Category: Uncategorized (Page 168 of 188)

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.

(this was our first food day: avocado. he thinks cado is ok, but likes Nanacado much better.)

When i was pregnant with henry there were a few common phrases that drove me batty:
2. it’s going to change your life so much! it’s going to change everything! (to which my cousins smartly replied, “well i should hope so!”)
1. just you wait.

the reason i hated (and still dislike) “just you wait” is because, well, i WAS waiting. JJ and i didn’t haphazardly fall into parenting – we wanted this. we wanted a baby. and we had a pretty good handle, thanks to a lot of the experience around us, on the toll it would take on our social, emotional and slumbering lives. but we both knew it was well worth it.

and we still do.

lately, through henry’s “rough patch” i can see it’s more true than ever. there are difficult times. but that’s anything worth doing. marriage can be hard, but it’s so worth it to spend your life with someone. service to others can be difficult, like in those people-serving jobs (youth directing, teaching, social services, counseling – anything where you’re carrying the burden of loving people), but the privilage of sharing space and time with people brings so much gratification. parenting takes more of yourself than you sometimes think you have to give, but wow. they give you more joy than what you thought you could ever experience.

Jesus was constantly talking in backward terms – you have to lose your life to find it, you have to die to live, you have to give to receive. and i think being a mommy or a daddy is a way of God inviting you to live that on a daily basis. it’s always a choice to give of yourself – your sleep, your energy, your body (i never knew i could double as a jungle gym until lately). but oh my gosh! to have this little person want to climb you and then plant a big kiss (well, more of an open mouth suck) on your cheek????

so here’s what i have to offer: selfishness is pretty lonely.