A favour

When you have finished reading this post, please say a little prayer for some friends of ours from medical school. They have a two year old daughter and several weeks ago gave birth to twins - a boy and a girl. They were born prematurely, and today, after battling medical complications since his birth, their baby boy died. Our friends know Jesus, and know that they will see their son again one day. But right now they are devastated. Please pray for them - now, and if God brings them to your mind again later. Thanks so much.

Shamelessly braggin' on my bebe

On Saturday my baby girl turned 18 months old. Nothing accelerates life like having a child grow up in front of you. There is definitely a part of me that, like every other mother I know, wishes life would slow down a little so they could keep their babies babies for longer. But I am also so excited to continue seeing Anna grow up. Every new stage she reaches becomes my favourite one yet. Of course, as she grows and becomes more independent our wills clash from time to time; I have definitely had my fair share of frustrating days! But overall Anna is a very settled, laid-back and obedient child and I can't think of a better life than getting to stay home and take care of her.

I am totally floored by how smart and awesome she is. (Here comes the brag.) I know every mom is amazed at what their child achieves, but I am really amazed! I made a list of her words over the weekend - and there are over 50 words that she uses consistently and correctly, plus five or six signs. Yup, fifty. She can name blue, green and red, and she holds her crayons exactly the way we hold pens to write (rather than the fist-grab). She can point to her eyes, ears, nose, hair, head, cheeks, hands, belly, belly-button, bum-bum, pee-pee, knees, hands, feet and toes, and can say all of those except belly and belly-button. She knows when something is hot or cold (warm is still kind of tricky!), she tells me when her hands are sticky, and when I forget to pray when we finish reading our bed-time Bible story she picks up my hands and holds them to remind me. She tells me when she pees in her diaper (which I don't honestly think is a sign of early potty-training because she's terrified of sitting on the potty the couple times I've let her try it!). She has overcome her crippling fear of the dog next door and now waves 'hi' to him when she hears him barking. She enjoys 'helping' me clean and do housework (a baby-wipe will keep her busy cleaning for a good 15 minutes!), and loves getting to feed her fish and water our plant every day. She loves Clover and Riah, and asks to see "Baby Cro-Cro" at least half a dozen times a day. She gets so excited about going to the library and picking out her own books, and her new favourite game is playing 'Ring-a-ring-a-rosie'. She has recently started playing pretend with her toys; bringing me her Ted and asking me to put a pair of her socks on him, giving her sippy cup to Elmo, helping Cheetah blow his nose when she has a cold herself... I love it!

I am so very thankful for my daughter, and so proud of what she has achieved in the first 18 months of her life. I love getting to share and experience her view of the world, and I'm grateful for her little reminders to me that acorns are fun to pick up and that airplanes in the sky are amazing. Few things make me happier than feeling her little arms squeeze my neck or hearing her running down the hallway saying "Mama!"

She is first God's child, but I'm so glad she's ours too!

Anna's nature walk

In the spirit of autumnal exploration, Anna and I went for a nature walk this morning. It was so fun! The edge of our neighbourhood borders a little wooded area, so we set off to explore fall colours and plants.

First we collected some acorns and talked about their little hats....



... and decided to try one on! We learned that acorns wear smaller hats than toddlers.




Then we looked at different kinds of stones, and found two that looked "same-same" :)






And then we found a big stick to stir the leaves with and listened to their crunchy sounds :)



And it turns out that children aren't the only ones that can learn things on nature walks. Not having grown up with the beast that is poison ivy, I haven't learned very well to watch for it when playing outside. I do know it has the characteristic three leaves, however, and half way through our walk I realised we were playing quite close to a lot of pretty red leaves - that all came in clumps of three! I've only ever seen green poison ivy in the summer so I wasn't sure what it would look like in the fall. I pulled out my iPhone and consulted google, and sure enough .... "Poison ivy leaves turn a vivid red in the fall. It is usually one of the first plants to change." (Good info here)

We scrubbed our hands, took baths and the laundry is on! So hopefully if it was in fact poison ivy that's the last we'll hear of it. Watch this space....!