Month: June 2009 (Page 3 of 4)

a friend of mine was composing “10 things” she’ll never do. however, she had a little trouble so she decided to stick with 8. i got to thinking… what 8 things would i say that i’d never do?? i had trouble with it, but here’s my list. let me know if i missed one.
*one caveat: due to the nature of her profession, her list was largely health related (“i’ll never stop working out… i’ll never get my kids vaccinated…”). due to the nature of my vocation, my list casts a much wider net. 🙂

Michele will never…
8. … throw away a book. i just can’t bear it. even the poorest written, lack-of-storyline chick lit will at least get sold on amazon, if not given to goodwill. reminds me of A League of Their Own– girl learning to read: “he touched her mii…miilll…milky whiiite br.. bre… breast. milky white breast. oh!”
Mae: “hey, she’s readin’ ain’t she?!”

7. … wear a crop top. I just read in Glamour that it’s making a comeback. Count me out, folks.

6. … get another full night’s sleep. I came to this realization just the other day (yes, i know – 7 months old and i’m JUST realizing that?!). i’m sure that the day henry starts to sleep through the night will likely be the day i find out i’m pregnant again, thus restarting all the trips to the bathroom. by the time the kids graduate and i stop worrying about them getting home safely, i’ll be so old that i’ll have achey parts and insomnia.

5. … give up on Church. this has become more evident to me lately. the day that i stop participating in the Body is the day that i’ll always be right. God will conform to my likeness and not vice versa. that’s a dangerous place for Miss Michele to be.

4. … eat a hot dog from a vendor’s cart in Ecuador. not only do i hate hot dogs, but while on my mini-basketball tour there some of our male team counterparts actually attempted this. they ended up with the scoots and i thought, “reason number 2…”

3. … bungee jump, sky dive or generally anything that requires my life to depend upon a small piece of rope. i know, i’m a party pooper but that just does not sound fun.

2. … take out credit that I know I can’t pay back. my papa told me the day that he handed me a credit card “don’t put anything on it that you can’t pay for right now.”
*admission of guilt: i, too, had trouble coming up with even 8, so i asked kristy what one thing i would never do. she listed this among never: eating a pound of pork chops, giving henry an entire 2 liter of diet coke and posting naked pictures on facebook. all of these are also probably true, but i’m most passionate about people with stupid credit. slightly behind is my revulsion to pig.

1. … say never. On nearly all of these, i could come up with a situation or 2 that i would say, “well, ok…”. most of those situations involved large sums of money being paid to me. but nonetheless, “never” is quite a stretch! i’m definately not the “daredevil” type that would say yes to anything, but i hope that i have an open mind enough to at least give something a chance. hear both sides. ponder the circumstances. weigh the options. i think this is because of another thought (and post) i have brewing about the dangers of declaring things either 100% evil or 100% good. but until then….

i’ve had a lot of visitors lately. the good kind, no worries (except the man that wanted to sell me meat out of the back of his van. “at cost” of course, but alas i informed him we have half a cow coming in just a few weeks).

the first of the visitors was my friend kathi (and her husband kevin). i love them because of the great conversation. i have very few friends with whom convesation is lackluster, now that i think about it. but i was verbally stimulated by KK on end and absolutely loved it.

it seemed that much of our conversation seemed to return to babies, mothering and birth. i tried to switch gears so that i wasn’t one of “those people”, but we always returned. in my defense, i think KK has been doing a lot of thinking on her own and was curious, wanting to hear about my experience. so we talked and talked and talked. we talked about what it means to be a parent and whatnot.

then kathi shared something that i’m going to repeat & attribute 3 times and claim as my own. she said she and her hubby didn’t want to speak negatively about their child(ren). they don’t want to speak ill of them. i don’t think that means that you’ll never hear them say “i just wish he’d sleep through the night!” but rather it’s that her faults don’t need to be made public. she was telling me about her thoughts on the power of words (to which i full heartedly agree, even if i’m not so quick to catch my tongue). we also talked about how parenting is a shadow of the relationship of God to person. and God would never talk about his children the way I have heard some parents talk about theirs.

i want my kids to grow up knowing that they are enough. obviously, there’s always room for growth – in all of us. but part of encouraging that is extending grace for where a person is at that moment. mixed with the hope of things to come and the faith that God can work in all people, why wouldn’t i celebrate the person he is right now?

henry status update: “dadadada” is now a part of our vocabulary and it seems to have become the multipurpose sound. he says it all the time. it’s absolutely adorable. he also purrs like a kitten when he is happy. also adorable.

on the sleeping front we’ve seen progress but not complete success. i’m actually happy with progress. you can’t expect immediate perfection, right? i mean, it took me 28 years to reach perfection.

on a similar note, i had a realization last night. henry wouldn’t go to sleep, but he’s usually very good at falling asleep if we’re on target for bedtime. i kept flipping him to his belly, because he likes to sleep on his belly. he’d play with the puppy rabbit and then flip over. then he’d lose the bink, cry, i’d come in and flip him back. rinse and repeat. i thought “why won’t you stay on your tummy? you like to sleep on your tummy!”

as if there’s not ever been a time when i couldn’t fall asleep on my side (my preferred sleeping position), so i’d roll to my tummy. so why would i never consider that maybe H will likely change things up as well?

i was remarking to kathi this morning (whole seperate post – what a wonderful visit!!) how it’s so much fun to see the new things he’s doing. picking things out of a basket. looking at a variety of toys. pounding on the mini-piano without me helping him. his whole life is one constant process of change! his routine, his gross motor skills, his babbles are all building blocks on the way to who he is becoming.

i’m not a huge fan of change of routine. this morning i put my face lotion on after i brushed my teeth and was thrown completely out of whack. but do i really want henry to be stuck with dadada as the primary vocab word? unless i do, i must face the reality that things change. not just my baby, but the way our day (and night) takes shape.