Seriously. . . . growing up waaaaayyy to fast. You would think with this being our 4th that we would be used to baby’s growing up so quickly. . . .just not the case. Here are a few pictures of the last few weeks, and several videos of Dane laughing now – very cute!!!

He loves the backpack!! So do we

Here is his first eating experience with “yummy” squash!!

Yeah – he liked it!!

First hair cut – yes, I know. . . crazy that he needed a hair cut at 4.5 months old!

Getting some love from Papa at Kya’s 4th birthday party

Videos of Dane’s giggle box

Same night, but this time with Kya being the entertainer:

I can’t believe that in just a week, Dane Justice Bryant will be 4 months old. It is already hard to remember details of what life was like without him.  Here is my new favorite picture of him – he loves to smile a lot, and he even laughed for the first time the other night!!

Ang and I have no idea who Dane is going to become when he is older, and we know that the enemy is going to be throwing a lot at him and us throughout the whole journey, but we have come to some conclusions about this:

1. It is our responsibility as parents to be listening and watching for clues for Dane’s journey. . . without jumping to conclusions (that is the hard part)

2. We must show him Jesus through our behaviors and communication – how Ang and I act and speak to each other will be the primary model for interpersonal behavior and communication for the first 10 years of his life. This is not only because of frequency, but also because of authority and “assumed righteousness” (i.e., kids until about 7 tend to believe that most of what their parents due is “right”).

3. Once again, the popular developmental theoriest – Bandura, explained that so much of what children do as they grow up is based on modeling what they have seen in their environment. This idea of modeling transcends conventional definitions such as, “not swearing,” “not yelling”, and “treating others nicely” – of course those are nice, but just a basic start. Modeling how to live is so much more than that – including things like. . . .

demonstrating appropriate life rhythm (i.e., hard work but then vacations, Sabbath, general breaks, etc…),

conflict resolution (i.e., it is ok for parents to “fight” in front of their kids AS LONG AS they are using appropriate means of conflict resolution),

management of emotions – not just the lows, but the highs as well,

becoming a critical thinker capable of making wise decisions,

etc….

I could keep going on and on with this one, but as a start, Ang and I have decided to meditate on the fruits of the spirit – in order to try and not only show them more in our life, but also be able to label them for our kids when we see them doing one (or someone else expressing one of them). This type of labeling of emotions is called “emotional scaffolding.” The terminology is very appropriate because we are trying to build a repertoire of emotional labels for our children so that they may be highly emotionally intelligent as adults (which men, in particular, are often lacking).

Here are the fruits of the Spirit- received from Discipleshiptools.org http://discipleshiptools.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=36690&columnid=41:

Fruit of the Spirit is Self-Control
Self-Control is allowing God to be in control of your will and heart and seeking the Spirit to enable us.

Not sure about you, but. . . . Ang and I have plenty of work cut out for us in chasing after these fruits with all that we are so that. . . . . our kids can be all that they were meant to be.

So, we knew that we were in for a full weekend, and it was awesome – let me give you a picture guide through it all.

Friday – to Fort Wayne for one of my best college friend’s wedding (Eric) – here are the kids playing on the steps outside the church

Here they are taking a breather . . . . . gearing up for dancing aka. the reception

Picture of Eric and I – yes, he was that happy , and I was excited for the cake line!

Picture of Angela with one of her closest friend’s in college (Tricia)

There is really never a bad time for a family photo!! Oh, in case you were wondering the younger two were back at the hotel with Justine (a Bethel student who often babysits for us – she was great this weekend!)

Saturday – Hitting the hotel pool for an early swim –

it happened to be Dane’s first swim ever. . . ok so he was barely in the water. . . . but it still counts!!!

Off to the Fort Wayne Zoo – love being S. Bend zoo members, half off of the price here!

In honor of their aunt Nichole and Uncle Aaron (in Zimbabwe right now), we started off here:

Here is the giraffe – amazing!!!

Here is Kya feeding the giraffe – just crazy!!

Here is the sky ride – neither kid was scared at all! – They loved being able to fly like a bird. . . .

Here is Justine playing around with Dakota

Just some other of my favorite pix from the zoo

The carousel is always a fan favorite – not sure what Elliana is riding?? But Kya was pretty pumped about his Kung Fu Panda!

Here is Dane after being told that the little known fact that 10% of a Komodo dragon’s diet is other Komodo dragons!

Here he is after being told that he is big and strong and could easily fight off a Komodo dragon with his bare hands

Back at home after a long weekend. Using the map, the kids are trying to recap the whole adventure at the zoo for Dane, since he was asleep for most of it – Dane is just trying to get a really close look at it all!

It was a great adventure – as one of my friends would say. . . . we were Making Memories!!

Wow- it has been a long month and a half, but I am ready to get back into the swing of blogging again . This semester ends a period of time that might have been one of the most refining times of my life thus far. . . but, we’ll get to that some other time

 I thought about catching you up on everything, but that would take a book, not a blog – plus, I know some of you have been following me on twitter – and greenlockers on twitter too – so, I am just going to start with a top 10 list of things that I have learned in the last month and half:

10. Lasik is a modern day miracle – seriously going from 20/600 to 20/15 over the course of 5 minutes. . . . . . . . come’on that’s just crazy!

9. God’s adventure (i.e., greenLockers) is wilder than I ever could have imagined

8. Not much compares to seeing a “smaller than average” middle school student encouraging his “much larger” peers to not waste schools supplies, but to donate them instead, and he did not know that I was watching

7. I don’t hear anyone talking about parenting in a positive light – about how wonderful it is to be a Dad or a Mom – I plan on changing that a little bit (get ready for . . . . “parenting tips” – coming soon to this blog ). I figured my wife is currently teaching college course called “Parenting” and I teach Child Growth and Development as well as Adolescent Growth and Development – though we ourselves still have a lot to learn, and are NOT perfect by any means!!!! – we also have a lot to share

6. This is one of my favorite pictures of Kya so far – love his Spirit

5. My wife does not get even a 10th of the credit that she deserves. . . – Here is Dane smiling at her during bath time – yeah, he loves her!

4. I am excited about the God’s plan to use the Church (with all of her quirks) to move His kingdom forward. Here are some middle schoolers from GSM cleaning out 800 bins. . . in the rain!

3. The heart of Bethel students continues to impress me – countless students gave up time and effort to FREELY give up parts of their summer for greenLockers

2. Absolutely NOTHING compares to “intentional use of time” and “open communication” when a family is running fully on mission (i.e., the busy, stressful times of the “six days” before the “7th day” rest period) 

1. Blogging and many other “good” things/opportunities are important to me for many reasons, but my family is more important – specifically, being the best husband and father that I can be  – - WILL ALWAYS take precedent over me saving my public face. – here is a picture after Dane’s dedication at church.

So two days ago – here was Ang and Dane:

Wow what a day yesterday. . . and now we have a “Square Day” (i.e., because he was born on 3/3/09) baby.  Ang is so amazing, and I could not be more proud of her, she really had to fight for this one! Here is the room setup at St. Joe hospital:

We got into the hospital to start the induction at 6am.  Once again there were some issues in getting Ang’s IV in – only 4 tries this time (thank goodness for the IV therapy people!). Instead of using Pitocin, which is what is typically used for inductions – they have always just used a “cytotek” pill with us. Sure enough – once again, Ang started to have good contractions. By noon, however, she was only dilated 3cm, and so we wait. . . .

Side Note: – People about ready to give birth should not be this cute!!!

By 4pm she was dilated 5cm – even though she was having full-blown contractions, and was in a lot of pain – so we went ahead with the epidural – to try and relax her body a little. At this point, they realized that her previous IV was no longer functional, and so we had to wait for what ended up being around an hour until the IV therapist could make it back. . . . then the 45 minutes it takes to get a bag of fluid into her system, and then the 15 minutes for the actual epidural procedure so, the two hours between 4-6 pm were definitely the roughest (oh, and she was throwing up too during this time!!!) – so thank you so much for all of you praying for us!! The anesthesiologist actually stuck around and personally adjusted the epidural every 10 minutes or so.  The nurses were great, especially Rachel during the day – Bethel nursing graduate, GCC member with a passion for doing mission work in India – coincidence. . . I don’t think so! – we had some great discussions.

Soon, after this little baby Dane Justice was brought into the world, and it was wonderful!!! – this picture was minutes after a 13 hour+ day – 9:45pm birth.

Here is the resident who helped (far left) and our main Doctor – Dr. Cavallo – who was amazing! – he has delivered 3 out of our 4 children – we love this guy!

6 pounds 14 ounces, 20 inches long. . . and a lot of hair!

A little tired after his first breastfeeding – he ate great – no problems at all!!!!

Yes!!. . . I am a proud Dad – it is sooooo great to finally meet Dane - I wonder what amazing plans God has in store for this little guy!

Here is a picture of Dane that looks a lot like Elliana when she was born – one of my favorite pictures so far – gotta love the hair! This was taken soon after I gave him his first bath (I had never done that before for our other kids – that was a great experience!)

Visitation at St. Joseph Hosipital is from 11am until 8pm – people are welcome!! Room 702 – thanks again everyone!!  and Praise God!!!