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.

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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.