randoms

1. Shawn preached a few weeks ago during two of Pinedale's Sunday morning services. He doesn't often preach, but is really pretty dang good at it. He and Jon (the High School minister) spoke about family, teenagers, and specifically family ministry. Like any good preacher, Shawn uses our family for a couple of illustrations. It's always interesting to me to hear Shawn's perspective on our family. If you're interested in hearing Shawn preach, then CLICK HERE. The message is from 8/29 and is titled For The Win.

2. It would appear that after almost two and a half weeks, Jude has transitioned from his crib to his toddler. And by "his toddler bed," I mean the floor. We put him in his bed for both his naps and bedtime, and he promptly crawls out and falls asleep on either the floor or the rocker/recliner in his room. As long as he's not screaming for an hour, banging on the door, and calling our names before he falls asleep on said floor, I'm cool with that.

I figure that you rarely see a thirty year old who refuses to sleep in his big boy bed, so I have faith that he'll one day sleep in his bed just fine. Between having a newborn and Jude's screaming before bed and waking up in the middle of the night crying, things at the Maurer house were hairy there for awhile. Thankfully the worst of Jude's fit throwing happened while Shawn's parents were here. They were such an incredible blessing in helping us understand that if we kept going in to soothe him, he'd keep crying to get what he wanted. I think my willpower to outlast Jude was worn down by that point, so having them here as backup during that period could not have been better timing.

3. I may be off my rocker, but I've decided to start weaning Jude from the paci. He'll still get it at naptime and bedtime, and possibly occasionally when he's tired cranky in the car (his screams in the confined space of a vehicle are like nails on chalkboard to me sometimes). Other than that, Cohen will be the only pacifier-ed person in the household. Except for me...but only on my bad days. Luckily, Cohen isn't a fan of the Nuk pacifiers that we use for Jude and much prefers the Soothie brand. It hasn't been difficult for Jude to distinguish which pacis are his and which are Cohen's, so we just need to hide Jude's pacis and do our best to distract him and remain firm when he asks for it. Hopefully this will be an easy transition, but realistically - very few transitions with Jude are easy. I'm bracing myself.

4. Jenn Lewis from Photographic Memories came to the house a few days ago to take some newborn photos of Cohen. I've only seen a couple, but I can already tell you that they are priceless. Words cannot describe how great she is at what she does, and how immeasurably blessed we are that she thinks our kids are cute enough to photograph. I have some maternity photos, Jude's 18 month photos, and Cohen's hospital pictures, but I'm having a hard time uploading more than one at a time. I'll try to add a couple to each of the posts I do for awhile since I can't seem to get as many as I'd like in one post.