Our Daughter has a Name!

After much prayer and deliberation, we finally decided on a name for our daughter. We had way too many criteria to meet in order for a name to even make it on the list of possibilities, and only two really survived. But the name we've landed on is...


Karis Jordan


The name means "Grace descends." Karis is the Greek word for 'grace' and Jordan comes from a Hebrew word, which means to 'flow down' or 'descend.' Our prayer for her is that God's grace would continually flow down and descend upon her life, and that in overflow, grace would be constantly descending from her life onto others.

Personality

This picture does not in the least do justice to the scene that took place the other night. You can barely see the yellow boots that Krieg is wearing, which he chose all by himself, along with the train hat, to accompany his mismatched PJ's (after a few wet ones. Oops!) Most people rarely see this side of Krieg's personality, since he is usually pretty reserved and cautious when we are outside of our house, especially around larger groups of people. But the other night was typical of what goes on inside of our house. Our friends were over for dinner, including his best buddy Ivy, and he decided that they should march and have a parade down the hallway. So in his loud, raucous voice, he runs up and down the hallway shouting "March, march, march..." for a good 4-5 minutes, trying to convince Ivy to join him. He was hilarious! I am thankful that he is becoming more comfortable in other places and with more people so he is starting to act more like his normal self! outside our house. He sure is a fun kid!

So many changes

It's been a little while since I've updated the blog, and though not much has happened as far as events are concerned, I realized that in a lot of ways, Krieg feels like a totally different child then he was a month ago. The biggest news from his world---Big Boy UNDIES! He very proudly sports Elmo undies, every waking hour of the day. I decided to take the risk of potty training early (which I was never planning on doing) since Krieg self initiated pooping on the potty. I think he's still a little young to have total bladder control, so we have our fair share of small accidents and go through lots of barely wet undies, but, no more diapers for this big man! For that I am very thankful. Having to pay for diapers for 2 kids just didn't appeal to me.

Next on the list of growing up is Krieg's language development. He was way behind in talking, and we even went to the speech therapist for an evaluation on the doctor's request. By 18 months he was only saying about 3 words that anyone besides me could understand. But in the last month, he has started to talk up a storm, and is now saying three word phrases. His phrase of the week has been "play dadda, play!" Every time Kevin comes upstairs, he thinks it must be daddy play time! It is amazing how much it changes life when he can talk so much. Last night Krieg woke up a number of times because of his stuffy nose, and one time I went in their only to hear that his one request was "chapstick". Really? Chapstick at 4AM? But that made him happy and he went back to sleep. Now two months ago it would have taken me 15 minutes to figure out that's what he wanted!

He is now even to the point of others really being able to understand and carry on a conversation with him, which, I think, has had a big influence on him doing so much better with babysitters and new people. I think his lack of ability to communicate made him not frustrated and hesitant to stay with other people. Another factor might also be that I am not nearly as fun of a playmate when I'm 7 months pregnant since I don't run around the house all day with him!

I hope this gives you a little snapshot into our fun right now!