Thursday, June 23, 2011

Milestones



Levi reached a small milestone in his life the other day. It’s a very small task yet something I’ve been waiting for him to do for a while because it would make getting the family in the car so much easier. It’s not a huge accomplishment and you might think I’m strange for making such a huge deal out of it. You may wonder what this miraculous feat is and why I feel deservers its own blog post but… once again, it not a huge thing because he has only learned to buckle his own seatbelt.

Now he opens the door, closes it behind himself and straps himself in so I no longer have to go to the back seat to lean over him to click the belt into the receptacle and give him a kiss on the cheek. On the downside, I no longer have to lean over him and give him a kiss on the cheek.

I’ve been Levi’s father for less than 2 year so I’m very new to this whole parenting thing, yet I feel that God has put my life into this fast forward mode because every time I glance at my children I notice a change. It’s not always a big change, like when Luke slept through the night for the first time or when he got his first tooth, but smaller changes like the new noise he makes or Levi buckling his own seatbelt.



Tiff told me that yesterday Luke stood, without holding onto anything, for the first time in his life. To me this is a pretty big accomplishment; he won’t remember it but us as parents will. My task as a father is to raise my children with integrity and teach them to be good Godly men. But as parents we have to embrace the time we have with your children because tomorrow they will be different… they will probably be asking to borrow your keys.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Brotherly Love




I’m sure every parent that has an older child gets the same question when a new baby comes into the family. “How is He/She with the Baby?”… “How is Levi with Luke?” I know firsthand that older siblings can get very jealous and be mean to the younger ones. I was the younger of two brothers and being 4 years apart all I did was bug my older brother and his friends. Interests were different and they wanted nothing to do with me.

But Levi is a completely different when it comes to Luke. He genuinely loves Luke with all of his heart and seeing Luke’s response you know he loves his big brother as well. Tiffany and I constantly find the two boys on the floor playing with each other, whether they are pushing cars on the floor or making noises in their indoor tent. It’s an awesome site to see. One of my favorite things is when Luke mimics the noises Levi makes which eventually turns into a “who can scream louder” match.

We Pray that when Ben joins the family the two older boys won’t leave Luke out all the time and that they all get along very well. But regardless, they are brothers and they will all love each other.

Monday, June 13, 2011

A new Begining

So it's been almost 2 year since our last post and shame on me for not keeping up with it. Since the last post so much has changed and I will try to sum it up with bullet points.

- Levi is doing great and he loves life.
- Two months after we got home we got pregnant.
- Luke was born about 7 and a half months later. (Yes a little early but doing great)
- We now have 2 boys in less than 2 years’ time.
- Now it's time to grow our family again.

Introducing Ben.



This is a picture of Ben and Levi when they were 3 years old. They grew up in Hope Foster Home together and we were told that they were inseparable just like brothers. We said, if we were ever given the opportunity we would adopt him in a heartbeat.

Even though the chances were slim that we would ever get the opportunity to adopt him we continued to Pray, especially Levi. When you Pray God answers... and the time has come and the process has started. Today marks the day of our orientation with our agency to start the journey to bring Ben into our family and we are completely overwhelmed with excitement.