Back Again!

Hello everyone! It has been a long time since my last update, so I have lots to tell. I hope you all have been having a blessed past few weeks!

Last week we moved into Livia and Dave's apartment (our apartment isn't available until January 1st), Rob and Denyce moved into their new place, Dougle and I started back to language learning, and I had another doctor visit (every 2 weeks now that I am 7 months along)! At our doctor visit, we had an ultrasound. It was a great ultrasound; perhaps the most modern machine in the entire clinic! Dougle thought he looked just like Canaan in his ultrasounds, with big cheeks and all, while I thought he looked a bit different, with a longer head compared to Canaan's round head. We will see soon! Overall, Max is head down already and looking very healthy. He's been really active lately too!

Canaan's personality blooms more everyday! He is also learning lots everyday and getting more ornery too! Here are a few things that we've been working on/he's been learning recently:

• "All by myself." Canaan has learned this phrase and uses it often. He likes to be independent in many ways, such as walking up and down the stairs to and from our apartment, climbing out of his bed, eating, and everything else. If he tries and can't do it alone, he will say, "Too hard." And sometimes, he will just say, "Heeeelp!" with the BIGGEST Texas accent ever. I am not sure where he picked up the accent on that word!! But it is hilarious!

• We realized about a month ago that we talk in third person with Canaan. I am not sure why! But we say, "Mommy is doing this....Canaan can help Daddy...etc." So, he talks like this too, referring to himself as Canaan. So, we've been trying to start speaking normally, though it is hard after talking that way for a while. I am not sure what made us start talking like that; perhaps we thought it was more clear for him when he first started talking? But now we are trying to use lots of personal pronouns, like: me, my, you, your, I, and mine. He is progressing, but he still gets confused a lot with which one to use! "Daddy, help you." and such are common phrases he uses still!

• New! New! In addition to us moving to David and Liv's, his good friend Chi moved too! So, we've been talking a lot about new homes. Everyone is getting new homes. And when Liv and Dave return from South Africa, they will be moving and then a few days later we will be able to move into our new apartment. So we will be having lots of "new houses" over the next month. Please pray for his quick adjustment. He has been starting to wake up crying in the middle of naps and the night. I am not sure if it is connected to the moves or just a normal part of his growing up. But keep him in your prayers. He has moved quite a bit recently!

• Canaan talks more in sentences, repeating phrases that we say, and making new ones himself. He tells himself to "be careful" a lot when he is doing something more risky, like going off the couch head first, and when he gets hurt, he says, "I sorry!" It is so sweet.

• Plurals. Canaan has been using plurals for quite a while now, which is impressive to me. But he doesn't always get them right. Sometime he adds plurals to adjectives as well as the nouns, resulting in something like: reds trucks. At other times, he adds them to words that don't need them, like: mines and peoples. It is fun to see him develop and learn these difficult concepts.

• For about a week, we had some speech issues. Canaan started repeating the last sound of each word/sentence multiple times. He would say: red-d-d truck-k-k. Sometimes it was just once, sometimes he would draw it out for 5 or 6 times: truck-K-K-K-K-K. Of course, we didn't know what to do. At first we laughed, because we didn't know it was going to continue. But it did. For days. Then we tried to correct him, telling him not to do it. Then we worried. What should we do? Discipline him when he does it (because he was doing it on purpose), or ignore it? Of course, being the Mommy, I was just worried he would give himself a speech impediment if he didn't stop! We wrestled with it, but decided to ignore it. After a few days it went away. It pops back up every once in a while, but we just continue to ignore it and he stops after an hour or so. Who knew being a Mommy and Daddy could be so difficult and confusing?!

• For those of you who don't know, we sometimes call Canaan "MONK" after the TV show. He has certain tendencies to like everything in order. He likes all doors closed, he lines up his cars and trucks (since very young- and they all face the same direction too), and many other things. His latest little "Monk fetish" is that if we have a series of books, he likes to read ALL of them if we read one. We can't just read one. If he finds one, and it is part of a series, he goes off to find the others before we start reading. We had 2 series of 3-4 books, but then mom sent us two packs of manners books- which he loves and has already started to memorize! However, each pack contains 6 books, which means we have to read all six if we read one! What a silly little boy we have!!

Well, thanks for bearing with the long post. I'll try to keep up better with it, even being busy! We love you all and miss you, especially during the holidays! Take care and God bless!