Christmas

The Smith home is preparing for Christmas! We are planning lots of fun activities and traditions. We are striving to teach Deacon the true meaning of Christmas-despite the secular world we live in. We praise God for sending his son and all that he stood for.

Posing at Mimmie's house-He carried the cross in with a little help from mom and dad at hanging of the greens at church so he was decked out.


We were feeling the Christmas spirit so we gave him a little cereal. I'm not much on cereal but we had some I had bought so we are using it to get him used to texture in his mouth. We will be moving on to the good stuff in the next week.

We do Christmas with the Boone's on several occasions. We have made a tradition of going to see Santa with them and exchanging Dec. 1st gifts. We got the kids matching pajamas to wear when we do our actual Christmas with them and an advent book. They got Deacon the nativity. Mimmie and Poppa got him the wisemen and Aunt Tay got him the inn keeper so we have lots of props for the Christmas story.

They love Deacon and Deacon loves them!

They think Santa rocks!

A little different than last year.

Jackson told Santa Deacon's list

Deacon gets plenty of attention at church. There is always someone wanting to hold him which is a nice break for us. Jimbo put him right to sleep-this holiday season is wearing him out!

He turned 5 months old a couple of weeks ago-we were a little busy!

Thankful

We are going to share our Thanksgiving pictures in a post about thankfulness-the pictures don't match the words but we wanted to share both:)

We have so much to be thankful for this holiday season. First we are thankful to God for blessing us with more than we ever deserved. We look at Deacon everyday with such amazement that God would choose us to raise him.


We are thankful for our families who have helped us so much since Deacon has been born. We know that help is always a phone call away. We are thankful for all of Deacon's great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.



We are thankful for our church family for loving us through one of the most exciting, challenging, and overwhelming years of our lives. They were there through the ups and the downs and we will feel forever blessed to belong to such an amazing community of faith.


We are thankful for the Boone's for being our second family. They are amazing examples to us as parents and we love raising our kids with them. We are thankful they let us love on Jackson and Amelia as if they were ours and in return they do the same for Deacon.

We are thankful for each other. God knew what he was doing when he crossed our paths. Our love for each other has grown stronger since Deacon graced us with his presence. Of all the things we've done together in the 11 years we've been together-raising him is the most fun!

We are thankful for Deacon for making everyday an adventure. We love him more than we ever thought possible. He is so much fun. We look forward to a lifetime of memories as we raise him into a Christian young man.

We are thankful for Maddy. She was our first baby and we love her dearly. This year has been a big change for her but she handled it so well. She is very good with Deacon and he loves her so much. She will probably be his best friend!

Catching Up

We are still here! We have been crazy busy the past week! We had some precious family time last weekend and got to spend lots of time with good friends. We ended the weekend with an amazing church service and a family nap! God is good!

I don't have any pictures to share this time. I did want to share how much I love our small group at church. We ended our parenting class this week. It has been such a blessing to learn and grow as parents with this group of individuals. We all love each others kids so much and we support each other in the day-to-day tasks of raising kid. I look forward to seeing God's plan unveiled in each of these kids lives. Praise God for good friends and an amazing church family.

I will be back next week with pictures! This weekend we have Amelia's birthday party and we can't wait. Amelia is such a special little girl to us and we can't wait to spend the day with her.

Our First Roadtrip

We went to Lexington to see Uncle Chase and Aunt Tay this weekend. We didn't take too many pictures because we were too busy playing and it was freezing outside! We had the sweetest sign outside to welcome Deacon to Lexington. Tay's friends were so excited to meet him!

We shopped on Friday then Mimmie and Poppa joined us on Saturday for the game. The girls left at halftime to shop some more-due to the weather Deacon came with the girls against his better judgement. We had so much fun. The food good and the shopping was great. We aren't big mall shoppers and neither is anyone in my family so we hit up every TJ Maxx, Homegoods and Marshalls we could find! Thanks Aunt Tay for a fun weekend!

Pray for us this week as we are working on Deacon's sleeping. He prefers to be held while he sleeps which is fine by me since I've waited for these moments my whole life. It makes it difficult though when other people keep him. Although, Mimmie would be fine with holding him while he sleeps too we know we have to eventually break the habit so we are starting now...well actually we started last night. He has slept with us since the day he was born and I don't regret one day of it. Our next child will cosleep with us the first few months as well. We have enjoyed our family bed so much but we need to work on developing better sleeping habits. Last night he slept in his pack n play from 7:50 p.m.- 6:50 a.m although he got up every hour or hour and a half and had to be patted back to sleep. We are pretty pleased for the first night and hope tonight is even better.

He is now napping in his crib which is a struggle but I know he is getting good rest. We aren't letting him cry it out as this isn't us at all. I didn't know you could sleep train without using the crying it out method so our friend Kristin is a God-send for telling us of this method. She also stayed by her phone all night and answered my many questions. I'm blessed to have her in my life. She helped me get through the night since Derek was working which made me want to give up many times!

I know people who have used the Cry-it-out/Babywise/Ferber method and it worked great for them and they have happy healthy children. However, I wasn't equipped that way so I had to find another method. It makes it hard since D isn't here at night because I want to cave in but we made it through night one! When he cried I comforted him but I did not let him in our bed! Hoping for another good night tonight.

Here are the Lexington pics:

4 months!

Deacon turned four months old in our blogging absence. Here are some of the highlights:

• he found his thumb-we try to divert his attention when he puts it in his mouth
• he is so close to rolling over but gets his arm stuck
• he loves his swing now-Praise Jesus!
• he discovered the tv
• he loves sitting in his bumbo while we work in the kitchen
• he can grab and hold onto his toys
• he can turn the pages in a book
• he loves touching our face
• he has slept a 6 hour stretch at night a handfull of times
• he has discovered Maddy in a big way-he loves to pull her hair and ears which we are working on
• he celebrated his first Halloween
• he colored for the first time
• he planted grass seeds in Mommy and Daddy's Sunday School class with the big kids
• he can laugh out loud
• he can pull up with our fingers and can stand against the couch

We are looking forward to the upcoming holiday season and many more firsts with our sweet baby!