Chandler Renee - 8 months

I'm playing catch up and finally posting Chandler's monthly update. Sometimes 2 months can seem like such a short time, but when I try to think back to what Chandler was doing just two months ago, it seems like a lifetime! Time really does go faster the older you get. Enjoy it while you're young, kids.

Chandler turned 8 months on November 13th. After having some... well, we'll call it "tummy issues, " for at least 2 months, we finally solved the problem. However, those issues never slowed her down. She continued to get into EVERYTHING! I know, people always tell you that, but until you experience it, you can't understand. Not to mention, it blows my mind how she can find the smallest speck of something on the ground, pick it up, and put it in her mouth... but then give food a dirty look. ha! This month she got better and better at pulling up on things. She began to stand alone for a few seconds, but not often. She still only had 1 tooth at 8 months... our little "One-Tooth-Wonder."

We were finally able to get her room ready for her to sleep in. After all of our traveling, unpacking, and flat out busyness, she moved into her own room. With that came sleeping through the night again!! We were thrilled for this. She hadn't done that since we came to Africa, when she was an incredible sleeper before. We also got her on a good bedtime routine, that I think helped with her sleep.

This month Chandler went to Ganvie for the second time. She did great when we went into a local family's home... for a minute. Then when she was fussy, she wanted our tour guide to hold her. She really liked him. She also experienced her first solar eclipse... sort of. She wore sunglasses and a hat while we tried to look at it with makeshift glasses. She also traveled to Bohicon (a little further north in Benin) for the first time and did her first photo bomb. And how can I forget her first Halloween. Even though we had no where to trick-or-treat, we dressed her up and went to the expat grocery store :)

Guest Blogger: Humble.

Anthony is Trey's good friend from high school & church. He is now on staff as a Ministry Associate at our home church, Hiland Park Baptist. He and our Pastor, Steven, had the opportunity to come here and train pastors and leaders in our churches. The first training took place in Cotonou and the second further north in Bohicon.  Steven had to leave suddenly due to a death in the church. Trey jumped in and helped Anthony teach on 2 Timothy. On Sunday, they hosted a seminar on Islam, the view Christians should have, and how to share their faith. I asked Anthony to share a little something about his trip here.

As I think back on my time in Benin, the feeling that continues to pop into my head is one of humility. It was a humbling trip for many reasons. First of all, I do not speak French. I had to be completely reliant on a man I had just met to communicate. It’s tough to be proud when you have no way of communicating with anyone! I was humbled by God’s grace in letting me have such an opportunity. I am undeserving of such an opportunity, but I am grateful that it was given to me. I am grateful for a church that desires the name of Christ to be spread across the earth.

Most of all, I was humbled by the love the pastors we spoke to had for God and his Word. Some of the men traveled as far as 6-7 hours on a motorcycle on terrible roads to listen to us. Most of them slept on the concrete floor of the church at night. At some points when our messages were being translated into two different languages, the men were only able to understand what was being said one-third of the time. It’s not a mere desire for knowledge that causes a man to do such things. It is a love for the God that dramatically changed their lives. These men had experienced the love of Jesus Christ and as a result wanted to know as much about him as they possibly could. They wanted to better understand his commands. They wanted to better serve their Savior. It was humbling to see their love for God and compare it for my own. I often found myself feeling inadequate to teach them. They were so receptive to what we had to say. That thought. The thought of their love for the Bible and the God who gave it to them will stay with me forever.

Photo with the attendees of the first session

Anthony trying his first real African food

the best hat he's ever purchased for $2

Ganvie trip 

He's now an African King!

Belated Halloween

I'm not exactly a fan of Halloween. Frankly, I think it's a creepy holiday and I don't like creepy things. Vampires, witches, ghosts, skeletons, blood... these things are creepy. And they're all very Halloween-y. But that's just my personal feelings on Halloween.

Growing up we didn't celebrate Halloween. We decorated the house for harvest. I only remember dressing up for preschool once. My mom once told me we didn't celebrate or trick-or-treat because it was satan's birthday. Later, she denied ever saying that, but for years that's why I thought we didn't dress up and ask our neighbors for candy. We always had a family night. We'd leave the house and get dinner, maybe a movie, always leaving all our house lights off so no one would come ring the doorbell asking for candy {however, if you've ever been to my parents house the busy road and general creepiness of the woodsy surrounding would probably deter trick-or-treaters :) }. When we realized our friends were getting lots of candy on Halloween night and felt like we were missing out, my mom started buying us a bag of whatever candy we wanted. Then we had the best of both worlds... candy we liked & helping our friends eat their candy.

I don't feel like I missed out growing up. And I've rather enjoyed being overseas the past two years and not being surrounded by all the creepiness {if you don't count the voodoo culture we live in now!}. I know my mom had her own convictions about the day. I wish I could talk to her about them now. I'm not sure how I feel about it as a whole. However, when BB sends Chandler a cute little fairy costume, she MUST dress up. And she did look pretty dang cute. We dressed her up to leave the house for our French class and to go to the grocery store. There's not many fall festivals here :) She got ooed and ahhed over by everyone. It was fun! And she enjoyed some apple cinnamon puffs for the first time. I guess you can say that was her treat ;) Thanks for the costume, BB!

Chandler Renee - 7 months

Once again, a little late on this monthly update. We are just crazy busy and our little girl is busy growing up! This month she was extremely busy moving around. She started a real crawl... and then she began crawling FASTER and pulling up on EVERYTHING. She's giving us lots of exercise chasing her around. Of course, she wants to get into everything she's not supposed to... our shoes, electrical chords, electrical outlets... you get it. We cleared up her "tummy troubles" at the beginning of the month, thankfully. She's stayed healthy the rest of the month. When she started pulling up she started falling down a lot.. but it only took a few days for her to figure out how to get down. Now she's a pro.

She began eating real food this month. We decided to not do pureed foods and start with something called "Baby Led Weaning." Basically, she feeds herself from the beginning. She's done a great job with it. She's tried and loved everything we've given her. Bananas, avocados, green beans, carrots, cucumbers, pears, apples. She may have turned it down on the first try, but after day 2 and 3 she enjoys it! We're proud of our non-picky eater and hope she stays that way.

This month we did a little traveling to Ghana to visit with friends. We had a great time on the coast there. We also helped throw a baby shower for our friend expecting a little girl in December. It was good to take a little break from language and speak English.

 

Chandler Renee - 6 months

This crazy, silly, goofy little girl is 6 months old. Well, actually, I'm a little late on this post, so now she's almost 6.5 months old. She has grown so much this month. She sits up even better than before. She LOVES to army crawl all over the place. She does a much better job at holding on to her toys, but of course, the most fun toys are the things she can't have... like computer cords :) We visited the clinic a couple of times this month. First for some tummy troubles, that we're still battling, and second for 6 month shots. We were nervous of how it would be, but could not have asked for a cleaner place. The only complaint was that the nurse did not give the shots quickly, but at two completely separate times. The good news about the shots... 6 different vaccinations only cost $1!!! Her lab test wasn't as cheap. Apparently the government here subsidized the cost of vaccinations so that people will get them. On her 6 month birthday she even tried some real food. We're trying something called baby led weaning. Basically it means they learn to eat solids & feed themselves from the start. All the foods we give her are soft & easily mushed in her mouth. It teaches her to chew before she swallows. She really has not swallowed much food, but she's starting to enjoy playing with the food :)

We spent most of this month around the house learning language... which means Chandler is hearing lots of French. This month she's made new friends at our language school (of course all of them are our age). She's grown to also 17 pounds and 25" long.

Her 6 month pictures were harder to
capture since she's getting so active