For homeschool devotions, we are reading Rediscover Jesus: An Invitation, by Matthew Kelly. It was handed out at our church during Lent.
The the book was written for grown ups, but on a very basic level; I’m guessing third grade. The only thing that makes it adult is that the examples he uses to illustrate points are ones that primarily relate to work, marriage, parenting, etc. I mainly edited these references on the fly to either eliminate things my kids wouldn’t get, or mostly, change the examples to ones kids would relate to. I incorporated my own examples about school, duty as it relates to being a kid (obedience, chores, etc.), friendships, and siblings.
I have appreciated the bite-sized chapters. In them, Kelly challenges us to add practices to our lives to help grow our faith. He supports his claims with his examples and with scripture. He gives the reader things to do right now – ways to start small with direction to take it to the next level with time.
A couple of days ago, chapter was “Comfortably Comfortable.” The subject? The importance of self denial in spiritual growth.
The first two images in the post below are our little guy at two months. The rest are him in all his ten-month-old glory.
When you’re the firstborn, you get your three month, six month, nine month …. and every milestone in between, tirelessly documented by parents frothing with pride and joy. And rightly so. Kids are amazing miracles. 
When I’m editing my photos so that the sheer magnitude of them won’t take down our desktop computer, it kills me to delete those blurry shots or ones where every child but one is blinking – and that one child is in the middle of the zombie faces beaming, but there is no way to crop out everyone else so that it looks normal.
Problems of a perfectionist? Perhaps.
In the name of doing things partway rather than not at all, I wanted to give a nod to our youngest, who is not at any official milestone right now (except that everything a baby does in its first two years is amazing).
In our second apartment, year two of our marriage, we painted feature walls in the living room, kitchen, dining room, and master bedroom. Our ground floor apartment got little light and had all white walls. Before the feature walls, our living space was both dark and stark. Not a good combination.
My favorite wall was the orange faux finish we did in the dining room. I don’t really like orange, so I don’t know why I ended up going with that color, but it was rich and deep, and made me happy every time I walked past it. I was sad to paint it over with primer when our lease was up at the end of the year and we moved into our first home.
While I miss my orange feature wall, I could never make myself do anything so bold in this house. Each time I paint a room, it means my kids have to fend for themselves for 24-48 hours, which they don’t mind, but means that laundry, dishes, and cooking aren’t happening. Plus, my energy waxes and wanes, and if I paint it and hate it, I may not have the get-up-and-go to fix it for months.
I don’t know about you, but for me, winters have gotten harder as each year has gone by. My body and mind suffer from the lack of light. Many times when I start getting my energy back in the spring, it is spent working to bring more light to the house to help with the dark next winter. I paint lighter colors on the walls, add timers for my lights (the poor man’s smart bulb), and make new pillow covers and quilts.
During one of these nesting pushes, I painted two walls in the gold living room a shade of cream, thinking it would help bring more light in. I had already painted my dining room blush pink and loved it, and figured this would have the same effect.
My two middle littles are often up to no good. At 5 and 6 and a half, they are always scheming and dreaming, and don’t always think about the consequences. Consequences of things like, pouring water in a trash can with apple cores and diapers in it and letting it sit for a week (talk about a home brew), or drawing tiny people with speech bubbles above their heads that say “Mom” on the trim work all over the house, or bringing a little container full of bugs into the house and losing track of it.
Then, sometimes they come up with fantastic ideas. Like the quiet time last week when they completely detailed their room, including dumping out drawers, refolding everything, and putting it away in neat little stacks. I was so impressed, I told their dad. He then congratulated them and offered to have them organize his drawers for a little cash.
Pictured above at ten months, on our first trip to Tobago.
She was my first daughter.
And she’s always kept us on our toes. As a baby, she refused to nap for fear she might miss something. She was walking at eight months old, an impossibly tiny creature on two legs.
By a year, she was a confident runner. And she still takes that same courageous, energetic spirit into whatever she’s tackling next. Unless she doesn’t want to.
She simultaneously fascinates us and infuriates us.
When we went out when she was a toddler, I was sure she would find another family she liked better than us and leave with them. Starting as a small person, she could always find someone she knows in a crowd.
Once, when we were at Jones Beach, she disappeared. I was terrified until I found her a little ways down the beach playing with a family she knew from her grandparent’s church. On a huge beach, in the summer, she found familiar faces.
Now, my fears are more along the lines of how we’ll survive her teen years. 
She is in turns amazingly helpful and completely maddening. We often marvel how such a dramatic, fantastic, social person came from two introverted homebodies. I’m sure she will continue to amaze us.
And drive us nuts.
We love this kid.
