Sometimes You Just Want to Squish Them

One evening when I was busy with the baby, I heard a great deal of whispering and conspiring going on, but my mother antennae were not registering anything too suspicious, so I waited to see what would develop. I was glad I did. No florist on the planet could make a more pleasing arrangement for me, complete with a real bird's nest in the center.

They brought it to me in the usual fashion, hands behind the back, asking, "Which hand do you want?" And I played my usual game of trying hard to choose the wrong hand first. It takes so little to make a child's day, and a mother's as well. This collection certainly made mine. I pour out for my children day after day, until sometimes it feels like there is not so much left to give. Amazing how energizing a little love gift like this can be!

Olivia is two...

...for a little while already. But we can't be too prompt in our posts, or the blog wouldn't be consistent.

This is the favorite birthday gift from a beloved Grandma and Grandpa Schlabach. Olivia spends most of her days playing babies, wrapping them up tenderly, feeding them and making sure they are happy. She found her words just over the time she turned two, so at last we can communicate better. It is lots of fun for us all to figure out what she is saying in her winsome little voice from the "morning" at breakfast to the "night night" at bedtime. This is our little sunshine girl, our Gracie, who has taught us so much about God's goodness and gracious care.

Just a little update on Margarite's bloodwork. It is fine! All clear. Perfectly healthy. It feels like such a lavish gift to us from a very kind Father! Thank you for praying with us!

EMS Picnic

Some things that might happen at an EMS picnic.

• There might be conversations at the lunch table about gory calls, or bad accidents.
• They might be selling a fundraiser cookbook with a few pages of lifesaving tips in the front before you get to the recipes.
• There might be a call where every EMT on the premises rushes off and leaves their bewildered spouse and very numerous progeny behind for a few hours.
• The scheduled hay ride might be two hours late, due to aforementioned call.
  

Two Little Boys

"Once there were two little boys who liked to share. They shared everything they had. If one of them had a cookie, he would cut it in half and give half to the other boy. Always they shared everything. Then one day the one boy found a toad. Now they could not figure out how to share it, so they fote and fote over it. Finally they were so mad that they just turned their backs to each other. And that is when the toad hopped away. Probably he was tired of that conversation."

Gregory related this story that Alex read to him when we were camping at a cabin this summer. I do not know the title of the book, but I would love to get ahold of this book, if it rings a bell with anyone. It sounds very familiar. We have little boys at this house that are best friends. Some days they are so kind and sharing, it seems almost syrupy. I have noticed that these days of great effort to be nice to one another are often followed by days where they "fote" all day. (That is Greg's past tense of "fight", by the way.) One day, in desperation, I deprived them of each other's company for a good long while, which seemed to help bring them to their senses. Life is very boring when you aren't allowed to play with your brother.

I have noticed that when men say they want to "do a bit of digging" they usually mean "make massive holes and pile the dirt somewhere else for a while". This applies as well when they want to "scrape a bit of snow" off the lane. I used to watch in amazement as my Dad painstakingly, methodically removed the snow on our farm lane with his skid loader. Never mind that we needed to leave for church in 15 minutes. This was a job that needed to be done properly, no quick pass and leave the rest.

It's like the world turns into their sandbox and every scoop of the bucket makes them feel more possibilities: "Hmm, I could pile this over there and then move that over here... maybe bring in some creek rocks and landscape that spot right there by the lane..." This seems to be completely involuntary. Something we uninitiated females struggle to understand. But that's O.K.

So this summer when Gabriel said he wants to fix some of our landscaping bugaboos, I walked around outside with him and tried to keep up with his envisioning. First he borrowed my Dad's Dingo, which is basically a tiny digging machine on tracks. I tell you, it was astonishing what that little workhorse could do. He cleaned out underneath our deck to make it usable for parking lawn mowers and bikes. The excess dirt went on a pile under the shade trees in the back yard. Then a kind friend loaned us his skid loader, and so our new parking spot became reality, with a long slope of topsoil slanting down to the back yard, waiting to be seeded with new grass. The neighbor lady got 2 loads of shale hauled in so that we can fix her lane when we finish ours. Another pile of dirt. We hope to extend our picket fence about 50 feet along the road front to give the children more safe area to play, so we graded and redirected the lane to the back of the house. At this point I am kind of hoping we can refrain from borrowing a bulldozer.

Since we are literally surrounded with dirt this summer, every time the children step outside they head for the summit of the nearest pile and set up camp with whatever toys happen to be the favorite at the moment. It ought to say something that in three days we went through 18 pairs of pants at this house.

So I was completely flummoxed when Gregory made a wistful proposal: "Mama, if we ever move away from here, could we get a property with more dirt?"

Margarite Elise, 2 months

People ask me how we are adjusting to a new baby in the family. Now that Margarite is two months old, I thought I would post a photo of a typical expression on her sweet little face. She is not only good, she is angelically so. For me, the novelty of having such a happy baby is still new every day. I feel an urge to pinch myself to be sure it is true every time she falls asleep on her own. She coos and grins and gains weight like a good little baby. At 2 months, she weighs what Olivia did at 6 months. It is truly a miracle for us!

So the adjustments to the new baby have been easy. She just sort of slid into her spot in the family with very few ripples. We still do not have conclusive results from the testing we did 6 weeks ago, but we are at rest and happy to report, all is well. Glory be to Jesus!