Song, Sunshine, and Stories: Greer Family Update

Many overturnings and upheavals of the Greer household have transpired since my last post. My original intention of writing a journal entry every day, no matter how short, has obviously fallen into the gutter over the summer. I will briefly recap.

Goodbye old house!

In the end of June, we found out suddenly and without warning that we needed to move. It was a combination of raising the rent on us and several other things unnecessary to discuss in a public format. Suffice to say that we couldn't stay in our sweet little cottage of a house any longer, and God's providing hand showed strong when within an hour we had found another place! In other words, in one week we had painted our new place and in another week had moved in. It's small and has no A/C, which made weathering the worst heat wave Bakersfield has seen in years quite interesting. The temperature has averaged between 85 and 90 in the house, with the swamp cooler working 24/7. Thank God I'm not pregnant!

We have managed to survive, thanks to the generosity of friends allowing us to cool off in their swimming pools, and have learned to enjoy Bakersfield's free water parks. One night the power went off for about seven hours, and of course we could not sleep. We went out and strolled through the mall, letting Bella play in the kid area, and then went to the movies. This was a particular treat because we cut movies out of our budget in an attempt to save money. We saw the latest Spiderman movie, which I enjoyed far more than any of the previous six Spiderman movies! I'm looking forward to the rest of that series now. We got home at 1 a.m. and the power was back on. What could have been a miserable time had turned into a fun family adventure.

I make it a practice of looking for things to enjoy about our new place. I love my enormous backyard, complete with a clothesline. I feel so old-timey and Amish, hanging out my laundry to dry. It's a feeling of kinship with all the women throughout the ages who have hung out their household's clothing to dry in the sun! I like the extra bedroom in my house, too. Finally the girls have a room all to themselves, and my desk and sewing and crafting has a room to itself as well.

TJ has been working so much overtime, it seems like we hardly get to see him. He and I have managed to make the minutes we are together count, and this month we will have been together three years! This week some dear friends blessed us by watching the girls so we could go on a romantic date together. I am so privileged to be married to a person who blesses me daily! He is so easy to live with, and still makes me laugh with his humor and cry with his self sacrifice and dedication to providing for our little family, and with his love for our babies. He is Elizabeth's favorite, and she crawls to him and climbs up his pants legs every chance she gets, favoring him with wet baby kisses! Bella loves hanging out with her daddy, learning from him about tools and music and prayer and how to play hide 'n' seek.

My firstborn, my little buddy

The girls are growing up so quickly. Bella will be two at the end of this month! She is incredibly smart and articulate, and loves expressing her thoughts in speech. I love her soft, high pitched little voice! She plays with her dolls, doing all the same things with them that I do with Lizzy. Yesterday she took her doll on a ride on her tricycle, put it in Lizzy's walker, and fed it lunch. So cute! She observes and imitates those around her to an alarming and amusing degree.

Elizabeth is truly named Sunshine. She bestows her open mouthed baby smiles on anyone who stops to speak with her, and doesn't mind being held by strangers. She is a professional crawler, and chases her older sister all over the house! She is practicing standing alone as well. She and Bella are best buds, and spend hours playing and talking together. Bella showers her with hugs and kisses and the occasional clonk on the noggin, and shares all her food with her.

With two active young ladies in our household, family emergencies occur daily. Elizabeth is expert at getting stuck under the furniture. Yesterday Bella picked up a bee and got stung. She was quite brave after I applied healing salve to draw out the poison. She kept exclaiming "Bee! Owie! Hurt! Sting! Finger!" using all the words she knew that would apply to the situation. Later that evening Bella opened the small fridge in the kitchen and licked the freezer part, getting her lips and tongue painfully stuck. She shrieked in surprise and horror, and pulled away with painful results. She said her favorite phrase over and over, "Get you! Get you! Cold, get you!"

I have come to the conclusion that parenting for the first few years mainly consists of keeping your kids from dying.

I will try to discipline myself to be more consistent with blogging in the future.

Peace out.