Life

Happy Valentine's Day! Love, Micah

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Micah told me she wanted to wish you all a Happy Valentine's Day, so, last week amid all the crazy, we scheduled a little photo shoot.

OK, so she didn't really tell me that. Her vocabulary consists of Mama, Dada, ba {which can mean book or ball}, baba {which means baby}, and plo {which is her beloved pillow pet}.

She looks like a sweet little angel, no?

Don't let her big blue eyes fool you. By the time it was all over, we both looked like this:

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And on that note, the photo shoot ended :)

We wish you all a very Happy Valentine's Day and hope you get to spend it with the people you love the most!

Until next time, grace and peace.

Lunch, aka the Messiest Meal Ever

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Welcome to our kitchen table. Micah has entered a lovely little independent stage of toddlerhood. She wants to do everything herself, including eating. For the most part, it's not a big deal, but today we had spaghetti for lunch, and I knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. So what did I do? Grabbed the camera and turned it into a photo op.

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Go ahead, Micah. Shove it in. Why use a spoon when you've got 10 little fingers? She likes holding her spoon and will protest loudly if she's not given one. Sometimes she allows me to help her put food on the spoon and guide it to her mouth, but for the most part, she wants no assistance whatsoever. Inevitably, she gives up on the spoon and uses her hands; they're so much easier to control, you know.

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We went straight from the highchair to the bathtub. Nothing a little soap can't fix. Yes, that is a ring of spaghetti sauce in the tub. No, it wasn't there before I bathed her.

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All fresh and clean, ready for an afternoon full of play.

Until next time, grace and peace.

Taking Things in Stride, Part Two

So, yesterday was what I like to call a character building experience. Basically, the whole day was an "opportunity" to practice the finer aspects of my character like patience and calmness. In other words, it was one of those days. Sigh. It started out well enough. Even though I have a sick baby, I decided to salvage the day, head to town, and run some errands. The plan was to snatch Micah out of bed after she woke from her morning nap, run up to the local Mexican place for a quick lunch, then drive to Corinth for shopping at Walgreen's, phone perusing at AT&T, a little gift card spending at Kirkland's, and grocery buying at Kroger. By my calculations, we would be able to do all of those things and make it back home just in time for Micah to take her afternoon nap.

What I didn't account for was the faceplant Micah did on the sidewalk between the AT&T store and Kirklands, the bloody mouth that followed, and the emergency trip to the dentist to make sure that her teeth weren't going to fall out of her head. Before you get too worried, I'll go ahead and tell you that everything's fine. She probably just scraped her gums (ouch!) on the concrete, hence all the blood, but her teeth were fine.

Since Dennis met us at the dentist's office, we decided to make the Kroger run a family trip. We loaded up the cart, got all our coupons ready, checked out and headed to the car to load the groceries in Polly's (that's the Honda's name) trunk. Except I couldn't find my keys. A sinking feeling washed over me, and I peered through the back window. There they were. Right next to Micah's carseat. Anyone else ever been there?

Thankfully, we had both cars there, so Dennis loaded the groceries into his vehicle, drove the 30 minutes home to Iuka, put away the refrigerated groceries, retrieved the spare keys, and drove 30 minutes back to Corinth, during which time, Micah and I slowly wandered up and down the aisles of Kroger again.

She was exhausted by the time we made it home, as was I. What day, y'all. Are there any remaining doubts that God's trying to teach me how to take things in stride? It's times like this that I would like to throw my hands up in the air and shout, "Lesson learned, God!" But I know that won't work. It won't be over til it's over.

Yesterday was a day full of mishaps, but we all survived, and I think I did a pretty good job of keeping calm and moving on. Wonder what God's gonna throw at me next.

Until next time, grace and peace.