it finally came!

the tooth is finally here! We have our boy back! It must have REALLY hurt coming through because Jaxon was not himself at all last week. Hopefully the one beside it won't give him as much pain coming through!

grandparent journal

A couple weeks ago Dan was talking to an older couple at our church. They were telling Dan about a book of questions their grandkids sent them to fill out about their lives and return to them. They thought this was a great idea and so did Dan & I. What a neat way to record & remember memories from our parent's or grandparent's lives that we may not have otherwise known about.

Off I went searching on the internet for ideas to make our own books of questions to send our parents (for Jaxon to have down the road). I finally finished it tonight.

I was planning on posting the file for the journal I made in this post, but apparently you can't post files. So if any of you are interested in making your own, I wouldn't mind emailing it to you. Just leave a comment with your email address or email me at danandlauracollins@gmail.com and I'll send it to you.

just for fun...and cause I love cake

Today I found a reason to make a cake. You see....I love cake. I could eat cake every day. Doesn't matter if it's chocolate, white, lemon, rainbow chip, I just like cake.

I have friends coming over tomorrow, so I used that as an excuse (and to celebrate Spring, of course! ;o)

My "butterfly" is a little warped, but it's cause I just started making a shape and then decided as I went that it would be a butterfly :)




Another excuse was that I got this new cake decorating set given to me by Darlene...a sweet lady from our church. It's from Pampered Chef and I wanted to give it a try. It's neat. It was surprisingly easy to do the writing. That's always the hardest part for me, but it was so easy!

blue gums

here's some new pictures of Jaxon's teething progress. I just discovered that the gums that are covering his top left tooth are BLUE! Poor boy. Must be painful. I'm thinking about buying an amber teething necklace. Apparently they help quite a bit. Right now I've got Jaxon on either Tylenol or Motrin at all times. As much as I hate giving him medicine, it's horrible watching him in so much pain (and I needed some sanity!).

Dan's feeling much better than he was on Monday, but still not 100%.









this is a picture of Jaxon's fancy work with his tongue. It's quite hilarious. He just started this 2 days ago....he can almost flip his tongue up-side down!

the flu & teething

Well....today I'm a nurse to both my boys. Poor Dan finally had a day to veg today and woke up with the flu :(. And Jaxon is really working hard bringing in his top right tooth so he's not the happiest either. They're both in bed right now so here I am blogging...


...he wasn't too happy about me taking his picture...







you can see almost the whole tooth through the side of his gums. It's very close!


Thanks for the advice on discipline! It was good to hear what other people's ideas are and it's nice to know I'm not alone! :) I will still happily take more ideas if you think of any more.

does discipline start now?

So I'm thinking it's time to start thinking about discipline and I'm curious to hear any good tips from you moms out there. Dan and I want to be intentional parents and to have somewhat of a plan of how we're going to discipline BEFORE we find ourselves in a situation that needs discipline, to avoid just "reacting" with the first response that comes out.

This week Jaxon started doing a fake cough when he has food in his mouth, resulting in food spraying everywhere. He also sticks his tongue out and spits it out that way. At first I thought he might be doing this because he's full or not hungry, but now I know that's not the case.

Does he KNOW this is bad or is it just part of him exploring the world of food? How do I react to this? Today I tapped his lip and said "no" firmly, and he gave me such a sad look and I felt so bad. Should I just say "no" or should I ignore it or what should I do????

Any creative discipline ideas would be appreciated!

my new (oops) look

Me and my hair these days......I tell you. Last Friday while our family was here, I got Ange (Dan's sister) to dye my hair for me. I already had the box of dye here. I had decided to go a shade (or 2) darker than last time because the last time it had a bit too much red in it for my liking. Well it turns out I'm not too smart because this is what my hair now looks like:



yeah. It's about 5 shades darker than I was expecting! It's pretty much black. Oh well. I am getting used to it. It WAS even darker than this. We went to WalMart after we rinsed out the first box of dye and frantically got another box (a few shades lighter than I want it) to try and get it lighter, but this is as light as we got! Lesson learned: just stick with what worked the first time :)

this is the color I got the first time (a couple months ago):


and this is the one the turned my hair BLACK!

he's yours, God!

Yesterday Dan & I had Jaxon "dedicated" .......a commitment that we made as parents to raise Jaxon in a way that would honor God, and also "letting" Jaxon go for the purposes God has for his life (when that time comes!). I'm guessing that this is something that we're going to have to do on a regular basis...mentally giving Jaxon back over to God. As a parent it's so easy to constantly be worrying about one thing or another, and there's always the temptation to hold him close and protect him and keep him under our arms of protection. But as we know....our "arms of protection" are not even CLOSE as strong as God's arms of protection.

We were blessed to have both of our parents come for the weekend, and Dan's sister Ange. It was a full house but a good time. Jaxon enjoyed being doted over for all his waking hours. Although he seems to be enjoying playing on the floor again today ;). He didn't see much of the floor this weekend! :)

Here's some pictures of the weekend.

fun with nana


Grandpa & Grandma







This is crazy. Bill (a guy from our church) can hold Jaxon by his feet in the palm of his hand. Jaxon just stands straight up, balancing. It's amazing. Bill says that every baby can do it.


all-you-can-eat brunch after church! Boy was it good!


...and of course after every big meal, sleep in inevitable!




Mmmmmmm.....homemade buns for supper!


I know how to pick 'em! :)


How many grandparents does it take to get Jaxon in his Jolly Jumper?