last night of one

(Pearl showing me that she is still one, but practicing her two for tomorrow :). These photos are all from tonight before I put her to bed.)

I put my one-year-old baby to bed tonight for the last time. Tomorrow she will wake up a two-year-old, and I am feeling extra tender for her as I think about just how full she has made these past two years.


She is a dream to me-- all of the good things that my heart had ever imagined having a daughter would be like are wrapped up in her tiny body and enormous personality.


As I nursed her before bed tonight I was teary just thinking about how much she means to me-- my very own baby girl. I love her most because she is mine. I love her for a thousand reasons (probably more), but the very most important one is just simply that she belongs to me.


I get to care for her. I am the one who gets to rock her to sleep at night and wake up to her tiny voice.


I am the one who gets to buckle her into her car seat and carry her on my hip into the grocery store.


I am the one who gets to watch her tease her brother and then teach her to say "I'm sorry."


I am the one who gets to change her diapers and carefully pick out her outfits and get her dressed each day.


I am the one who gets to respond when she calls out, "Mama" three hundred times a day.


I am the one she wants. I am the one she needs. I am her mother.


It has been a privilege and blessing that I will never be able to be grateful enough for. I am so very happy that I have so many years left in front of me to be her mama.

to go or stay

I haven't really been taking photos with my camera lately and I think it's because of my love affair with instagram. The good thing about that is that I feel like I might actually have a chance at catching up on all of the stuff that I STILL have yet to blog about from months ago. I was going to start with posting about our Beach trip, but I keep having these thoughts that I need to just write down some other stuff first.

(All of the photos in this post are from a day last summer where we were out working on the chicken coop. The light was good so I got the camera out. I love these little faces and never posted them, so here they are now, completely irrelevant, but included nonetheless.)



My children are at such easy ages. Pearl will be two next month and I can't believe how easy it is to have two children that you can reason with and explain things to. If she cries in the middle of the night I can have a conversation with her about how it's still night time and that I'll come back and get her when it's light outside and she'll stop crying and sweetly say, "Okay Mama," and roll over and go back to sleep. George went through a little bit of a phase when he first turned 4 where he was pushing limits and testing boundaries much more than he ever had. I felt challenged as his mother to find a healthy balance between giving him some autonomy and expecting obedience. In the last few months he seems to have settled into himself more. I don't feel him pushing against me, testing my patience the way he was before.  I have just had the thought over and over again lately that both kids are in places where my job feels pretty darn easy and smooth right now. I know this won't last forever and there will be hurdles for us all to get through together in the future, but sometimes right now I feel like I want 14 more kids just like them.



Speaking of which, I can't believe how much I'd love to have another baby come to our family soon. I've actually wanted another baby since Pearl was 4 months old (craziness that I cannot explain), but recently the feelings of desire for that are so intense that my heart feels a little smothered. Hopefully the time for our family will be right soon.




Also sort of speaking of which, we are moving. Probably to Oregon, but possibly to New Zealand. John was accepted to PhD programs in both places (among others, but those were our top 2 choices), and now is the time where we are really buckling down to try and make the decision that is best for our family. There are so many things to consider in this. Oregon State makes the very most sense-- it is the number one place to be in the nation for what John is studying (as in, the advisor that has accepted him is the only Endowed Chair at his position in all of the world, which brings with it a host of perks and benefits), it is in a super cool town (Corvallis) with excellent schools and safe neighborhoods, it is within driving distance to come home and visit our families which is a huge thing, and we've felt really good about Oregon since John was first thinking about PhD programs 2 years ago. The opportunity in New Zealand was a more recent development and John actually was not expecting to get the offer to come there. When it came we were totally shocked and I spent an entire afternoon, my heart excitedly pounding, searching for reasonable rentals in Auckland. The program in NZ is very good, the advisor is a well-respected and known scientist, and the adventure of it all, oh the adventure of it all. That is the main thing that pulls us in that direction. How can we turn down that opportunity?! It would be so hard for us to be that far away for that long (3 or 4 years), but it also would be a once in a lifetime experience for our family that I know we would end up loving. So we weigh the pros and the cons. Oregon State wins that battle, but it still is tough to let go of the idea of NZ. We kind of keep coming back to this though: academically, graduating from Oregon State would make John competitive to get any job he wanted at the end of all of this. And that is what we are doing it for-- the future. The opportunities and training and technology available at OSU are superior. And we will get to see our families more. But what would you do? Are we crazy to not take the opportunity in NZ? We are hopeful that if we decide to go to OSU, we will still have options to live abroad at another point during John's schooling (either during his PhD for a few months at a time doing research somewhere or while he does a post doc). John and I spend most of our free time going back and forth about this; I asked him the other day what we would talk about once we had made the decision. I'm sure we'll find something :).



Pearl just woke up. I brought her out by me where she saw a mini flag and started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I had no clue she knew that. We recite it at school each morning, but I had no clue she was catching on to all of those words. Sort of entertaining to hear this tiny person squeaking out, "to the 'public, which it stands, wif liberty, justice for all!"


I guess that's it for now.

feeling like an outlier

 

I have debated about whether or not it is necessary for me to add my (published-on-my-blog) voice to this topic, and after thinking about it all day today, I've decided to write about it. Mostly because I sort of feel like I'm on an island when it comes to this topic and I'm wondering why I feel so differently than most of my friends (at least the ones who've spoken up) about something that we're all so invested in. I'm wondering if by adding a different perspective I'll find that some of you actually do feel the same way that I do and I'll feel a little less weird about not being sure why I feel differently. So here we go.

The topic I'm referring to is the Huffington Post article written by Glennon Melton called Don't Carpe Diem (click on title to link to the article-- and if you haven't read it yet you'll probably want to before you read my post so you'll understand what I'm talking about). I don't often read links that people post on Facebook, but after about a dozen (literally) of my friends linking to it with such (SUCH) high praise for it, I clicked over.

I immediately knew I didn't love it the way everyone else did. I immediately started questioning myself and wondering why the author's sentiments did not resonate with me the way that they did with some of my dearest friends.

(A quick disclaimer: can we agree on the fact that either side (resonating with it or not resonating with it) is perfectly acceptable? I understand and respect that everyone who posted about it felt validated and uplifted by Melton's words, and I hope they would understand and respect that all this is is me feeling differently, not me feeling like what I feel is a superior. Let's all still be friends, K?)

As I've thought about it today, there are about 4 things that I keep coming back to that help me understand why I (and maybe some of you?) might not relate to the opinions in the article.

The first thing (and the most insignificant to me), is that I actually really appreciate and value it when someone tells me to enjoy the time I have with my children. I never hear the message "ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU'LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN'T!" TRUST US!! IT'LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!" I simply hear someone who has been in my spot before saying, "Hey look, I know there can be rough patches, but as a whole, these years of your life as a mother to young children are such a little blip of time and then they are over and you'll look back on them with such fondness and happiness and gratitude that YOU got to be the mother, that it was YOU that had the opportunity to spend your days in such a meaningful way." I hear someone who maybe feels a little nostalgic for the days of her past when she was the one with the screaming kids in the cart. Really. And I don't think she's trying to tell me that I can't feel frustrated and overwhelmed and frazzled at those screaming cart moments, just that all of it, the exhausting and invigorating, the frustrating and the glorious, will add up to the sum of our days as Mother and once we are on the other side of them, they'll seem to have gone too fast. I just hear someone else who is in this sorority of motherhood reminding me that it truly is the most beautiful blessing. And I'm always grateful for the reminder.

Another reason I've thought of that perhaps explains why I don't relate to the article as a whole is because of my own childhood and mother. Again, I don't want this to sound like people who don't mother/feel the way my mom and I do are inferior or don't love their kids as much or something (ridiculous!). I am simply stating that the way my mom mothered has influenced the way I mother. And so the fact that I knew so 100% clearly that her children were her delight and joy, that she wanted us with her constantly, that I never EVER heard one word of complaint about taking care of us, that she almost never took vacations without us because she would just rather have us with her, those things all have influenced me. I also had the sort of rare experience of watching, as a teenager, my mother be a mama to new babies. I watched her drive my carpool to school the day after she had come home from the hospital with my new baby sister, and now I look back on that and wonder why she didn't seem exhausted or overwhelmed-- she had a 3 day old baby to care for now in addition to the 4 of us, and she just took it all in stride like she was made for it. (She was.) After watching her find such incredible joy in the days of her motherhood it is not hard for me to understand why I love it so much too.

On that same note, I have been taking care of babies for a long time. Like, really taking care of them. When I was 9, my baby sister and I shared a room as soon as she was old enough (probably 3-4 months) to move out of the bassinet in my parents' room. From then on out, my mom never had to wake up in the night with her because I did it. If she woke up crying, I'd pick her up and bring her to bed with me. If she needed to nurse, I'd bring her to my mom and then she'd end up back in bed with me after my mom had returned her to her crib. She was my baby. I've wondered if the early (and constant) exposure to taking care of babies that I loved (I had two more baby sisters after that first one) helped me to be equipped to take many of the challenges of motherhood more in stride-- I had been blessed with 3 dress rehearsals before I had the real thing :).

So, those reasons above are things I've thought about, but they aren't actually what I think are the main reasons that the article didn't resonate with me. These final two things seem more significant to me.

I am not that hard on myself. I don't need someone telling me that it's okay to not feel guilty for not enjoying every moment, because I don't feel guilty if I don't enjoy a moment. I have never thought that I am supposed to be reveling in all of the tough moments as a mother-- I know they are going to be there, and I know I am going to get through them (hopefully with some amount of grace), and when they are over, I'll be glad we got through them and move on. It never occurred to me to feel "guilty and panicky" (the author's words) for not loving moments that aren't really intended to be loved. Does that make sense? I still love motherhood, and feel like I am truly soaking in these fleeting days with my children, but if I am feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in a moment where my child is pushing boundaries, I am fine with that. That is an okay time to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. I don't feel any guilt for not enjoying that specific moment. I just am not that hard on myself. Sometimes I actually feel like I am a little too easy on myself. Which leads me to my last thought...

I much prefer (and need) people to expect things from me than for people to tell me that I am fine just the way I am. I need people to hold me to a higher standard, and I think it is because of what I said above, that I am not that hard on myself. This was first evident to me in a church setting. I have never been able to relate to the talks or lessons (usually specific to women) about how we need to be gentler with ourselves or stop expecting so much of ourselves. I have come to realize and appreciate that there are many women who value those sentiments because they are genuinely quite hard on themselves, and need that reminder. I feel like I need the opposite though, and end up feeling patronized by the "be patient with yourself, you are good enough" lessons. I want (and need) talks about how much better I could be doing, about how great and valuable my contribution could be if I'd just put forth a better effort. So when I read in the article about how trying to enjoy every moment "just doesn't work" for the author, I felt that same feeling of someone telling me that I am fine just the way I am, that I shouldn't worry about trying to be better. I know that wasn't the author's point (and again, I feel like her point is valid and I'm happy that it resonates with so many), but that is what I felt from it.

I also felt conflicted by the idea of segmenting time into Chronos of Kairos because I feel like I should be making a valiant effort every day of turning Chronos into Kairos, of seeing and feeling the beauty in the small bits of our lives. Obviously I'm not talking about turning the moment where your 4 year old chops up your curtains with scissors into Kairos (though actually you totally could if you wanted :)), because that is an okay time to feel frustrated and angry and to not feel guilty about it (am I repeating myself enough here?). But mostly, I WANT to live in Kairos, and I WANT people to want that for me, not to tell me that it isn't possible or worth trying for. I think it is.

Do any of these thoughts ring true for any of you? I'd also love to hear thoughts from those of you who loved the article. Do I seem totally off base? What was is specifically about the article that you loved? I hope I haven't muddled my words too much or made anyone feel judged or inferior. That was not my intention at all. Just wanted to express my thoughts and opinion. We can still love each other, I hope :).

fall photo flop

I am not sure why, but I am sort of attached to the idea of getting some "Fall Photos" of my kids. I am drawn in by the loveliness of colorful, crunchy leaves, maybe. For whatever reason, I have taken some of my favorite photos of my children in the fall (I've done it every year since G was born), and I was determined to keep this tradition going.

Well.

Doesn't this picture just scream, "Fall is so beautiful! We are a happy family! We love each other!"?


No?

What about this one?


Hmm. Not so much? Maybe this?


Hahaha, oh George, you are killing me. It's nice that I can laugh about this now because let me assure you that I wasn't exactly laughing at the time.

The story is this: It was a pretty Fall day. A bit chilly, but I didn't know how many more days we'd have with leaves and no snow, so when I had an open afternoon I decided to quickly rush the kids over to the park to snap a few pictures. Pearl was already wearing something that I thought was fine for the pictures, but I needed George to change because he had a Superman shirt on that had short sleeves. Plus, Superman wasn't exactly the look I was going for.

George was not happy about having to change his shirt. I mean, he really wasn't happy. I can almost always reason with him, and he honestly never throws tantrums. But he was unhappy about changing his shirt and he let me know it. We sort of worked it out (or so I thought) and I told him that I would just take a couple of pictures with him in the shirt I wanted and then he could put his Superman shirt back on. There weren't any tears, and only mild protests continued, so we forged on to the park. I even sang some of my best Michael Jackson to George in the car to get him to crack a smile. It only sort of worked.

We got to the park and I sat the kids down in some leaves by a tree. I backed away to start snapping like normal and noticed that George would NOT wipe the tormented expression off of his face. You guys, I take a lot of pictures of that boy. I have NEVER not been able to get him to cooperate even for just one or two shots. He wasn't budging. I started out being nice, tried getting silly, and then got frustrated. I went over to him and firmly held his arms so he would look at me in the eyes. He pulled his arms away in rebellion and accidentally smacked Pearl (who was sweetly and perfectly sitting next to him) in the face. She started to cry and I yelled at George and picked up Pearl. I almost never yell at him and rarely even raise my voice at him, so this really hurt his feelings and he lost it and began sobbing. I calmed Pearl down and then attempted another conversation with George, but he was still pretty heartbroken. He just kept saying, "You hurt my feeeeelinnngssss!" The first picture on this post was snapped at this point.  Oh the drama of it all. This one was right after Pearl had calmed down. You can still see the remnants of her tears.


He did finally calm down but he continued to really have difficulty putting on a happy face. He was seriously cracking me up though because he was really in a bad mood and did NOT want to appear happy, but he knew I meant business. So he'd be like this one second:


And then I'd pull out my youhadbetterlistentomeNOW voice and he'd instantly do this:


Seriously!

It was honestly hysterical how fast he could pull out that smile for one photo and then put it right back away. Like so:


Oh, the grumpiness, little George. Pearl was happy though.



This is a bad picture of Pearl, but I have to post it because George had just been scowling ferociously one second earlier (the third picture from the top was taken moments before this one), and then magically did this when the threatening voice came out:


I totally felt for him. I know what it is like to just be in a grumpy mood and it is lame to have to suck up your pride and slap on a happy face. I sort of feel bad that the whole thing unfolded that way because it really was my fault initially. I shouldn't have made an issue over the shirt and I should have fed him some dinner before we left. He was hungry and his autonomy and power had been totally taken away (I hadn't tried to do that, but looking back I can totally see how he felt), and I was really sorry about that. I took a minute and had a meaningful conversation with him and apologized for what had happened. I didn't excuse his naughty behavior and he said he was sorry, too. We hugged and he smiled a real, unforced, un-coerced smile. As you can see, he had already put his Superman shirt on (though that hadn't really done anything to help his mood up to that point, and yep, count it up, that is 5 different shades of blue he is rocking).

By this time the light was almost totally gone. I took a few more photos of my now happy children and we played in the leaves (until Pearl fell down and skinned her hands, but that's neither here nor there). I didn't get any Fall Photos that I really liked, but here are some of the better ones. (By the way, who is  Pearl's mother and why didn't she do her hair before these pictures? Not sure.)

This is probably my favorite one of the bunch.




I think some of these could have turned out okay had George been cooperative from the beginning and the light not faded so fast. It was just getting so dark.


Oh look, happy children playing together! Weird!





He's a sweet, smiling boy most of the time. Just don't mess with his Superman shirt.


I was actually able to get some more Fall Photos of my kids on a different day completely accidentally. Maybe it was the fact that they were unintentional that made them turn out so much better. I'll post those next.

snowy update

When I get behind on blogging I feel like the journaling and writing get neglected most. I get anxious to catch up and feverishly try to plug away at posts that are mostly pictures with a few sentences of caption. I'm not really a fan of that. I want details and stories recorded. I want feelings expressed in words that I can re-read at a later date. I want memories described in text. I love pictures as much as anyone (we all know that), but I want to write about the details that pictures miss. Someday I want my children to be able to read about the days of their childhood from the words of their mother. So here is a start at what I hope will become a much more consistent part of this space. (Along with some pictures, naturally. These are from the first snowfall of the year that came last Saturday. George woke us up with shrieks of, "It SNOWED! Can we go outside and build a snowman?!" We bundled up and quickly found that one child had a snowsuit that was getting too little, and the other had a snowsuit that was still far too big. Oops. The kids had so much fun, though, and it was especially memorable because it was Pearl's first experience with really playing in snow.)




We have fallen into a pretty good weekly rhythm that we can count on, and, though I am totally a free-spirited polychronic (also described here) party girl at heart, I am grateful for the structure that we have in place to build our days around. Since our outside running weather is gone, a few friends and I have been going to the gym together at 6:00 AM. I get home around 7:15 or so and get myself and the kids ready for school. Three mornings (8:30-12:30) a week (Tuesday-Thursday) all three of us go together to school where George is in his own early childhood Montessori class (with a teacher that I adore), and Pearl is with me in a class where I am the special educator. It is a pretty incredible blessing to our family the way this whole me still teaching thing has worked out, and I am so grateful that we get to all be at the same place together. On Mondays just George goes to school for the morning, and Pearl and I get to spend a few hours just the two of us. George loves school and I love that I have some built-in time that is just for my girl. On Fridays we are free to go whichever way the wind blows us. We can often be found at our neighborhood park, Target, my parents' house, a friend's house, the zoo, or the mall. Sometimes we stay home and do projects or play with cars, "guys," baby dolls, or markers (Pearl's current favorite thing). We have a relatively simple life (though it doesn't always feel that way), and I am so grateful to spend my days with the people I love most. One day I'm sure I'll come back here to read this and long for the simplicity and beauty of this time. That's why I wanted to quickly jot it down.





Speaking of school, both children are really thriving and learning so much. I didn't anticipate that with Pearl (as I would have NEVER put her in a preschool at her age under normal circumstances-- it just works out that she gets to be there because I am there), but holy cow, I am constantly amazed at the way those few hours a week manifest themselves throughout the rest of our days. She loves cleaning up, and will often put her toys and things back where they go without being asked (this is because she has learned to clean up and restore the works at school when she is finished with them). She stacks things constantly (thank you, pink tower),  and tries to roll up dish towels while doing the "pat pat pat" on both sides to keep it neat (the kids either place their works on tables or little work mats that they roll out and roll back up themselves while singing, "Roll up the mat, tap tap tap." It really is so darling.). She has learned the routine at school so well and is usually the first little student to be in her "ready body on line" when she hears the clean-up chimes. Most of the other children in the class are much older than her, but there is one other little boy that is just two weeks younger (he is the son of one of the other teachers). He is bigger than Pearl, but for some reason (probably because he is just beginning to talk and still throws little tantrums when his mama takes something away :)) Pearl insists on calling him "Baby." She calls the other students by their names, and she knows his name, but she is convinced that he is a baby that needs her mothering. If he cries she'll go pat and hug him and say, "Oh, Baby cry. Baby sad." A few weeks ago, she noticed that he had a runny nose, and without missing a beat, rushed over to the "Care of Self" area in the classroom, grabbed a tissue, wadded it up, and went over and wiped his nose while noncholantly commenting to herself, "Baby. Nose." and then threw it away in the trash. She is a confident, assertive, funny, sometimes demanding, little mother-er, and I super love that about her.




George is also a happy little student. He loves math and numbers and is starting to work on place value and basic addition. He knows almost all his letter names and sounds, though his teachers report that they have to really entice him to work in the language/reading area. He is happier in math or practical life. John and I have talked with him about how good it feels to choose and complete some more challenging works because he seems (like most people, probably) to prefer to work in his comfort zone. He'd also almost ALWAYS prefer to work with a friend. His teachers are constantly commenting about how social he is, which occasionally results in a little visit to the "Watching Chair" until he is ready to sit back on line without talking to his friends, but most often is such a dear quality in our boy. We just had parent/teacher conferences and one of the things that his teacher wrote about him was that he is well-liked by all of his classmates and an honest leader in the class community (the honest part is because if he does something he knows he shouldn't do he will readily admit guilt and tell the teacher the whole story which kind of cracks me up).




On Monday I got to accompany George and his class on a field trip to a local farm. When I walked into the classroom to get the students I'd be chaperoning, one of his teachers ran up to me giggling. She had a funny story to tell me about George, she said (this is a regular occurence). When his teachers told George that morning that he would get to be in the group with me as the leader he proudly and joyfully exclaimed, "Yeah!! 'Cause she's my BFF!!" They cracked up laughing. Oh little boy, we really are BFFs, and I am so glad.




I've had to engage in a couple of conversations over the past two weeks that I wasn't expecting to be having so soon with George. They both happened in the car when we've had quiet time to think and talk. I was just driving along minding my own business when George asked, "Mom, how are the babies in the girls' tummies?" I wasn't sure what his question was exactly so I asked for clarification. He said, "When they are mommies their tummies get big with the babies, but when they are girls, their tummies are still small. How are the babies in there?" I explained that babies are not just chilling in little girls' tummies and that when girls get older and are grown up then the babies can get in the tummies. The lightbulb moment came for him, plus an additional, lovely little question: "OH! So the babies aren't in the tummies when the girls are little! So how do the babies get into the grown-up girls' tummies?" I quickly tried to gather together the bits and pieces of my answer for him so that he was given correct information, but without giving him too much information. This isn't a conversation that I am scared to have candidly with him, but I did feel like Holy cow, he is four. He doesn't need details. Edit, Liz, edit. So I edited and ended up saying that the mommy and the daddy create a new little baby together with Heavenly Father. He was totally satisfied with that answer and didn't ask any further questions about what exactly that creative process entails :). In fact, I even said (mostly for fun so John could be in on this too), "George, why don't you ask Daddy that question when we get home," to which he replied, "No Mom, that's silly, we already know the answer. They get created!" So there was that. And then there was the time last week when he asked me (again in the car), "Mom, when do girls get the breasts?" (pronounced "breast-ez," naturally). So we had a conversation about puberty and how boys get hair on their faces and girls get breasts when they are 12 or 13 or 14. He was like, "Yeah, I'll get hair on my face. Probably when I am five." No sir, not you will not. We will delay those milestones as long as possibly, pretty please.



Somehow (I think from Veggietales, actually) George learned about castor oil and has referred to it a couple of times when describing how something disgusting tasted. It's a little funny to hear your four-year-old be like, "Ewww! That is so yucky! It tastes like castor oil!" And then this past week I got some food poisoning and threw up and when George heard about it he said, "Oh, probably because you ate some castor oil, huh Mom."

(She wouldn't keep her mittens on but then got so sad when her hands got frozen)

George got sick about a month ago and was up all night throwing up. In the morning when he woke up I sat down by him at his make-shift bed on our bedroom floor and asked, "How are you feeling, buddy?" He looked up at me and gave a sweet smile and said, "Like I love you." Not exactly the answer I was expecting, but wow does that little tender boy know how to melt his mama's heart. I love him so much.

(George had just thrown a snowball at Pearl here)

Pearl is seriously a little fireball of joy and delight. Yesterday John and I were talking about how completely adorable she is (something that we discuss pretty much daily) and John asked, "Does she just have an enormous personality?" because there really isn't any other way to describe her. Enormous, happy, loving, spicy, independent. Her personality cannot be contained in adjectives.




One of the most precious things about Pearl to me is how much she still loves to nurse, and I am not so sure she'll be ready to give it up any time soon. My plan right now is to wean right around 2 (which is what George did), but I am wondering if she'll be as ready then as George was. I am giving myself permission to extend that if I feel like it isn't going to be a painless transition for her. I am a big believer in child-led weaning, and while I think I can facilitate that a little bit to meet my needs, I am not going to take something away from her that she isn't ready to be finished with. I adore our nursing time. I feel so blessed that I have been able to spend so many hours giving my children this part of me. I will never regret nursing for longer, but I know I'd regret it if I stopped too soon.




Pearl's favorite things (besides her Mama, Daddy, and Brother (who she still refers to as "Bruh Bruh")) are babies and animals. She is obsessed with babies. Mostly real ones (she cannot keep her hands off of the babies at church and her new baby cousin), but dolls will also do. She is especially in heaven if she can push them around in some kind of stroller or shopping cart. She thinks she's a grown-up. She also loves animals, which is fun because George really doesn't care for them much. He doesn't like the way dogs smell and just isn't really a pet lover (aside from our chickens-- he really loves them). But Pearl is another story. She adores my parents' dog, and cannot get enough of looking at animals in books. She tried to steal a horse calendar from a mall kiosk and cried wildly when I made her put it back, "Fosie! Fosie! Want fosie book!" (Fosie is horsey, in case you don't speak Baby.)

(These two pictures are my favorite ones from the day)

George is so patient with Pearl. She steals his toys and messes up the "guys" that he spends hours arranging, and he will just calmly redirect her in his little sing-songy voice, "No no, Pearlie. These are Bruh Bruh's. You go in your room and play with your toys." He does occasionally get frustrated with her persistence (she really loves taking his toys from him and running away while squealing with delight), but he is almost always just so gentle and patient even then. And even though Pearl does love to torment him with things like that, she also just really adores him and wants to be around him all the time. George is a back-scratch lover and can often be found begging anyone nearby to scratch his back. Pearl will always do it for him and it is so heartwarming to walk into the bedroom where they are playing and see George splayed out on his stomach, his shirt pulled up, Pearl leaning over him tickling his back with her small fingers.




This post has been all over the place and got really long. I wanted to document these stories and feelings though, and mostly just want it recorded that I am in love with my little family. I had to get a prescription filled at the pharmacy the other day and when I was told it would take 30 minutes, I decided to take a walk up the street with my two little tagalongs. We ended up at Smashburger at George's request and as we sat there together eating fries and sipping root beer I marveled at how blessed I felt. Even running errands with those two little people turns into a party. There are big moments of overwhelming joy as a parent, and then there are little ones. Little ones that happen over and over again throughout the hours and days that you spend with them, even when (maybe especially when) you were just supposed to be running a pesky errand to the pharmacy.

It's a happy life, this one.