Sweet Little Siblings!

I love, love, love seeing my sweet little loves together. I know they will have their ups and downs together as siblings, but the desire of my heart is to see them be best friends as they grow up, and throughout their lives.
It has been precious to see how Kenna has taken to her little brother in the two short months he's been here. The first thing she wants to do in the mornings is come find him and she checks on him constantly throughout the day, making sure he has his paci, wanting to "pat pat" his back if he's falling asleep, and sitting with him while he drinks "momma's milk." She takes it very personally if for any reason we don't let her help put on "Finn new diaper."
And yes, throughout the day I do quite a bit of protecting- fingers that want to poke little eyes, or in little mouths, swinging him a little too hard in the swing, or trying to feed him things he shouldn't have... she can be quite the stinker.
She just loves him soooooo much. And, for the most part, he just sits back and takes it all in. So sweet and laidback... he loves her too.
I'm so proud of the big sister she is becoming more and more every day! And it is such a joy to see Finn's personality bloom more each day. My two little peas in a pod.
And here is just about the most precious video I may ever have of them... Matt and I took it the day we brought Finn home from the hospital. Seriously could almost make me want a hundred kids.

Untitled from lindsey brogli on Vimeo.

Priorities, people.

While eating ice cream:

Mommy: "Kenna, are you glad Finn came to live at our house?"

Kenna: "Yeah!"

Mommy: "Are you going to play with him when he gets big?"

Kenna: "No, I not."

Mommy: "You're not going to play with him?"

Kenna: "No, I finish ice cream."

Wordless Wednesday: Outgrown!

Mother's Day!

On Mother’s Day weekend, we had the pleasure of dedicating our sweet baby boy to the Lord in church on Sunday morning. We did this with Kenna at Bayleaf two years ago, and this year she joined us up front with Finn as we committed ourselves as a family to raising him in the fear and admonition of the Lord. The kids were both perfect and barely made a peep! I think they were intimidated with that many people staring back at them.

The main thing I wanted to do for Mother’s Day was for us all to go pick strawberries. I have great memories of my mom taking me and my brother and us eating sunshine-hot fresh strawberries all the way home. So we packed Finn up in our frontpack carrier, put on our sun hats, and went!

Kenna was not as thrilled about it as I thought she would be, although she did enjoy sampling the strawberries right off the vine. There were some really big, beautiful fat red ones at the farm we went to. Aunt Alisa and Emmie joined us for a little while, and the girls had lots of fun picking together.

They even had a little farm area with goats that the girls especially liked.

Later in the week, I came home to a beautiful gift in the mail from my sweet husband and kiddos… a silver charm necklace! This one has an “M” and “L” stamped in it to look like it’s carved in a tree. It goes perfectly with the silver “K” Matt got for me when Kenna was born… now I just need an “F” for Finn!

Kenna These Days

Right now Kenna is all of two and a half... curious, inquisitive, sweet, sneaky, and a little too smart for her own good. We have to watch her every minute to keep her safe and out of trouble, but that's okay because she provides so much fun entertainment right now!

New words and fun things she's saying:

Asking us "How doin'?" or "Whatcha doin'?" or "Have good mornin'?"

Always asking for or looking for baby Finn.

snick/snake = stick

fire cake = birthday cake

musmic = music

coo number = cucumber

scary bird/scary bee = bumble bee

"go bee way!" = go away bee

"Oh no! I poop in it bath!"

Instead of I love you she says "loves you too."

special colors = sidewalk chalk

She has started discovering bugs and it's hilarious. She greets them with a high pitched little "oh!" to warn them not to get too close and then goes in to investigate.

She loves to pretend to go to the store... some things she has told us she is going to buy at the store are diet coke, chichen (chicken), honey dip (honey mustard), and a sammach (sandwich).

She's learning her shapes and her favorite one to say is hexagon. It comes out something like hagong.

She loves to be sung to at night and will ask for her favorites by name. Favorite songs:

"figgy" -Father we thank thee
"creamy" -create in me a clean heart
"more holy" -we cry holy, holy, holy
"momma's song" -finding who we are (my favorite on that cd)

and she will sing Jesus loves me and Jesus loves the little children on her own which is SO CUTE. She loves to sing it to Finn- still working on getting a video of that.

She loves reading "gooks" and will ask "momma to you?" when she wants me to read her one. Some of her favorites she knows so well that she can recite them in her little way which is also very cute. On constant rotation right now is a big sister/new baby in the house book. (This is an older photo, you can tell by how much less hair she has in it!)

She still doesn't have a ton of hair, but what she does have is starting to get curly, which I love. It looks just like what Matt's looked like as a baby and what mine does now. She's such a fun mix of us!
It's an adorable, wild and fun age... a little frustrating sometimes and a tiny bit exhausting. We are worn out at the end of the day. But oh how we love this girl!

Finn These Days

I blinked an eye, and suddenly my newborn is 2 months old, and I feel like he is less a newborn and more an infant each day... always a sweet baby boy though.
He's starting to find his voice, and I absolutely love all the little oohs and ahhs and baby snorts. He's especially snorty first thing in the morning, very ready to start the day together. He makes faces all the time, usually very serious-looking, like he is trying so hard to tell us something.

He is starting to smile and I caught some of the first few real ones on camera the other night. We were sitting on the couch after nursing for quite awhile and I looked down to suddenly see the biggest grins on his face! These are his first smiles (late April):

I know babies' heads have a reputation for smelling like babies and not grown ups, but I swear Finn's head smells exactly like Matt's- he is such a little man! It always makes me think of how quickly he is growing up.

He's a very physical little baby man- he can hold his head up already and loves to stand up on our laps for a few seconds at a time. He stretches one arm out straight while nursing and will gently smack me with it to get my attention. It's uncoordinated, but always takes me by surprise that he can make such a strong movement!

He loves to sit up in the bumbo & watch his little family bustle around. Apparently we're a little exhausting sometimes:

Happy Easter!

We had a really busy, but really great Easter weekend! Matt had a major project due for one of his classes, and also taught Sunday school Easter morning. I had a great time with the kids leading up to Easter weekend, and we had a really fun time going to our church's annual Easter egg hunt together as a family on Saturday! Easter is such a special time to celebrate in the life of a believer, Jesus's sacrifice on the cross and vanquishing of sin and death, that we really load up on the excitement around here!

At Home:

I didn't feel brave enough yet to let Kenna loose with real dye, so we stickered some plastic eggs instead. And since Sundays are so wild and crazy in our family at this stage of life, we opened our baskets Monday morning (the day after) so we could take our time and take fun pictures!

The Color Wonder markers were a favorite with Kenna, and definitely the Hello Kitty stamps and chocolate bunny!
Finn of course, looked on with approval. Sweet brother.
My two little bunnies!

With Friends:

And we filled up a few with candy to take to our friends the Bryants' annual Easter egg hunt (here are last year's pictures). Kenna had a great time with the "candy eggs" and after she picked up the first one and discovered chocolate in it, I wasn't sure she was going to pick up any more!
Sarah's mom dresses up like the Easter bunny and I wasn't sure how Kenna would react this year... but she LOVED it. I had a hard time prying her away so that other kids could take pictures! I was so bummed that I forgot my camera, but a good friend took some photos and emailed them to me later:

At Church:

Even the threat of chilly rain (and some falling on the drive out there!) was not enough to deter us from Bayleaf's awesome Easter egg hunt.
It was so cute to see Kenna and Beckley old enough to really get into it this year... they were putting eggs in each other's baskets and Kenna helped him pick them all up when his bucket fell over. So sweet.

Our big girl took one look at the giant slide, took her shoes right off, and climbed all the way to the top by herself. I both love her brave independence and at the same time am incredulous that my baby girl could possibly be that grown up.
My little blue Easter egg snuggled up with Mommy all morning while Daddy took Kenna to all the bouncy houses. He is growing like a weed too- from the angle I was holding him, I coouldn't tell that his little newborn hat barely covers half his head anymore!

With Family:

We had our traditional delicious lunch at Matt's parents' house after chuch. Ansley helped Nana B. pick out everything for the kids' Easter buckets... they opened them in a total blur of chocolate bunnies, bubbles, play dough, and crayons. All the fun stuff!
Granddaddy had left a strip of his yard unmowed so that it would be long enough to hunt eggs in. It worked out perfectly and the weather was just gorgeous! The kids could not have had more fun finding all the eggs and inspecting their treasure (Granddaddy and Nana helped spot a few):
I wanted a cute sibling shot of my two cuties all dressed up for Easter, but it just might not be possible at these wiggly little ages. Kenna was wearing a dress my mom made and smocked for me when I was her age. Finn's was an outfit I bought when we first found out we were pregnant with Kenna- I bought a boy outfit and a girl outfit (see them here on my crafty blog!) and this was the boy one!
Granddaddy and Nana B:
The Edwards:
Us:
A sweet one of just Matt and I that Leanne took for us:
And guess who was left holding the giant chickie when it was all said and done!

Easter is one of my favorite holidays, and certainly not because of the eggs and chicks and bunnies. We serve a risen and living Savior and King! Without his death there would be no atonement for our sin, and without his resurrection, no promise for an eternal life restored to our heavenly Father.

For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ¹⁰ The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. ¹¹ In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
-Romans 6:9-11

I hope everyone reading had a wonderful and worshipful Easter with their families as well!