Bringing You Up to Speed

The previous blog post was about the first day of kindergarten. Now i am dying to write about the last day of kindergarten, but a whole lot has happened since then! It is kind of sad to write about the first day of a school year and then jump to the last day, skipping everything in between. So here is a quick run-down of the major events of the 2015-2016 academic year. Many of the things listed below deserve a blog post of their own. I hope to be able to come back and write about each individually. Until then, we will at least have an outline of what we've been up to this year.

September 2015

Sunny's Best Friend's Birthday - We all LOVE Best Friend so much. She is a wonderful girl and the perfect fit for Sunny. Their relationship is important to me, and i hope they can remain friends for a long time. Best Friend and her parents live on a homestead out in the country with chickens, pigs, a giant Saint Bernard, and tons of land to explore. Going out to their house is always a treat!

Apple Picking - We went apple picking on a gorgeous day and had a wonderful time.

October 2015

Gammer and Granddaddy's Visit - We had not seen my parents yet in 2015, so we were very thankful when they came to visit us!

Halloween - You may be surprised to hear this, but Halloween this year involved a lot of shiny satin and sparkles. Everyone was a princess, and everyone had a good time. We went to a harvest party at a church nearby and then went home to trick-or-treat on our street. Getting out to see our neighbors is important to me, so we always make sure to go trick-or-treating.

November 2015

Teeth Fell Out - Sunny lost a tooth at school. There is a lot of fanfare when you lost a tooth at school. The nurse gave her a little treasure chest to keep her tooth in and she proudly wore a sticker to let everyone know.

Dimples' First Birthday! - Cute little Dimples turned a year old. There was cake involved, which meant that Sunny and Bright Eyes were VERY excited. Dimples herself wasn't so sure about the cake, though.

Wonderful Thanksgiving - Our beloved friends Tripp and Laura along with their brood came to stay with us for Thanksgiving. Being with them was rejuvenating and uplifting. It was hard work wrangling six kids but well worth it! With our combined forces, Laura and i made THE BEST turkey. It was soooo delicious.

December 2015

December was jam-packed, as Decembers tend to be. We participated in some new holiday events this year that were a lot of fun!

Christmas Market and Parade - I took Sunny and Bright Eyes out for some Cornstalk Christmas festivities. They were so adorable, experiencing things for the first time. The highlight was probably getting their faces painted.

Singing in Church - All of the younglings at church went on stage in their Christmas finery to sing "Away in a Manger" with hand motions.

Nursing Home Nativity - My moms' Bible Study group went to visit a nursing home to put on a live nativity with the children. Dimples played the part of a lamb. She didn't even try to stay put for a picture, so this was the best we could do. Most of her black lamb nose had rubbed off already. Dimples was the youngest kid present and all the old ladies just ate her up! She loves meeting new people so it worked out well. Bright Eyes was a fancy angel.

Christmas Day - We had a wonderful Christmas Day at home with just us. We implemented some new traditions this year (although hopefully filling the house with smoke while cooking the Christmas turkey isn't one of them). I'm very thankful for the cozy family time we had spending Christmas together.

January 2016

New Year's Eve Fondue - We celebrated New Year's Eve with chocolate fondue, which of course was a huge hit with all the miniature chocoholics we have around here.

Never-Ending Sickness - We then spent the rest of January being sick. We had to cancel pretty much our entire schedule and then we all lost our minds from laying around in our misery at home for a month.

February 2016

The Only Thing That Ever Happens in February - is snow, of course.

High School Pals Reunion - I traveled to San Antonio for a get-together with my best girl friends from high school. It was 85 degrees in San Antonio, so imagine the shock of going from the picture above to t-shirts and sandals! I had the best time catching up with old friends. The picture is MIA so i will have to add that in later.

March 2016

Easter - We had a lovely Easter. The church we were visiting at the time held its Easter services in a beautiful theater downtown. I had never been to this theater before and honestly didn't know that it existed. It reminded me of my beloved historic theater where i grew up in Dixieland, at which i have so many fond memories. Generally, the Kingdom of the Cornstalks is not a visually inspiring place. The buildings are mostly ugly and there is a widespread lack of appealing design. This theater was a very welcome oasis of beauty in the midst of an otherwise drab environment. I felt my spirits soar as soon as we stepped inside. It was so meaningful to celebrate our Risen Savior in such an intricate location.

Sunny and Bright Eyes were mesmerized. Their hearts came alive and they didn't want to leave. They ran up and down the stair aisles and walked through the rows and imagined all sorts of things.

After church we had lunch at the Griffiths' house, which has become a cherished tradition. This was our third year in a row spending Easter with them. Since we have no family nearby, we don't have any continuity in what we do for holidays. They have shown us great hospitality, and we are thankful to be included every year.

April 2016

Sunny's 6th Birthday! - That sweet girl turned six, and we are so proud of her. Gammer and Granddaddy came to join in the festivities. We had a family celebration on Wednesday and threw a party for her school friends on Saturday. The party was a blast. I really enjoyed all those precious (yet extremely energetic) girls! When i tucked her into bed that night, she gave me a sincere "thank you" for all the work i put into making her birthday special.

May 2016

Holy moly, May was a blur! Before you have kids in school you hear all this talk about "such a busy time of year" and i always thought, "yeah sure whatever." It is majorly true, and we only have a kindergartener! I shudder to think a few years down the road when they are all in school and in higher grades. We had the double whammy of it being the busiest season for The Professor plus all of the end-of-the-year events for Sunny.

Kindergarten Showcase - The kindergarteners put on a performance of the songs they had learned in music class during the year. There was also an open house for parents and family to view artwork and writing assignments the students have done. Sunny was so proud to show off her work and tell us all the things she has accomplished in school. It was all kinds of adorable and we really enjoyed it. She is the one in the pink dress below. She styled her hair all by herself just for the occasion.

Mother's Day - was very sweet. The Professor and the girls worked so hard to make things special. They were excited for days about all the things they had planned and worked so hard not to give away the surprises.

Ice Cream Social - The PTA at Sunny's school sponsored an ice cream social to celebrate the successes of the school year. The weather was was FREEZING cold that day, and eating ice cream didn't help! Here is Sunny with some of her school buds, and Dimples trying to keep warm since we wouldn't let her run around.

Having Friends Over After School - The main goal of inviting Sunny's classmates to her birthday party was to obtain their parents' contact info. Once i had names and phone numbers of her friends' moms, i could start having friends come home with her after school. I was a little over-eager in this department, and learned many lessons the hard way. The kids had fun though!

The Little Mermaid on Broadway -  What an amazing experience! This will hopefully be a whole blog post on its own so i don't want to give away too much right now. For Sunny's birthday i bought tickets for the two of us to go on a mother-daughter date to see the Little Mermaid. We got all dressed up and went downtown. It's a memory that i will treasure!

Cornstalk Arts Festival - Is an event i look forward to every year. It is nice to have a little culture in the Kingdom of the Cornstalks every now and then. 

Field Day - I have such fond memories of field days with my school in K-8th grade, and was eager to volunteer at Sunny's school! That particular day was hot as all get out and i got burnt to a crisp. I always enjoy interacting with the elementary schoolers. My station was the "Bat Spin" in which players put their forehead on a baseball bat and spin around. Then they run to a cone and back. Our station was immediately before the water balloon toss, which every kid was dying to do in the oppressive heat. The half-heartedly endured the bat spin simply as a means to the end of water balloons.

Last Day of School - Woohoo! The last day of school is the prime reason i'm writing this post, because i wanted so badly to tell you about the end of school. We made a big deal out of it for Sunny and greeted her with fanfare. She survived a very rough year, and it was meaningful (to me at least) to celebrate her perseverance through a difficult situation.

Memorial Day -  Some brand-new friends invited us over to their house for Memorial Day. Their house is pretty much the closest thing to Disney World that our kids will ever experience. It was AWESOME. These new friends are inspiring people that i hope to spend more time with so i can learn from their strength of faith and character. They have adopted three special-needs children from China. The mom is a former special ed teacher who is extremely gifted at loving children. They have created an impressive play environment for their beautiful adopted daughters. The only trouble is trying to get your kids to leave when it's time to go!

And that wraps up the basics from our 2015-2016 school year! Thanks for joining us in this snapshot of our lives.

The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

She had been scared about it for quite some time.

She mentioned on several occasions that she didn't want to go; she wanted to learn at home like her friend Addy.

To ease Sunny into the idea of starting kindergarten, I checked out several books from the library about "My First Day of School." It gave us the opportunity to talk through the new experiences she would have. In most of the books, the main character rides the bus to school. I happened to mention that she would not ride the bus. I would drive her to school, where she would line up on the playground and walk inside with her class.

She declared immediately, "NO! I won't go! I'll grab onto you and scream!"

Honestly, that was exactly what I expected. We had visited a new church over the summer, and when I took her to her class, she clung to me and cried. They had to pry her off of me and bear hug her while I dashed out of the room. I pictured that very scene repeated at school, with a hundred other kids and their parents watching.

As the day of reckoning drew painfully close, we focused on how to seek God in the midst of fear. Naturally, the famous Joshua 1:9 was at the forefront:

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged,
for the Lord Your God will be with you wherever you go.

I asked family members to write her letters of encouragement. She received a couple of letters, which she kept hidden under her bed with her personal treasures. The letter from my dad talked about—if you can believe it—Joshua and courage. We read it each night at bedtime.

At last the fateful day arrived and moved from the realm of hypothetical to reality. We were, shockingly (haha), running late. We rushed out the door and sped the 4 minutes to school. We arrived at the playground and located line #2. She got in line, where we hugged and did our standard Bye Words. Then more children started assembling and her anxiety mounted. She said, with an undertone of panic to her voice, "I don't want to go! Please let me stay with you."

I knelt down and took both her hands. I told her to remember the words from Granddaddy's letter: You can do this! I told her about Joshua having courage when he was afraid. We repeated several times, "You can do this!"

And by some miracle, she believed it. She remained fixed on her yellow line while I moved off to the side. She didn't cling to me or follow after me. There were kids everywhere now and it was very loud. There was a paparazzi of parents snapping pictures on their smartphones. I don't have a smartphone, but I had brought the camera. I yelled to her above the din, "Can I take your picture?" She meekly nodded yes. I reached for my purse but it wasn't there. It was at home, sitting on the kitchen counter. Without any technology or devices taking up our focus, we were left with nothing but old fashioned human experience. I have no digital image to preserve the moment, only the memory etched forever in my mind.

Separated by a throng of boisterous elementary schoolers, we maintained eye contact across the distance. We couldn't hear each other to yell words of encouragement, so we communicated with our hearts and our faces. It looked exactly like the dramatic train-station goodbyes you see in movies.

Her teacher wisely knew that she needed some extra care. She came and took Sunny's hand to escort her along the way. And then my precious girl marched off to school, brave and strong. I was so, so proud of her.

The visual of the back of her auburn head and favorite purple dress as she walked away from me hit me hard. There she goes, off into the world, and things will never be the same again.

I exhaled slowly and thought, "Wow. That was a fast five years."

Except no. No it wasn't.

Those five years were HARD EARNED. But now that I am placing my most valuable possession in the care of another, every moment that she was under my wing became precious. As Jessie sings in Toy Story 2, "Every hour we spent together is within my heart."

Her little years, intense as they may have been, are officially over. She's a school girl now. It was one small step to get on line #2, but a giant leap for her to voluntarily walk forth into the unknown. Kindly, mild-mannered Mrs. Porter didn't know that as she held Sunny's hand, she was leading her into the future.

With a heart full of hopes, dreams, longings, and expectation, I used all my energy not to sob openly in front of all the smartphone strangers. My baby just walked away and I can't follow. Get to the van, get to the van, I thought. When in the van, there were kids to buckle into their car seats and other tasks such that I never did get the emotional release of a good cry.

We arrived back at home again, where the walls were singing this song:

Bright Eyes and Dimples couldn't figure out why their goofy mama wouldn't quit smothering them with hugs. One day their turn will come to walk away from me too and I have to soak up all the time until then. I set about to staring at the clock until 1:25pm. I couldn't get there fast enough to hear how it went and guys! Guess what:

SHE DID IT.

Something Went Horribly Wrong

From March 2015

As I mentioned in my last post, we have a new baby around here! New babies are sweet, snuggly, and MASSIVELY TIME CONSUMING.

The factory settings for a standard-issue baby take up quite a lot of time, and then when you throw in add-ons like personality, medical issues, sleep regressions, growth spurts, etc, it can really drive up the total pretty fast. We were given the Super Deluxe Primo Edition baby when it comes to how much time her care requires.

When she was about eight weeks old, Dimples started doing this thing of 30 minute naps. She will only sleep for 30 minutes. When it's time to transition from one sleep phase to the next, she wakes up and can't put herself back to sleep. Therefore she calls for Mama to come do it for her. The phase of sleep that she is transitioning into is an active, twitchy phase. Once she gets back to sleep, she can't stay that way for more than a few minutes before she jerks herself awake again.

As it turns out, problem-solving baby sleep troubles is somewhat of a hobby of mine. It's fairly pathetic that I actually enjoy the diagnosis and treatment of sleep issues. When this 30 minute business first popped up, I rolled up my sleeves and got ready for action. I tried this. I tried that. I tried the other thing.

All of those solutions failed.

I pulled out my collection of baby sleep books. I googled. I googled some more.

We went back for round two of problem-solving with a whole new list of hypotheses.

Round two failed.

So here we are, TWO MONTHS LATER, with a baby who will only nap for 30 minutes. Because none of my solutions have worked and because she absolutely has to get more sleep to avoid being an overtired mess, I now go into her room at the 30 minute mark. I jostle and jiggle her back to sleep and then hold her in the darkness for the remaining hour of her nap so that she will sleep.

This eats up an exorbitant amount of time.

To give you an idea of what my life is like, let me describe my schedule:

7:00am - 7:30am   Feed Dimples
7:30am - 8:00am   Shove breakfast into Sunny and Bright Eyes as fast as possible
8:00am - 8:30am   Put Dimples to sleep
8:30am - 9:00am   Dimples sleeps, aka my only free time
9:00am- 10:00am  Hold Dimples in her room in the dark
10:00am                Start the whole cycle over again

I spend two out of every three hours tied up in Dimples' room. This would be one thing if Dimples were a first-born or an only child, but alas, she is a third child. What do Sunny and Bright Eyes do while unsupervised for two out of every three hours, you ask?

Good question.

The answer is: WHATEVER THE HECK THEY WANT.

It is a testament to the ingenuity and creativity of young children that Sunny and Bright Eyes are able to invent new mischief day after day after day. As this 30 Minute Nap issue has perpetuated, all their Christmas toys have become old news. Even watching a movie, previously a rare treat, has lost its appeal. They went down the list of all the areas of the house they aren't allowed to play in and STILL had time left to spare.

One particular day, Dimples was having an ugly reflux flair-up. She was miserable and cried a lot. It was very difficult to get her down for a nap and took a lot longer than usual. I came out of her room after an athletic event of bouncing, jostling, rocking, and jiggling. I was supposed to go check on Sunny and Bright Eyes since i'd been gone for longer than I had promised, but I JUST WANTED TO BRUSH MY TEETH. There were several things that needed my attention immediately before I became sequestered in Dimples' room for an hour, but I was desperate for two minutes to brush my teeth.

I decided to go for it, and knew that I was taking a huge risk, but little did I know how huge of a risk it would be.

Right after I got started, I heard Bright Eyes come bumbling upstairs. She stomped towards the bathroom and I felt her presence in the doorway. As I was leaning over the bathroom sink brushing my teeth, I heard her softly call my name.

I turned my head slightly to the side and was about to do my best to communicate, with a mouthful of foamy toothpaste, that she needed to keep quiet and not disturb Dimples. But as my peripheral vision landed on her I could instantly sense that something was amiss. Everything went into slow motion as my hand holding the toothbrush dropped down from my mouth. I turned to look her head-on and felt my stomach drop.

This is the Bright Eyes that I was expecting to see:

But this was the Bright Eyes standing before me:

I hoped against hope that it wasn't true, and refused to believe it until I got a closer look. With toothpaste dribbling out of my mouth, I knelt down in front of her to assess the damage. The examination confirmed my worst fears. All of Bright Eyes' luxurious soft curls were gone. Her hair was as short as a boy's.

In that moment it was too much for me to take in, and I burst into tears. I cannot describe to you how much I LOVED that hair. Just a few weeks before, we were at church when Bright Eyes was having a particularly fabulous hair day. A couple of church ladies came over to me and asked, "Do you curl her hair? It's so gorgeous!" I answered, "Are you kidding me??? I barely have time to brush my teeth in a given day. Anything her hair does, it does all by itself." Now one of the precious few things of beauty in my life of toil was abruptly and haphazardly taken from me, and I sobbed bitterly.

Bright Eyes was completely taken aback by my reaction. She had a guilty conscience and she was expecting to get in majorly big trouble. She had counted on yelling, fuming, and probably a spanking. She did not plan on a crying Mama, and was weirded out by it.

Throughout all of this, I noticed that she kept both of her hands firmly behind her back. It was a minor detail that my brain picked up on but didn't have time to process right then, given my extreme state of shock.

After I released some emotion, I needed answers. I pleaded with her, "Bright Eyes, what happened?!?" She was still uncomfortable with the situation and wasn't going to talk. I tried to hug her but it was awkward with her hands behind her back. Since I was getting nowhere with her, I raced downstairs to interrogate Sunny.

Sunny was around the corner in the back section of the basement, sitting in the middle of what looked like an Edward Scissorhands crime scene. There were beautiful light brown curls strewn all over the place. A small purple wastebasket was half-filled with hair. The sight of it all renewed my state of shock. I was still crying when I demanded that Sunny give me an account.

She stammered and sputtered and failed to form complete sentences. She knew she was guilty and that anything she said would be held against her. She was determined to give me as little information as possible.

As I continued trying to extract the details from the two of them, it struck me that something was a bit off with Sunny. She was positioned with her right side pointing away from me, so I didn't have a head-on view but there was something suspicious about it.

I happened to have plopped down on the floor right in front of the murder weapon. A pair of cheap dollar store scissors were laying in front of me, and I fiddled with them while we talked. It occurred to me that they were sticky, with a layer of hair clinging to them. Then I noticed that the table was also sticky. Then I noticed the half-empty bottle of wood glue sitting on the floor.

With this new information, the plot thickened. Scissors and wood glue are the kinds of things that you don't want your resourceful and unsupervised young children to have access to, so we kept them on the high shelf. These items that they misused so abominably were stored six feet off the ground. In order to obtain them, Sunny climbed onto The Professor's desk and stood on top of the printer.

As their list of wrongdoings was growing by the minute, I finally erupted into the angry outburst that they were waiting for. I pulled Bright Eyes towards me to sit her in my lap in order to outline her offenses and issue her punishment. It's hard to make someone sit in your lap with their hands behind their back. As I reached for her hands to move them out of the way, I discovered the hidden secret. Her hands were COVERED in glue. And then the glue was covered in hair. Instead of being tarred and feathered, she was glued and haired.

She had used the wood glue like hand lotion. Then she also rubbed it through her hair like hair gel. Things didn't go according to plan, however, when it didn't rub off of her hands like lotion would. The glue stayed there plain as day, a testament to her guilt.

If only it had been your basic Elmer's school glue. School glue is washable. Wood glue is most definitely not.

I paraded them upstairs to start the process of de-gluing them. We had made it as far as the kitchen when I got my first good glimpse of Sunny.

For the purpose of comparison, here is what she looked like before:

It was now time for Dimples' 30 minute wakeup, and I still hadn't managed to brush my teeth.

Their hair needed some serious fixing due to the uneven and choppy nature of their new styles. My haircutting skills are seriously lacking. What little skill I do have is with long hair. Therefore when The Professor got home from work, we packed everyone up and hauled them in for their first professional haircuts. The haircut ladies did a great job of taking a big fat mess and turning into something halfway cute!

They got oodles and oodles of compliments everywhere we went that week. So now here we are, a short-hair family. It took a long time for me to adjust to their new looks, and I relived some of the sorrow all over again when they woke up the next morning after I had forgotten about their short hair.

For old time's sake, let's look back at a few pictures of their former glory:

Something Went Right For a Change!

I have been fighting the Battle of the Bathroom Sink for a couple of months now. Bright Eyes developed a fascination with the bathroom sink and an affinity for playing with water. At every possible opportunity, she makes a beeline for that sink. Sometimes she takes her tea set in there; sometimes she gets out her bath toys to play with; sometimes she just uses whatever happens to be on the bathroom counter.

One time, while i was tied up in another room, she pulled the stopper to fill up the sink and decided to "take a bath." She sat on the counter and put her feet in the sink. After washing her feet, she plunged her head into the water to wash her hair. The trouble is that she left the facet running full speed for all of this. The water just kept pouring into that sink until it overflowed. It ran over the edge of the counter and onto the floor. After a few inches of standing water collected in the floor, it seeped through the ceiling of the room below and rained water into that room as well.

After what had previously been an annoyance turned into a major flooding episode, we laid down the law on the sink. She was forbidden to enter the bathroom without express written consent. It worked for a little while, until like many things that parents take an extreme stance on, life moved on and other misbehaviors required our attention. We got distracted from enforcing the sink rules and she slowly eased back into her old ways.

Another of her favorite things to do is "clean the bathroom" by getting a wad of toilet paper and wetting it to wipe the counter/mirror. She can't reach the paper towels in the kitchen, which we typically use for cleaning, so she substituted the next best paper product that she had access to. Unfortunately, toilet paper doesn't hold up to water in the same way that paper towels do. As a result, lots of little wads of wet toilet paper washed down the sink. After one particular episode, the sink was never the same. It started draining very slowly. I tried a couple of different remedies, ranging from vinegar (my go-to solution for all life's problems) to Drain-O. Nothing helped. 

We lived with a slow-draining bathroom sink for a while. I was too swamped with life to do anything not related to basic survival. It always bugged me, but i simply didn't have time to fool with it.

But then Bright Eyes got into trouble with the sink AGAIN, and it quit draining altogether. Once the problem escalated from Moderate Inconvenience to Urgently Needs Intervention Now, i cleared my schedule and sprung into action. 

I needed to remove the stopper from the drain. I am extremely unskilled in the household repairs department, so i did not have the know-how to tackle the project. Thank goodness we live in the age of Youtube; a quick seven minute video made me an instant expert! Youtube told me that i had to lie on my back and stick my head inside the bathroom cabinet. At first i thought, "Oh my this is more than i bargained for!" Thankfully it turned out to be very simple. I felt like a professional plumber lying there under that sink. It was so easy to unhook the thingamajig that holds the stopper in place. 

I started removing the stopper from the drain and HOLY COW IT WAS DISGUSTING. There was gunk dating back to 1975 inside that drain. I was unprepared for the huge glob of nastiness that came out. After the nasty part was over, the sink was like new! It drained faster than it had in a year. 

I was SO pleased with myself, i was practically giddy. Although it was an extremely gross task, it was the quickest & easiest solution to a problem that i'd experienced in a long, long time. It was so endlessly satisfying to take on something i didn't know how to do and conquer it so completely.

Having something go right is extremely atypical of my life the past few months, because of this:

Allow me to introduce Dimples.

Dimples joined us on November 13, 2014 with quite a bit of fanfare. How she entered the world is a story for another day. She's a beautiful little critter with a huge smile. Despite how sweet she is, life with her has been pretty difficult.

The trouble with new babies is that there's so much gosh-darn uncertainty. Even when you've already had a couple and you think it should be old hat, they have a way of taking any confidence you feel and throwing it out the window. Those early weeks are the worst. You haven't yet collected enough data to be able to predict what the baby is up to. Every cry is a lengthy decision tree. Is she hungry? Is she sleepy? Does she need a diaper change? Is she gassy? Does her tummy hurt? Is she reacting to something I ate? Is she too cold? Did the pacifier fall out?

It goes on and on and on.

Because of my background in Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care, I do actually enjoy diagnosing things. It's satisfying to isolate the variables and figure out the cause of a problem. But newborns push the limits of even the most accomplished diagnostician.

Therefore, those first few months make you batty. It's too much insecurity to tackle with too little sleep. Unlike the problem of the bathroom sink, issues with a newborn aren't resolved so quickly. There is no seven minute Youtube video that makes you an instant expert on getting your baby to do life perfectly. You can remedy the source of the crying right now, and at 3am there will be an entirely new problem to fix. And at 6am. And 10.

Its exhausting.

So praise the Lord for that sink! It was nice to know that I can in fact do something right every now and then. Getting my baby to sleep is a loosing battle, but at least my sink drains like a champ.


Thanks for reading! Tune in next time for "Something Went Horribly, Horribly Wrong."
 

About Our Grandparents: Grandma Jackie and Grandpa Lou

We LOVE Grandma Jackie and Grandpa Lou. They are The Professor's grandparents on his mother's side. We don't get to see them more than about once a year because they live in Dixieland and Grandpa's cancer treatments keep him close to home.

Here is a summary of our encounters with them over the past few years:

2009: They came for The Professor's PhD graduation! It was so meaningful to have them there.

 2010: They came to see Sunny when she was born! It was quite the travel experience for them. Our arrangement was that we would call them when i went into labor, and they would hop in the car and drive right over! Except, it was a 12+ hour drive.

2011: We saw them in Zion for Grandpa Mac's 90th birthday weekend. They were so sweet with Sunny. Sunny and Grandma both share an affinity for strawberries, and i think Grandma fed Sunny about 6 pints of strawberries that weekend.

 

2012: They came for Sunny's 2nd birthday, and we had a blast! They got her a pink folding chair, which she still uses to this day.

 2013: We went to their house in Dixieland. That week was the first time that they met Bright Eyes, so it was very special.


The thing that is so impressive about Grandma Jackie and Grandpa Lou is that they truly care about people from their hearts. They are so encouraging in all their conversations. They have faithfully served the Lord for decades, despite numerous hard times. We respect who they are and what they stand for, and we hope to model their faith. Their constant trust that the Lord will provide gives them so much peace. They aren't phased by things, either big or small.

Grandma is the picture of Southern hospitality in that she shows her love by feeding people. When we visited them at their house, we were not planning to eat a meal. Well, Grandma had other plans! She laid out a huge lunch for us. She made sure to have all the things she used to make for The Professor when he was growing up.

While Grandma bustled around in the kitchen, Grandpa played with the girls. He won their trust, such that after lunch was over, Sunny felt comfortable enough with him to invent a game. He was pretending to be a blackberry and she was pretending to be a spider eating him. It was so funny!

After we got back home to the Kingdom of the Cornstalks, Sunny was playing with a toy that Grandma/pa had given her for Christmas. Because she didn't see her gifts again for about a week after opening them, i reminded her who the toy was from. She said, "Oh! I'm so glad they got this for me, i really like it! We should Skype with Grandma to tell her thank you!" But sadly, Grandma has no computer and cannot Skype =[.

Grandma writes us a letter every few weeks, and always includes a check. During the height of our money troubles, those checks were our only spending money. We put $10 in Sunny's pink piggy bank, which goes to her college fund, and The Professor and i split the rest. Having that little bit of "fun money" was such a blessing! We think of Grandma and Grandpa often, and wish that we could spend more time around them so that their good character can rub off on us.
 

Finally: A New Name for the BabyGirl

And it’s about dang time! 

I’ve been thinking that if a new reader joined us, he/she would probably be very confused that my oldest child is called BabyGirl. A new reader would likely expect “BabyGirl” to refer to the younger child, not the older. And now, even my younger child isn’t a baby anymore, so her older sibling most certainly can’t be a baby. 

Listening to her talk also confirms that she is a BabyGirl no longer. She says things like, “Personally, I prefer to play outside today.” And, “The thing is Mama, that I really don’t like zucchini.” Yesterday at church she told the nursery worker, “I’m concerned that the boo-boo on my finger is a splinter.” 

She can drag a chair over to the kitchen counter, climb on top of the cabinets and help herself to the stash of remaining candy canes. She can put her coat, snow boots, and mittens on all by herself. She can pretty accurately diagnose the source of Bright Eyes’ distress when she starts crying: “She’s probably hungry, Mama. You should give her a snack.” Or today, “I think her teeth are bothering her. Do you want me to get some ibu’s for her?” 

Ever since she hit her half-birthday and the aliens returned her soul, she has been such a joy! She says the funniest things. She is an amazing helper. When something brings her joy, she becomes really huggy. 

Therefore, she shall now be known to us as Sunny.  

At first I was hesitant to call her that. The name Sunny might give off the impression that she is always happy. And as a girl whose emotions are often bigger than she is, that is not the case. She has her fair share of storm clouds. If you think about it though, even the sun itself isn’t always sunny. It goes down at night. It usually hides when it rains. It’s gone for months at a time during the winter.  

When it comes to the sun, some days are sunnier than others, and it’s the same way with the BabyGirl. Currently, her rainy season is over for a while and now her days are full of light. The Professor and I are soaking up all these warm rays like we’re on a Caribbean cruise.  

On Christmas Day, Sunny and I went for a walk with my dad. Sunny wore her brand new pink ballet princess dress, which she LOVED. We had a blast walking around the picturesque beach town, exploring all kinds of new things. It was a wonderful experience. She was free to simply enjoy life.  She was the quintessential child who takes in everything around her with delight. We walked by a sidewalk café and she made my dad play pretend restaurant. She served him make-believe food with a make-believe fork. But the pretend café only had one fork that day, and there were two of them eating, so in the end she had to take back his fork and he had to eat with his hands. 

When we moved on from the café, a woman walking a small dog passed us on the sidewalk. Sunny hesitated, because you never know if a new dog is friendly or not. The woman smiled and said, “This is Sparky, and he loves kids. Especially princesses.” 

It was funny because I had forgotten that Sunny was wearing her ballet princess dress. But that’s how it goes when you are a little girl. If you have a dress that you love, you wear it seven days a week. If you like your new My Little Pony, you take it with you everywhere. If you have a favorite book, you read it every single night.  

The things that she loves, she goes at with gusto. The people that she loves are forever in her heart. She definitely brings light and warmth to our family. She is our little sunshine!

Maiden Voyage of the New Van

We are now the proud owners of a minivan! We bought a van from the good people at Warehouse Auto and then promptly put that sucker to work driving 2,458 miles on a big ole Christmas road trip.

Taking two small kids on a trip of that magnitude was a huge undertaking that required weeks of preparation. It had been two years since we last visited our homeland in Dixieland, and we were more than ready to go back! Bright Eyes had several great-grandparents who were anxious to meet her for the first time.

The trip was both the best of times and the worst of times, as is typical of long-awaited events of that nature. It was exhausting and draining on all of us to be on the road so much. However, in the midst of so many travel difficulties were periods of great joy. When we could finally sit still and just be, it was sheer bliss. The beach is always a great place for being. Our time there was very restorative.

Our girls saw the ocean for the first time and flew a kite for the first time. The BabyGirl bonded with Granny over biscuits and Bright Eyes established a connection with Granddaddy over apple slices. We breathed in the sweet sea air. We ate tons of seafood and i actually liked raw oysters!

The beach is a very, VERY long way from the Kingdom of the Cornstalks, so we were fortunate to have the opportunity to go there. It was a special time that i will always remember. It was a true vacation in that our usual cares and concerns about day-to-day struggles were exchanged for beautiful scenery and meaningful relationships. And the food! Granny's cornbread, Kay's turkey, my dad's grouper sandwiches—the whole week was delicious!

After a week at the beach, we continued our trek to spend a week with The Professor's family. Our time there was a blur of go, go, go to see as many family members as possible. Lare & Amy were so hospitable to have a big group over to dinner with children running around all over the place. We had Christmas festivities at The Judge's house with kids frantically tearing into presents. Grandma Jackie and Grandpa Lou had us over for a wonderful visit in their home. We were delighted to see Grandmother in her new assisted living apartment. Allison helped me get caught up on Top Chef, and our girls played with their cousins to their hearts' content.

When it comes down to it, an undertaking of this level is simply not possible without a good deal of help. There were many people along the way who eased our burden by looking after us. We are so thankful to the people who took the time to notice our needs and lend us a hand.

For example: On our drive to Lare & Amy's house, we took a winding, curvy, hilly road. The Professor made the comment, "You don't see roads like this in the Kingdom of the Cornstalks!" Immediately from the backseat we heard the sound of poor Bright Eyes throwing up. She had never in her life driven on hills and curves, and she was not accustomed to the motion of it. We therefore arrived at our destination with a child covered in vomit. Amy dropped what she was doing to dig up some clean clothes for Bright Eyes to wear.

After dinner the kids were all playing and the BabyGirl asked me to come upstairs to help her with something. While i was up there, Amy came up to rotate some laundry. It struck me as kind of an odd time to be doing laundry while hosting a houseful of people, but ya know, whatever. I was actually pretty impressed with the multi-tasking she displayed; i would never have remembered about my laundry with all those people over.

When it was time for us to leave, she said, "Oh! Let me grab Bright Eyes' coat!" She presented us with a freshly-washed, vomit-free coat hot out of the dryer and smelling like lavender breeze. Turns out the load of laundry that i was criticizing her for was MY DAUGHTER'S COAT.

I was blown away by the thoughtfulness of it. She saved me so much hassle by washing it then and there. Also, that particular coat is special because it's been in the family for decades. I was so glad it had been washed promptly so that it didn't stain.

It was a small act of kindness that made such an impact.

Bright Eyes is in that stage of getting into EVERYTHING. It is so much fun because she is exploring non-stop and learning new things every moment. She has to get her hands on each new thing she sees: What does it feel like? What does it taste like? Can I bang it on the table?

I really love this age. The caveat, though, is that she has to be watched like a hawk 24-7. It requires a lot of energy to take her into someone else's home, where she grabs the glass ornaments off the Christmas tree, splashes in the cat's water bowl, digs through the trash, pulls on the table cloth, and knocks over every drinking glass she encounters. Uncle Stan was so attentive to our needs and made the experience of keeping up with her so much easier. I was trying to cut Bright Eyes' food into small pieces while holding wiggly, squiggly Bright Eyes in my lap at the dinner table. The task necessitated six hands. Stan saw me from across the room and came over to cut her food for me.

Throughout the evening, he continued to bring me things so that i didn't have to get up from my post of watching or holding Bright Eyes. I had mentioned that i like cashews, so he brought me cashews. He came to my seat to offer me coffee. When i said that i could only drink decaf at that time of night, he offered to make me decaf.

The job of watching Bright Eyes at a big family dinner is one that prohibits you from participating with the group. While everyone else is eating dinner, you are feeding her. While everyone else has dessert, you are in the other room changing a diaper. While everyone else is engaged in conversation, you are chasing her from room to room. Uncle Stan saw all that and made sure i wasn't alone.

I was so inspired by Uncle Stan. He serves everyone around him so effortlessly. It's truly a gift. I do not inherently possess this quality, but i long to develop it.

One of my favorite names of God is El Roi, the God Who Sees. In order to effectively help someone, you have to see their needs. Amy saw that Bright Eyes needed a clean coat to go home in. Uncle Stan saw that i couldn't take care of myself while keeping up with Bright Eyes. My dad saw that we could never afford a beach vacation.

So many people over the course of the two weeks saw our needs and met them. Things like that are what turn a grueling road trip into an experience of God's character.