Bye Bye Paci

It's been a long time coming...
We realized a while back that it was time to give up the pacis...but with our hectic summer the girls have literally reverted and been wanting their pacis every waking moment of the day. Even my attempts to use them only for sleeping, were draining and with all the whining I would just give in. So we took the drastic route...and threw them away! Phillip and I had talked with the girls a few days earlier about how they are big girls now, and don't need paci's any more. We were going to throw them away and then watch the trash man take them. On Monday it hit me...I want Phillip home to help with our first bed time after no pacis and I knew he would be home on Monday and Tuesday night of this week, so all of the sudden the day was here and the girls did GREAT!

They took their last nap with their paci's and them put them in their kitchen pots and marched into the big kitchen to throw them away. Don't mind Atley's swim suite...we were NOT swimming that day, but she wanted to wear it, so hey, why not!

Smiling with their paci's one last time!

Throwing them into the trash can. They kept saying "trash man take them."

Later that night Phillip actually dug back into the trash and pulled them back out...for just in case, you know:) They are hiding in the garage now...
The girls have done a great job without their pacis and truly understand what they did. I think it helps that we watched the trash man take the trash away the next morning. They know the paci's are gone, and they can't get them back. They have been talking, singing, crying, playing a little more when it is time to sleep, but overall we are really pleased. Whenever they ask for their paci, the catch themselves and then say, "trash man take them...but I have my lamby now." Even since the paci's have been gone, their lamby has been staying in their bed most of the day and they are making other milestones with potty training as well!
Today they both only wore a diaper for nap and bedtime, and had NO accidents all day long. We even went to the ZOE house, where Avery peed on the potty 2x, and played at the playground. I was very proud of them! This is not so new for Avery, but for Atley to be using the potty now without major resistance is a BIG deal! They both even learned how to climb up on the big potty all by themselves tonight. I'm never going to "start" any kind of new transition at the beginning of summer...our summers are so crazy and it is too hard to be consistent.

School started on Tuesday here... and for Atley and Avery school starts in September! Homeschool TOT school that is....more on that to come!

Of course I couldn't leave out my sweet little snuggle boy who now has FOUR teeth, 3 of which all came in in 10 days! He is getting faster and faster with army crawling, and just began pulling up on me the other day. I am glad he is not on his knees crawling around really fast yet...I know it will come and it will be hard to keep up with three fast movers!

And finally...
Hot Summer Nites at ZOE was incredible. It was such a blessing to have Generate, Gateway's Youth Band, lead the worship! They are so intentional about inviting the presence of the Lord into worship, and it was exciting to see the kids so passionate about worshipping the Lord. Kari Jobe came in on Wednesday and I ended up picking her up from the airport all by myself! It was fine once I met her, she is so real and quite/soft spoken too. I just talked talked talked, and by the time she left on Friday I was texting her and taking her to the airport again. She was in love with Canon and kept calling him her "boyfriend". She did an awesome job of leading worship on Thursday night and a few people even gave their lives to the Lord. We got to hang out with the band, and Kari quite a bit. It was great for me to have my mom here that week because she would stay at the house with the kids, or help me when we all went out, and since she was staying here, I could stay out late at night with everyone! I haven't done that in over THREE years! So fun for me...I was even doing back flips at Skyzone one day. Thank you for praying for Hot Summer Nites! The enemy really didn't want it to happen the first night, and after much prayer and techinal difficulties, the Lord won!!