Posted by Amanda | Posted in Daily Life | Posted on 02-02-2011
Tags: dancing, DJ, mmmm...tea!, the Cooks, the Phillips', the Sahli's
The Saturday following my surgery was the end of our Recovery Week, and we celebrated by having our friends the Sahli’s over. We had to postpone our original dinner plans from the previous weekend due to a rather ill-timed hospital trip, but in the end it all worked out to my benefit since they brought over dinner and all the fixings! A minor organ being removed is well worth having Elizabeth’s home-made enchiladas and cornbread.
Scarlett and Victoria both love having Sam over to play, but Sissy *really* loves Sam; Lincoln is so funny when another boy is in the house. How can a little baby recognize gender distinction, and then realize “hey! it’s a boy, I want to follow HIM around!” at 7 months old??
Buddies:
I’ve been working on organizing our enormous cache of digital pictures from the last 11 years of our life together, and in doing so it has made it hard not to stop, go digging, and pull photos that remind me of any current ones I am editing. For instance, when I look at the picture above of Scarlett, Sam and Victoria I think, “Aw, they’ll love having that picture to look back on in a few years when they’re bigger.” Then I pulled this photo of Scarlett and Sam on the same sofa circa 2007 and realized Wow, they ARE older:
I am constantly amazed by how much alike and yet how different the kids look then as opposed to now.
The following morning, Mikayla was kind enough to get up with Lincoln when he decided to wake for the day at 6:30 so I could get a final solid night’s sleep before church. I came downstairs and found them lying on a pallet in the living room enjoying some quality cousin-snuggle-time:
Although I know that all sibling relationships are not created equal, I have been a little troubled with Scarlett’s continuing lack of interest in Lincoln. She’s not unkind toward him exactly, it’s more like he doesn’t exist… unless he’s bothering her. It was such a radical shift from how she was toward Victoria (doting), and although she is sometimes sweet with him, I mostly feel as though she would vanish him from existence if she could :-/ And so I started praying about it – just really asking that God would work in her heart and help her love her brother more and more each day. I also prayed for patience with her about this attitude, and I have to say there have been noticeable improvements. She’ll now sometimes kiss Lincoln “good morning” and “good night,” and she’s started helping me change some of his diapers and whatnot. Last week she even offered to feed him some baby food, and although it was somewhat short lived, I was still encouraged!
Lincoln absolutely LOVED having Scarlett feed him:
Me: ”Okay, Scarlett, let’s not give him a tonsillectomy!”
Scarlett: ”Well, I gotta get it IN THERE.”
Nana and Papa have started keeping DJ (Papa’s grandbaby) occasionally when Elishia needs help. Once again, although the girls played really well with him, it was Lincoln who instantly gravitated toward the other boy in the house.
Lincoln is a total pacifier thief, which I find odd considering he HATES his. He crawled over to DJ, who was playing so nicely and minding his own business and just popped it right out of DJ’s mouth and into his own!
DJ was very sweet about it and didn’t take advantage of his superior size to knock him into the wall like he could have 
Jim is in a super busy phase at work right now, and although the kids miss him when he has to stay at the office late, everyone chips in to make a fun night with all us gals (well, and Linc!) at home. One of our favorite things to do is to make a stage (read: spread a blanket) and put on ballerina skirts and dance. Everyone gets involved:
We were so happy to get back to playdates! During my recovery week, we basically holed up at home and we were ALL happy to visit with our friends. The Phillips’ came over and we had a fun lunch and the girls played together while Lincoln and Judd spent equal amounts of time giving each other sweet kisses and trying to wrestle 
I was also able to share with them the wonders of our new Teavana tea. Amanda really liked it, but Judd… well, he was a convert.
Loran brought over her crew and our combined total of 6 kids (!!) had fun running through the house and playing “jail” (read: we put a new gate on the lower portion of the stairs going up, and now everything north of the gate is “jail”). Notice how Lincoln is all but sitting in Carter’s lap? Yep, totally trying to get the ‘big boy’s’ attention:
Although not true 100% of the time, Victoria usually loves Lincoln to mess around on her and will lay down from time to time and just let him clamor up and over her. Lincoln, of course, is all too happy to oblige
It’s good to be back to normal!