Rachel started pulling up the day after Christmas. It is so awesome to watch little children learn how to operate in this world… so cute to see them discover new things.

She is talking up a storm and very clearly says “Mama” and “Num Num” (for food). Super smiley too. Oh, my goodness, what a cutie.

And now I get to have a whole week with her! Off all week… And Bethany will turn 4 this week! I *cannot* believe that. It is harder to believe she’s turning 4 than to believe Timothy is already 5. What a crazy few years it has been.

Rachel has been saying “Ma ma ma ma ma” whenever Andrea walks into the room and ignores her lately.   Andrea pointed out that this makes her our earliest talker–and we have early talkers!  It’s scary because this means we will most certainly have kids that are smarter than us VERY SOON.   I better be nice to them so we can use them to support us in our old age

I remember saying last year, when Andrea said she wanted a dog that we would get one when all our kids were potty trained.

Well… I guess I need to be careful what I say, or be better about following through. Our new puppy joined the family last Friday. His name WAS Bailey, but that sounded too much like “baby” and we have a friend with a dog named Bailey, so we switched to “JD” as a reference to Scrubs and Dead Like Me. In “Dead Like Me” Reggie adopts a dog that is left on her doorstep and calls him “JD” — when people ask what it stands for, she says “Just Dog.” Love it.

JD is a 4 month old post-parvo Border Collie/Mix that is super smart. He learned to sit, shake and stay in less than a week. He is *mostly* potty trained, but hasn’t quite figured out how to indicate to us that he needs to go outside. We let him out after he eats/drinks and he does a good job not going in his crate, but he’s had about 1-2 accidents a day since we’ve gotten him. Now Andrea is dealing with 3 things that pee everywhere–but she loves the dog.

Anyway, we’re hoping this gets us to be a bit more active and that we enjoy having a dog. Lots of challenges ahead… how crazy are we?

Yeah, that was supposed to be rhetorical.

Shopping is a buzz, an energy, but it uses energy too, all the energy needed to make all the things we shop for. So if you've got to shop but want to see the global temperature drop, buy the green thing that took lots of love to create but zero energy to make. Shop your sustainable heart out and Buy NothingTM .

via Do The Green Thing.

Funny and cute.

Rachel is now sitting up on her own! She did it for the first time a few weeks back, but now she can do it reliably and for extended periods of time. She is also very fascinated with her tongue, sticking it out and playing with it… it is truly adorable.

We’ve been teaching Timothy about money lately by giving him an allowance of $1 each week (10 dimes). He divides it up into 4 categories: 1 for church–which he puts on our cross downstairs, 4 for savings, 3 for Christmas gifts and 2 for spending. In just 6 weeks he’s learned how to divide them up and what goes in what bank. He’s purchased a few pieces of gum and is thinking about what to buy his family for Christmas.

Today, Andrea cleaned out her purse and had some of the contents on the floor in the living room. 6 pennies were there and Andrea told the kids they could each have some of the pennies and put them in their piggy banks. They split them into 2 groups of 3 and picked them up. Timothy looked at them and said “I’m going to put this one on the cross, and the other two in my spending jar.” My heart nearly broke right there as he recognized a principle that many adults don’t get: giving first puts your heart in the right place. So neat to see our five year old grab hold of such things. What an awesome kid.

As a kid, Christmas was always about what you got. As a parent, it is *a little* more about what you give, but in many ways, it’s about what your kids got. I’ve struggled for years in how to make Christmas more about worship and less about sweets, gifts, shopping and money. Well, maybe not the sweets

It turns out that the people at Advent Conspiracy and to some degree One Day’s Wages have though the same things. How much better would our world be if we got less stuff this Christmas and were able to see a world changed because we gave… even just a little bit?