Dedication and Mother's Day

My first official Mother's Day was absolutely wonderful! Chris and I considered last year as my first Mother's Day since I was pregnant and was technically a mother, but this year was more special since Hayden was able to be with us...not to mention the fact that last year's Mother's Day was the first time I went into preterm labor and ended up having to be put on bedrest...apparently, Hayden wanted to say Happy Mother's Day last year, too. :o)

In addition to being Mother's Day, we had baby dedication at church. We had not had baby dedication since last Mother's Day, so there were 16 children who were dedicated Sunday morning. The front of the church was definitely full. So many people came up to us talking about how special that service must have been for us. To be perfectly honest, it was special, but I had that personal moment of Hayden's dedication to the Lord a long time ago.

I've shared with all of you that I have had a previous tendency to be extremely controlling and fearful and uptight about certain things. I've been through some things in my life that caused me to be that way, but that didn't give me an excuse to try to have control over my life. A year of working through some things and giving certain things over to the Lord has brought me a long way with my sin of control and self-reliance.

All of that happened before Hayden was born, but when he was born, the first several weeks were tough for me. I was determined that breastfeeding would work for us, because I knew of all the benefits that breastfeeding gives to a baby. Ultimately, I thought something I could control would help control his life and make it easier for him and for me. After several weeks of crying and trying to make it work, it just wasn't working. I realized that I had tried to grasp control of him and his life and knew that I had to give it up and let the Lord take over. I remember sitting there trying to feed him and crying while realizing that it was just not working. At that moment, I dedicated Hayden to the Lord. Ultimately, Hayden belongs to the Lord and is only a gift to Chris and me. Nothing I can do can control his life and make it perfect. Sin entered this world and made it an unperfect world, and Hayden will go through some illnesses and tough times and will be affected by other people's sins just as all of us are. My job is to be his mother and to raise him to rely on Christ rather than himself.

So, baby dedication on Sunday was an outward symbol of something I had done shortly after he was born. I was so glad I was able to do it publicly, but the most special moment definitely occured that night I cried while trying to feed him and gave him over to the Lord. I've been so blessed to see how Hayden has been taken care of through these first 9 months, 2 weeks, and 6 days of his life, and it hasn't been because of anything I've done. I'm so glad he and I went through those experiences those first 6 weeks of his life. I needed that to happen. I feel so lucky God hasn't given up on the mess that I am and that He continuously tries to mold me into someone who relies on Him. I am still a mess, but God hasn't let go of me and never will. I feel so lucky and so blessed.

On another note, Hayden has had his first real illnesses this month. Nine months of not having any real illness with no fever was bound to end at some point. He got a double ear infection 12 days ago, finished his medicine on Sunday for that, and went to the doctor today with viral tonsillitis. He's feeling pretty yucky, but it will work it's way out of his system.

Here's a picture of us from Sunday. I was just glad Hayden didn't leap out of Chris' arms and crawl up the aisle. :o)

Happy Birthday, Gus!

Today marks Gus' 3rd birthday! Chris and I had been married for nearly a year, and we decided to get a dog. After all, you know what they say about keeping a plant alive, a dog alive, and a child alive. Well, we kind of broke the rules, because we killed the plants we had. But, we thought we might have some luck with a dog. A basset hound seemed like a good candidate for us, because we lived in an apartment at the time.

We bought Gus from a family in Grenada, MS. His parents were Fred and Lola. We were able to meet Lola, but Fred had been run over shortly after Lola got pregnant. We were, however, able to see the pictures of Fred and Lola's wedding. I mean, you have to explain the puppies to the children in a biblical manner...with a doggie marriage, of course...complete with a veil for Lola and a bow tie for Fred. We knew right away that Gus was the puppy we wanted out of the litter. He seemed to have the most personality, and the children had deemed him the favorite puppy. The family had named him Big Bubba, but we decided to change that to Gus. We won't go in to the reason for the name Big Bubba. :o)


Well, as you can see, we had more luck with the dog than we did with the plants. Gus threw us right into getting to see what parenthood is all about with all of his medical issues (complete with allergy shots), and he definitely showed us the importance of puppy-proofing your home. I won't even begin to tell you all the things this dog has eaten. I believe the entire container of onion flakes took the trophy. Or was it the pound of chocolate? Or the bottle of mint extract? I could name so many things. We definitely called animal poison control several times.

Gus enjoyed two years of indoor life before we moved into our new house, but the shedding and claws were not welcome inside our new home. Shortly after we moved in, Hayden entered the world, and poor Gus was not only banished outside but he was no longer the only child. The inhumanity of it all!

Along the same lines, Hayden has said his first word. I wanted to wait awhile before I deemed it his first word, because I wanted to make sure the association was there. He had been saying dada for forever and then added things like mama and baba and nana. He says those things, but the word association isn't there. In other words, he doesn't understand that Chris is dada or Missy is mama. Well, his first word is "Gu" or sometimes "Guk." That's right...I said it all along that his first word would be the dog's name. Hehehe.... Hayden's so cute standing there at the back door saying "Gu" over and over.

Happy Birthday, Gus or Gu or Guk. We love you, buddy!

Easter and A First Haircut

This school year has flown by, and thankfully, my traveling to schools is finished. Don't get me wrong...I love working with my teachers and I do only travel once or twice a week, but I enjoy a nice, long summer break from traveling. I'm looking forward to summer, spending time with Hayden, maybe taking a trip with Chris, getting a tan and going to the pool (the tan didn't happen last summer when I was pregnant and on bedrest), organizing (one of my favorite things to do), and maybe even doing some decorating of my house. I mean, we have lived here nearly a year, so I figure a few pictures on the wall and around the house might be a good addition. Hehehe... :o)

Life here changes nearly every week, mainly because of Hayden and his new tricks. He seems to change almost overnight and learn new things faster than I can get used to the old, new things. He's starting to feed himself finger foods, but as hard as it is to believe (being nearly 25 pounds at 9 months of age...the size of the average 18 month old), he seems pretty picky. He definitely knows what he likes and what he wants. I can't really get him to eat anything mushy (like sweet potatoes or bananas). If he does eat those things, they usually go in the mouth and right out of the mouth, or they just end up mashed up between his fingers. He's figuring it out, though and figuring out the textures he likes. I don't think it would be a terrible thing if he lost a pound or two or maintained his current weight for a while...he's a heavy load for this girl to carry around.

He's really mastered the skill of pulling up now and is pulling up on everything (including me). The latest thing he has discovered is that he can pull up on our furniture finally (it was too tall for a while) and the toilet (good thing I clean) and the whirlpool tub (can't wait til he figures out what those knobs do). He has even done some real crawling (instead of his usual tummy-on-the-floor brand of crawling) in the past three days. He's figured out how to find me in the house and how to follow me around the house, so I have a constant shadow. Sometimes, I'll leave the room, come back, and find him wandering around the house trying to find me.

Hayden's first Easter was good but uneventful. He's too young to really do much of anything, but he did have a good time playing with the grass in his basket (pictures included below). I'll be glad when he can understand Easter and what it means and enjoy our wonderful Easter services at church...we had some really good ones this year.

We did get his first professional pictures taken (pretty late, I know) by a photographer in Clinton, Heather Bryant. She's quick, which is the best thing you can be when you are taking pictures of an infant. Hayden's first pictures were some Easter pictures with a real, live Easter bunny. Bingo was the pet of a friend of our photographer, and I promise you that they had tranquilized that poor bunny. Heather would just plop Bingo down next to Hayden, and he'd just sit there and was content to chew on a piece of grass or leaf. There was never any hopping or biting. Heather had a real carrot as a "prop." Hayden took hold of that carrot and put it right in his mouth and even took it and beat Bingo upside the head with it. It was super funny. Let me tell you...those pictures turned out super cute. He also took some regular 9-month pictures the next Friday, and we took some pictures as a family, too. I'm excited to finally be getting some pictures of Hayden and of our family.

The latest new thing was a new haircut yesterday! Hayden had a pretty good head full of hair when he was born, and it's been over his ears for a couple of months. I've held off for a while, but lately, I've really had to do some work with it to make it go behind his ears and prevent him from looking like a girl. I love those curls he's getting, but I can't handle the prospect of my son being called a girl with hair over his ears. My mom and I went yesterday to get our hair cut, and after we were both finished, I asked the lady who cuts my hair (Beverly) about Hayden's hair. Well, I asked her and showed her how it goes over his ears, and she started cutting. It was so quick and happened so fast, and Hayden did super good. He never cried or anything. He was a normal kid and squirmed a good bit, but a blueberry sucker (a rare treat, but everyone deserves a treat during their first haircut) that Beverly had helped out with the squirming and left him with a very blue mouth. My mom took some pictures and gathered locks of hair while I held Hayden, but we didn't get a picture that showed his blue mouth. I can't imagine what his mouth would have looked like if I had let him have the sucker afer his haircut...there was blue everywhere. He looks so cute now, and as much of a little man as he was before, he really looks like a little man now. I remember going with Tracie to Lindsey's first haircut when she was two, and I couldn't believe my 9 month old was getting his first haircut. Lindsey was actually old enough to say she wanted to go shopping for shoes after her haircut. :o)

I'm including some pictures of Easter, Hayden and his cousins, the first haircut, and post haircut. You'll notice Hayden's cousins hiding from Hayden in some of the pictures. They are so funny to watch when they're around each other.

Sitting, Standing, Scooting, Pulling Up, Laughing, Breathing Treatments, Teething, and A First Wedding

As you can see from the title of my post, there's a lot going on in the Davidson household. Hayden has quickly moved from army crawling to sitting up on his own to standing using support and even pulling up to a standing position. He's quite the little daredevil. There isn't a whole lot of pulling up going on (we don't have a coffee table or low enough furniture), but he was doing it so well on his crib that we had to move his crib mattress all the way down to the bottom to prevent him from doing any middle of the night tricks. He loves pulling up on his knees using the fireplace and finds every drawer that will open, opens it, and pulls himself up to check out what is inside. He really loves standing up now and would do it all day long if he had someone behind him to make sure he didn't fall. He is especially fond of standing at the door and looking out at Gus. Oh, and he just got his third tooth in and has another coming in soon.

He's gotten quite good at his army crawl, and although he still doesn't pull his tummy off the floor, he is doing more of an alternating movement with his arms and legs that is more similar to real crawling. So often, he gets up on his knees and hands and rocks back and forth like he is ready to do a real crawl. He might make a few little crawling movements and then falls on his stomach and does his best bird flying impression. Whether he every really crawls or not, he can definitely get around very quickly and easily and is quite a handful. I call him our little garbage finder, because he is always finding new and exciting treasures on his journey and putting them in his mouth. Roomba is getting more of a workout than usual because of that.

Last week, I had to take Hayden to the doctor. Praise God that he's never been sick, sick or run a fever. Just a few colds and sinus infections along the way. About seven or eight weeks ago, I took him to the doctor for a little sinus infection, and he never really got over it. Last week, he had a lot of junk rattling around in his upper chest and was coughing through the night and even doing a little wheezing here and there, and I thought it would be best to get it checked out. Dr. Myers heard all of the junk rattling around and thought it would be best to start him on Singulair and breathing treatments to knock it out of his little bronchiole tubes. She thinks it's from allergies, and poor Hayden is doomed to have allergies in this family. Asthma runs in my family (my brother and niece), so we knew all about the nebulizer and breathing treatments. Hayden isn't too sure he likes his breathing treatments very much...mainly because he has to sit still. Most of the time, I end up having to put a mini wrestling move hold on him to get him to take it, and he really lets me know how unhappy he is with that. I'm hoping all of this will help break that junk out of him and help the allergies or whatever it is that is causing it.

This past weekend, we were so excited to go to my cousin's wedding in my little home town of Pelahatchie. I was so excited for Lee and Greg, and it was especially wonderful to see so many family members I had not seen in forever. Many of them had never met Hayden personally, and he was in proper form and really hammed it up. On Friday night, we went to a family dessert in honor of the couple, and Hayden was the life of the party. I think he was excited about being up past his bed time, or maybe the Singulair and breathing treatments had made him a little crazy. He was really funny and had a great time. I was also able to return to the church Chris and I were married in and that I grew up in. I had only been back to the church once since we were married, and it was really great to see so many people that I had not seen in years. It was so wonderful to see so many people I love so much and celebrate such a beautiful union.

Here are some pictures I've been meaning to post for a while. The ones in our back yard are from a really pretty day several weeks ago, and the standing up ones were probably two weeks ago or so. I'm also including a really cute video of him laughing. He has the funniest laugh. Here, he is laughing at his cousins, Lindsey and Kristopher. He really loves when they come over, and I love the cheap entertainment. :o)

Independent Man

Hayden is growing so independent, and it is super exciting to watch. There are so many times I look at him or hold him or see him smiling his goofy new smile at me or get a kiss or hug from him (yes, he really does have his own way to kiss us), and I just wish I could freeze the moment so I can remember it. I don't want to freeze him in the moment, because it is my job as a parent to allow him to grow up and gain his independence. But, I do wish there was some way to freeze the moment so I'll be able to remember it.

During the first several months of parenthood, you are exhausted nearly the entire time. During those first several weeks, it just seems like a neverending cycle of sleep, eat, change diaper, then repeat. And when I say sleep, I don't mean that you as a parent are getting to sleep. You are just getting to watch your little one sleep all the time. They are so dependent on you, and I think it's so neat how God designed this whole stage in life and the slow progression towards independence. I know many parents get weepy about it (independence, that is), but for me, it is so exciting and fulfilling. Not to mention the fact that more independence on his part means more time for me to do some things around the house that need to be done. Hehehe....

These are just a few of the independent things he is doing now - drinking out of a sippy cup, feeding himself a bottle, rolling anywhere and everywhere he wants to go, doing a sort of army crawl across the floor (I'll have to video it so you can see what I mean), finding all of the door stoppers in the house and making them go boing over and over, taking the caps off the door stoppers (I have since removed them all after I found out he could remove them), unscrewing the door stoppers from the wall (he's a smart cookie and very strong), opening drawers in the kitchen, shimmying himself out of his carseat when he's not buckled in (that's when I realized it's time to get a new one), and finally sitting up! And, that's only to name a few! You can tell I have my hands full...and he's not even fully crawling yet.

Hayden kind of decided to be a late bloomer with the whole sitting up thing. He was getting around the house everywhere and had even moved up to the "crawler" room in Sunday School because of how fast he can roll and scoot around, but he would just not sit up. We had been trying to sit him up for a while, but he would always fall over within about 30 seconds of sitting him up. But, all of a sudden in the past week or two, he has decided to sit up finally.


You better not make fun of his sweet, chubby self...there are times when you can't even see the diaper! :o)


I had to include one that he wouldn't be embarrassed of later.

In the video, you'll be able to see his other favorite thing to do....put his feet in his mouth. In this video, he discovered he can do it sitting up. Such a neat trick! Sorry about how dark it is...I didn't turn on the lights in the living room before taking it.



And, on Saturday, I discovered his very first tooth! :o) I knew he had at least one coming in, but it finally began making its grand appearance on Saturday. I'll try to take a picture of it when it's up a little further.

I feel so lucky that God has gifted me with a child and has allowed me to experience seeing him slowly begin to gain his independence. I think that this week I might just leave him here at home by himself and go shopping. I'll be sure and leave a TV dinner in the freezer that he can heat up real quick. Or, since he finally has this tooth, I guess he could always call for pizza delivery with his play phone Mamaw got him. Hahaha....

Facing the Fear

Something has been on my mind for the past couple of weeks, so I am just going to start writing and share it with you all, because....well, because I think I'm supposed to. Right now, I am doing a Beth Moore bible study on the book of Esther, and it has been SO good. I have always loved the book of Esther, but the way Beth has picked it apart has been amazing and brought new things to light to me about the book. First of all, you must know that this is one of only two books in the Bible that bear the name of a woman (the other being Ruth, of course), and the Bible study is appropriately named Esther: It's Tough Being a Woman. The Bible study is (obviously) geared towards women, but there are so many things that apply to people in general - both male and female...except maybe that week on beauty treatments. :o)

Anyway, we only have about three more weeks of bible study left, and it has been such a blessing. I would definitely recommend doing or leading this study if you have the chance. There are about ten weeks worth of lessons that you do at home as well as a DVD that you watch with the group. This study will truly speak to you.

Each week, Beth concentrates on a reason "it's tough being a woman." During this particular session I'm talking about, she talked about "It's tough being a woman in the tight fist of fear." I know the study is for women, but can't everyone just substitute their name right in there in place of "a woman." I surely can...It's tough being Missy in the tight fist of fear. Fear. We are all fearful. Do you all know the most frequent command in the Bible? Some would think it would have to do with love or repentance or honor. However, the most frequent command in the Bible is "Fear not!" And, by the way, that is not a coincidence, because God isn't about coincidences. Human nature is to fear.

You might be saying, “I’m not afraid of anything. I’ve never had a problem with fear.” Well, I hate to tell you (actually, I really don't), but you, my friend, are in denial. And, Beth says in the video that there is no denial in courage. Courage is looking flat in the face of "it" (your fear) and denying that it will have victory over you. It's not courageous to deny your fear's existence, but it is courage when you deny that it has authority over you. Can we all just say "Wow" real quick. Culture teaches us to "toughen up" and "to get over it." So, we take that idea and worldly thought and end up just shoving the fears to the back of our minds. When we choose to ignore and deny our fears, those fears continue to live in us and continue to have power over us.

So, we must overcome those fears. But how? Obviously, we need to face our fears and identify them. How would you fill in the blanks for the following statement? If ____, then ____. Isn't that how all our fears echo around in our minds? If my husband cheats on me, then I'll just die inside and never feel alive again. If my child dies, then I'll go into a deep depression and cry all the time. If I fail, then I'll look like a complete idiot and lose my self-image. If the economy grows worse, then I'll be left with no money. Go ahead. Fill in the blanks. There are endless possibilities. And, the possibilities don't all have to be that extreme. Many of you have read my hand sanitizer post. If you haven't read it, read it now (I linked it). I'll have to say it is my favorite post ever. I'll have to say this one, "If I forget my hand sanitizer, then I'll get sick." That doesn't sound like something terrible to think, but there is an extremely fine line in there where even seemingly small fears like that can take over our minds.

Beth then said that we must fill in the blanks like this, "If ____, then God." If ____, then God will take care of me. If my husband cheats on me, then God will take care of me. If my child dies, then God will take care of me. You get the point. If we allow anything but God to fill in that "then" blank, we will be left in the tight grip of fear.

Notice that the statement isn't "If ___, then God will take care of me and make it right." Well, He will make it right, but we might not get what we want. Our husband might cheat on us. Our child might die. We might lose our self-image. We might get sick. God doesn't always give us what we think might be the best thing, but we are promised that He will still take care of us. He will give us strength and love and grace and everything else we need to handle the situation. If we are a child of God, we are given that promise. And, amazingly, we will eventually move on and go about regular life. God doesn't want our conditional trust but our trust...period.

Courage comes from the Latin word meaning "cor," meaning heart....a heart, that is, that knows God loves you. There are numerous places in the bible where we are told to, "Take courage...." I've never really thought about it before, but notice that word "take." It's kind of like we are being told by Jesus, "Okay, here is some courage. Now, take it. Go ahead. It's right here." We just have to trust Him. Remember, if ____, then God! Since I heard that, I have been so tempted to take a Sharpie and write that really big on my mirror, but I don't think my husband would be too happy with that. We have an amazing God, don't we?

Our Little Traveler

I took some pictures this morning of Hayden's travels across the floor. You'll be able to see his progression throughout the house. I stopped him once he got into the kitchen and brought him back in the living room, but he probably would have gone much further if I had let him. One of his favorite things to do (as you will see) is go to the back door and look out to see if Gus is at the back door. Hayden loves his brother, and Gus loves his brother, too. :o)

And, here he is....hitting the motherload! Turn the music off (or pause it) at the bottom before you play the video so you can listen.


I made two other posts today, so keep reading!