Spring: My New Fall

I was blessed to have been raised in a home that knew and loved Jesus. We went to church every Sunday and prayed every day, and Christian values were modeled for me in a way that didn't make it difficult at all for me to believe in God and live a life of faith. The thing about accepting Christ at the age of five, however, is that you sort of take the miracle of creation and grace and forgiveness for granted. I've never known anything else, so even though I knowingly and actively choose to believe every day, it's not often that I feel wowed or humbled by the power and presence of God.

This spring, however, has been a total spiritual rebirth for me. Historically, autumn has been my favorite season, but I honestly think that from now on, spring will hold that title. I've wanted to start a garden for a couple of years now, but this year, I actually did it. Kurt built me a beautiful raised bed in which to grow my veggies (which we will be referring to as "the ark" from now on, given it's size), and I started several of the veggies indoors from seed a few weeks ago...and they're growing. They were these hard little specs that I just pushed into some soil and now there are green shoots coming out of (almost) all of them. And the fact that there will be vegetables and fruits growing off of them within a few months that we will then consume is just astounding to me. This is not biological happenstance. This process of germination and cell division, for me, points directly to a Creator. I am watching them grow with almost as much eagerness and wonder as I followed Madelyn's inutero development, only I get to actually see it and it's much more immediate (and has a lot less nausea). Just amazing...

Baking Beauties

In an effort to stave off some serious cabin fever one blustery spring afternoon, I moved Maddie's little stool from the bathroom into the kitchen to see if she would like "helping" Mommy with some baking. She loved it, to put it mildly, and has been a regular fixture in the kitchen ever since. Yesterday, she and I whipped up some chocolate raspberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. As long as she has an ingredient in one hand and a measuring utensil in the other, she is pleased as punch and jabbers away while we mix and stir and sift and fold. I learned the hard way, however, that I'd better have a hand over the bowl at all times lest "1 teaspoon of salt" spontaneously turns into "1/2 cup of salt." "Savory" is not generally a word that should be used to describe cupcakes :)

Enjoying a pre-dinner cupcake that is the reward for two hours of baking!!

Eye Twitches

I recently called my sister for a quick medical consult (this will be her lot in life from now on, although we'll all try to keep any oddly located skin rashes for our paid physicians...). My left eye has been twitching pretty much constantly for the last several weeks. I don't really notice it until I sit still, but then the whole world just becomes, well, twitchy and it's all I can think about. Very annoying. And given that my personality lends itself quite easily to unnecessary and irrational worry, I was confident that I was going blind. Hence the call to my sister to see how quickly she would recommend I enroll in Braille school.

Her diagnosis was both relieving and distressing. I'm not going blind. But I am, evidently, exhausted. Apparently eye muscles are particularly sensitive to fatigue, and it's not uncommon at all to develop a temporary eye twitch when your body is depleted of sufficient rest. Why might this be, you ask? I am not in college nor do I work the graveyard shift. I don't even have a newborn in the house anymore. I do, however, have an otherwise adorable 18-month-old who has refused to sleep longer than a 2-3 hour stretch for at least three weeks (with the exception of two or three gloriously undisturbed nights, but as all of you parents know, this is not enough to fully catch up). I don't know what's going on. We've done all the troubleshooting we know to do, and I know that sometimes toddlers just go through spells when their sleep is routinely disturbed. But sadly, this has made for a very grumpy Maddie...and a very grumpy Mommy (Kurt is exhausted as well, but he should get an award for rallying to maintain his positivity).

Today, for example, Madelyn and I battled all day long (neither of us won, for the record). Conveniently, she has recently discovered this new little scream thing...almost like a tiny dog's yelp. She does this when she gets even the slightest bit frustrated or when she's asked to do something that she doesn't want to do, which evidently was ALL day long today. But the screaming is really only a warning to another recent discovery: hitting. My precious little girl with her kind eyes and her gentle hands hauled off and smacked me across my face five times today (not coincidentally, time outs have recently increased in our house as well). I did my best to remain calm and patient and remind myself that she's tired and experimenting with boundaries and just being a normal toddler. But it still hurt.

To add insult to injury, however: at one point after a bout of screaming and a stern reminder that we don't scream in this house and we use our words and listen to our mommy, she looked directly at me and walked over to the fridge where I had recently hung a crayon drawing of a sunflower that I made for her. She grabbed the drawing and walked over to the recycle bin and promptly stuffed the drawing in the bin...all the while looking right at me. Sigh. I suppose I should feel encouraged that she chose "recycle bin" over "garbage."

So all days aren't giggles and cuddles.

Twitch, twitch, twitch.

Big Baby Blues

(unfortunately, this picture needed to be removed)

Is she gorgeous, or what? If Kurt and I can manage to stick to our guns in the realm of discipline with those curls and big blue eyes, it will be nothing short of a miracle. As you can see, we added a stool to our bathroom, and Madelyn's latest obsession is washing her hands. And in case some of you are wondering, we don't always wash our hands naked in this house :) This happened to be just before bath time, and who can resist a baby-bum shot? Although evidently, Madelyn didn't quite find it as humorous as Kurt and me:

(unfortunately, this picture needed to be removed)