Things are looking up

So, once again, it has been a long time since I have updated the blog, so this may be a long one.  I'll start with what most people want to read about - Cora.  We continued to struggle with sleep time and tried the semi-Ferber method.  We always ended up soothing her to sleep after so many hours of crying.  BUT, even if that's not how it is supposed to work, one day she started sleeping again.  It was wonderful - a full night's sleep.  She probably slept through the night for a solid week, and now we're back to occasional waking.  I do know that it helped when all of her canine teeth came in...I can't help but wonder if the two year molars are trying to work their way up.  Or, maybe she's just waking up.  I don't know, but I hope and pray each night that she's going to sleep all night.  It's better for everyone.

Cora has accomplished so much since I last blogged.  She has added songs to her repertoire, including the following: "C is for Cookie", "I Love Trash", "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Winnie the Pooh", and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".  She mostly sings bits and pieces.  She has gotten a lot better at the "ABC" song.  She skips around the first part of the song, but she always gets "O" through the end.  Sometimes "W" has a couple of extra syllables, but overall, she does really well!  She also spelled her name for the first time the Friday before Mother's Day.  I wasn't really paying attention - I was repeating each letter after she said it enthusiastically, and Jeremy pointed out that she spelled her name.  Since then, she will spell it over and over and over again.  She is always very excited when she gets to "A"!  Cora has learned some other things too.  She's counting from 1 to 10 now, though sometimes she misses a number or two.  She is also starting to learn her colors.  She does really well with yellow, purple, blue, pink, and brown (thanks to "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?").  The rest are still a work in progress.

Though this may not be as interesting to many of you, our little family has had some positive changes too.  To make a long story shorter, it was a somewhat difficult transition for us moving to Tennessee.  Our house did not sell like we thought it would, Jeremy ended up in a job that he was not happy with, and we did not have many friends.  Because our house didn't sell, we are living with Jeremy's parents.  It has gone pretty well, but let's just be honest, it's embarrassing when you're 30 years old with a child and living with your parents.  To make things more difficult, it's at 35-45 minute commute to Chattanooga which makes life hard when your job (for Jeremy) and your church is in Chattanooga.  Cora's not a huge fan of the car either, so that can be difficult.  When you make a major life change like that, and things don't go the way you expected them to, you cannot help but wonder if you made a mistake.  I kept thinking of all the doors that had been opened for Jeremy to get that job, and I really felt that we had made the right decision, but it was hard to understand why things weren't working out better.  It was a struggle.  Of course it is during those time that your faith is refined.  I kept thinking of how the Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt because it seemed better than they journey they were on, but God obviously had a plan for them.  If you have time, I would encourage you to look up the lyrics of the Sara Groves song, "From This One Place."  I have and continue to cling to the words of this song to remind me that God can see the big picture when I can't.

Thank God, some of our prayers have been answered.  Jeremy just started a new job with Marathon Health.  They were contracted to take over the health care of Chattanooga city employees and their families.  It was a really quick hiring process as they had to get their health care team together quickly.  If we still lived in Lexington, I don't think there would have been any way that Jeremy could have made it down for an interview.  He's only 3 weeks into the new job, but so far he really likes it!  To make it even better, it came with a pay raise!  :)

We still haven't had any significant action on our house.  We decided to change realtors after 9 months with the same one.  After speaking with several realtors, we chose one who we had met in a Financial Peace class.  She is actually one who had gone through Dave Ramsey's special realtor class.  Our house has been off the market for a week and will be relisted tomorrow as a new listing with a new significantly lower price.  We're really hoping this will help us get some new interest.  The downside is that we're going to be losing money....lots of money.  We are just fortunate that we had a 20% down-payment when we bought the house, so we'll still get money back, we just will lose a lot of our down-payment.  We're optimistic that if we attack this with "gazelle intensity" we will be able to sell soon.

Another positive - I've been making a lot of progress on my dissertation!  I should still be on pace to defend my dissertation the beginning of the Fall semester.

I'll end with some cute pics of Cora.  :)

Cora meeting Huckleberry, the miniature pony

First Ponytail!

Cheese!

What!?!

Car ride to church - she kept taking off her hat and putting it back on