My growing girl

Our precious little one is growing, growing, growing!  She's already well into 2Ts as she is quite tall, and loves to pick out her own outfits.  She's also learning her ABC's and how to count (which she can do on her own to 3 counting items, and prompted to 13).  She continues to amaze us daily, and is such a blessing in our home!

Week 1- LOVE: 1 John 3:18

Year's Verse:  Galations 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Love Verse, Week 1: 1 John 3:18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

As I begin walking through the fruits of the Spirit, I start with "love". I am going to delve into what the Bible says about love for the month of January, starting week 1 with 1 John 3:18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

Love means, according to Dictionairy.com, “a profoundly tender passionate affection”. This can be summarized in deep feeling, softness, caring. To “love” in word or talk is to speak words of affection, speak passionately, speak profound thoughts. It is verbal, written, and even thought. In my eyes, it is only half of love. Not quite the real thing.

The “love” of the Bible requires action and follow through. You don’t tell someone you love them and then neglect them. You don’t speak praises of someone, then do something to cause them harm. To love in deed and in truth is to follow through on your words, your thoughts. It is to extend that helping hand, to live up to your word. It is to speak a plan and actually live it.

This week, I spoke that I would do a year long Bible study on the verse in Galations. I spoke this out of LOVE and obedience to God, to study His word and to grow closer to Him. I pray that I also learn from my week 1 verse, and that I do not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. That I not only speak my intentions, but that I follow through.

2013: My One Word

2012 started off with My One Word, which was "joy".  With all that happened in 2012, I had some struggles, but ultimately came out with a better understanding of joy.  This year, I am doing it a little different.  Instead of a word, I am choosing a verse.  Galations 5:22-23  "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

My intention is to study one fruit per month or so, and adding in righteousness, truth, and character to round out the year.

January- love
February- joy
March- peace
April- patience
May- kindness
June- goodness
July- faithfulness
August- gentleness
September- self-control
October- righteousness
November- truth
December- character

Each week of a month I will add in a different verse, based on that month's fruit, and study it for the week.  I hope to post my studies once a week-- or at least monthly, as daily just isn't feasible with my responsibilities at home.

I pray that some of you will join me on this study, and post your comments as we go.  Bring it on, 2013.  I am ready for you!

Landen

With broken hearts, we announce that our fifth child, Landen, is now in heaven.  No Mother should ever have to say goodbye to a child, much less four of her children.  Doug and I are devastated and are seeking comfort in our little family.

I am sticking close to home lately, once again feeling that the outside world is a bit too harsh for me at the moment.  I know that this will pass, but in the meantime I am hunkering down in the quiet sanctity of my home.

I am thankful for the loving support of my friends and family.  So may have reached out in different ways, and each has touched our hearts deeply.

Moments like these

This evening started our new night time routine with Samantha.  As she drinks her bedtime milk, all snuggled up in my arms, Doug wants to begin reading the Bible to her.  We have a toddler's Bible (put into children's language and pictures, with verse references) and tonight we read about Creation and about also about the great flood and Noah's Ark.  She listened intently, pointing at the pictures and watching her Daddy's face while he read.   It took all I had in me not to cry.

Moments like these are what I prayed for.  Moments like these, my little family reading the Bible together, are what I pictured in my head as we lovingly prepared for this child.  Moments like these will be forever etched into my memory.

We are so busy throughout the day, that our special moments come fewer and further between.  We run from class to class, mealtime to snacktime, naptime to bedtime.  We have playdates, preschool, and errands.  We take walks, eat on the porch, do puzzles and color.  We make memories, we learn, we grow.  All of my days feel wonderful, fulfilled and blessed with this little firecraker of a daughter.  But those special moments, where I feel with clarity that this is what I prayed for...moments like these warm my heart, fill me with joy, and have me singing praises of God's amazing blessings in our lives.

I love moments like these.

Photos

Our first family photoshoot, courtesy of Meridith May Photography

The Mom Stays In the Picture

I, like so many other Moms that I know, hide from the camera. I don't like my post-baby body. I don't like my saggy boobs, my stretch marks, my fat roll that won't go away over my c-section scar. I don't like that I still need to lose 30+ pounds of "baby weight" (which if I am honest with myself isn't really baby weight anymore). I don't like that my cheeks are too round, that I have some grey hair and that I have dark circles under my eyes.

But, I need to remember that my child doesn't care. She doesn't care if I don't do my makeup. She doesn't care if I look tired, look fat, have a zit the size of Texas on my chin. She doesn't care if my clothes match, or even if they fit properly and hide my spare tire tummy roll. All she cares about is that I am her Mommy. I am holding her, playing with her, smiling for the camera with her. I hope, years from now, that she can look back at our photos and just see her Mommy. I hope she will look back with fondness at Mommy being there, Mommy holding her, Mommy playing silly games, and Mommy comforting her. I hope she can look back and see that I was comfortable in front of the camera, just being me. Being Mommy was enough...and being with her was the best thing of my day!

Here's the article if you haven't seen it. Fabulous and thought-provoking...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-tate/mom-pictures-with-kids_b_1926073.html

The Mom Stays In the Picture  
Allison Tate, Freelance writer and mother of four

Last weekend, my family traveled to attend my oldest niece's Sweet Sixteen party. My brother and sister-in-law planned this party for many months and intended it to be a big surprise, and it included a photo booth for the guests.

I showed up to the party a bit late and, as usual, slightly askew from trying to dress myself and all my little people for such a special night out. I'm still carrying a fair amount of baby weight and wearing a nursing bra, and I don't fit into my cute clothes. I felt awkward and tired and rumpled.

I was leaning my aching back against the bar, my now 5-month-old baby sleeping in a carrier on my chest (despite the pounding bass and dulcet tones of LMFAO blasting through the room) when my 5-year-old son ran up to me.

"Come take pictures with me, Mommy," he yelled over the music, "in the photo booth!"

I hesitated. I avoid photographic evidence of my existence these days. To be honest, I avoid even mirrors. When I see myself in pictures, it makes me wince. I know I am far from alone; I know that many of my friends also avoid the camera.

It seems logical. We're sporting mama bodies and we're not as young as we used to be. We don't always have time to blow dry our hair, apply make-up, perhaps even bathe (ducking). The kids are so much cuter than we are; better to just take their pictures, we think.

But we really need to make an effort to get in the picture. Our sons need to see how young and beautiful and human their mamas were. Our daughters need to see us vulnerable and open and just being ourselves -- women, mamas, people living lives. Avoiding the camera because we don't like to see our own pictures? How can that be okay?

Too much of a mama's life goes undocumented and unseen. People, including my children, don't see the way I make sure my kids' favorite stuffed animals are on their beds at night. They don't know how I walk the grocery store aisles looking for treats that will thrill them for a special day. They don't know that I saved their side-snap, paper-thin baby shirts from the hospital where they were born or their little hospital bracelets in keepsake boxes high on the top shelves of their closets. They don't see me tossing and turning in bed wondering if I am doing an okay job as a mother, if they are okay in their schools, where we should take them for a vacation, what we should do for their birthdays. I'm up long past the news on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and eating cookies and milk, and I spend hours hunting the Internet and the local Targets for specially-requested Halloween costumes and birthday presents. They don't see any of that.

Someday, I want them to see me, documented, sitting right there beside them: me, the woman who gave birth to them, whom they can thank for their ample thighs and their pretty hair; me, the woman who nursed them all for the first years of their lives, enduring porn star-sized boobs and leaking through her shirts for months on end; me, who ran around gathering snacks to be the week's parent reader or planning the class Valentine's Day party; me, who cried when I dropped them off at preschool, breathed in the smell of their post-bath hair when I read them bedtime stories, and defied speeding laws when I had to rush them to the pediatric ER in the middle of the night for fill-in-the-blank (ear infections, croup, rotavirus).

I'm everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won't be here -- and I don't know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now -- but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.

When I look at pictures of my own mother, I don't look at cellulite or hair debacles. I just see her -- her kind eyes, her open-mouthed, joyful smile, her familiar clothes. That's the mother I remember. My mother's body is the vessel that carries all the memories of my childhood. I always loved that her stomach was soft, her skin freckled, her fingers long. I didn't care that she didn't look like a model. She was my mama.

So when all is said and done, if I can't do it for myself, I want to do it for my kids. I want to be in the picture, to give them that visual memory of me. I want them to see how much I am here, how my body looks wrapped around them in a hug, how loved they are.

I will save the little printed page with four squares of pictures on it and the words "Morgan's Sweet Sixteen" scrawled across the top with the date. There I am, hair not quite coiffed, make-up minimal, face fuller than I would like -- one hand holding a sleeping baby's head, and the other wrapped around my sweet littlest guy, who could not care less what I look like.