First food!

So a few days ago Noah started looking at my food, and particularly my tea...of all things (he would grab the cup practically out of my hand, and he watched it going back and forth between the table, and my mouth) And he woke up in the night hungry at like 3am (which he hasn't done since....well I can't remember when) And since he's reached the age between 4-6 months (which is what they recommend) I decided it was time to start him on solids!

First bite of runny rice cereal....yummy!

Looking at the spoon...like...what am I supposed to do with this?
Tobi is quite the beggar, even for Noah's first food!

I think he liked it, what do you think Noah?

Rugby

This Saturday we watched the rugby game...South Africa vs Tonga. Well....considering I still compare the rules of American football to rugby...I was glad to have all my SA friends around me to explain the rules. SA doesn't have the sports I'm used to watching (basketball, baseball or American football) but as it turns out America actually has a rugby team! They aren't very good, but hey...I'd like to see a South African play baseball. One of the most frequent questions I get is "Why do you Americans call it the WORLD series when they don't play anyone else in the world?"

Watching the game

By the braai...and dropping Rachel!

Well, I guess Noah is truly South African cause he couldn't take his eyes off the Rugby! I would call his name, and he would look at me for a second, but eyes straight back on the rugby! In fact, Jen was holding him, and he watched it through the mirror behind her too! He is truly a boy:

Jen & Cait with Noah :) awwww

Noah is a morning person

Clint and I aren't morning people. We can stay up super late, but when it comes to the mornings, thats a different story! Every morning I wake up groggy to Noah laughing and squealing away in his crib, and I go to get him to feed him. Just as I am thinking...this is too early...surely its like 4am (its usually like 6:30 or 7am) I peer into his crib...and its the best part of my day cause he greets me with this:

absolutely GYNORMOUS smile. Like he's saying "Yay! It's mommy...time to get up!"

And after I feed him its his most talkative time of day. Gurgling and squealing like he's telling me all about what he wants to do for the day. I usually eat my breakfast (muslie and yogurt) while laughing at him chatting to me. Here's at 7:30 this morning!

House

We drive down every day to Crestholme to look at our new house, and they are now at ceiling level! We've been waiting about a year now to see this happen. Today we picked out our baths and showers, and taps (super exciting....I think I sat in like 10 baths.) And we just discovered that our house is 2 houses away from a property with a horse ring with 2 beautiful horses we can watch from our patio....I can't wait for Noah one day to see them!

This is Clint walking on our patio from our living room, into our bedroom (which also leads out onto the patio)

looking in on our living room, front door, and kitchen


Standing in our living room!

SA

Random and very superficial thoughts about what is cool about living in South Africa. I've lived here almost 2 years now....its gone by so quickly!

1. SA has long life milk (for you Americans...its milk you can keep unrefrigerated stored in your cupboard...so when you run out of milk you still got it!) Got milk? South Africans always do!
2. The eggs aren't refrigerated...I still haven't figured this one out
3. There are keys to every door in your house (even the livingroom and kitchen doors) and they look like they are from the 1700's
4. Every SAfrican owns a kettle....in LA you usually boil water on a stove, or in the microwave...its really weird
5. When you park your car, there is always someone to help you put your groceries away and back out (really helpful when you're pregnant!)
6. Most houses are very different from one another (no cookie cutter houses) so when you walk into someones house, you get a real feel for what they are like.
7. All the TV series are like 3 seasons behind LA, so if you missed an episode of your favorite show....it'll be on in a couple years time :)

How strong? TOO STRONG!

I can't believe how strong Noah is getting! At only 4 months old he already seems so independant! He can push himself up when lying on his tummy really well now:

He can grab a rattle and pull it towards his favorite part...his mouth of course.

And he LOVES his baby gym. He can play and laugh and squeal at it for hours. He pulls sooo hard on the things dangling. I can't believe how strong a little guy can be!


He also loves kicking the sides of the bath so that he splashes water all over me and I end up wetter than he does at the end of the bath! :)

Our house!

Its been so exciting driving down every few days to see the progress on our house! All the external walls are being laid...we are waiting for the interior walls.

This is from the inside looking out onto our front porch though our sliding glass doors! You can see the ocean from here WAY in the distance on a clear day:

The garage, front door, livingroom, and kitchen
The two bedrooms, and bathrooms:

It will make more sense once the interior walls are built. Now whenever there is a problem with where we live currently (like the CRAZY construction noise next door that starts at 6:30am and ends sometimes at 10...) we say..."you know what the solution is? Move to Crestholme!" They say it should be done by Christmas? But who knows with builders.

Congratulations Lyle & Liz!

Liz and Lyle got engaged today! Lyle is our church's intern and he works basically in an office just off our garage...so every day we've heard the stories of the developments of him getting the ring, and all the romantic details of their story....... but today was the day! Its been awesome having them apart of our lives for the last few months.....Congratulations guys!

The ring designed by Gary Cherry....one of our elder's (Glen Cherry)'s brother!

Light of the World

"You are the light of the world, a city on a hill cannot be hidden"

In Hillcrest the electricity goes out in our house (and our church) about 2x a month. Either due to rolling blackouts, or the construction next door to us, and it always goes out at 5pm...just as it gets dark! Its never gone out on a Sunday evening in the history of our church...but this Sunday was the exception. I totally thought no one would show up....but we had an awesome "emergent" candle/gas lit service! The lights came on just as Clint was finishing his sermon. I was thinking during the sermon how most of the universal church (church through all the ages) had evening services just like ours....lit by candles! Our church has also just started going to two services...and the transition has been pretty smooth. Unlike my home church Grace....the first service is the most popular! (8:30am)

So a lady called our church this morning asking the typical questions that I would ask if I was looking for a church (Do you believe in the innerancy of Scripture? Do you believe in a literal 6 day creation? If the Bible seems to contradict itself, how do you answer that question?) So I explained to her that we believe that the Bible has no errors, that yes, we believe in a 6 day creation etc. etc. After the end of a 20 minute conversation which I thought would end in....so when are your service times? She said that she was actually looking for a church that takes into account that the Bible was written by men and has errors in it...and that there are so many manuscripts it can't possibly be entirely true. I was flabbergasted on the phone. Why would you want to go to a church that doesn't know what is true/error in the Bible? I guess it makes it easier to excuse sin if the Bible isn't ENTIRELY true. Then she asked if I knew of any churches that taught that the Bible isn't true. Yikes. I didn't know how to answer her!

4 Months Old!

Bumbo

Noah loves the new Bumbo seat that grandma brought down from Pretoria....except that he always loses his toys on the ground....(this photo is of him looking down at his Pooh rattle that fell!) so Clint came up with the solution:

And he put the rattles smack dab on his feet! He loves it!

I went down to the baby Expo at the International Durban Convention Centre (ICC) this weekend where Noah's grandma Anne had a display for her Baby Buzniz. I've never seen so many babies, or baby stuff in my life! Noah's super blessed to have a grandma that does nurseries! Baby Buzniz booth:

Noah and grandma Anne at the Expo. Noah doesn't like to suck his thumb, but he LOVES his WHOLE hand!

Noah and I taking a break after a long day of shopping at the baby Expo!

Playtime!

Playtime with Noah has been so fun lately. Basically anything you say he thinks is just the funniest thing in the world! Noah laughing:

Smiling at Tobi our cat

This face I call "curious Noah" its when he's really concentrating on something... here its the writing on my shirt

Our church camp was this weekend at Hope Valley....so pretty!
The camp speaker was Ian Duguid who preached on the book of Ezekiel....one I've never studied
The church playing one clap...we also played mafia with the enitre church!

We mostly just enjoyed hanging out with the body of Christ
The kids had fun in the mud!

AND they finally laid foundations on our house this week!!!! Clint is standing on our front door :)

And Noah discovered he has hands!

And he learned how to sit with daddy

Good Morning Tobi!

Tobi playing with her favorite toy: Spurgeon's tail.

Typical day in the Archer household from 6:00am-7:00am. Its not as impressive as an hour in the life of Jack Bower, but I realized this morning the humour in it. Tobi is on what Clint and I nicknamed..... ODF "Owner Directed Feeding" because she had a weight problem for a while. :) So now her feed times are 7am and 7pm. But an hour before her feed time she tries any lengths possible to get you to feed her early.....especially in the morning.

6:00am - Tobi starts purring loudly to wake us up

6:10 - Tobi crawls towards Clints face...reaches though the covers and pillows and bats it with a big "whap"

6:15 - Tobi bats Clints face again, Tobi gets shoved off bed by Clint

6:16 - Tobi finds anything that can be batted around our room....and bats it with great fierceness and noise in her 3rd attempt to get us out of bed.

6:18 Tobi bats Clints face again...this time with claws

6:30 - Tobi climbs on my bedside table, and with one fowl swoop knocks off my lamp, my Bible, my Nalgene, and my photo frame with a great "clerclap plunk plunk"

6:32 - Tobi rolls around my Nalgene...good thing its indestructible...and runs it into anything that makes noise

6:40 Tobi knocks the key to our door off my nightstand (clever girl!)

6:42- In her last attempt she starts chasing her tail...over our feet, our legs, and even our heads.

6:45 Noah wakes up

6:46 I scrounge around looking for the key....sleepwalk toward our door (Tobi is going ballistic at this point) feed Tobi.

7:00am Feed Noah....Tobi purrs on my lap in full contentment while I'm feeding Noah.

You'd think it'd be easier to just feed Tobi at 6am....but we do this every morning.

All to God's glory....

Noah's little hoodie!

"So whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" I Cor 10:31

I've been thinking about this verse alot lately because I have just realized how much of my day consists with eating and drinking. Noah gets fed every 3 hours, and naps for about an hour and a half inbetween. And I feed Noah 6 times a day. So I get 5 increments of an hour and a half where I need to use the time very wisely....otherwise I realize its time to feed Noah all over again! :) 3-4 of those increments of time are usually spent preparing/eating/ and cleaning up after breakfast lunch or dinner, or shopping for food. I love preparing meals for my family...and nursing Noah...don't get me wrong! But I just realized that a majority of our day revolves around food and drink....so how do we give glory to God in what seems so simple as putting food on the table, or feeding a newborn?? I've realized that I've viewed this time spent not as time that COULD give glory to God....but just as a part of life. But Paul says we CAN give glory to God while we eat and drink....and WHATEVER I do! It's not time waisted for the kingdom, but rather a time where I can praise Him for providing for us, and give Him glory by lifting my thoughts from the necessity of eating, to His tender mercies towards us in blessing us with the enjoyment of food! Like Noah I should long for the pure milk of the word....its a daily (well, almost hourly!) reminder.

Home Executive

Noah loving his swing

It seems like every day he is learning something new. The last two days he's figured out how to grasp the little starfish on his swing to make the chair "sing" and make the lights flash. I was getting ready for church and all of sudden I heard his chair start to sing...and I thought Clint had pulled on the fish to make it go...but it was Noah!

Noah staring at his next aspiration...the higher goldfish!
So yesterday I was filling out an application to get a card to save money at my local pharmacy DisChem. On the form you have to fill out it asks you to circle what your current employment status is. As a mom I always dread these cause it never gives an option for "mom" :) But this form gave 4 options. #1 Employed. #2 Student. #3 Pensioner. #4 Home Executive.

HOME EXECUTIVE? I laughed outloud thinking....thats me! So now I make Clint call me the Home Executive...and he's the Home CEO.

Noah and Daddy

Clint and Noah laughing at each other!

Noah's personality has really come alive this week as he laughs at you when you talk to him and make him jump up and down. Noah is also chatting alot this week..his favorite word is "A---gggooooO!" which he repeats over and over when you change him or bath him!

Noah waking up!

Video of how Noah wakes up at 7am every morning laughing at his mobile. He sometimes coos and laughs at it for like 20 min! I tried to sneak up on him to catch him...I usually just stay in bed and enjoy the laughter through the monitor before getting up to nurse him :) Make sure you turn your speakers on!

3 Months Old Today

Noah turned 3 months today! He is starting to grasp things (like his rattle) and loves to stand on our tummies while we hold him from falling :) He is such a tremendous joy to us and we thank the Lord everyday for him!