Jordan at 7 months

Today Jordan started free standing for the first time. He had been doing it a lot, so I just had to pull out the camera to video it. I only managed to capture him standing once very briefly, but here it is. In other developments, yesterday he said his first word! No it wasn't 'mama' or 'dada', instead it was 'brother'. It happened directly after Judah affectionately said of Jordan, "I love my brother." To Clayton and Judah's shock, Jordan then responded, "bra-ba" (or something to that effect). When prompted to repeat this numerous times later, he did, and to his delight, continues to receive tremendous praise and encouragement from his cheer squad. While recording this footage, I tried to get him to say it again, but as you will see he's a little pre-occupied and makes an attempt of sorts.

Wunkle Nunkle Gedunkle

Read on - trust me. This is hilarious and very precious at the same time. No the words in the title are not from my vocab list for German!

Nathan was repeating this phrase tonight and other delightful gibberish. I wasn't paying much attention - he is the sort of person that says silly words all the time, and for what its worth...so am I. But he was trying to get my attention with his prattle. When he finally did I grinned at the words. He grinned right back at me and said "Maybe God will give ˆyouˆthose sounds next time Dad." Suddenly I understood. Several nights ago when I was putting them to bed I was praying for them and lapsed into tongues. They have often heard us pray this way but this time Nathan was particularly intrigued. He asked me about it and I explained that God gives us the words to help us pray and that maybe oneday God would help him pray the same way as he helps me.

Now that I was finally on his wavelength, Nathan begged cheekily "Say 'sugarmamadoodle' to me Dad - say 'sugarmamadoodle!'

Classic...

PS: To the non-charismatic readers of this blog I am recording this primarily because it was incredibly cute, not because I am in a hurry to conclude that my three year old is speaking in tongues!

PPS: To the charismatic readers of this blog I need to further clarify that I do not rule out this possibility nor indeed the exercise of any spiritual gift on the basis of age. The Gift of the Spirit and the Spirits gifts are for kids too! After all the kingdom of heaven belongs to "such as these."

More fun with autumn leaves

We've had some pretty chilling weather already, with our first light snow fall in late October. The past few days have brought a welcome change, with blue skies, sunshine and pleasant temperatures. This morning, after we had dropped Judah to preschool, Nathan thought that it would be a fun idea to draw outside with chalk. We've been warned that we need to make the most of the outdoors while we can - so we did. Here was our morning. Just click on the picture below.

Fall Leaves

A few more pictures.

Some cute pictures I took of Jordan with a baby pumpkin.

Nathan loves dressing up and goofing around.

Apple Pie

Every Friday is family night. I like to bake something special with the boys in the afternoon in preparation for our special night. It helps build their anticipation and it's a fun thing to do together. On this particular Friday night we baked our very first apple pie and it was really yummy.




Leftovers...

A few images of our Fall and a day at the 'farm'

Images of 'Fall' here at Wheaton. Just a few snaps I took on a walk we took last week.





The following pics were taken at a 'Pumpkin Farm'. Forgot to take pictures of all those stunning orange pumpkins.

Jordan's first pony ride.