It's kind of ridiculous how much time has past, but I'm going to move forward without guilt. I don't want to miss a minute of documenting these babies.
Samuel has been a joy in every way. He is such a smiley baby and doesn't often cry, unless he's over tired or his sister is attacking him. Rae doesn't know how to love softly. She is a very physical child and even her loving is a little intense. She can't help it, this little guy is so cute and she just squeezes a little too hard sometimes (as shown below). Audrey saved him this time because I was having too much fun documenting her covering her ears afterward proclaiming that he was too loud.
Samuel is six months old. It some ways I feel like I blinked and in others I feel like I have lived every one of those days sometimes hard and sometimes so full of joy I can hardly believe that this is my life.
I still find myself daily looking back on my life just 4 years ago without my two latest miracles. I can't believe how beautiful the journey has been. I can't even put into words how I feel about how the Lord has led me through so much growth, sometimes it was painful and full of heartache and other times I could feel his light just at the edge of my vision. Right now I would say that that light is in full view and I can look back at the journey and appreciate everytime he let me cry and comforted me, everytime I felt his strength pushing me forward, and everytime he would show me he was there.
God lives and his plan for my life has been far better than any 10 or 20 year plan I tried to make for myself. I'm blessed to have him walk beside me everyday. Everytime I'm tempted to start worrying about the future I try to take a step back and let Him lead. Don't get me wrong. I feel like things never go perfectly, that's the hard part of mortality. Paul still struggles with his health everyday, and everyday I pray for a miracle for him to be healed. It's hard to watch the struggle, but I know, like every journey there will have to be times when we are carried because life is too heavy for us alone. I know that He is there still. Paul describes it as feeling like you are walking toward the Red Sea with the hope that God will part it, or maybe even standing at the waters edge waiting. Someday I know we'll see the whole picture, like I have with my journey with infertiliy and I'm sure at that moment we will come full circle in the knowledge that He was there all along guiding, loving, comforting, and strengthing us. In that moment we probably won't recognize ourselves because the becoming process will have changed who we are and made us who He knew we could be.
As always, I started this post with the intent to talk about Samuel and my thoughts carried me away.
This kid is such a birght spot in our day and I'm grateful he joined our family.
He is obsessed with our living room fan. He studies it like he's an engineer. It's funny because most of my kids by six months were done with the fan and on to other things, but this kid still loves it. I often call it his best friend. He also loves our stair well light. Everytime I descend the stairs with him he almost bends over backwards in and effort to look at it for as long as he can.
He likes his tongue. He is either sticking his tongue out or he's sucking his bottom lip in. It makes me giggle every time I see it.
He has such bright eyes. I often sing the song Yellow Diamonds (which has no business being a song because it's hardly music but that's a side note), only I sing, "blue diamonds in the sky!" because that's what his eyes look like to me.
He favorite words are Na na and Da da, or screaming Aaaa (I think sometimes he thinks he's singing with this one because he'll hold it for a really long time).
I could call him Mr. Smiles because he will literally smile at anyone if they smile at him, although he's in the stranger danger phase so even though he leads people on and smiles at them he doesn't want to be held by them.
He is soooo ticklish. and his giggles are as Audrey says, "a window to heaven".
He has started sitting, although he is not perfect at it. And if he's laying down he likes to scooch with his legs like an inch worm on his back. On his tummy he gets his knees under him but his arms aren't strong enough for a crawl yet.
I love having a baby boy, mostly because it's like I'm seeing Paul in baby form and I think it's the cutest thing ever. I often tell Paul that we just copied and pasted his genes because Samuel looks sooo much like him. There are times when I see myself in him but it's not very often.
I can always tell when Samuel is tired because when he wakes up his eyes are so wide and the more tired he gets the smaller they become.
I have tried on a lot of nicknames for this kid in an effort to find the perfect one but none of them have quite stuck, other than "Handsome" because he is. Here are just a few: Chompy, Sam-I-am, Bub, Buddy, Samuel Wamuel Bo Bamuel Banana Fana Fo Famuel Me My Mo Manuel Samuel (this one goes along with a song), and stinker.
He just popped his first tooth and with it has come a lot of biting of things, which can be painful. Hence the name Chompy. We love him though. He's our best boy and always will be.
