9 Months Old:

Our little man has such a personality!  His grandmother calls him a comic and he certainly is!  He knows exactly what to do to get attention, and when he has it he will perform.  He is a little mimic and likes to do what we do, but he also has a few of his own tricks.  He is still a very sociable baby and everywhere I go complete strangers still stop me to tell me what an adorable baby he is.  He will make eye contact with people and then either smile at them or start to chat with them in his own baby language and just about every single person cannot resist that.

Measurements on 26/09/2012:

Weight: 8.67 kg

Height:  73 cm

Head Circumference: 46 cm

Milestones:  I took baby G for his measles inoculations this morning and the sister was so impressed with him.  He is basically either on track with just about all of the milestones or ahead.  The only things that he doesn’t do is wave goodbye and clap his hands, but he is trying to clap his hands at least.

Baby G’s vocabulary is very advanced for his age – he is saying so many words now.  Some new ones are:  vissies (little fish), tata (bye-bye), Atie (KT – he can’t say the K),  and eina (ouch).  Last week Baby G actually said “eina” to his daddy and pointed at his lower gums, his daddy was so proud of him!  Off course he got some teething medicine immediately.  We also noticed that baby G has started to sing – it’s so cute!  It’s his own tune and words of course, nothing familiar.

He is standing so strong now that most of the time he only holds on to stuff with his one hand, and I’ve also noticed that very often he thinks he is holding on to something, like my pants, but he is actually standing on his own, he just doesn’t know it yet.  He crawls up stairs so quickly, and he can even crawl down stairs if they are not too high.  He can also sit down if he is standing, and he is not falling down so much anymore.

He’s learned to throw stuff, like balls, which are a favourite toy at the moment.  He can pick up small things in a pincher grip; he likes to poke his index finger in my nose or mouth and he loves to spin the wheels on toy cars (another favourite) or anything that has wheels.  Baby G loves to look at himself in a mirror, in the next picture he was doing exactly that with the mirror on his playmat.

Sleeping:  It feels like baby G is sleeping a little bit better lately in spite of his teething.  Most nights he will only wake up for the first time somewhere between 1 and 2 in the morning, but after that he might wake up 2-3 times before we get up in the morning, so I still feel pretty tired in the mornings.  We haven’t had many very rough nights in the past month, only about 3 or 4.

Daytime naps are definitely down to 2 during the day, but it feels like he is sleeping less during the day for the last couple of days.  Very often he fights when he needs to go down for naps and it sometimes takes me 2 to 3 times of trying before he will eventually sleep.  This baby is definitely convinced he will miss out on things if he naps.  Fortunately he goes to sleep quite easily at night.

Eating:  Since Baby G got his first tooth his appetite for solid food has not been great.  Sometimes he will eat well, but most of the time I can only get him to eat a few baby spoons, and then he refuses flatly to eat anymore.  Even the food he normally loves is not going down so well.  I’ve noticed that lately the easiest way to get food in him is to let him eat with me.  He usually does not have a problem eating mommy’s food, but “baby food” is not a hit with him.  If I say “baby food” then I don’t mean specifically pureed food, but more anything I specially give to him to eat.  It can be anything from fruit to yogurt or vegetables.  Baby G does love chicken though and he will almost always eat that if I give it to him.

Since he is not eating so well, he is drinking a lot of breast milk again.  Last month I thought I can maybe cut down on the breastfeeding, but I think he is actually drinking more now than what he did a month ago.  I do get someone else to give him a bottle of formula every now and then, but I don’t have much success.  Obviously he prefers breast milk and when I’m near he will just flat out refuse to drink formula.

Clothes:  Baby G is wearing 6-12 months clothes, but most of his pants are still way too big.  I still dress him in 3-6 months pants and most of those fit well, only some of the legs are getting a little bit short.  I got out a pair of shorts in size 6-12 months the other day and wanted to dress him in it, but it was so wide over the waist that it was bigger than his hips.  I think it will be months before he will be able to wear those.  Most t-shirts, vests and tops in size 6-12 months fit quite well on him though.

Firsts:  You all know baby G got his first tooth, and because of that we are brushing his tooth now, and he loves that!  He likes to chew the silicone finger brush, and I’m sure it feels good on his inflamed gums.  I can already see the next tooth on the bottom, but it just doesn’t want to cut through.

It was also Baby G’s cousin’s 5^th birthday party earlier this month and Baby G was invited and even got a party pack.  He did not really play along with the other kids as they were all a lot bigger than him.  It was here that Baby got his first taste of flings chippies, and a few days later he got to taste chocolate too, when his daddy allowed him a taste of one of the chomps in his party pack.  He sure loved that, but what a mess to clean up!

Baby G loves animals, he will crawl after any dog, even ones he doesn’t know, and he has absolutely no fear of them.  He also loves our fish, and he often crawls over to the tank, pulls himself up on the stand and he will watch them or bang on the glass with his hands, all the while talking away to them.

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2 Testimonies I haven’t shared with you yet:

After my last post I got this feeling that I need to share these testimonies with you.  It is not about healing, but rather about money and up to now I did not feel comfortable sharing it, but I think God wants me to share it now.

Before I write about the testimonies I want to share, I want you to read this post about An.drew Wom.mack’s teaching of Daniel.  In this teaching AW used an example of someone who wanted to sell his house for I think it was over 2 years, but just could not get it sold.  After hearing this principle and praying differently his house sold a few days later.

This teaching helped me to receive in the following instances:

My DH was a policeman many years ago.  In the beginning of the year 2000 he went off work due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and not long after that he was boarded by a psychiatrist and by the end of the year his service at the Police department was terminated.  The case with the compensation commissioner was still pending early last year and we were at our wits end on how to get it finalised.  More than 10 years later and the compensation commissioner did not want to accept 5 different psychiatrists’ reports nor the fact that the police also accepted the diagnosis.

So based on that teaching I started to pray differently – Instead of asking God to help us that the case can be finalised I asked him to remove all obstacles that are standing in the way of this case being finalised.  I asked God to fight this battle in the spiritual realm and remove all the devil’s onslaughts against DH’s case.

I cannot remember the exact timeframe, but it was a matter of weeks and DH got a letter in the mail stating that they finally accepted the diagnosis and that DH just needed to sign some documents and then they will proceed to pay DH what he was owed, and back pay it for 10 years.  Wow!  We could not believe it!  It took another few weeks after DH signed and he finally got what was owed to him.

Now if you wonder if it is normal for cases to take this long – no its not.  There was someone else that DH knew whose case was just 2 months ahead of DH’s and that guy’s case was finalised within 1 year.

Later in the year we found out that one of DH policies has a premium waiver on that should have started when DH was boarded, but we never knew about that and so we only applied for that about  a year ago.   The premium waiver was approved but we had paid premiums for 10 years that we were not supposed to.  So we asked that they pay us our premiums for the last 10 years back and the company politely refused, so we send them an e-mail complaining about that.  So once again I prayed that all the obstacles be removed in the spiritual realm and we actually just forgot about it, because I was nearing the end of my pregnancy and we had just so many other things on our mind.

When I was in hospital after baby G’s birth, a guy phoned DH out of the blue and it was an employee of the company where we have the policy.  He told DH that they had a look at his claim and they decided to pay him back all his premiums since 2004.  So it was not all, but most of it and we got the payment in the New Year.  Who would have thought that someone would work on something like this in the time between Christmas and New Year, but this guy did!

It was also at a very convenient time as DH works on a contract basis and he did not work for the whole of December and 2.5 weeks in January, and as such did not receive an income for that time.  So it worked out perfectly for us – DH was with me for the last bit of my pregnancy and for the first 3 weeks after baby G was born, but we still got money to live off, which we did not expect to get.

Let me tell you all – it is absolutely wonderful to have your prayers answered by the Lord.  God has been so good and faithful to us, not only in the instances I mentioned above, but also in many other ways.  All it took from me was to get to Know Him better.  In the time before I surrendered completely to the Lord I always thought that He would expect things from me that would be difficult to give up, or that I would never be able to meet His expectations, but I was so wrong!  God has JUST been good to us, and blessed us abundantly, and today I cannot believe how hesitant I was, and all vain!

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Believing in healing for others:

Last night I was having some quiet time with God and I had this overwhelming desire to talk to Him about how it must grieve Him that we as Christians don’t walk in the victory He wants for us.  I felt that Jesus must be so sad that He made such a huge and terrible sacrifice for us, but most Christians have no idea of all He did for them.

I only found out less than 2 years ago about the atonement and what is covered by it.  Like most Christians I only knew that Jesus died for my sins, not that he took all curses upon Him, and that I don’t have to be cursed (Gal 3:13).  That by His wounds we were healed, so we don’t have to suffer with illness, pain or infertility (1 Peter2:24).  That Jesus delivered us from evil (Gal 1:4) and that God wants us to prosper (2 Cor 8:9).

Two true stories came to my mind, and I want to share it with you.

First, there is this couple we met quite a number of years ago who are Christians and have a wonderful personal relationship with God, but their daughter has this debilitating disease that I don’t think is curable according to the world’s standards.  I got the feeling that this couple, although they believe in God, they don’t believe that God can miraculously cure their daughter; instead they trusted completely in the doctors and medicine and prayed that she would somehow be healed that way.  I might be wrong, but that’s the impression I got from what they said and what they asked us to pray for.

This was long before I even knew about the atonement and that Jesus already healed us, but I just believed in my heart that miracles can still happen today.  I just felt that if it’s in the Bible and that other people in the Bible besides Jesus was able to heal then it should still be possible today.  One morning while I was praying I asked God that if the parents of this little girl could not believe that He can heal her, will it be enough if I believed in her miraculous healing?  Right after that I opened my Bible for Bible study and I got the answer.

The passage that I read was about the paralysed man whose friends had lowered him through the roof, because they could not get into the house Jesus was in.  Luke 5:19-20 (NIV):  “¹⁹ When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.  ²⁰ When Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.”  In my study Bible the explanation for these verses is the following:  “Jesus was not hit by the sick man’s faith, but by the faith of his friends.  He responded to their faith and healed their friend.”

Wow!  I cannot tell you how dumbstruck I was to get an answer immediately after I prayed.  I can happily say that this girl, last time I heard, was in remission according to her doctor.  I believe she is healed, but the doctors will probably not say it out loud.

The other story I want to tell happened a couple of months before I got pregnant with baby G.  I knew some truths, but not yet all, but I definitely knew that that God wanted to heal us and I knew the power of confessing God’s word, so I wrote on a piece of paper a whole lot of healing scriptures that I not only confessed over myself but also over other people.  After a week or so I knew most of what I wrote down off by heart so I only occasionally glanced at my list.

There was one lady whose blog I read who went through a really rough time with several IVF’s and I put her name on the list.  The only problem is I kept confusing her name with another lady, also someone whose blog I read, but she was in the process of adoption and had given up completely on IVF and TTC.  The only similarity in their names is that it starts with the same letter.  At first I did not realize that I kept on saying a different name, only after a few weeks, and then I still accidently sometimes slipped up and said the wrong name, but I usually corrected myself, when I realized what I did.

Well, much to my surprise the lady who was in the process of adopting miraculously got pregnant.  At first I was shocked, and a bit mad, because she was not a Christian, and here I believed for a miracle, but I wasn’t pregnant yet.  Then I thought; “What if it wasn’t a mistake on my part?  Maybe God wanted me to confess healing over her, and that it worked?”  I guess I’ll never know for sure, but I choose to believe that God did heal her and that is why she got pregnant.

After that I kept on confessing things over the other lady, at that stage I thought she deserved it more, as she is a Christian, and I’m happy to report that she too got pregnant, not from her IVF’s, but also miraculously when she least expected it and her baby has been born already.

As a matter of fact, when I thought back on it, there are only 2 ladies that were on my list that haven’t gotten pregnant yet.  All the others are either pregnant and far along or have had their babies already.  So last night I felt this strong compelling feeling that I must do this again and a number of names came to mind immediately, the original two and a quite a few new names.  I just knew that even though these people might not know what Jesus did for them, Jesus still cares about them, and the least I can do is to confess healing over them.  I really think this is what Jesus wants me to do and I’m already anticipating good news in a few weeks time!

So from today I want to concentrate again on all the people I know off who need healing and who long for a baby and confess healing over them.  If you want me to include you, please leave a comment or if you don’t want others to see your request you can send me an e-mail to marion.kmeoj@hotmail.com.

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1st Tooth!

This morning I saw that baby G’s first tooth came through.  I started to suspect that it would happen soon on Friday, since he suddenly started to drool a lot, which he normally doesn’t do, and I thought I could see white teeth underneath his bottom gums.  Friday night he woke up just about every hour, but fortunately no screaming.

Then on Saturday afternoon it looked like he had a slit on the top of his bottom gums on the left where the middle two teeth are supposed to be.  Yesterday night at about 21h00 he woke up screaming loudly and since I suspected teething he got some Pan.ado syrup for the pain.  (He also got teething gel regularly since Friday).  Fortunately his sleep hasn’t been adversely affected except for the two instances I already mentioned.

This morning when I looked, I could clearly see the white jagged edge of a tooth through the slit, and when I put my finger in baby G’s mouth I could feel it too!

Baby G was also naughty today – first he somehow got hold of a bottle of nail polish of mine (yes, I know – my fault) and crawled around with it in his hands and when he crawled on the wooden floor it broke and there was nail polish on the floor, on baby G’s hand and on his clothes.  Fortunately it was a clean break close to the cap and no pieces of glass to cut him, and I saw it just as it happened so I could clean it off the floor and baby G’s hands, but not off his clothes.

Later he dropped my cell phone on the floor for the umpteenth time, but this was just the last my phone could take and since then its dead and I cannot get it to work at all.  Here is a picture of baby G caught in the act of being naughty – he loves to turn the knob on the amp – DH is teaching him that he is not allowed to touch it, and sometimes he listens, but not always…

And then just because it’s spring a picture of beautiful cherise pink blossoms in our garden.

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