Giving it Grace: Hansen life: August

Now that we have two kids are are more of a family than ever before, it feels weird to do monthly updates on Mary and not share updates on Drew. But instead of doing more monthly updates on Drew too, I'm going to start posting monthly recaps that include all of the family.

August was pretty slow around here. We're still adjusting to Mary - me in particular. Keeping up with two kids is definitely a skill that takes developing, and I'm in the very early stages of it.

Drew's been enjoying many outings with Papa as the weather starts to turn toward fall. Drew started off tolerating Mary really well, but toward the end of the month he's grown weary of having to share my attention with her. He's acting out more and doing naughty things for my attention. It's disappointing, but we had to know it was coming. I also think it would have happened baby or not - he's two, after all! I was telling Kyle I think I'm the most disappointing because this is the point in which sin nature has clearly entered his heart and there's no denying it. Up until this season he was "just a baby" and sure sometimes he disobeyed, but it was more out of developmental clumsiness than anything else. Based on his actions the last few weeks, we can't say that anymore! My baby is officially a boy, and going through all the things that come with that. Speaking of being a boy, he had his 2 year check up yesterday and everything looks great. His ped was impressed with how much he sleeps (10-11 hours at night and 2-3 hours during the day), which made me proud of him and the work we've done to teach him good sleep habits.

Two of my friends celebrated wedding anniversaries, which always makes me smile. I found out that several of my friends are expecting babies this spring, which is always joyous news! We also celebrated my grandpa's 93rd birthday (separate post to come on that) - so cool!

We had a freak storm toward the end of the month, so we were without power for a few days. Thanks to the emergency kits I put together last month, we actually had much of what we needed to stay comfortable at home without power. My only big concern was all my frozen breast milk, so my dad took that over to my mom's house because she still had power. Much of the items in our freezer thawed, so removing the breast milk was a good call! Fortunately we were able to re-freeze almost everything and only had to toss the milk from the refrigerator.

On the day the storm hit we were doing a huge garage purge; it was actually the perfect activity to do because without power there wasn't much else to do! It took the better side of 3 weeks to do the purge and then sell all the items we cold for profit; I did the purge over one weekend but then have been selling stuff online since then. I'm really glad we cleaned house a little, as Kyle and I decided we'll be living with my dad longer than we had originally planned. Another post to come on that later.

Photo highlights from the month of August: