These days

What Little Guy is doing these days ...

He likes eating lemons, after I squeeze them into my tea or water.

When we are sitting at the table (near the sliding glass door) at lunch and the sun goes behind the clouds, he always looks up at the overhead light and furrows his brow.

For Daddy's birthday we got a helium balloon at Kroger (just as we did for his birthday).  It made the trip through Kroger more fun, and has brought over a week of entertainment.

I was folding the freshly laundered guest room sheets.  As I shook them, they billowed and he got a running start and charged headfirst into them, along with all his runny nose and teething drool.  Apologies in advance to all future guests!

He was sitting in his high chair while I got breakfast ready and his CD was playing.  I wondered why he was putting his head down and covering his eyes.  "He shouldn't be tired," I thought.  Then I listened to the music.  The Doxology was playing and had just gotten to, "Amen."

1000 Gifts, Vol. 4, # 94

{from a few weeks ago}

951.  an impromptu weekday lunch date (when we went to pick up our car after the repairs were finished)

952.  a little boy sleeping soundly through lunch in his car seat so we could have undistracted adult conversation

953.  a close (24 miles away) audiologist to make new ear molds for a growing boy

954.  a NICE audiologist who is re-doing the new ear molds, as she is not used to doing toddler ear molds

955.  bright sunny days even if the temp doesn't get out of the 30s

956.  asking my in-laws to go on a Saturday night date with me (to the Gaithers)

957.  requesting Usborne Lift the flap books from interlibrary loan after we got one in a lot of used books (and it was/is a WINNER!)

958.  many, many steps to get our sand table ready on the front porch (a November purchase on an online garage sale, two separate bags of play sand purchased, and a bungee cord replaced so the lid will stay closed)

959.  anticipation of summer!

960.  leaves! blossoming trees! redbud!

The greatest need of your child (-ren)

Robert Murray M’Cheyne, the famous nineteenth century Scottish Presbyterian, was right when he said, “The greatest need of my people is my own holiness.”

That is the opening paragraph of a blog post at The Gospel Coalition.  And it's a quote I must have heard hundreds of times during my time in Japan.

But why stop with pastors?  I think it is also the greatest need of my son.  Well, obviously he needs Jesus.  But in terms of what he needs most from me, it is my own holiness, my own pursuit of Jesus. 

"Apart from me you can do nothing."  Apart from Jesus, I cannot lead him to Jesus. Apart from Jesus, I cannot demonstrate to him the joy and freedom and love and grace of Christ. 

Outdoor Living

Jim may be a farmer, but I'm an indoor person.

Enter: Little Guy!  Ta-da!!  It's outdoor living time!!!

This is where I need advice on how to "do" outdoor living with a 15 month old. :)

We live on the (outside) corner on a U-shaped street, so our lot is pie shaped. The U-shaped neighborhood is surrounded by corn or soybean fields (depending on the year), as in the edge of the grass in our yard goes up to dirt where big tractors travel with plows or planters or combines, and during the growing season, a small child could easily get lost in there!

The front yard is small, but the backyard fans out. (It's sort of diamond-shaped with the front tip of the diamond cut off at the street.)

There's an 8' x 8' concrete pad out the sliding glass door in the back, a narrow front porch (which now houses the sand table and a folding chair for me), and his other outdoor toys are: a ride-on (push, no wheels) John Deere gator, a push toy lawnmower, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and a softball.  This week I'm to pick up a little slide from a friend, now that her granddaughter has outgrown it.

Of course, there is always running, running, and more running.  And there's the pull of the sidewalk, going along the sidewalk towards our neighbors', especially if they're outside with their dog and he wants to see the "Bow-wow."

I think it's a given that the summer will include a wading pool.  Also, we have access to two fun parks 3/4 mile away and two more near Grandma's 5 miles away.  Our neighbors have also offered access to their future purchase of a swingset.  (Their children are both girls and are both older than ours.)

But, we have no shade in our yard (thus the sand table on the front porch).  Also, we have rip-roaring wind, so we can't really leave anything, including the slide, outside. 

How would you spend time outside with a toddler in this yard?  It's a lot easier to sit in the living room or kitchen and watch him play in a room with four walls (or gates where there are no walls)!

Discovering the world day by day!!!!

Highlights for Little Guy last week:

 

playing outside for hours on end in 75-80* weather (The lowlight is coming as he doesn't know a cold front is coming in, which will cramp his style.)

 

spending 2+ hours at the farm Sunday night while we went to small group

 

 

playing in the church nursery for 45 minutes Thursday morning during speech therapy (no other kids! all those toys!)

 

going to "Grandma's park" (i.e., the village park, which is next to their house).  He is sporting new scrapes and bruises, proof of a good time!

 

going to Goodwill in Champaign after his hearing test & finding lift-the-flap books for 50 cents ***AND*** a Fisher Price play phone for $4.99 (which I thought was highway robbery until I looked online when we got home and saw it for $30)

 

trying to play the organ at Goodwill but not getting any sound out of it

 

playing Grandma's piano Friday for a LONG time

 

going to Subway in Champaign, ordering off the menu, and having him eat it (first time for him to eat in a restaurant without me taking food for him)

 

having big ice cubes in his sippy cup of water!!!!  (And so, there is more drinking of water!)

 

ceiling fan season is back!!!!

an explosion of speech (or I learned the technical term is "jargon").  Chee for cheese, baa for ball, wah-wah for water, uppuh for applesauce, and it sounded for all the world like he said Grandpa repeatedly tho' it has not been repeated. 

The "Drudgery" of Motherhood?

In a P.S. to one of Tara Barthel's recent blog posts, she quotes G. K. Chesterton.   As always, Chesterton is brilliant!  [Emphasis mine.]

“Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world.

But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean.

To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.” G.K. Chesterton

A tree

::from the archives::

March 24, 2009:

April 4, 2009:

April 5, 2009:

April 6, 2009:

April 7, 2009:

April 8, 2009:

April 9, 2009:

April 10, 2009:

April 11, 2009:

April 12, 2009:

April 13, 2009:

April 16, 2009:

This cherry tree next to my parking space is a good reminder of the transience of life.

9 For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
12 So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.

~Psalm 90