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Monday, December 31, 2012

Special Christmas

Well, before the ball drops I'd better get my Christmas post out there.  I think it's been over two weeks since my last post, can you tell I've been on vacation?! 

Our Christmas vacation was full of fun moments that were definitely not captured on camera (at least not mine, whoops!) but were captured in the hearts of me and Hubby T and all the family members we shared our holiday with.  I hope that as my kids grow they will always know the joy of sharing Christmas with as many family members as possible.  I am exhausted just thinking about that (or maybe I'm just still recovering from this year's whirlwind) but that's the way Hubby T's family always did it and since marrying into their family I've come to love and appreciate it as well.  We are very blessed to have so much family within driving distance (and to have a great little passenger!) 

This holiday season Little B mastered the art of opening presents, watching but not touching the train that runs around the Christmas tree, singing "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and the knowledge that Santa "comes down Mom-Mom's chimney!"  Hopefully he'll forget that knowledge between now and next Christmas when we may or may not be at Mom-Mom's house!  I'll be a little sad to take down the tree tomorrow, but thankfully I always have the hope and joy of anticipation of next year's Christmas.  Here are just a couple of the best pictures from our camera, hopefully the grandparents can share some better ones with me for our scrapbook! 

Almost 2 year old discovers the wonders of the trampoline!

Snow on Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from my wonderful family to yours!

Monday, December 17, 2012

Book club and hearing God

Last weekend my book club met to discuss two books, The Voluntourist by Ken Budd and Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis.  Although the stories are very different, they are essentially about two people who choose to participate in overseas service projects/mission work while trying to figure out who they are and what their calling is in life.  These books led to a discussion among my book club about our callings.  "Do you know what your calling is?  How do you know?  What are we supposed to do when we don't know?"  Most of us didn't have good answers to these questions, which we all agreed is a frustrating place to be.  As women of faith, we are all confident in our calling as mothers and the calling we have to raise children of faith, but what about the other work in our lives that we could accomplish?  What are those of us who do not hear God speak to us supposed to do?

Then I read my Advent devotional yesterday morning.  The topic was prayer, and how prayer is an opportunity for us to hear God's voice.  I will freely admit that although it sounds lovely, I do not expect this to happen to me.  I have never heard God speak to me as if he was sitting next to me on the couch having a conversation.  I don't doubt that God could communicate with me that way, but it hasn't happened yet.  So this excerpt from Henri Nouwen's A Spirituality of Living was striking -

"The trouble is that as soon as we sit and become quiet, we think, Oh I forgot this.  I should call my friend.  Later on I'm going to see him.  Our inner life is like a banana tree filled with monkeys jumping up and down.  It is not easy to sit and trust that in solitude God will speak to us - not as a magical voice but as knowledge that grows gradually over the years.  And in that word from God we will find the inner place from which to live our lives."

I hope the point I got from that jumps off the screen for my book club friends as well.  The idea I pull from the passage is this: maybe we are expecting the wrong thing.  Rather than expecting a magical voice to speak to us, and constantly being disappointed, maybe we should be expecting to receive knowledge from God.  This is much more subtle and mysterious, but it resonates with me.  It's why I believe the hours and hours that I have spent over the course of my lifetime attending worship services, participating in Bible studies, reading, talking, thinking, praying aren't meaningless.  Maybe the collective experiences of my Christian walk create in my heart a knowledge of God and what He calls me to do.  Maybe I should stop fretting so much about not hearing God and just see what happens as I attempt to live a life devoted to God...

Perhaps instead of magic we should be expecting the miraculous.  Isn't that what the Advent and Christmas season are all about anyway?

Friday, December 7, 2012

Christmasy Update

So it's probably about time for me to circle back to two posts ago where I left you hanging with the news that Baby B is going to be a big brother!  We are very excited about this new addition to our family, especially now that I am pulling out of first trimester yuckiness.  If you are interested in hearing my thoughts on these past couple months, read on; if not, skip to the following paragraph.

If you have seen the movie Love Actually, do you remember the scene where the adorable, blue-eyed little drummer boy asks Liam Neeson's character what could be worse than the "total agony of being in love?"  Well I'll tell you little man - it's the total agony of first trimester pregnancy.  I didn't even have it all that bad relatively speaking.  I didn't get sick that often, although my appetite disappeared completely and we all ate terribly for a few weeks because I didn't feel like food shopping or cooking (even though I was hungry all the time).  It certainly didn't help that my fridge and oven broke too.  And I was exhausted, of course.  Although I can't complain about that too much because I did get to nap everyday while the boys napped.  I got very tired of wanting to tell people the exciting news but not wanting to, and of experiencing pregnancy symptoms that can be totally normal but can also be totally not normal.  I remember thinking last time I was pregnant, or maybe somebody said this to me, that pregnancy is fantastic practice for parenthood because you care so deeply for your child and want to understand what's going on, but you have absolutely no clue and no control.  Ah well.  Here we are at 13 weeks along and so far everything is fine.  Except for my normal clothes are starting to not fit, but I don't quite fit into maternity clothes yet...like I said - agony.

Aside from the fourth heartbeat now blessing our house, we are also all wonderfully excited for Christmas!  Hubby T and I scored big time with our tree this year.  We were planning to drive the 30 minutes down to Costco to buy a $28 tree (the best deal we've found) but decided to pull into the church 5 minutes from our house and see how much their trees were.  Only $10 more!  Totally worth it to avoid the hour drive plus the proceeds the church makes from Christmas tree sales support their local missions programs.  Talk about tidings of comfort and joy:) 


Baby B has done a great job of not touching the tree, too much.  I put "his" ornaments down low, so he'll still finger them a little bit.  For the most part he's good about leaving the tree alone, which I really appreciate.  We have a surprisingly large number of Christmas books for Baby B's enjoyment, not quite sure how that happened, but he's devouring them nonetheless.  His favorites, so far, are the Berenstein Bears Meet Santa Bear, Clifford's First Christmas, and Little Critter's Merry Christmas Mom & Dad.  We need to work a story that tells the actual Christmas story in there somehow.  He loves the lights that we put up around the house.  As soon as I plug in the Christmas tree lights in the morning he runs over to the fire place and tells me I need to plug in the "uder (other) lights."  I've been able to do Christmas shopping and wrapping in front of him this year, so I'm enjoying that while it lasts.  We haven't baked any Christmas cookies yet, maybe this weekend.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from our walk through Christmasy CW this morning.  Plans to go with a friend fell through (my fault, stupid Facebook) so I decided to entertain myself by posing the boys in front of the CW decorations, or at least trying to.  Taking pictures of CW Christmas decorations is a "thing," there were a lot of photographers around, and although I generally don't have a clue what I'm doing when I snap a picture, I'm pretty sure my pictures turned out better than everyone else's:)

 
 

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Amazing Friends

Amazing friends drive seven plus hours into the night after a long work week to visit friends

Amazing friends laugh and welcome you with hugs when you (and fifteen other people) show up at their house at midnight with no warning

Amazing friends give up their beds, bedrooms, and bathrooms for you (again, with no warning)

Amazing friends give you so much energy that you forget how tired you are

Amazing friends bring their kids and their friends kids into a candy store right before lunchtime (and make sure no one leaves empty handed)

Amazing friends miraculously stretch a gingerbread making project intended for four children to include ten children

Amazing friends play with, clean up after, and love your children as if they were their own

Amazing friends tell you to come back anytime

Amazing friends may not always be close to your home but they are always close to your heart

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”  C. S. Lewis

Thanks for a great weekend small group!  Let's start planning Road Trip 2013 soon!!

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Our Thanksgiving

I know, I'm a week late.  Who's talking about Thanksgiving anymore?  It's Christmastime!  But I couldn't let this year's go by because we had a great trip to Mom-Mom and Papou's house.  So, by way of quick photo summary, what do you think Baby B is most thankful for this year?

A. Walks in the woods


B. Laugh out loud playtime with his grandmothers


C. Visiting the Christmas trains with Daddy and Papou


D.  Learning that he is going to be a big brother (!)


Friday, November 16, 2012

The Park

In the last year and change, I have found that finding things to do each day is one of the more difficult things about being a stay at home mom.  I've been feeling that way a lot the last couple weeks, so today it was a relief to lean on that good old-fashioned stand-by: the park.

Wait for me!

This gate may be my favorite part of the park.  Containment has become quite the challenge with these two!

They may look like they're following each other but they're about to go two separate ways and stay that way for most of our visit...
Why is the bee wet?!

Yay for me!
Couldn't be happier!

No really, couldn't be happier:)

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Growing Pleasures

Baby B is going to be 22 months old this week, almost two years old!  Although he has passed many of his "first" milestones, he continues to do and say new things that characterize the lively and independent little boy he is becoming...

Like many kids, Baby B loves to hear his favorite stories read to him over and over and over (and over and over!) again.  While this gets pretty old for Hubby T and I, what doesn't get old is hearing him settle down next to us to read and say, "I like dis book" or "I like dis one."  He says it softly, almost like he's talking to himself, but it's so precious to hear this expression of what's going on in his head.  Plus, what parent's heart isn't warmed to witness their child loving reading?


Another funny habit Baby B has developed recently is answering his own questions with the answer he wants us to give.  Frequently when he makes a request we will repeat it back to him, mostly to make sure we understood it correctly.  Instead of confirming his question, he answers it!  For example:

Baby B: I want mo' cheerios.

Me: (In mock disbelief) You want more cheerios?!

Baby B: Okay!


He is starting to sleep with a blanket!  Most new parents these days adhere to the philosophy that you can't put your baby to sleep with anything that could smother them or cause breathing problems.  This includes crib bumpers, stuffed animals, blankets, etc.  So until recently when it's been cold we've dressed Baby B in layers and left him to his own devices in his very sparse crib.  (This may sound mean but he's honestly been completely fine.)  In the last couple weeks as it's gotten cold we decided that maybe he was ready for a blanket, because hopefully in the next year he'll learn to sleep in an actual bed!   The first couple times we put a blanket over him he giggled at us, as if the blanket was tickling him.  Most of the time he just accepts it now, although I've yet to see him embrace the warmth of a blanket the way I do on a cold night.  I'm sure he kicks it off pretty quickly but occasionally I'll walk in to check on him before I go to bed and he's still laying there, fast asleep with the blanket over his body, occasionally with his teddy bear tucked tightly under his arm.  At what age will my child not be completely adorable while fast asleep?  (Sorry, no picture for this one.  No picture is worth taking with a flash in the dark and awakening my sleeping child!)


What else is there to report on my little bundle of energy?  He's moved up to size 4 diapers (I think they only make them up to size 5...we're getting closer!), he talks enough to carry on a conversation with Hubby T over the phone during lunchtime, he wants to walk everywhere by himself (i.e. don't you dare try to strap me into a stroller!), he picks out his own Curious George book from the library every week, and every time I sit down at the piano he runs over and demands that I play "Old MacDonald Had a Farm", or in his words, "E-i-e-i" and we always sing about the chicken first.  I am so looking forward to the holidays in the coming weeks so that some of our family can see him again and share our joy in how much he's grown this year...