Jodilightful!

A funny thing always happens to the breakfast conversation when the oldest child sleeps in: the second oldest gets the opportunity to be the authority on *everything*.

Beatrix: (With conviction) First God made me, then you, Ro-Ro.

Romilly: No, no, no.  First God made Pippa, then me, then you, then Juniper.

Beatrix:  …And then MOMMY!

Romilly: (Big sigh.  It’s not easy dealing with ignorance.)  No, no, no.   First God made Adam and Eve.  Then Mommy, then Daddy.  Then Pippa, then me, then you, then Juniper.

*  *  *  *  *

Glad we got that all straightened out.

Juniper Lucy is 18 months old today!  Normally that would mean I’d take a picture of her with her special teddy bear, but since her Daddy and big sisters and Gran and Grandad have cleared off to Lancaster County for the day and taken the camera with them, I’ll just be sharing a few recent favorites.

Also, for posterity, I thought I’d record some of her words thus far.  We’ve quite quite an explosion in the last few weeks, and I confess I haven’t even started listing them like I did for the other girls.  Poor neglected fourth child.

So, at the ripe old age of one and a half, Junebug can say:

Uh-oh

Ro-Ro

Pippa

Bea

Daddy

Mommy

Gulla (Gulliver, the dog)

Hi and Hello

Bye-bye

Night-night

Ah-mum (Amen)

Baby

Ellie

Bopple (bottle, Ellie’s that is)

Apple

Poppy (potty) and Pee-pees (girl wants to potty train like there’s no tomorrow, but there is, and I’m not doing it yet. Nope, I’m not.)

Uppy (up)

Nose

Pease (please)

Tee-koo (Thank you)

and her new favorite (*not* ours!): No.   Spoken mournfully when we try to dress her, change her diaper, brush her teeth, etc.  We’re awfully mean to her.

We call her our little engineer because she loves trying to “fix” things  and figure things out.  A few months ago she discovered a screw missing from one of our vents and crawled all through the house to get one from a bucket of odd screws in another room to replace it.  Crazy, scary genius!

She adores her sisters and especially her baby Ellie.  She is irresistibly adorable and cheeky. We’ll keep her, I think.

They kind of look related, huh?

For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

Pippa: Mommy, can we have gum for our snack?

Me:  You know Daddy doesn’t like gum.  You’d have to ask him, and I suspect he’d say, “Not while you’re under my roof!”  [No, he really would.]

Pippa:  So, could I go to Joel and Heather’s [next-door neighbor's] house and chew gum there?

Romilly: No!  Only if you’re on their roof you can!

They are hatching a plan as I type this.

Last year I took a picture of the two big girls with the firstfruits of Trevor’s harvest.  Now I remember why I did it during nap time last year.   Rascal.

For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

As we were driving home from the craft store today, Pippa heard the words “When my heart’s broken…” in one of our Sovereign Grace Kids songs, and she asked me to turn the music down.  She had something to say.

Pippa: I want to say something, but I need to think for a minute, but leave the music down…

(And then:)

When my heart breaks in two,

And I don’t know what to do,

My Savior will make me a new heart all the way through.

(The last line was tweaked slightly when we wrote it down later, her revisions, not mine.)

Is that a good one, Mommy?

Me: (just about crying) Yep, that’s a good one.

Sam and June.

I had the pleasure last weekend of visiting with a long lost friend.  We grew up across the street from each other, but only became good friends in high school as each of us began to grow in our love for the Lord.

After our family moved back to the States we had one all-too-brief get-together with Amber and her husband, Greg.  They introduced us to Take 5 bars (yum!) and The Settlers of Catan, and then they moved to Texas.  Isn’t that always the way?

When we last saw them we had two girls, and they had no children yet.  Last weekend our four girls got to meet her two boys, and we mommies had a couple of hours to catch up on the last three and a half years.

Among the many things that impressed me about how my dear friend has grown into a wonderful wife and mother was the care she took over choosing her boys’ names.  I don’t mean in choosing names that I think are fabulous names (although they are that, too).  I mean that she really put thought into how she would name all of her children when she set out to name her first child.

Her boys are Samuel Courage and Lucas Wisdom.  Pure loveliness.

Each of her boys has a biblical virtue name for a middle name, *and* each of them has a corresponding Bible verse, which she recites to them at naptimes and bedtimes.  All I could think when I discovered this was, ‘why did I not think of that?!’

Now, our girls are into their names (I know.  You’re shocked, right?).  My mother-in-law has always taken great care to find the girls name-themed gifts and the whole family has now gotten on board with the girls’ name ‘symbols’.  Pippa (Greek, “Lover of horses”) often receives gifts with horses and violets (her middle name) on them.  Romilly has always been showered with either sunshine themed clothes and accessories (her initials spell RAY) or Alice in Wonderland items to go along with her middle name.  Beatrix gets the obvious Beatrix Potter references or the even-more obvious bumblebee motif.  June is a little trickier, but we’ve mainly been working the Junebug = ladybug (which it doesn’t, but who’s counting?) angle, keeping a vague Narnia link up our sleeves via her middle name, Lucy.

But Bible verses for each one?  It was ingenious!  I had to have them!

And so the quest began.  Would it be possible to find a verse for each of my girls’ names that wasn’t either ridiculously obscure or so tenuously connected to the the name that I’d have to spend more time explaining how it’s related than teaching the verse itself?

I think I’ve more or less done it.  What do you think?

Pippa’s verse: Psalm 20:7 (ESV)

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.

Romilly’s verse: Isaiah 50:10b (New Living Translation)

If you are walking in darkness, without a ray of light, trust in the LORD and rely on your God.

Beatrix’s verse (Beatrix means “sojourner”, not super useful for clothing and toy shopping, but fabulous here!): Psalm 119:19 (ESV)

I am a sojourner on the earth; hide not your commandments from me!

Juniper’s verse: Isaiah 41:19b-20a (Good News)

Forests will grow in barren land, forests of pine and juniper and cypress.  People will see this and know that I, the Lord, have done it.

It would have been nice if they’d all been the same translation, but I’m still pretty excited about using them to teach my girls some amazing truths about our great God.

I may have to find ones for myself and Trevor.  Jodi means, “See Judith” (or so I thought for years, having looked it up in a name book in elementary school), but once you get past all that, the going theory is that it means, “God is gracious”.  That’s certainly workable.  Or I could utilize the fact that my initials are JLY, Jesus Loves You!  So many possibilities…

Many thanks  to Amber for giving me this brilliant idea, though she likely has no idea I’ve stolen it. May she have many more fabulously named children.  (And if you’d like to suggest middle names for them in the comments, she’s accepting suggestions!)

Well, I’m not quite sure when it happened (on her birthday, I expect she’d tell you), but our sweet, feisty Beatrix is now three.  Three!

We marked her special day with a gift and cards at breakfast on  her special day (7/7) during our camping trip.  She had seen a Peter Rabbit “guysie” in England back at Easter time, and, feeling a natural kinship with all things Beatrix Potter,  immediately commissioned me to make her one.  For months she reminded me faithfully that she wanted Peter Rabbit for her birthday, and thankfully I managed to deliver the goods.

We enjoyed a typical camping day filled with lots of fun in the lake and a lovely hike, and dinner was a simple favorite: spaghetti cooked on the camp stove.  We sang Happy Birthday over three chocolate mini donuts, and the birthday girl was delighted with her no-frills festivities.  (There will be a proper party at some point.)

This girl has an adventurous spirit and an infectious smile.  She thinks she’s bigger than she is, yet still wants to be the baby.  She is fearless and outspoken, but soft and cuddly when the occasion calls for it.  She has the face of a baby and the language and thought processes of a six-year-old.  She cracks us up, daily.  She has a brutish affection for her sisters, which is sometimes received with joy and giggles, but other times… not.   She is a true blessing to our family, and I am honored to be her mother.

Happy birthday, Beatrix Joanna.  We love you so very much!

You know how when you have a million things to do, and you don’t know where to begin, you just grab for the quickest, easiest thing on your to-do list?  Like, when you have twenty people arriving at your house in two hours for a birthday party and you haven’t made the cake or wrapped the presents yet and your house is totally a mess, so you think… ‘I guess I should just start by checking my email one more time because maybe that one person who may or may not be coming to the party has written in the last three minutes to say if they’re coming or not?’  (No?  Just me?  Really?)

Anyway, that’s how I’m feeling about my blog situation right now.  We’re just back from a week away visiting friends and camping, we’ve celebrated Bea’s third birthday this week and went to a wedding today.   (Oh, and we finally got our van back, and June’s tooth is fine.)  I have so much to blog about, I don’t know where to begin.

And so, in this deer-in-the-headlights moment, I’m going to point you in the direction of something far less interesting than any of those things would be.

Over the last two weekends (in two installments, because I couldn’t be concise to save my life) the stories of our girls’ names have been published over at Appellation Mountain, one of my favorite baby name blogs.  The first post tells the stories of how Pippa and Ro were named, and the second, Bea and June.

I feel just a little bit famous!