited about this fact, or did she want another hamburger?!!" Who knows?

Since the move I have not been able to find the device that downloads my pictures from my camera. When I do find it, I'll post some recent pictures. Hope all of you are doing well and that you're enjoying the holiday season. Take care!