Category Archives: little ones

on ministry and sweeping the floor

{source}

I sweep the floor. A lot. We have dark hardwood floors and with two littles eating approximately 17 times a day, I’m constantly sweeping unless I want to crunch things underfoot. Which, let’s be honest. There are some days that I just put on some socks and ignore the muffled smashes.

I do a lot of laundry, too. See above paragraph. And add in cloth diapers.

There’s lots of nose-wiping, sippy cup-filling, baby food-heating. Toddler questionings, phone ringings, baby holdings.

I’m guessing most of your days look something like this, too. Mundane, ordinary, no-glory tasks.

And yet He promises abundant life. Life more-than. More than we can ever imagine or ask for. So what I’m learning is that this abundant, beyond-imagination life takes place in the present moment. Not dwelling on the past or looking ahead to the future, but joining Him in the present.

I just finished a book where one of the characters talked a lot about having a “ministry of presence”. She meant being available in the moment to participate and join with Him in whatever He is doing.

I have a ministry of presence in my home, to my husband, to my littles. So do you. We are ministers of presence. We join with God and through His Spirit, we are able to enter into His life, moment by moment. By being there, by being available, by being present enough to listen to His voice.

We minister to tiny hearts by actively listening with His ears to their mismatched words and run-on sentences. We minister to little bodies by wiping noses with a prayer or singing spontaneous songs during bath time or laundering mini-sized clothes with patience and long-suffering. We minister to every person who enters our doors by creating homes filled with welcome and acceptance and our own unique brand of creativity. We minister to our husbands by fixing up their coffee just right or paying attention to the details of a rough day or speaking encouragement or offering quick forgiveness to a careless word.

We minister presently, actively, hundreds of meeting-Him-in-the-moments as we march through our day. You, sitting right there reading this, have a ministry of presence that only you can fulfill.

Go be present. Go listen to Him amidst the crying and giggling and tantrum-throwing. He is there, waiting for you every time. He is present and He wants you to join Him there. Even when it’s the 37th time you’ve swept the kitchen floor this week.

stealth nursing

It’s dark and it’s dinner time. We’ve just pulled up to an out-of-town restaurant on our overnight getaway. We left the older one with grandparents, but the little one is still nursing. And by the sounds she’s making, she is hungry.

Hubby goes inside to put our name on the wait list and I climb in the backseat and pull the crying baby from her car seat.

The car is on, motor rumbling, idling waiting while the baby eats.

And I sat in the resentment for a few seconds.

Everyone else gets to go eat. Everyone else gets to not be at the beck and call of an infant. Everyone else gets to stay out as late as they want. People don’t have to nurse in their car in other countries. Why is the US so NOT nursing-friendly?

And then Baby Sister smiled up at me and opened and closed her chubby little baby-fingers around my hair. Resentment flew out the window and undiluted thankfulness shoved it out of the way.

I love breastfeeding. I love the sweet sounds and the soft skin and the giggles when my hair tickles her hand. Not everyone gets to participate in this and I am so thankful that I can.

So I sat in the dark car, with the lights off, and called myself a nursing ninja. Because stealth mode, of course. In those 15 minutes of people watching in the parking lot, I saw a lot of life happen. Shy first dates, laughing groups of college kids, new little families. And no one knew I was there. How many backseats have a I sat in just like that, invisible in an I-get-to-spy-on-you way. The answer is a lot. More than I can count.

So maybe its more like a breastfeeding creeper than stealth nursing.

The point is that I am so very grateful that I get to nurse my babies. There are many moments where the temptation beckons to be resentful or to think I’m missing out.

No. No, no, no. I want to brush silly resentment aside and revel in each sweet nursing moment.

Stealth spy skills are just a bonus.

 

a snow day, y’all

Last week, we woke up to this. And let me remind you, we live in the south. We get to see something like this maybe once a year.

Don’t you just love how snow makes everything {including your cheap-o plastic hose hider} look beautiful? ;)

I realize I could have walked to the other side of our gate so the word wouldn’t be backwards, but I didn’t think about that at the time. Hence, we live on a “hcnar”.

As soon as the girls woke up, we headed outside. The picture below is one of my new favorite photos of Little Bit. Complete with a busted lip from tripping and falling on our hardwood floors and backwards boots that she insisted on putting on all by herself. Ooo, I could just squeeze her. Oh wait, I do! ;)

I mean, really. Cactus with snow on it? That gives you an idea of what a treat it was to wake up to a snowy, winter wonderland.

And the chickens. Letting them out of the coop was absolutely hilarious. Hubby opened their door and they all just stood there on the inside, peering out at the white stuff on the ground. Finally, one brave chicken gingerly stepped out and waddled a few steps. When the rest of the chickens saw that he didn’t die or implode or anything, they followed suit. But they just kind of wandered aimlessly around instead of scratching through the snow, into the dirt. It was like they had no idea the dirt was under the inch of snow. *Insert derogatory chicken comment here.*

By noon it was all melted and slushy and incredibly messy but we thoroughly enjoyed it while it lasted. The chickens were just glad to be able to eat again.

my sweet Little Bit

Oh, my sweet Little Bit. You will be 3 years old in 3 months and I don’t know what I did before you were with us. You are mostly little girl with only lingering traces of toddler and this makes me happy and sad all at the same time.

You are so independent now. You like to put your shoes and socks on all by yourself. And you like to try and dress yourself every morning. Panties, too. Which you get right about half the time and the other half you have have a butt cheek hanging out amidst bunched fabric as you come running in the living room, saying, “Should you help me, please?”

You still have chubby fingers and I love to hold them, but you really only let me in parking lots or to trim your fingernails.

You are happiness and joy and curiosity and laughter. You have the biggest vocabulary of any almost 3 year old I’ve ever heard, you know. I mean, you use words like “patiently” and “unwrap” all the time. You ask me what time it is and what town someone lives in and what everyone’s favorite color is.

You want to look in our eyes when you talk to us and you perceive emotion like an adult. You see I’m not having a great morning and you ask, “Are you sad, Mommy?” and you come give me a leg hug.

We’re a lot alike, you and me. One day that might mean we get on each other’s nerves a bit. But never doubt that it was God Himself that instilled in you a strong sense of emotion and words and joy. In His power, in His Spirit, these are awesome abilities. Outside of Him, not so much. I should know ;)

You are the absolute perfect firstborn for me and Daddy. And we apologize in advance for making you our guinea pig and trying every version of sleep training and schedules and time-outs until we found what works. That’s just the way of oldest kids. You’ll be okay.

Don’t even get me started on how much you love your sister. In the 7+ months she’s been a part of our family, you have not once knowingly mistreated her. Now I know that will change. And you both will get on each other’s nerves and not share and argue about what clothes are really yours. But remember, big sister that you are, that you lead in love.

And oh, how Baby Sister watches you. You make her laugh like no one else can, including me. She watches you and her eyes dance. She is going to learn about life and love and words and relationship from you. I’m so glad she gets to have you as a big sister.

 

when I can’t find the balance

It’s a tricky stage of parenting life, these days of diapers and naps and tantrums and cuddles.

The balance between play and routine, structure and spontaneity is blurry and fuzzy grey. What should my day look like? Can she watch a movie at 8:30 am? How long is too long in a baby exersaucer? Two hours at the park, but now no clean jeans. No, I can’t read to you right now because we have to load up and go to HEB unless you want to eat bread and pickles for dinner. 

Day after day of striving to find balance between it all weighs heavy on me. The list of daily tasks grows long and demanding and tries to elbow its way to center stage while the little ones hang out in the wings.

I don’t want it to be that way. I don’t want the shape of these days to morph into a black hole of busyness and tasks and to-do lists.

And I realize that we can’t spend our days romping in the wildflowers at the park or reading on the porch for hours at a time, either. Things like laundry and groceries and dishes exist and have to be taken care of.

I wrote yesterday about what He’s been whispering to me, about letting Him be my pace for the day.

And that’s helping me slow down and rest in the moments of my days.

But this balance thing – between routines and fun, between tasks and relationship – it can still be tricky.

So today, He seems to be telling me that He is the only balance. And so the only answer I have is to let Him shape my balance for the day, for each moment. Let Him shift my focus around as needed throughout the day. As Emily says, you have the letting power. I can choose moment by moment to let Him change my task or shift my focus or show me the life in whatever I’m doing.

And I’m learning that most times balance is not an either/or thing. It is not choosing between doing the laundry and cuddling on the couch or choosing between going to the park or vacuuming my floors. It is more about Him teaching me how to love and do relationship amidst the tasks and routines. To have meaningful conversations over mopping together. To express His love even while they are playing on the kitchen floor while I’m cooking dinner.

Yesterday, Little Bit was given some secondhand shoes from a sweet friend at church and they light up when you walk. And they had sparkles on them. And they were pink. And all she wanted to do was put them on and run around and then come show me. Over and over again. And so I vacuumed and admired and laughed at her running around me. And then I stopped to take this picture. For that little window of afternoon time, He was the balance. Amen and amen.

 

{I’m linking up with Emily at Chatting at the Sky for Tuesdays Unwrapped!}

on setting the pace

I love a good to-do list. Complete with little boxes in front of every task so I feel ultra-accomplished when I fill that box with a decisive black check mark. I love a good plan, a schedule for my day. My plan, my checklist becomes the standard by which I measure the success of my day. Working my plan. Checking off the list. Accomplishing the tasks. Doing, achieving, running my own race at my own pace. And honestly, I really like to set my own pace, thankyouverymuch.

But babies and toddlers and people and chickens and circumstances don’t follow my plan for the day. Ever.

I used to view all the above things as obstacles to my schedule. Things to work around while still racing the clock to accomplish all I had said I wanted to check off that day. They were problems, inconveniences to my day.

And then these life-giving words.

From Grace for the Good Girl by Emily Freeman:

“Sarah Young wrote one of my favorite devotional books, titled Jesus Calling. In it she says this, “Enjoy the tempo of a God-breathed life by letting Him set the pace.” {p. 206 in GFTGG & p. 26 in Jesus Calling}

Enjoy the tempo of a God-breathed life. Oh my goodness.

Right after she references Sarah’s words in Jesus Calling, Emily points out several things that come up for her where she has to remind herself to enjoy His pace.

For me, it means several things. It mostly means to choose joy and peace and relaxation instead of frustration and annoyance and bitterness in the details of life. Giving up my pace for His pace.

I’m in the middle of mopping but Little Bit has to go potty. Again. Enjoy the tempo of a God-breathed life.

I’m two sentences from finally finishing a blog post but Baby Sister just woke up from her nap hungry. Let Him set the pace.

The laundry is piled high and my floor is crazy dirty but a friend stops by for coffee. The tempo of a God-breathed life.

I’m all set to enjoy my afternoon cup of coffee with both girls calmly napping but Little Bit wets the bed. Let Him set the pace.

I could go on and on and on. But I’m learning to let Him {moment by moment} set the pace.

I can’t tell you how much more I’m enjoying life – with all its interruptions and unexpectedness – by letting Him breathe His Life with His own pace into my day.

 

 

a Thanksgiving recap

I’m supposed to be meal planning. But instead I’m blogging. Oops.

I decided in the middle of going through recipes and scheduling stuff in my Google calendars and checking things off my to-do list, I should document our Thanksgiving. Because, let’s face it. With my memory, I won’t remember what happened or what we did by tomorrow afternoon.

We spent part of Thanksgiving in Houston with Hubby’s family and part of it in Hunt with my family. I forgot my camera when we went to Houston {boo}, so we just have phone pics of our time there and I’m feeling a bit too lazy to download pics from my phone. I mean, I just downloaded them from my camera and had to edit and resize them and that was enough to make me annoyed. Without redoing my phone camera photos.

Anyway.

Back to Thanksgiving. The view from my mom and dad’s house is glorious.

They live in Hunt, Texas which is right on the Guadalupe River in the hills. They look across this valley to a thousand-acre ranch on the other side. At the end of their street, you run into the river. Don’t you feel sorry for them? ;)

My sister and her family came down and my grandparents made the drive in, too, from east Texas. My aunt and cousin  were also able to drive in, so it was just a sweet few days of visiting and soaking up some good memories.

My sister has two littles, one is Little Bit’s age and the other is a year. So there were lots of cousin hugs and hilarious toddler conversations with some screaming at each other and stealing toys thrown in for good measure.

That sweet boy slept in those fireman boots while he was at Nonie & Opie’s house. He has the cutest, raspiest little loud voice I’ve ever heard. And chubby little cheeks and bright blue eyes. Why yes, I did steal lots of kisses from him.

My sweet sister also was willing to try taking some family photos for Christmas cards. She is awesome like that. It was completely impromptu, so no matching outfits or fixed hair, but I think I’m going to use them just the same. Real life, people. Real life.

This one wouldn’t stop sticking her tongue out. {See above photo, too}

That Baby Sister is a live wire, I’m telling you.

And I love, love, love that we got a big family picture like this. It was the first time I’d used the timer feature on my camera and I didn’t have a tripod and the lighting was weird, but oh well.

It was a sweet Thanksgiving.

{attempting simple} cloth diapers

Cloth diapers. Oh yes. Yes, I did. Bet you thought I would never, ever do that, didn’t you? Because I thought that exact same thing, too. ;)

I’m not gonna lie, I was scared. Among other things, I thought the nursery would smell like poo 24/7 and that I would be slaving over the washer and dryer all the live-long day. Turns out, neither is true. Staying true to my goal of attempting to incorporate simpler living in the daily routines of my life, I’ve been cloth diapering for a solid week now with only minor catastrophes incidences.

My brain wheels got to turning when poor Baby Sister had a consistently reddish bum, even using Seventh Generation diapers. I still love those diapers and they always did great on Little Bit. But they were not being so sweet to Baby Sister. So for probably the past month, I’ve been playing around in my head with making the switch to cloth diapers.

And then one day about two weeks ago I decided to quit dreaming and just do it.

Thanks to my sweet friend, R0byn, I got a bit of a head start. She let me harass her one day via thousands of texts ask her what she started with and recommended. She highly recommended Bum Genius diapers. By the way, she has several great posts on this if you’re interested.

Bum Genius diapers have great ratings all around and they are “all-in-ones”, meaning they can fit newborns to potty-training toddlers. Score one for a money-saver there. Thanks to Robyn, I also knew they had a 30-day money back guarantee, so if I tried them and hated them, I could send them back.

I ordered 6 off of vine.com {they were running a 30% off thing} and tried those 6 for a few days. And quickly realized I needed about three times that amount of diapers to avoid the aforementioned slaving over the washer/dryer. I checked craigslist, and lo and behold, a lady was selling a lot of 13 Bum Genius diapers {in girl colors!} for $6 each as opposed to $16 each brand new. She had only used them for a year, so they looked like new! Score one for me.

And the whole changing/storing/washing process really isn’t that bad. I use a cute chicken wire basket in the nursery that has a washable drawstring laundry bag lining it, toss the dirty diapers in there, and when it gets full I dump all the diapers and the bag in the wash. {I have 2 laundry bags, so I just line the basket again with the other one.}

There are just a few extras when it comes to washing. You have to rinse everything once with cold water before you add detergent, then wash hot with detergent, then extra rinse ‘em. And I did what any easily confused, anal direction-following person does. I taped the washing instructions to the inside of a laundry room cabinet. Don’t judge.

I was gifted some Rockin’ Green detergent from a sweet friend at church who works in that company, and it is the. best. detergent. ever. It was developed specifically for cloth diapers but works with everything. Rockin’ Green also is starting to distribute just a few brands of cloth diapers. So she gave me 4 different kinds of cloth diapers {yes, she is awesome} to try. Three were Itti Bitti brand and one was Go Green. Love, love the Go Green but Baby Sister leaks out of the Itti Bitti ones. However, this could totally be user error so I’m not giving up on those just yet :)

So if your eyes haven’t glazed over yet from too much cloth diaper rambling, I’ll tell you about flushable poop liners. You’ll either be all interested or I’ll put you to sleep. Either way, you’re welcome.

Robyn recommended flushable poop liners. These take a lot of the ick factor out of the whole thing. Before I knew about these I had visions of me scraping poo off a diaper over the toilet, gagging at the unmentionables piling up underneath my fingernails. Gross, I know. But these are the things I imagine. With these liners, you just grab a tiny corner of it, pull it off over the potty and flush that sucker down. All the solids go bye-bye and then you wash the diaper like normal. Easy peasy.

So how’s that for my first stab at attempting simple?! I’m really, really glad I switched. No more forgetting to buy diapers, no more red bottoms, no more feeling like I was throwing away money every month!

Do y’all cloth diaper? What are your thoughts? Please share any tips!

fall celebration

It was the first Halloween Little Bit was old enough to kind of get. She was a bee, and Baby Sister was an elephant. We started out at a church trunk or treat and then went trick or treating in the nearby neighborhood for about an hour. Long enough for Little Bit to get good and tired and Baby Sister to get good and hungry. Good times :)

Do you like my anatomically correct antennae super cute headband that I found Halloween day at HEB because I forgot I she didn’t have any antennae for her costume?

And I am unbelievably, fantastically excited that it is November! Bring it, holiday season!

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