August Wrap Up!

 August has been a very busy month in the Pearson home! We have had big things going on in everyone's lives! Mitchell has been doing well at work, and we're almost done with his 7 month stretch between vacations. (He had planned on having one in the beginning of June, but had to take it early when I was having trouble after Brax's birth) We've just got to make it through September and we'll a week of vacation, start up peak season, his last vacation in November and then the home stretch through Christmas. In addition to UPS, he's always had a desire to find a way to work from home, and has thought that buying and selling online would be a great way to do that. In the last year or so, he's talked about starting something multiple times, but never really followed through. Well at the beginning of August, he decided to 'follow through' :) and started an ebay store. He's been picking things up at thrift stores and garage sales and listing them online, and I've been handling all the correspondence with buyers as well as shipping and handling. It's been quite a roller coaster ride trying to figure out a balance to be efficient and effective while not spending so much time that we're neglecting other things. We've sold 35 things so far and are actually making money already! We've gotten a few 'high dollar' items that we purchased for $2 and $3 respectively that we sold for $50 and $95 respectively. :) It definitely makes you want to work harder for sure!

The kids have been quite the little accomplish-ers lately as well! Braxton started the month out by sitting up all by himself! I've been working with him for a month or so but he never could sit for more than a few seconds before losing his balance and falling over. Then one day it 'clicked'. :) I sat him up and he stayed that way for almost half an hour! He's really enjoyed playing by himself and being able to reach for toys and such.

He's still not crawling but if he's sitting up he can manage to 'scoot' a couple of feet forward. I'm really not sure how he does it without falling over, but he does!

Brookelynne has been doing great too!! She is starting to say more and more and more words each and every day. Sometimes I just look at her like "seriously? You just said __________?!?!?!" :) It's because she's awesome. lol (that's Mitch's response when I'm impressed by her) Anyway, she's also become interested in water. I know, now, at the end of the summer, when the pools are closing and the weather is cooling down, now she starts to like water again. But this is the situation we have! She really does love it now and every time she sees water she starts screaming to get in! I'm going to try to get some extra water time in before it gets too cold. We'll see!

We've also had a trip and some sicknesses, so I'll update on those soon!

Busy Busy Busy Days....

Our life would seem busy enough to most people but alas, my husband must not think so. :) I will preface this post by saying that I have absolutely no idea how Mitch's mind works or in what ways he comes up with or supports his ideas and/or decisions.

A year or so ago, Mitch started picking up 'good deals' at thrift stores and garage sales. He did some research into what sells well on line since he works so close to the 'fifth riches zip code in America', he was sure he could find great items at the local thrift stores. And low and behold, he has. Unfortunately, all that became of such purchases was a packed front closet and nothing else. Then a couple months ago, the bug seemed to get at him again. We were looking for a few things on craigslist and happened upon some fantastic deals, and all of a sudden he was back at the buying. Making a trip to a goodwill, or garage sale most days, my living room is now covered with '100% cashmere' this and 'gymboree' that, 'justice' here and 'cole haan' there.

About 10 days ago, he got on ebay, set up a store and started listing. And the listing has gone pretty well! :) We've posted about 73 items, with 35 still active, 24 selling and 14 not selling. (For those of you who are unaware, that's actually a very HIGH percentage for beginners, most beginners who end up being successful don't even have 1% of their items sell in the first year! Much less, week!)  This means however that I have much more to keep up with. While he does the shopping and most all of the listing, I do pretty much everything else. I check and respond to messages, I package all the items, I print the shipping labels and I do the shipping! It's been crazy to see how many things I've sent out in the past 10 days and to think that we've made over $200. Seriously, its just ridiculous. Anyway, it is going really well and we're both very excited about it.

The only down side is that it does take time and we don't have a lot of that to spare so we're trying to be even more wise about our time management than ever before. I better hit the sack, because I'm pretty sure that blogging when I could be sleeping would not qualify as 'wise' in Mitch's eyes! lol

How often I fall short...

I don't think it would be a surprise to anyone who knows me to say that I take my 'job' as a mom extremely seriously. I think very long term about the smallest of things that we do with our children and line up our priorities so that in 20 years we have 2 'legal' adults who love the Lord with all their hearts, love others more than themselves, and live their lives thinking for themselves and making wise decisions in accordance with God's word. I truly want those things and believe that that is what my God has called me to do. This requires full devotion to this task and while no one is perfect, and I include myself in that, I could definitely do better than I have done.

Anyway, there are a few instances lately that have really reminded me of that and reminded me of how EXTREMELY BLESSED we are at the Pearson home. One of which, happened the other night when I went outside to clean up the back porch. We're done with all that we're doing on the swing set, so I wanted to get all of the tools and such, that we'd been storing on the porch, back in their correct, respective locations. I brought Brooke and Brax out with me, put Brax in an exersaucer, and let Brooke play on the porch. We were only out there for 15 minutes or so, so I didn't think anything of bug spray and didn't even notice until the next afternoon that Brax had gotten (as we would say on the westside) All.Bit.Up. Seriously, he had 20 or 30 knat (sp?) bites all over him. I felt Horrible. Seriously. Not so much that he had gotten the bites, but that I didn't even notice them for like 20 hours. Seriously, where was my head?  I'm totally aware of instances where that many bug bites on baby caused blood poisoning or other serious complications, like allergic reactions. And what did I do, but bring him inside, change his clothes and put him to bed? What is wrong with me?

Another instance where I've been reminded of God's Grace and Mercy happened this weekend, once again outside. (Maybe 'outside' is the problem??? lol Anyway...) Brookelynne has been climbing up the stairs all by herself for 2 weeks now, and easily gone up them 200 times without incidence. Of course I tell her to "pay attention" or "be careful", but I no longer run over there to stand behind her every. single. time. that she climbs them. "I know she's growing up so fast, and besides, I've usually got Braxton to be entertaining as well." Anyway, Saturday morning she was outside playing and climbing up the stairs to the fort, and when she got on the fort, she lost her footing a little, went to step back, stepped out of the fort, grabbed the wall right next to her, swung around and out of the fort, and then fell the 5 feet to the ground, landing on the wooden footer. She cried (of course), and her butt bruised the next day (not surprising) but other than that, she was fine. And not even scared. Seriously, how blessed are we? I can think of 100 variations on that story that could have made it a little or aLOT worse, and by God's grace, it happened just that way. I don't know what caused Brooke to grab on just right so that she didn't tumble back down the stairs. I can't understand how she at 21 months old held on  just long enough to turn her around, but not fling her out or back under the platform. I don't know how it worked out that she fell on the ONLY part of her body that could provide enough cushion that no bone or organ would be hurt, but she did, just an inch or so south of her tailbone. Seriously, how good is our God?

Now I could easily use these two incidents to tell myself that I'm horrible or that I should have known better or paid more attention, but really, that's not solving anything and once again, they're both fine. "No harm, no foul" comes to mind. But while I'm not freaking out or beating myself up, I am deciding to take it as a reminder that while I can make all the plans in the world, and I can be diligent to teach them or train them, to love them and protect them, that without God's grace and mercy, it is worthless. They can be taken from me in an instant, or they could choose to reject all that I teach them, only God knows and neither of those things can change what I need to do. I have not been called to prevent such things, I've only been called to be obedient. Obedient to teach them, obedient to love them, obedient to pray for them and mostly obedient to live out in front of them a life that is pleasing to my Lord. So today, I'm grateful for my God's mercy in not giving me what I deserve, and his grace in allowing me the joy of being His child, my husband's wife, my children's mother, my mother's daughter, my preschoolers teacher, and my friends' friend, and above all that I can find my identity in Him.






Only He knows what tomorrow will bring and I was reminded of that once again last night when I met a sweet little girl who was in the 3 yr old class I was working in. She's 5, non verbal, doesn't eat orally, still in a diaper, crawls, but can't walk, and obviously mentally slower than her age, how much so, I don't know. I was asking her mother what she had that caused this, expecting to hear an explanation such as cerebral palsy or another 'she had it from birth' reasoning, when she told me that it was something to do with the way her body's cells processed energy. They don't know what happened but one day they stopped processing correctly, and this is what has become. "She was a normal one and a half year old" she said, as my heart stopped. "And then this happened". This? Seriously, "This" is all the doctors can say because no one knows what "This" was. Was it a fall, like Brookelynne's, that jarred her brain just the wrong way? Was it a bug bite, like the 20 Braxton got, that her body had a reaction too? There's no way to know and all I can do is pray for that sweet little girl and thank my God that my children are healthy, and pray that they stay that way.

But as we've been learning in Job, God is Good no matter what, and we should equally be willing to accept adversity from the Lord since we gratefully accept good from Him. I pray today that as I praise Him in good times, I will even more so praise Him in bad ones, for His character never changes and His love is constant and everlasting, and we are nothing, and have nothing without Him. Since the kids are now up, I'll end this they way that true Southern Baptists often do, "Amen and Amen" :)

The Entertaining Adventures of Brookelynne Starr: Talking Edition :)

Well my sweet baby girl is far from a baby and looking more and more like a kid everyday. (as apposed to an infant). She's been saying words for a while, but with the exception of 'up please' (which is pronounced 'uppppa') she hadn't started saying anything but words. Not phrases and definitely not sentences, until this week. :) She seriously amazes me at some of the things she has begun to say, and almost all of it came over night. Here is a list of some of her new phrases....

*We love to eat salad here, and by salad, I mean lettuce, tomato and cheese with dressing on top, and whenever we do, we cut up a tomato for Brooke and give her some dressing to 'dip' it in. Whenever I buy salad stuff, I buy a lot and we eat a little at every meal for a week or so, so on the second or third day of it, at lunchtime, I pulled the tomato out of the fridge, and out of no where she yelled "Cut em up!" She'll say it over and over and anytime you ask her what we do with tomatoes, she'll say "Cut em up!" with this big goofy grin on her face!

*She's MASTERED possession. I don't know if I'm the only mother who thinks of her child's achievement as checkmarks in an English textbook chapter list, but I do, and she totally get's possession, lol. Her favorites are "Mommy's Car", "Daddy Car" [these are said EVERYTIME we see the cars], "Mommy Cup", "Gabba's Truck" (Grandma's Truck), "PawPaw Truck", "Gabba House"[everytime we get in the car], "Brooke Bow", "Ba's Hat" (Braxton's hat) and "Mommy Bag" [this is her diaper bag that we need to get before we leave her classroom. Every time I go to pick her up, before she'll come to me, she tells me to get her bag by saying "Go, Go, Mommy Bag, Mommy Bag, Go" :)]

*She has a new sound association, and that is the very unique noise that trucks, and more specifically, Paw Paw's truck makes. Most people say that cars or trucks say 'Vroom, Vroom" and that's what I tell Brooke that Mommy's car 'says', but my dad makes noises for things that actually sound like the thing sounds. Anyway, Paw Paw's truck says "Nunnnnn, nunnnn, nuunnn" and for some reason it clicked this week. For a full day she said it over and over, "Paw Paw truck, nunnnn, nunnnn, nunnnnn" and it's hilarious. Seriously :) [oh, and apparently Gabba's truck makes the same sound]

*She's started saying 'more ____ please', instead of just whatever it is she wants over and over. :)

*Her new favorite thing to say is "Nap time over" lol. She even told me that when nap time had just started the other day! haha. Silly Girl!

Anyway, Husband needs the computer and I need to get to bed. I'll post more later!

Milestone Moments of Braxton James: Sitting Up Edition :)

Well. Its official. My baby boy can sit up on his own! It seems like this has been a long time coming, but at the same time, it feels like this came on so fast! We've been 'working on' or 'practicing' sitting up on our own for about 2 months, meaning that every couple of days I would sit him up and sit near him to see how long it took for him to fall over or throw himself backward. This usually only took 15 to 20 seconds before we had to start over again. We would 'practice' for anywhere from 1 to 20 minutes, but he never kept his balance for more than about a minute, and it really seemed to me that he just didn't 'get it'. Like it wasn't important to him, so he wasn't going to try. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, today I sat him up like I do most days and to my surprise, after a couple of minutes, he still hadn't fallen over. So I grabbed the boppy and put it behind him, and started doing other things, waiting to see how long it would take him to tip, fall or flop. Twenty, count them 20 minutes later, he was still sitting up playing with toys! Talk about a proud Mama! I am! It was the craziest thing ever because it seriously seems like when I sat him up today, something in his little brain just 'clicked' and he thought to himself, "It appears that Mama thinks I'll like doing this sitting up stuff, so maybe I'll give it a try today." lol. Anyway, he does enjoy it, in fact he lovvvvvvvvveeeeesssss sitting up and playing with toys, he can reach for different toys and really play with more than just rattles. He'll occaisionally be playing with something and just stop, look around until he sees someone who's looking at him and then give them this huge grin! Seriously cutest thing ever!