Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Not Sure Who's Grown More These 11 Months, Him or Me

Oh, my little baby's basically all grown up! When does he become a Toddler, when he starts toddling unassisted? Right now, I'd say he's more of a Tumbler, but he's been circling the coffee table on his own for a few minutes now looking for choking hazards to ingest. The world is apparently chock full of irresistibly appetizing choking hazards, who knew?!

Other than his super sturdy legs keeping him upright for most of his waking hours, his mouth is his busiest body part. If it doesn't have a huge grin on it, it's likely stuffed with his thumb going in or his tongue sticking out. But one thing his mouth is always full of now is TEETH! His first 2 appeared right at 6 months, then his top 2 followed at 9 months. A couple days after Christmas we looked in his mouth and there were all the sudden 3 more! His 8th little nubbin just broke through, and now gnawing on a soft juicy pear with all those incisors is one of his favorite things to do.

Other current favorites include bath time, pulling everything out from drawers or cabinets, cruising, babbling, keeping Mommy from getting work done, and anything with Sissy, or as he calls her "Issy!"

We're still traveling together; toting his portable high chair, potty chair, and toy box to Florida last week and Georgia next week. But his sidekicking days are numbered, as he can't be kept still or quiet, and it's going to be impossible to baby-proof the whole veterinary world. I don't take for granted one minute that I've had with this precious guy. God has truly blessed me to be able to do the two jobs I love so much, serving as a CVM Region Rep and serving as a mommy, at the same time.



Baby Einstein
Make believe with Issy.
Using those incisors on a star fruit at ECHO in Florida.
If you ask him what the lion says, and he's in the right mood, he just might ROAR back at you. :)
Filling that huge head with some book learnin'.
Still not crawling, but scooting backwards enough to get himself into some tight spots, like this one.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

The Art of Neighboring

There are a lot of lost arts. Origami, whittling, sporting suspenders and a bowtie... Okay, I kinda just made those up, but I wouldn't mind a little more of those in my life. And I definitely wouldn't mind a little more time on a front porch swing with a glass of lemonade and a neighbor. One of the biggest tragedies of our convenience era of garages and privacy fences is the loss of neighboring.

What if we took Jesus literally when He said to "love your neighbors as yourself"? In the book The Art of Neighboring the authors explore the idea that if we loved our literal neighbors it would have the potential to change not only our neighborhoods, but our communities, cities, and eventually impact the world. 

For the past year, we've been testing this theory out through Southeast Christian Church's Love Where You Are groups, and I think the hypothesis is proving correct! Since last January, we've been hanging out with our neighbors and finding out just how much we have in common with the people within walking distance.

Of course there's the traditional borrowing of a cup of sugar, or a chainsaw, when the need may arise, but it's gone so much deeper than that. It's been beautiful to share in each other's celebrations and trials. We squealed with joy together as we cut into the gender reveal cake for one neighbor's fifth baby, and learned their only girl was finally getting a sister. We cried together when a brother lost his job...again. We cried together over the publishing of one neighbor's first book, and later her cancer free diagnosis. We've prayed together for our health, our kids, our families, our work, and our neighbors. We've even prayed in Spanish.

We pulled out all our craft supplies (yes, even glitter), and made Christmas cards together for a local nursing home, then we delivered them with caroliong.




Another time we got out a different kind of glitter and decorated Christmas cookies for our neighbors.

When our next door neighbor, who we'd yet to really connect with passed away tragically, it hit me pretty hard. It was so heavy on my heart that here we were intentionally neighboring and we hadn't been able to love the ones closest to us. It renewed my resolve to love those near us well, and we look forward to welcoming our new neighbors with an open home.

One of the best parts of doing life with these folks, is studying God's Word with them and looking for ways to live it out together. I hope you have the opportunity to build a rich community with those right outside your front door, it's such a blessing to go for a walk and find two neighbors sharing coffee on their front porch and stop for a visit.

You'll have to excuse me now, I've got a Saturday morning running date, with a neighbor!


"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[There is no commandment greater than these.” - Matthew 12:30-31


Monday, January 4, 2016

What's Your Word?


We're not big on resolutions around here. Goals aren't really my thing. But I don't mind a plan at all, and I do love a good theme. So with the beginning of a fresh new year we have a few ideas in mind.

First, we've pulled out the Bible in a Year for Kids in Spanish. When Angie initially moved in with me, which was exactly 5 years ago yesterday, we enjoyed reading this Bible together through 2010. This time, we've got some new additions in the house, Jon, Isaiah, and Teolinda, to introduce it to. It's a beautifully illustrated book that gives us the opportunity to keep up our Spanish while we study God's Word together daily.

We're hoping as the year progresses that Isaiah gets more interested in the stories.

Along with the Bible for kiddos, I have another stack of books I look forward to digging into in 2016, as time and the baby who chews everything within reach, including pages, allow.

But, my real change for 2016 can be summed up in just one word. You may remember that last year, I chose the word gentle to focus on. And although it was a rough start, and nothing about natural childbirth was "gentle," something quickly came over me that made gentleness second nature. I almost feel like it was cheating to have a newborn around when I was trying to work on gentleness. I haven't conquered my quick temper, or harsh tongue with others by any means, I've even found myself yelling at Angie in the other room to get her act together while nursing the tiny munchkin in my arms, but toward him I am a soft, mushy puddle.

Now, Isaiah has entered this stage which I have not read about, but can only imagine is a normal phase for all, or most, babies. One in which, he is so close to mobile, but so far from stable. This juxtaposition leads to regular tumbles, and frequent scooping ups into my arms, where I hold a crying hurt, startled, or scared baby close to my chest until he regains his confidence that the world is not against him. (I did not finish typing that sentence without having to go do just this, as he had head-butted his sister while they played.) My gentle is the Ying to Zy's currently clumsy Yang.

The arrival of our bundle of joy also helped Angie with her word for 2015, "Happy," which comes almost as naturally to her when he's around as gentleness comes to me. And praise the Lord, the word I had for our family, "Peace" has been more evident in our home in 2015 than ever before.

This year, we've each chosen new areas to challenge ourselves with. Since watching the latest Cinderella movie, Angie and I have been reminding ourselves to "Have courage and be kind." And thus, Angie has admirably decided her word for 2016, in a tumultuous final year of middle school, will be "Brave."

My word came to me as I was reading a National Geographic article about the beloved Pope Francis. Simple, unassuming, rock star, revolutionary, radical, and informal are all words used to describe the new Pope but for some reason the word "Warm" was the description that stood out to me profoundly. This is probably my favorite line from the article:

“If you asked anybody on the street, ‘What’s the Catholic Church for and against?’ you would’ve gotten, ‘It’s against gay marriage, against birth control’—all this stuff. Now if you ask people, they’ll say, ‘Oh, the pope—he’s the guy who loves the poor and doesn’t live in a palace.’ That’s an extraordinary achievement for such an old institution. I jokingly say that Harvard Business School could use him to teach rebranding."

If Christianity needs rebranding, and it probably does, then I think a little more warmth is exactly what's called for.

From my end, as an Extraverted Sensing Thinking Judging personality on the Myers Briggs spectrum, Darth Vader and I don't often have the word "warm" used in the same sentence as our names. 
So, after changing to flannel sheets on our bed for added warmth, :) I started by singing and dancing with the kiddos a little more, writing Jon an impromptu list of all the things I appreciate about him, and being conscious of my tone of voice. I'm not sure "Warm" is going to be as easy for me as "Gentle" turned out to be, but I definitely think it's a word that would have been used to describe Jesus, so it's at least worth a year's effort.

What's your word for 2016??