Just Some Pictures I Love of a Girl I Love

Loving Our Children

Parts of this post are too good not to share.  It's about parenting teenagers, but some of it I can certainly take and use immediately.
Here is some of it:


Our children are the fruit of our best love -- am I making them my best friends? 

Their hearts came into being in the circle of our wooing -- why do I ever stop wooing their hearts?

Each child came to us directly from the presence of God and a parent's daily work is to lead the child back from whence she came --- back into the presence of God. To simply keep inviting the child into the transformative presence of God -- to live before Him ourselves.

For only the Spirit of God can take a child and shape him into a whole and holy person. My parenting cannot do this work. I forget this. I realize parenting is complicated with seasons necessitating instruction, admonition, intervention... but I wonder --

Is my work as a parent less about directing and more about being a friend who's a spiritual director?

It's our tender love that woos them back to His.





Quotes good enough to put in books, or maybe on walls... at the very least, to keep in the forefront of my heart.

Mimicry

Eden is in the "I want..." phase.  She says "I want..." in front of everything and will sometimes start the sentence with those two words and not even know how she's going to end it.  She pauses and thinks of a way to end it.  It wears me out quickly.  We are talking a lot about the meaning of contentment.


Daddy:  I want to bring a hat to the beach next year for me to wear.

Eden:  I want my hat on.

Mommy:  (mimicking Eden) I want to say "I want" in front of everything I hear.

Eden: I want everything I hear.


See?

Signing

Too Soon

We went to Chick-fil-a for lunch today, or, as Eden says it, Chick-a-way.  We saw some friends who mentioned they had just come from Chuck E. Cheese.  Nothing gets past Eden and she asked me on the way home from lunch if we could go to Chuck E. Cheese.  I told her that was a good idea, because we have tokens that need to be used, but that we probably wouldn't go today.
When we got home, she asked if we could go to Chuck E. Cheese after nap.
"No, honey, I said we're not going today."

She looks forlorn and says, "It's too soon."

"Ok, whatever you say."

When I come to get her after her nap, she says, "Good afternoon, Mommy.  It's time to go to Chuck E. Cheese."

"Remember, I said we're not going to Chuck E. Cheese today?"

"It's too soon.  It's too soon, Mommy."

"Sure, if it helps you to think about it that way..."

You have to agree with whatever she says.  However she's worked it out in her brain is sometimes the only way she can grasp it at that moment.  As much as I would like to explain reasons for everything, sometimes, it's just impossible.  Either her inability to understand makes it impossible or my inability to think of any explanation that even makes sense to me makes it impossible.
In related news: I can now say that the words "because I said so" have officially crossed my lips, more because I was demanding an explanation of myself at that moment than because my daughter was actually asking for one.

Perfect

When I was 14, I had an assignment in Literature to write about the perfect age.  Here is what I wrote.

I think the perfect age is one year old.  New things meet your every glance.  Little wandering fingers feel new and exciting textures. Roaming eyes see dazzling objects, each one the perfect play toy.  A small nose twitches at each delicious aroma and tiny feet help to seek out the source.  New and wonderful sounds come from every direction: a lawn mower, leaves crackling beneath a jogger's feet, water running in a sink, the bark of a dog or even a toilet flushing.  All the world's a toy... to a one-year-old.


I got a sticker on my paper and a 97%.  Yes, a sticker.  It was a chicken holding an egg and it said "eggccellent work." I was home schooled. Don't judge.

A Minute With Me

"AAAAAAHHhhhhh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa...."

This is how Eden cries now.


and this is what I am hearing right now.
Let me fill you in.

I am sitting with Arielle while she has some tummy time.  Eden asked to play "doctor" and gave me the stethoscope, wanting me to listen to her heatbeat.  I took the stethoscope and told her I would love to play with her.  She laid on the floor and decided to play "nap time" instead and asked me to go get a blanket.
I told her she could go grab a blanket and I would put it on her... and so it began.

"NOOOOoooooooo  a mamawhoa, whoa, whoa!  I wanna play!"

"I'm not going to go grab your blanket right now, but if you bring it to me, I'll put it on you."

"AAAAAHhhhhhh, no, no, no, whoa, whoa.  I want the blanket on!"

"I'll gladly put it on you if you bring it to me."  By the way, she's brought it to me MANY times before.

Continued and escalating crying.

"Ok, if you would like to cry for a while, you need to go sit in the crying chair."

Still crying.. "No I don't want to sit in crying chair!"

"Well, it would be better than standing in the corner for whining, which is really what you're doing right now."

The mention of standing in the corner sends the volume of the crying up and her little tushy straight to the chair.

While she's sitting in the chair, she's crying and saying, "I wanna sit in crying chair!  I wanna sit in crying chair."  I guess she's still afraid I'll change my mind and put her in the corner.

"That's fine Eden.  I'm not stopping you from sitting there, so sit."

Well, she must have misunderstood the "I'm not stopping you" part or something, because that produced another shriek, followed by even louder screaming and crying.

This girl baffles me.

After a few more minutes, she calmed down and stopped crying and I told her she could get out.

What does she do??  She stays there and starts crying again!  "I wanna blanket Mommy.  I wanna blanket on me!"

I am having dejavu.  "Eden, you are welcome to get out of the chair and go and get your blanket from your room."

And it continues.

Now Arielle needs to eat.  Thank you very much for sharing my day.  This moment in the life of a frustrated Mom and ever more baffling two-year-old brought to you by....
oh, wait, I don't have any sponsors.  I'm not getting paid for this.
I'll just say it was brought to you by Juicy Juice, generic formula and the letter "W"  for "whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa..."

Losing It : Progress is Progress

My last goal of weighing 125 for this past weekend's festivities was not reached.  Jillian and I didn't have as many dates as I would have liked due to getting our house ready to put on the market.  There were people inside and outside our house almost every day for the past couple weeks and, for one reason or another, it's just been hard to workout.  The good news is, I didn't gain any and I actually managed to lose one pound.
Holding steady at 128 and hoping to make it down to 125 before the beach.  We're headed to Destin, Florida in about 3 weeks and now that the house is on the market, hopefully I can buckle down and knock a few more pounds off.