I'm watching things grow

In honor of the great green day, I’m making corned beef, just like my grandmother used to cook for our family. The nostalgic smells have me thinking about legacy and what a blessing my grandparents, especially my grandmothers are in my life. Not just childhood memories, the things they’ve passed on to me, practical and spiritual, that I see everyday. Regular Bible study. Scripture memory. Love for and loyalty to their families, especially their husbands. The universally appropriate advice, “take a minute away to read a book - you’ll feel better.” I am blessed, my children are blessed by their lives.

I see this blessing in Gwennan right now. Her four-year-old brain is processing the complexity of God in ways that astound and encourage me.

Just last night while we were praying, she says, “Dad, I mean God,” then her head pops up. “Oh, I have two dads! You, Daddy, and God is my dad.” Bows her head again, “God-dad...”

My heart is still smiling at that recognition. Especially on the heels of this conversation...

The house is quiet while the two little ones sleep. Gwennan is up from her nap early helping me in the kitchen. “Mother, when does God stop looking at people?” 

I’m caught off guard for a moment, “Are you talking about our prayer, ‘the Lord turn his face toward you?’” 

“Yes. When does God stop looking at people?” 

We embark on a long discussion about common grace (in 4 yo terms) and heaven and hell and who goes where, when they go, how we know we are children of God. She receives it all with her deeply thoughtful expression and sums it up, “Because I have a new heart, God never stops looking at me.”

She understands better than I do somedays.

I think to quiz her and ask, “What is the place God’s children go when their bodies die?” 

“Heaven.”

“Good. And what is the place people go when they don’t love God?”

“Hilton.”

“Nope. That’s the neighborhood we’re moving to.”

“Oh... hell.”

As I’m sure it was for my grandmothers and mother before me, the greatest blessing in my life is watching my little ones turn their faces to the God who always looks at them. Seeing the truth we daily repeat take root and grow. Witnessing the people you love best in the world learn to love the One you love best. Grace upon grace.

Who's three??

Revisiting blog posts, it seems like small one gets most of the pictures and big one the stories. Maybe because, as you saw last week, big one has grown a bit bored with momma's camera. Or because small one doesn't yet have the words for humorous quips.

I thought I'd break trend today. Show pics of Gwenny and a story from Afton.

The girls love to fight. Afton especially. She creates situations for them to fight about. Just for the fun of a good fight. The most popular topic: mac n' cheese. Small one will start, Let's fight about mac n' cheese {I am not making this up}, then they yell back and forth over who likes mac n' cheese and who doesn't. Afton's favorite game.

With more words, her fight-starting skills are really improving.

The other night at dinner, she recognized a chink in big sis's armor and attacked. No! That's how she starts. Just No! No explanation, just a fight.

Big sis is immediately thrown off her game. They are fighting, and she doesn't even know what about. You can see the desperation building in her eyes, as she tries to regain footing. No! she yells back.

Small one, No! I two. You three.

Big one, No!

Small one, No! I two. You three.

Big one, really frustrated now, No, I'm two! You're three. I'm two!

Long pause. Small one sits back looking satisfied. Big one is still trying to figure out what happened.

Wait, I'm three?

Afton says nothing. PoppaDaddy and I hide silent giggles behind coffee mugs. Gwennan is still unsure.

That's our little girl. Genetically predisposed to ruffle feathers. I've never seen her prouder.

{I don't meant to misrepresent them. In general, the girls work together very well. For instance, this game of 'Pooh sticks' rapidly became 'Pooh landscaping timber' with a bit of sister team work.}

Baby sparkles {or Gwennan's compositions}

We're on the downhill side of a challenging few weeks. My grandmother encouraged me to think of every difficult time as a stage and the pleasant times as 'normal.' Bearing that in mind, we are returning to normal after wandering through a bad stage.

I can tell we're normalizing - big one is bouncing into rooms rather than tramping, and she has resumed composing. When she's angry and belligerent, the songs stop. But when her heart is happy, she flits around making up marvelous ditties.

Sunday she sat at the piano, banging out her magnum opus, 'Baby Sparkles.' The name is a mystery to me, but she plays it any time she's in a good mood. Baby Sparkles is an ongoing work with new verses every couple weeks.

This verse started with several repeats of 'Thank you God,' followed by 'Praise you Lord,' which then unraveled into a drawn out ballad about bathing in tomato juice after encountering a skunk named Flower. One of those moments when you look over your shoulder and think, 'how in the world did we arrive here?'

Last night she composed a song just for me, inspired by my decline to give her a third cookie. She replied, 'I don't like your tone. I hate your tone.' {we're not totally out of the dark woods}

To which I said, 'Hate is too strong a word. Can you re-phrase?'

To which she wrote this little number:

'Tone, tone, I like tones,
But I don't like yours.
Turn it around and find something good.'

I was rolling.

A few weeks ago, she was headed toward black and scream-o. I'm grateful to see my goofy girl resurfacing.

Daddy's Little Automechanic

When I was little, my parents used to read this book to me about two children helping their daddy. I loved it, and it fulfilled its purpose by encouraging me to see chores with Daddy as fun. We have pictures of my "help." At about 18 months, I'm sitting on my dad's chest with the oil funnel on my head, while he's working with his head under the car.

G had a moment like this the other day. Tim was studying the Toyota manual before replacing the fuel pump in the Leprichon (his truck is tiny and bright green). Following his interest, she became engrossed in the manual, sitting in front of it, swiping at the pages.

Obviously, Gwennan still has a limited ability to help, but we'll get there. Before we know it, she'll be digging through the mulch we just spread to check for edible objects and rifling through Tim's wrench set while he works on the car. I love it! (although, I might not when she's actually making a mess out of my project)

Did I mention that she sat, unaided, for several minutes while I took pictures?

Babies in Pictures

My little girl is growing. She's learned to sit up. You can tell from these pictures that the boppy is really only necessary to cushion her fall now instead of propping her up as it is in the bottom photo. She now spends a lot of time sitting and chewing on stuff. For instance, she just pulled off her sock and shoved it in her mouth.

I admit, the baby picture posts are mostly to satisfy Grandparents and Great Grandparents (that's right MY grandparents have bookmarked my blog).

I want to point out something about photographing people in general, but babies specifically. Pay attention to the clothes they are wearing. When I wanted to take G's 3 month pictures, I put her in one of my favorite new outfits (she had just moved up a size) without a thought to how it would look on "film." Even though the light was much better when I took this shot (natural light on a sunny day coming in from multiple angles), the color was off. Those awkwardly pink flowers on her shirt are actually purple. The problem is two fold: the colorful shirt messes with the overall white balance, and the pattern distracts from my subject: Gwennan. If you look at the above pictures, you might notice the cat emblem on her shirt, but mostly you see her eyes. Even more distracting than big patterns, lettering. Right now, Gwennan has on the cutest onesie that say "Daddy Loves Me" in bright colors. While I love putting her in this outfit, today is not the day to photograph her. I'm not a particularly skilled photographer, but I try to improve. Paying attention to clothing detail is my newest lesson.