Wow, it's been over a month since the last post.  I guess I have been busy nesting and resting and not thinking about writing. 

The biggest thing that we've experienced is Jonathan starting to walk.  This would be a great place to insert a video but I don't have one (what a bad mommy!).  I do have a picture of him mid-stride, though.



Hands up and out to the sides and laughing as he walks.

Obviously, we were so excited when he started taking his own steps.  He still crawls when he needs to get somewhere quickly (like down the hall to his room), but almost half the time he prefers to walk.

He has also learned to identify things using words.  A few of the words in his arsenal: pup-pah (puppy), meh (meow, which he says when he sees our cat), cah (car), baou (ball), tuh-DOU (touchdown...don't ask why he knows this).  Then he has code words that only we know the meaning of:  ha HA ha means he wants to watch a Three Little Pigs cartoon he is currently obsessed with; bah bah BAH bah is Brown Bear Brown Bear; ba ba BA is Yo Gabba Gabba.  It might sound far-fetched but I am telling the truth: we have decoded some if his jibber jabber.  There are still some things that he says that I have no idea what he means, but the important thing is that he is communicating!

I am now in my third trimester (33 weeks to be exact).  It isn't as bad as the first, but it is pretty uncomfortable.  We have made it almost 10 weeks further than we did with Jonathan which is so amazing to us!  We never thought I'd be pregnant for so long and it is such a blessing to be able to experience this and have the peace of mind that this baby will (hopefully) have a much less eventful beginning to his life than his brother Jonathan did.  I am scheduled to have the cerclage removed on Feb. 15, my last day of being 36 weeks pregnant (that's 1 day shy of being full-term).  BUT so far baby James is breech.  If he doesn't flip by then, they will not remove the stitch and schedule me for a C-section, then remove the stitch at the same time.  I know C-sections happen all the time, but I am really looking forward to labor (weird, I know) and will be disappointed if I can never experience that (our local hospital does not do VBAC). 

BUUUUUT God is sovereign and He knows what way is best for me and James, and whatever God ordains is right. 

Jeff is still in school at RTS in Orlando.  He is gearing up to start his Spring semester and has already begun yet another online class.  I can tell when he is starting new classes because a steady stream of books starts to arrive in the mail.  We bought a huge bookshelf about a year ago, and we have a good collection of books then, but now it's overflowing like crazy.  Almost all the books on there are theology-related, and about 1/3-1/4 are books that have been purchased just since Jeff started seminary.  I have never seen a person go through so many books in such a short amount of time!  But, I have never lived with someone pursuing a Master's degree, either, which is in a whole other league compared to a Bachelor's, not to mention that RTS is a prestigious school so they are going to make you work to be able to call yourself an alumnus.  How he does it all while still performing his duty at church and being an AWESOME dad and husband I will never know!  But thank God he is able.

So that's the Skipper household in a nutshell.  I wanted to write about an awesome series I have been reading on the meaning of marriage based on Paul's teaching in Ephesians 5, but that will have to wait.  So much good stuff in there, though!  If you want to read it yourself, here are the first 2 parts:

Part 1: A Picture Perfect Marriage

Part 2: The Wife's Role