Prayer for Gabriel

Gabriel has recently gone through a tough time. He would wake during the middle of his nap screaming and crying. At first I thought he was going through a growth spurt and just wanted to eat. I later realized it wasn't hunger, it was pain. He would stiffen up his body and try to grab his stomach. I tried burping him, and I tried giving him gas drops, but neither of those things worked. When I tried to feed him, he would fall asleep because he was so tired from not having full naps. This went on for several days.

I decided to take him to the doctor and weigh him. Since his last doctor visit, which was 15 days prior, he had only gained 6 ounces. The average weight gain for a baby his age is an ounce per day. Since I didn't have an appointment, I couldn't see the doctor, but was able to ask the nurse about it. I explained Gabriel's problems and started crying in the middle of the waiting room. The nurse told me it sounded like I was eating something that was bothering him. Babies often have problems when their moms eat things like onion, cabbage, tomato, broccoli, dairy, or citrus. So now I'm eating a very bland diet. After a couple weeks of eating "safe" foods, I'll start to introduce some of the questionable foods again. This way I'll be able to determine what the problem was.

Gabe is doing much better during his naps now. He sleeps all the way through. In fact, sometimes it's hard to we him up to eat. I guess he's catching up on sleep. I want him to catch up on eating too! I plan to weigh him again in about a week to see how his growth is. We could use your prayers! Please pray for Gabe to be healthy and strong and continue to grow at a steady pace, and for me to have some relief from the stress that comes with an unhappy baby. I'll keep you posted on how he's doing.

The Beginnings of a Vegetable Garden

This year Richard and I decided to make a vegetable garden. It's my little project... Actually, it's not so little. We built three raised beds, which took a lot of work. It started by digging up all the weeds and grass in the middle of the backyard.



Then we purchased lumber and started building our beds, placed the beds in their spots, and lined the bottom with cardboard. Having cardboard at the bottom keeps weeds from growing. This is our smallest bed, which is 3'x3'.



For the soil, we used a combination of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite.



My mom told me about this great gardening idea called the square foot garden. It's for people who want to max out their garden in a small space using raised beds. The idea is you section off your garden into squares that are one foot wide. Each plant has different space requirements within the square. For example, you can grow 1 tomato plant per square, 1 pepper plant, 9 green onion plants, and 16 carrots. If you're interested in the square foot garden, I recommend looking at this site. It contains a lot of information and I now follow the blog. Some plants require multiple squares. Squash needs 9 squares. That's the size of my small box, so we planted a yellow crooked neck squash plant. He needs a name. How about Yellow (I'm so creative ;0) )? Meet Yellow, my first garden plant!



Stay tuned to see how Yellow does this season...

Gabe smiles

Soda Pop Stop

On Sunday, we had an adventure in Los Angeles. We took our friends, Craig and Stacy, and drove them to a small grocery store in LA called Galco's Soda Pop Stop. It's a small grocery store filled almost entirely with soda. But not just any soda. This store only holds the most unique sodas. Many, in fact, are only sold at this location. There is a wide variety to choose from. You can have some fancy root beer, or you can have a cucumber soda, or you can have vanilla soda where you can still see the fuzz from the vanilla bean that was used. I was told it's very rare to find a soda made from actual vanilla bean. The owner of the store is a cute old man who seems to get excited each time you ask him for help choosing a soda.

Check out this video about the store featuring the cute old man.





Wow look at all the soda we got!

Gabriel's Baby Dedication

Gabriel was recently dedicated to the Lord at our church. Why a dedication instead of a baptism? Richard and I believe that a person shouldn't be baptized until he/she commits his/her life to the Lord. Since Gabriel is too young to fully comprehend what that means, we don't baptize him. Instead, we pray over him and ask the Lord to watch over him as he grows. It's our prayer that one day Gabriel will decide to follow Jesus, give his life to the Lord, and be baptized.

Here is a picture that was taken when Richard was introducing the family before he prayed over Gabriel.

Tabor is FINALLY here!!!

Tabor has joined us at last! He was born on April 5, 7 lbs 15 oz, 19 in. He is exactly 2 months younger than Gabriel.

Welcome to the world, little one. You are much loved!

Gabriel meets Paw

Gabriel is Bob's 7th grandchild. All the kids call Bob "Paw". Each time I say "Paw", Richard corrects me and tells me to say "Pawwww". You see, in the south, you have to draw out your words. I think Richard wants to impart some of his southern habits on Gabriel. Anyway, someday I'll learn to say it right, but as of right now, I continue to be reminded that I'm not Southern enough. Maybe I need to eat some more fried chicken.



Gabe and Paw hit it off right away. They hung out...


...stared at each other...


...and took naps together.


The adults had fun too. Bob loves the Opera. So, being in LA and all, we went to the Opera! We went to see The Turn of the Screw. This is a picture of us before we left.



And of course, we couldn't possibly let Bob leave without a visit to the beach.


We enjoyed another great visit with family.