Aussie Kid

One of our (Nate and my) favourite things to put on toast or crackers is good ol' Aussie Vegemite. So we were sure to bring back three large jars with us from Australia when we last returned from there. It's a good thing too. It turns out Eliana has some good Aussie roots in her despite the distance. She LOVES vegemite! In fact it's now hard for us to get her to eat anything else on bread.

We are currently down to our last jar of Vegemite so it looks like it's good timing to return back to Australia for fresh supplies. It's less than 6 weeks until Eliana and I board a plane bound for homeland!

LOUD

One thing I don't think I've mentioned about Eliana is her love for loud noises. She laughs and giggles when we use the vacuum, blender and coffee grinder. A month or two ago we were at a friend's 30th. He got an 80s rock band together and they played LOUD, like unbelievably loud, 80s music in a small community room. To everyone's surprise (most of all her parent's) Eliana stood right under the lead singer's feet, near the massive booming speakers, and bopped away to the music!

I've learnt from that to take a video camera every where with me. Unfortunately I don't have any recent pics of Eliana, so here are a couple of her from this time last year - I hope the warm weather will join us soon!

17 Months

Eliana is now 17 months. Some new stuff for the month:

- She started going down the slide on her own

- One of the most exciting things for me is that she started saying animal noises! I have known babies to do this at 8 or 9 months so you can be assured that I've been trying to teach her to make animal noises from the time she was born :). But she just held off until she was ready. I'm finding that's true with a lot of her development. I want to force her to develop quickly, but God knows when it's time for her to take new steps and His timing is best :) .

- She's been saying mama like she means it. She has been practising saying her own name. It's a tricky one and her tongue gets in a tangle but she has a good go at it.

- Her favourite things to do still are brushing her teeth, reading books and playing outside. A new favourite activity is unpacking groceries. No matter how heavy the gallon of milk is or how tricky the bananas are to get out of the grocery bag, she will put all her effort in until each item has been taken to mum or dad in the kitchen to be put away.

- She's officially down to one nap now and i'm actually really enjoying it. It's been a hard transition though, as she went from two 1.5-2 hour naps to one 1.5 hour nap, but I'm hoping the longer we are on the new routine, the longer she will nap.

- The older she gets, the more I see my need for the Lord every minute of every day! My sweet little baby is a sinner. Allow me to revert to the thing I am most passionate about - the gospel. Nate and I believe the Bible is God's perfect word, so we want to seek the Lord's help to live by it. It tells us that we are all sinners in need of a Saviour, because our sins cut us off from our most Holy God, and without him we face eternal punishment - hell. The only way back to God is through His Son, Jesus. Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sin and then three days later conquered death and rose to life forever!!!! It's God's plan for salvation, and there is no other way according to Jesus himself (John 14). This gospel (or good news) and the whole Bible shapes all we do as parents. Eliana is so young and we don't know how much she understands, but we want our parenting to point her to Jesus every day. Only the Lord gives us grace to do so.