Pink Cheekers

I get major flashbacks these days because I have baby boy in a hot desert climate and culture. It’s so similar to when H was a baby and it feels so familiar.

Like this day, when we went out to lunch after church and Mister B was snoozing in his car seat, flushed and pink from the hot temps, but not letting it interrupt his nap.

I think I’ll be seeing a lot more of those pink cheeks now that summer is almost here!

Flashback

I cleaned off a very old camera today and I found these gems.

This was 2013, soon after we had to leave Africa. N had just turned 3. This was likely their first of MANY visits to the public library here in Colorado. They wore new winter coats and boots which were certainly a novelty at this point.

Such babies!

What a beautiful thing. Two and a half years later we still don’t take the public library for granted… one of the amazing things about of life in America.

Seasons

I say a lot of prayers lately that God will help me enjoy and appreciate each season in it’s time. And then to help me rejoice and let go as one season passes to welcome the another.

This can be hard for me, especially when it comes to babies growing up.

Having tiny ones isn’t the easiest stage in the world, but it’s just so darn special. And fun. And dear. And I love it. I don’t even know what to say. It’s just so precious and such a gift. These tiny newborns fresh to the world that are nearly part of their Mama’s very own body. In their minds, they are part of their Mama. They sleep so much and learn so quickly and stare into your eyes and soon they grin at you and your world could stop FOREVER and you could be happy with that baby grinning at you for the rest of time. Is there anything like it in the world?

It’s been even more poignant for me this time around, since my Lil’ A is the probably the last babe that I will carry and birth myself. I have embraced the season and loved each stage so far, but it’s still bittersweet.

In May I finally bit the bullet and sorted through my baby’s shelves and other stored items to clear out the newborn things. In the past I have I have stored for the next baby, but this time it’s mostly goodbye.

Oh, the pile of sweet things. I can hardly take it.

Goodbye tiny socks.

Goodbye tiny things that my firstborn wore almost six years ago. Goodbye tiny mittens.

Goodbye precious sleeper.

Goodbye cute outfits that both of my newborn girlies wore.

My Auntie (hearts) me. I love this one.

Brought H home from the hospital in this one.

Teeny onesies. Nothing like them in the world. When preparing for babies I would carefully fold the tiny onesies, amazed that they would soon be filled with a body full of life. It was the ultimate in expectation.

Goodbye cupcake sleeper.

Goodbye little turtle onesie. Didn’t my boy just wear this yesterday when we took him back to Africa?

I wiped my eyes as I folded.

I pray again for perspective. Again for joy in each and every season for what it is. This will be a lifelong prayer.

Deep breath.

The baby is growing. She healthy. What  a gift that she is outgrowing her clothes. The perspective gently rolls in. Yes, it’s goodbye to sweet clothes and tiny newborn snuggles.

But it’s hello to the next season of growth. To the next set of clothes that my daughter will wear as she learns to grab and giggle and roll.

Seasons. Thank you Jesus. I embrace.

Ecclesiastes 3

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Flashback

Check out this cute cheese-ball head last Christmas.

I do believe she is her father’s daughter…

Flashback

I have been sorting pictures for Sweet N’s baby book. I know, I know… she’s hardly a baby anymore! I do a scrapbook for the kids from age 0-2 and I haven’t finished hers yet. I would like to complete it before little one is born in February… but we’ll see about that. I’m still choosing pictures from 12-24 months.

And I came across this one and it made me chuckle…

It was taken last October. We were in Jordan at the time, believing we would get visas to return to Africa any day (which didn’t happen for six more months after that… what a challenging time! Bah!).

We went as a family to the Red Sea for a short time (Aqaba) and at breakfast one morning I snapped this photo. I don’t know what was in her mug… could have been cold coffee! Mike and I both drink coffee with milk and sugar so the kids like it to and we give them sips. Or maybe it was juice. Or water. I don’t know.

But what cracks me up is how much she LOOKS like she needs a cup of coffee. Ha! Reminds me of how I’ve been feeling in the mornings these days… And I love that her pink sippy cup is right next to her ‘coffee cup’…

3, 2, 1, Blastoff!

This is a flashback.

And what I mean by ‘flashback’ in this case is just that it took me a really long time to post about this fun stuff.

Anyway.

One of my boy’s (or boys’? ha!) Christmas Gifts was a model rocket set!

Don’t worry. I knew nothing about model rockets either until Mikey and I were Christmas shopping and standing in the aisle at Hobby Lobby where all the model rockets are stocked.

Turns out that setting off model rockets was one of Mike’s jobs when he was a camp counselor many years ago. Who knew?!

It sounded fun to me!

So, the day after Christmas we carried the supplies to the local park.

Mike is the expert so he showed us how it all worked.

Long fuse and igniter button…

3…

2, 1…

Blastoff!

Now these things go really REALLY high. High enough that I often completely lost sight of it up in the stratosphere and would be frantically looking around screaming “Where’d it go?! Where’d it go?!” Then someone would say “It’s right up there.” and I’d say “WHERE!!!” and they’d point and roll their eyes at me and I’d shut up. I promise I couldn’t see it. How can everyone else see it and not me?!

What is the stratosphere, anyway?

I dunno. But it sounds right.

Anyway, if all goes well it floats back down with a parachute. This is one of the most exciting parts cause it’s WAAAAY up there and you never know where it might land, especially if the wind is a-blowin’. Which it was.

And then it has to be retrieved. This usually involves running. I like this part to. Mind you, I don’t DO the running. I WATCH the running. Big difference.

Success!

Such a fun time.

But wait. The fun didn’t stop there. Check out this cool airplane that launches with a huge rubber band. It may or may not have gotten stuck in a tree a time or two.

Nice!

Good times. Good times.

Limbo - Part II

Plan A failed.

We knew it was a long shot so it's not a huge surprise. It's not a permanent fail, mind you. Just a hasn't-happened-yet-but-could-still-happen-at-almost-any-moment type fail.

So what plan are we going with?

Plan G!! (If you missed the long and tedious list of possible plans previously, bore yourself around the bend and back by clicking here to see it.) We're hoping it only takes a week or two of waiting until we get our visas and can fly on to Africa. In the meantime, we're hoping to be wisdom-leaches from co-workers we love and respect who have lived in Jordan (Yes, Plan G= Jordan) for many years.

This won't be our first time to Jordan. Mike and I have been there twice before. The first time was just a couple weeks after we were married. After our wedding, we had a perfect honeymoon in Mexico. Then we returned home for two days to chop off my hair (later I learned that bucket baths are possible for those with short and long hair) and pack for a long trip of visiting teams and locations in a few different countries.

Less than two weeks after we were married we were in Africa sleeping head to foot in a mini-bed in a mini-mud-hut that previously housed goats and chickens. Those goats liked to express their frustration at getting kicked out of their home with much gusto in the early-morning hours by ramming their heads into the door. And the chickens expressed their frustration by sneaking back in to the hut and leaving 'presents' under our mini-bed. Oh my. I am still in disbelief when I think about the week we ran the seminar in that village. It was my very first 'National Geographic' moment.

After that interesting experience, we arrived in Jordan on a very delayed flight. That meant our host wasn't there to meet us. So instead of getting a taxi to a hotel in the city, these two newlyweds put a sheet on the floor of the airport and slept alongside the cleaners and the Indian Sadhjus. Welcome to the Middle East! Oh yes, those experiences are both DEFINITELY worth a post of their own. Another day friends, another day.

Aaaaaanyway... here I am in Amman after I had washed the airport floor grime off my my freshly married self.



It was all SO new.



Look at us. So young! Two adventure loving, world-traveling newlyweds seeing the world together for the first time. Please pardon the lovey-dovey cheese. I love it! I love him! And I never would have guessed how much more of the world we would be seeing together in the future.



This is the Dead Sea. You know how they say that the Dead Sea is so salty that you can float in it without trying?



I confirmed it myself. Ha!



And of course we smeared the world-famous mud all over ourselves. You can pay a ton of money for this mud. But we just scooped it up from the bottom of the Sea, smeared ourselves and then glopped extra mud into plastic bags to bring home for our family and friends. We're frugal like that. "Merry Christmas... here's some mud!" Yeah. Everyone loved it, I'm sure.

;)



And we've had flawless skin ever since.

Ha!

As if.

Have you seen my face lately?

Aaaaanyway...

The year after the mud-smearing we returned to Jordan for a few months to teach English.



Mike bravely taught level 2. His challenge was learning how to speak slowly enough to get his students to understand the basic instructions in class.



I taught level 7. My challenge was leading the class in conversation while simultaneously praying that no one would use their near fluent English to ask me a grammar question that I had no clue how to answer.

We loved it!

Okay okay. Enough reminiscing. My goal was to tell you where we're headed and I've done way more than that.

We fly this weekend. It's gonna come real soon. And so the extreme-emotional roller coaster has taken me on as a passenger yet again. I regularly switch between packing and crying and doing last minute shopping and second-guessing and crying and organizing and generally feeling conflicted between the extreme sadness of leaving our families and taking the grand-babies with us and the excitement of being one step closer to getting back to our life and home in Africa.

This is just how it goes...

Jordan here we come for round three!

Flashback

Here's another flashback.

This time we are flashing back to our Middle East trip last summer.

Our first stop was Kuwait, if you recall, which I'm sure you don't, and that's fine, it just seemed like a nice way to start the sentence.

Sweet N all of a sudden started blowing bubbles (spitting?) constantly. It was really funny. You have to be a parent to understand that.

I took pictures of her blowing bubbles all over Kuwait, expecting to do the same in the next two countries and then put them in one long watch-my-silly-daughter-blow-bubbles-all-over-the-Middle-East post. But the thing is, is that when we left Kuwait... she stopped blowing-bubbles at all.

I can't explain it.

But I can tell you that she is STILL sleeping this morning (it's 10:34), H is still watching a movie, and my husband isn't back from playing football (soccer) yet... so I am continuing to blog like a maniac.

So now I will post these six pictures of my girlie blowing bubbles all over Kuwait (and nowhere else) that have been sitting in a folder on my computer desktop for half a year.

Then I'll feel much better.



Bubbles at the breakfast buffet. God bless that breakfast buffet. The breakfast buffet at this hotel was a spiritual experience for me. I'm not even kidding. God shows His love to me through breakfast buffets. Especially free ones.

\

Bubbles during portrait time.



Hard-to-see bubbles in the local market. (No need to be alarmed at the strange man in the picture... that guy pushing her is our friend! Ha!)



Bubbles on the floor of the children's museum. Ohmygoodness she was such a baby!



Bubbles in the car seat.



And bubbles in the hotel lobby. God bless that hotel. What a gift it was!

Good memories. So many good memories...

Flashback

Flashback to N's first birthday.

I thought it would be cute at bedtime to take a picture of her with her lovies. You know... so that the whole world (?) can see her sweet toys that she is attached to these days. To have a nice little memory.

Uh huh. So I thought.

Here is how it went.

Follow along...



I put them in her lap and tried in vain... "N! Look here! Give me a smile! "La la la la lookie up here! Look at Mommy sweet girl!! Hellloooo! Show me that grin!!!"

You know... the usual way us Moms sound like idiots and make fools of ourselves trying to get a smile on camera.

I failed.

She was like "What are these things in my lap Mom!?"



"Get. Them. Away."



"Away with you, Teddy."



"Go over there."



"You too Taggy. I don't want you here."



"Dolly? I don't want to see your face."



"Okay, I'm ready to look up Mommy, since my toys are smashed together on the edge of the couch far away from me looking unloved and dejected."

Um... what in the WORLD?!

It was just so strange!!

I promise she hugs one or more of these things when she falls asleep!

I cannot explain her behavior.

But I can show you that I tried one more time, moving the lovies and keeping her attention away from them long enough to get a silly little grin from N, Teddy and Dolly all at the same time.



Yeah. That's more like it.

;)