Okay, all you would-be medical people out there...what's wrong with my mouth?



For the last two or three days, I've woken up with a slightly sore throat that fades over the day, plus a sensitive tongue. It's kind of like the feeling you get when you've drunk your coffee too early and it burns your mouth (hypersensitive) or like when you've used too much Oragel (numb)? Today, however, my sore throat has not gone away all day, plus my taste buds are really prominent. They got more bumpy as the day went on (as you can see on the front of my tongue), and a visible ridge of bumps along both sides of my tongue sticks out higher than the rest of the taste buds. The right side of my tongue/mouth hurts more. The pictures don't really show just how high up the tastebuds are sticking. It's really weird.



Any clue, anyone?

Caspian is so awesome. Every day, he whips out a new word or concept. Last week he started praying at random times, on his own. He tells me he's going to pray, then what he's going to pray for. It's so cute. He does it every morning, too, when I'm getting ready in the bathroom. He'll climb up the stepstool, get a drink in a Dixie cup, announce "pray," set the cup on the top step, sit on the bottom step with his feet inside the stool, and pray for his water (and Grandpa, lately)! Oh, what a blessing he is!

He discovered money today! We were reading his toddler Bible, and his favorite pictures are from the prodigal son — especially where the son is holding a goblet in one hand and a bag of money in the other. I explained again that it was money and that you use it to buy things, and this time he repeated "money" (so cute, BTW). To show him some real money, I took all the change from my wallet and put it into his empty sock so he could hold it like the prodigal son held his bag. He thought that was the coolest thing ever. Then we dumped the change into a shallow tin and spent about 30 minutes sorting the different kinds of change back and forth between the lid and the tin. He said penny, quarter, dime, nickel, head, and house (building). We counted how many we had of each kind, put them in piles, poured them like water, and shuffled our fingers in them. Money is officially his new favorite toy (I know, I know — I've opened the floodgates). We played with it again tonight, and he keeps trying to get my wallet out to play with it some more. He would not accept poker chips as a substitute, either. Darn.


He got his second spanking ever this morning. :( He's been pulling out a power cord from the electrical socket in the living room recently, and the seriousness of it isn't getting through to him. This morning when he yanked it again, I gave him a swat on his behind. He was so shocked and surprised that he howled for quite a while. He didn't see that it was me, so he just associated the discomfort with touching the cord and the socket. (woo hoo!) We talked about it, and he decided that they were "No, no — eyes!" which means he's not allowed to touch them, just look with his eyes. Thumbs up!


I tried explaining about his birthday this morning, since we have a month to go. When I mentioned birthday, the immediate connection he made was "cake". I explained about his birthday cake, and asked what kind of cake he wanted (yellow and chocolate). Then I showed him the calendar, today's date, and his birthday. We circled his birthday with highlighters and pronounced it to be cake day. He understood that we had no cake today and that the special day was the day we will have cake, but all day, he wanted cake anyway! To get around the incongruity, he kept trying to circle today's date with the highlighters! He'd drag a chair over, climb up, grab a highlighter, and try to mark on today's square. It was pretty funny.

His big new color is teal and he's finally started verbalizing "orange" (as "ng"). Almost every morning, he asks to call Grandpa Kirk. His preferred greeting has switched to "Hi!" and when he starts in on giving "five," literally everyone in his sight line gets asked. He's getting pretty good at hitting balls with his plastic golf club (today we worked on a two-handed swing) — and he made the connection between that and Wii golf.

Marker session #2, with daddy:

Let me back up. Last Tuesday there was a Mary Kay event in Lexington to wrap up the final quarter of the Seminar year. Of all the people in attendance, I was shocked (truly) to be recognized as having the highest retail sales for the entire quarter! I got flowers and a tiara and it was totally unexpected. That event was also the first time I got to wear my red jacket in public, too. One other first, that not all of you will appreciate: it was my first time back in an underwire since sometime in my first trimester (early spring 2006). Talk about weird! That night I also experimented with not wearing a sleep bra — it worked! Ahhhhh...


On Thursday, my Red Jacket Debut was awesome! My friends/family/guests completely filled half of the seats at the Pampering Center. It was so incredible to have those who came, come to support me. I smiled so hard throughout the whole thing, my scalp hurt!

My dad took this picture outside the training center:

Caspian is turning into a parrot. He will almost always repeat the main word/phrase of whatever your statement is. He's also getting into concepts. For example, whenever we're about to get in the car or take a bite of food, he asks, "Hot?" No. "Cold?" No. "Warm!" Yes. "[just] Right!" (like in Goldilocks). His other big thing is happy or sad (and "cry"). He just cracks me up all the time. He is so awesome. He's so brilliant! And sweet! And funny! And gorgeous! And kindhearted! And strong! And WONDERFUL! I love him.

One more milestone: on Saturday night, we were all sitting in the living room together when Caspian suddenly insisted that he wanted to go through the gate into the other part of the house, and that he wanted both Charlie and me to go too...? We kept asking him where he wanted to go and why, but he just kept insisting that we all go. Finally he said he wanted us to go to the potty. We were so clueless, we kept trying to narrow it down (you want mommy to go potty? you want daddy to go potty? we don't have to go potty, sweetheart...). Turned out that Caspian wanted us to take him to the potty! We only realized this after he started pushing there in the living room and it was too late. Can you say, "Duh," first-timers?

Here's a little "blast from the past" for you!

Car Finale

God provides, that's for sure. We ended up switching service providers and replaced the entire engine in our car. Mercifully, God allowed some people to minister to us in a great way by loaning us the money to pay for it. Glory to God!


Tonight will be my Mary Kay RED JACKET DEBUT!!!!! Exactly two years and three months after I joined this incredible company, my team promoted me into this position of leadership and responsibility. No offense to the other MKers out there, but I really do have the greatest team on the face of the earth. They are amazing ladies, all of them. Our goal by the end of the month is to be an official Team, and I've been ordered to get into DIQ right away (by some of my sassy team members). I'm taking them up on that challenge!


How did I spend the afternoon? Letting Caspian play naked in the bathtub with washable markers for the first time. Thankfully, they're also non-toxic...





Gosh, I love my life. I'm so grateful and so thankful for the opportunities and flexibility Mary Kay has provided for our family. Thank you, Lord!

UPDATE: Prayer Request for the Car

We heard back from Toyota today. They replaced the pipes and cleaned everything out, then took it for a test drive. There is an unexplained rattling and the car won't maintain oil pressure. They cannot figure out what is causing these problems, so we have two options. We can either start replacing random parts until we find out what's wrong (expensive) or we can replace the entire engine (expensive). They found us a used engine that only has 83K miles on it for $4500. We don't even have the $900 for the first set of repairs, much less an additional $4500 (or more). Our mechanic is a man we trust to be thorough, so if they can't find the problem's source at the Toyota dealership, we believe them.

Please pray to heal our car, that we choose the right option, and that Charlie gains peace and comfort. This new blow has him reeling.


Guess I'd better hurry up and earn my MK car, huh? ;p



Here are a couple things to take your mind off Satan's attacks:


Caspian told me he drew the letter "u". On the right is the first set of "writing" he did, then he moved his stylus over to the center, drew two specific lines, and said "U!"

Here are the two lines he drew, in case you couldn't see them:




BACON TOMATO CUPS
8 slices bacon, crisply cooked
1 medium tomato
1/2 small onion
3 ounces shredded Swiss cheese
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon basil
10 ounce can refrigerated flaky biscuits (with layers that separate)

Preheat oven 375° F. Chop bacon, tomato, and onion. Mix all ingredients except biscuits into 2 quart batter bowl. Separate each biscuit into 3 thinner biscuits. Spritz muffin pans (or mini muffin pans) with cooking spray (like Pam) and lay each biscuit over a cup and shape using miniature-tart shaper. Fill cups with bacon mixture. Bake 10-12 minutes until golden.

This is a Pampered Chef recipe. Literally every PC recipe I've ever made has been amazingly delicious. Here's a catchall website with all the recipes: http://www.joycesfinecooking.com/pamperedchefs.htm http://www.jfcrecipes.com/pampered_chef.htm

Prayer Request for Our Car!

Early last week, the knob that adjusts the driver's side seat (raise and lower) dislodged. It could still spin, but it didn't engage. Fortunately, the seat was then stuck in the "up" position, so I could still see out (poor Charlie couldn't see stoplights, though, since he was hitting the ceiling). At the end of last week, the A/C started cutting out. It would be on for 30 minutes, then gone until the car had a chance to sit again, then on for 10, then gone, etc. We figured we'd take it in to get looked at sometime this week, since we're supposed to drive to South Carolina this weekend (and see good friends in Knoxville on the way).

As we were driving home yesterday afternoon, the "check engine" light came on. Once we got home, I went inside to get some things together while Charlie sat in the car with (a sleeping) Caspian. Fifteen minutes later, I came back outside and smelled burning oil. The car had started making weird rattling noises, too, so Charlie turned it off. He looked under the hood, then back at the heat gauge — off-the-charts hot. After waiting 10 minutes, he tried restarting the car. It died immediately on every attempt. This morning (after sitting all night) it started on the first try, but the service guy from Toyota said not to drive it.

At noon today, someone towed our car to Toyota. We got the following diagnosis: towing = $60; replace broken seat-adjuster knob = $16; because of a pin-sized hole in the radiator pipe, all the engine coolant had leaked out, causing the overheating = $775 for replacement pipe; all that overheating gunked up the throttle = $58 to flush. But that's not all. Only after all that work will they be able to figure out why the A/C stopped working and if other parts of the engine were damaged by the overheating. Whew.

Good thing God's in charge, huh?

Thanks for praying!


P.S. The interesting thing is, the last time I had a $1,000 Mary Kay week (as I did this past week), we suddenly needed $900 of car repairs. Hmmm...spiritual attack, anyone?


Here's a pick-me-up for your Monday: Caspian's first time holding a ladybug. Well, technically, a it's a ladybug carcass. It was dead on the sidewalk and he proudly carried it home. :)