Sissy is TWO!!!!

Though many, many “flashbacks” are long overdue, allow me to momentarily skip over the last nine months, because… Sissy is TWO! 

At her two year check-up, Sissy weighed-in at 27 pounds and is 34.5 inches tall.  She has certainly made up for her slim start, putting on three pounds in six weeks over the summer! Unlike the Goose, who has been a string bean from the day she was born, Sissy is built more like a typical toddler… except for her lack of hair.  She finally has enough hair for a bow, and her thin blond locks are starting to curl. 

Though she still has a gluten-free, dairy-free diet, Sissy LOVES to eat!  Her favorite foods are corn, field peas, green beans, limas, rice, beef, chips, and of course… “snack bunnies” (gluten-free snickerdoodle cookies shaped like bunnies), hence the bunny-shaped cake.

Sissy’s favorite activities include swinging, cooking, playing with babies, building with blocks, playing with cups of any kind … and her newest love – coloring.  Unfortunately, she likes to color things other than paper… the table, chairs, floor, and with the sidewalk chalk she enjoys coloring herself and others. 

She loves to play anything with her big sister, and does not like it when she is gone to school.  Though they sometimes aggravate each other, they both prefer each other’s company to playing alone.  The goose doesn’t mind at all… she enjoys instructing Sissy on how to play “the right way,” dressing her up, and playing with all the baby and toddler toys, of which I am daily told… “We SHARE... They used to me mine you know.” This is not always the case… about the ownership or the sharing, but for the most part, they do share and play well together.

 

Speaking of sharing, Sissy doesn’t seem to mind at all that The Goose plays more with her birthday gifts than she does. She was far more interested in the gift bags (aka “purses”), packing peanuts, and musical cards than the gifts.  Though she loves her new babies, tractor, chalk, stickers, and even her own tiny doll house, we were all amused at her excitement over the little things. 

 

 

 

The Goose very sweetly came up with her own gift for Sissy… a blue fuzzy “ball” that she earned at school last year.  Sissy has had her eye on the “warm and fuzzy” and the Goose noticed.   She put it in a box made from a toilet paper tube, wrapped it carefully with fabric scraps, decorated it with feathers, and wrote/drew a card to go with it.  I believe it was the most thoughtful gift Sissy received… and I think she understood that too… She would have been content to stop with the gift opening then and just “play ball.” It really is the little things in life…

 

 

This little thing has grown up so quickly… She is a feisty girl, much like her mother I’m afraid.  But she is a joy! 

 

 

Just to make matters confusing for blog readers… Sissy calls the goose, “Sissy” which has recently changed to “Sassy,” appropriately enough.  Although, truth be told, I think the original Sissy is going to be the sassier of the two.  (Don’t worry… for blog purposes, they will remain Sissy & The Goose.)

FLASHBACK... Winter 2013

In the spirit of recording these pearls for posterity, here we continue our stroll through the last nine months of unblogged life with our winter highlights...

Baby cow feeding, petting, and naming...
Dressing up.... and Cabinet peek-a-boo...
Sissy's first snow... Hide-out making...
and a little mess making too! 

The Goose LOVED checking on the baby cows, petting them, and even getting to feed them a bottle.
I think her favorite part was naming them... Here she is feeding "Dusty"

As much as Sissy LOVES the cows... she does NOT love seeing them up close!
She wouldn't get near the mamas or the babies without Bobby holding her, and she didn't dare pet them.

Anxiously awaiting feeding time at the barn...

Though she didn't like giving REAL cows a bottle, Sissy did enjoy giving feeding her stuffed cow a bottle...
her methods are a little unorthodox, but oh well!

 

 

 

The Goose had to dress up like a one-hundred-year-old for the 100th day of school...
We all thought she was spot-on, and though she approved the outfit the night before
the morning of, she was none too happy with her attire... oh well!  It was hilarious!

 

 

We did not expect snow, and certainly didn't think it would last,
so when the flakes started coming down, we rushed outside to let Sissy feel her first snow!  
Little did we know... we ended up with 3" in less than two hours...

Poor Sissy had no mittens... but she didn't care a bit!

rabbit tracks!

Evidently, it's never too cold to swing...

Since the snow stuck around another day,
Mommy had time to make some mittens for cold-hands-Sissy

The Goose's newfound favorite activity is creating "hide-outs" ...
Since there was daily drama at the disassembly of these structures,
we created a permanent hide-out space in her closet... safe from pugs and little sisters.
She liked it so much, she even fell asleep there...

Nothing beats bathroom supplies for a little toddler fun...

Ah well... at least she was entertained while I got a shower!

 

 

FLASHBACK... Christmas 2012

Though you may have read the story of our strange Christmas, somehow the photos never made it up.  Here you can relive a little Christmas in September with the highlights from our festivities...

These adorable outfits were lovingly made by Jeremy's mom...
They liked them so much they took their best pictures EVER!  It was a Christmas miracle!!!

Celebrating Christmas Eve with cousins... and crazy girls after Christmas lunch with Granny

 

Excitedly examining Jesus' gifts...

 

She's officially a rock star now with a pink guitar

After much debate and lengthy searching in the Target toy section, The Goose chose this Elmo phone as her gift for Sissy.

Showing off their favorite gifts from Christmas morning...
the long-awaited McKenna (American Girl of the Year) and Sissy's prized giant ball. 

All dressed-up for post-Christmas celebrating at Gamma's...

Thoughtful Thursdays: Learning Real Love

Ten years ago today, I was celebrating Singles Awareness Day (S.A.D.) as the unlucky RA on duty at P. College, for I clearly had no lovey-dovey plans to celebrate V-Day. Somehow, the few of us unlucky-in-love folks ended up eating “Chinese” food and renting the very romantic (read: terrible) Mel Gibson movie “Signs” (If you’ve never seen it, don’t. All I recall is something about aliens and crop circles… but I digress). I never liked Valentines Day (and yes, if you are a faithful blog reader you will note a pattern… I don’t like many holidays… some call me Scrooge, perhaps rightfully so, but I digress again). Little did I know that I actually spent that SAD day with the same person I am spending it with a decade later. You see, ours was not love at first sight. To tell the truth, I’m not sure when love came. Our story would never make the Hallmark cut...  I can’t even remember the first time we met, but someone may or may not have been dressed as Danny Ford at an awful 80s party… Our second Valentines brought our engagement, which also has no elaborate, sappy story to accompany the event… it was cold and raining… the sole of my shoe split so my feet were soaked and frigid… any well-made plans were more-or-less ruined... I’m not sure, but I think the first time I ever got flowers from this boy was when I was in labor with the Goose... Ours is not a romance novel...And I couldn’t be happier.

I have learned more about real love in the last decade than I ever imagined. At our wedding we heard those familiar words of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things endures all things.

LOVE NEVER ENDS.

And while I have learned much about this amazing love that God has for us, I fear that all too often I have failed at showing it… I have been impatient… arrogant… and quite irritable. Yes, I still have much to learn. Mine is but a poor reflection of this love.  Though I treasure these words and hope to learn from them, I have found our love to be a bit more like the love Paul describes in the third chapter of Colossians… This love of mutual submission (a word we all may be a bit too afraid of and offended by) that binds together, yet sometimes admonishes and has complaints… this love of learning to live together with those who are different and growing together as we learn to live like Christ... this love of forgiveness… THIS is REAL LOVE. Not a romance novel. Not a Hallmark card. This love is work… a constant choice to place another before my own selfish desires... to admit wrongs… to seek forgiveness… to learn patience… to grow together as we grow closer to God... And I wouldn’t trade that for roses and romance any day.

Thank you, Danny Ford, for your patience with my irritable impatience, and for joining me on the journey to live in real love. Here’s to many more decades of it.

young love... 2003

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. ~Col.3:12-15



Thoughtful Thursdays: Thorns

The parable of the sower… you’ve probably heard it a time or two, or read it in a gospel or three (Matt. 13:1-23; Mark 4:1-19; Luke 8:4-15), but where do you put yourself in this story? Are you the sower of seed? Are you the seed in the good soil, producing much fruit for God? I imagine most of us identify with one of those productive and positive roles. Very few of us would like to admit that we might be seeds who have fallen in the rocks or amongst the weeds.

As I came across this familiar passage in my reading, I was struck by one verse:
And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. ~Mark 4:18

Even as I strive to live for Christ, I fear I find myself all too often in the thorns… distracted by the “cares of the world” and the tasks of my everyday life… desiring more… perhaps not more wealth or things, but certainly more comfort… drawn to jealousy of another’s success or calling. All these things and more creep in almost unseen, and as they grow, my growth slows. My faith may be present but left unchecked, these thorns of distraction and earthly desire keep me from living the life I am called to – a life of joyful service to God.

I think if we are honest, we find ourselves in the weeds a bit more often than we would like. Though we may skim over this parable thinking we have nothing else to learn, perhaps we should visit it again and ask God where we are in this story. What might the cares of our world be, and how are they distracting us? What is it we truly desire, and what petty desires might we have that are getting in our way? How are we deceived by wealth? And if we find ourselves in the weeds, maybe we need to ask the master gardener to pull up the thorns in our lives so that we can grow fully and fruitfully for Him.

Thoughtful Thursdays: We Wish You A Strange Christmas

How was your Christmas?
Get that question very often over the last three weeks? Over the course of these conversations we swap stories of families, travels, illness, chaos, exhaustion, & sometimes sadness (I have yet to hear a story of peace, quiet, and exuberance). While most folks answer, “Good! Busy… But Good.” My reply is simply, “Strange.”

This year, my mother got sick a week before Christmas and stayed sick… spending her Christmas morning in the ER finding out that she had pneumonia. Thankfully, my version of the “flulike virus” only lasted two days, leading up to a Christmas Eve rush like never before. We had four, no, five separate Christmas celebrations in 48 hours in order to accommodate schedules, children, the elderly, and infirm. It was strange… but strange isn’t always bad. My strange Christmas led me to ponder what a “normal” Christmas could or should be…

Every year Wes and I try to do less… less on the schedule… less hustle-and-bustle… less extravagance… less waste… less gifts… just less of everything except Jesus and family. Every year around January 2nd we sit down to a finally less messy house filled with much more than we deserve and ponder how we can try so hard to make things less complicated and stressful (ahh, the irony...) and somehow always end up so busy, crazy, overwhelmed, and tired.

This year during our post-holiday review, we came to the conclusion that there is no “normal” Christmas. Initially, our conclusion only applied to the stereotypical “normal” our society fools us into seeking… peaceful children in adorable, clean pajamas playing with their toys while mom and dad sit back and watch, sipping their coffee and smiling at the joy of it all… But now, I affirm this conclusion in a different way. There is no “normal” Christmas. There shouldn’t be. There is nothing normal about our Savior… not a “normal” birth… not a “normal” life… God the Son willingly took on lowly humanity… it was STRANGE. There is nothing normal about the gift he lavished upon us. AND there is nothing normal about our celebration of His birth, giving each other gifts and largely giving him nothing.

Yes, this year, our Christmas was strange for many reasons. Not only were the events which we couldn’t control strange, but we also did a few strange things on purpose… Like no mention of Santa (and certainly no elf on any shelf)... We have an advent buzzard to remind us of all the sin in the world and things that distract us from Jesus (but more on him another time)...  And, most importanly, the first person in our home to get a gift on Christmas morning was Jesus. We talked a lot this Advent about whose birth we celebrate and how we should and can give Jesus gifts on HIS birthday… it’s not very hard to do, He told us what he wanted (John13:34; Matt.22:37-29) and how to give it (Matt.25:34-40). And much to my surprise, neither girl so much as walked over to her own gifts before eagerly and joyfully examining everything Jesus got first. Strange… but wonderful.

As you settle back into the “normal” of your everyday life and routine, I urge you to ponder the strangeness of it all. How “normal” was your celebration? How would you change it? Could it be a little more strange this year? Don’t put it off until Advent rolls around again… think about it now. Christmas doesn’t have to be so “normal”… The coming of the Savior changed everything. It was certainly strange… but amazingly wonderful.

May your New Year bring about many wonderfully strange moments, may you share this strange grace with others, and may your next Christmas be far from “normal”… Strange even.

"Truly, I say to you, as you did it unto one of the least of these, you did it to me." ~ Matt.25:40