I’ve known that my brain and my husband’s brain function on very different wave lengths for quite some time, but something just happened that really drove the point home. It is very late at night and Chris and I are both playing on our laptops. I am checking for status updates on facebook and reading celebrity gossip on People.com.
I just asked Chris what he was doing. His answer- I’m reading about how to program Tetris.
!?
So I know that every mother wants to think that her children are brilliant, talented, extraordinarily beautiful and entirely unique. And I just want to say upfront that I am absolutely no exception to this rule. I live in an almost constant state of amazement at what incredible little people I have the privilege of raising. (I say almost because a very small, really almost minuscule portion of my time is spent thinking about how disgusting and/or marginally brain damaged boys can sometimes be. But as I said, we’re talking small, like teeny tiny amounts of time) So anyway, what follows is a completely unapologetic brag fest about my fabulous children. I am just saying this upfront because unless you happen to be one of their grandparents you may be just moments away from a very exaggerated eye roll.
OK, but you’ve been warned.
So Corbin has taken his love of art to an entirely new level. he spends several hours every day coloring with and on anything he can get his hands on. He has started coloring more or less in the lines in his coloring books and even has a pretty keen sense for what colors should be used where – as in yellow pants on the man with the yellow hat and pink flowers in his curious George coloring book. He has also started drawing people with stick arms and legs, and faces with eyes, nose and a mouth. Here is a picture of one of the men that he drew yesterday.
Actually he says this one is a woman. And yes I realize that the arms and legs are coming out of the bald woman’s head…but come on people, he’s only two and a half!
I was also somewhat impressed with this picture of a vacuum cleaner. Now granted he gave it eyes but did you notice that he did the outline in one color and then colored it in another? And he was the one who told us it was a vacuum cleaner as he was drawing it and has referred to it as such several times since then. I mean is it just me or does he actually have the basic shape down?
Bennett is also making great strides developmentally speaking. He is now sitting up unsupported, babbling adorably and grabbing for every toy in sight! Here is a picture of our sweet little monkey.
And here is a picture of what I turned around to find him doing as I was taking pictures of Corbin’s art work!
Apparently its time to put away the baby seats because he can now officially escape from both the Bumbo and the bouncy seat. I’m guessing we are just weeks away from scooting and or crawling. wooooo, hoo.
(did you sense the sarcasm there? Seriously, I’m not really sure how I feel about two mobile children….although the thought of no longer having to carry 20+ lbs. everywhere I go does have a certain appeal.) OK, I think my bragging impulse is satisfied for now. Thank you for bearing with me.
I have recently developed an obsession with clipping coupons and creating my grocery list around the buy one get one free listings in the Sunday paper. I’m saving around $30 to $40 every week which I think is well worth the hour or so it takes to get my list and coupons together. And as an added bonus it really seems to be satisfying that part of my personality that enjoys problem solving and craves organization. Between the grocery savings and these incredibly low gas prices I’m hoping that the holidays won’t be as much of a stretch as I had originally thought. The boys and I are fighting a nasty cold to which my super hero hubby seems to be immune, but other than that we are all doing very well. Here are a few pictures from the last month or so.
I’m a little reluctant to say this, because I have definitely been warned about the possibility of a regression, but I think Corbin is finally potty trained! He has been in underwear for the last three weeks and hasn’t had an accident in two. Now we’re still doing the pull ups for nap time and night time because I don’t have a rubber sheet for him yet. But he has been waking up dry more often than not lately. Its like he finally just decided one day that he was ready to do this (with a little encouragement from the jelly bean jar) and he did it. He is an independant little boy who is growing up much faster than his mama would like…..although I have to admit that I am very glad to only have one in diapers now.
Last week a friend of mine was admiring the small sapphire ring that I wear on my right ring finger. It was a gift from my parents in honor of my high school graduation and it was given to me as a reminder that even though I would soon be leaving the physical covering that they provided I was still under the spiritual covering of my family, and more specifically, of my father. Although the ring itself is quite lovely, there is another reason that I continue to wear it to this day. That ring is a reminder of a very personal part of my testimony and I feel like God is leading me to share it here.
When I was a freshman in college I did something that I could never undo and that I very quickly came to regret. I was in a relationship with a boy who I thought I loved. And even though on some level I think I always knew that he was not the one for me, I chose to give him that part of myself that I knew was meant for my future husband alone. I still don’t really know why I did it. I guess I was afraid of losing him and I didn’t really trust that God had a better plan for my life. The relationship ended soon after and I was left completely devastated. I felt so ashamed, so stupid, so much like a cliche. I could not believe that I had so easily given away something that I had always viewed as sacred. Because my mother and I shared a very open relationship, I confided in her about what I had done. She of course was heart broken for me, and because she and my father also have a very open relationship she did not feel that this was something she should keep from him. I can still remember the sinking feeling I had in my stomach when she told me that he knew. My father is so self disciplined and so unlikely to make a self destructive or emotionally based decision. I had always thought that he and I were so alike in so many ways but I knew that he wouldn’t have made, had not made, this mistake. And yet on some level I still felt like I needed him to know.
I have tears in my eyes every time I think about the way my father handled that situation. He could have chosen to ignore it. We could have both pretended that he didn’t know, or he could have just passively avoided me until the awkwardness of the moment wore off a little. God knows I wouldn’t have blamed him, in fact I might have even been relieved. But that is not what my father did. Instead he invited me out to dinner just the two of us. I cannot tell you how nervous I felt that night. Picking at my french fries I tried to imagine what he might say, what he might be thinking of me at this very moment. And then he began to speak. He did not shy away from the subject we had come here to discuss. He did not blink. Instead he looked me right in the eyes, and he told me that he loved me. That what I had done in no way changed the way that he saw me. That he wanted me to know that I was still under his covering, and that I would continue to be for as long as I remained a single woman. The entire conversation probably lasted no longer than 15 minutes and yet the profound effect that it had on me will last a lifetime.
My father may never know the full impact of what he did for me that day. Little by little from that point forward my concept of grace and redemption expanded. The grace that he extended to me was unexpected, undeserved and almost beyond my comprehension. I slowly began to understand that my worth was not based on what I did or did not do, but rather on the love that had covered me since the day I was born. It was a love that pointed me to the greater source, that was rooted firmly in the divine. It gave me the strength to walk away when I was later faced with the opportunity to enter back into that same broken relationship. And three years later, I felt the far reaching implications of that grace that keeps no record of wrongs when I saw the untainted joy in my father’s eyes in those private moments before he walked me down the aisle to meet the man who was to become my new covering. I am convinced that only the love of a father can cover that depth of shame, and extend the kind of grace that transforms weeping and brokenness into joy and a raised countenance.
Chris and I were joking yesterday about how we think Corbin believes in reincarnation. he keeps talking about when he was the mommy and I was the little boy, or when he was the baby and Bennett was the big brother. He also describes the activities that he enjoyed taking part in when he was a monkey or a dinosaur: which we have taken to mean that he also agrees with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Of course this is all just toddler/parent silliness, but it reminds me of something that my children’s literature professor said to me when I was a junior in college. She told me that all parents, regardless of their political or religious views, economic or social standing, have an inherent desire for their children to share their own core ideologies. I argued with her. I told her that I wouldn’t care what my children valued or believed as long as they were happy, and that a base desire to impose one’s own views, whether it was through gentle suggestions or making deliberate efforts to affect a change of thinking, was failing to love one’s offspring unconditionally. I was immensely troubled at the thought of parents burdening their children with their own expectations, and I narrowly surmised that the playing out of such expectations on a young person would either lead to a complete stifling of individuality or an awareness that the consequence for open mindedness would be parental disappointment. Though she didn’t say it at the time I am now quite sure that my professor must have regarded me as one of the most simultaneously arrogant and naive students she had ever taught because 1) I had not yet had any children of my own and was therefor completely unqualified to determine what kind of expectations I may or may not have for them, and 2) I had only just turned 21 and was still barely beginning to form my own ideologies.
Since I became a parent I have often thought about that professor, who also just happened to be a mother of two, and felt pangs of embarrassment as I remember making such an ill informed argument. I’m not entirely sure how to articulate how my views on the subject have changed. I just know that while it may be true that I do not particularly care about the vocations or locations that my children choose in life, it is also true that I want them to believe that Christ died on the cross for their sins, and I want them to love the lord with all of their hearts, souls, bodies and minds. I want this for them because I love them and I believe that this is the truth, the only truth, that will save them. This is my core ideology. And I desire more than anything for it to be my children’s as well.