Holding onto precious moments

This blog entry will mesh the highlights of the past several days. On Saturday when I got Julian up, the first thing he wanted to do was read his book. He's been bringing a book up to bed with him now and so this morning we read The Poky Little Puppy. This is one of his current favorites. He also likes Richard Scarry's "Best Word Book Ever". Then we went downstairs for our Saturday morning pancakes and of course he has to get a few tastes of the batter and a couple chocolate chips.

Something I'll add here that I've forgotten about is another little milestone. He's started to say "diaper, diaper" when he has a messy diaper. Someone told me this is the first step towards starting potty training! It's great too for us to know right when he needs to be changed. It was a reminder to me of how he is growing and developing so fast. I have to hold onto his precious moments and savor them!

Later in the day we went to the Verona library again. He played with the trains and then saw a wall hanging with Clifford and he kept saying "Clifford, Clifford?" so I found him a Clifford book. He was so content sitting in the chair just "reading" to himself which gave me time to browse for more books for him.

This was unusual, today he didn't want his afternoon nap. Normally when I say it's nap time or time to go night night he heads for the stairs but today he just wanted his book and was a little fussy. He did finally go down. While he napped I did my menu planning for the upcoming week. This takes a good chunk of time but it has really worked out well for us to have all our meals for the week planned out in advance.

My quiet time today was 1 Samuel 14 where we meet Jonathan, Saul's son. He shows great faith in God in going with his armor bearer to look for a sign that God will fight for them and God did. They had a great victory that day. Jonathan's faith is encouraging. He stepped out trusting that God would assist them in what they were up to. I also took some time to read a card I got from a friend who referred to Psalm 103. I looked it up and took some time to read it and take it in. One of the lines is "Praise the Lord and forget not all his benefits." I took that verse and just started listing the benefits the Lord has blessed me with in my life. It was good to sit and take some time to think about that. There really are so many ways he has blessed us. Healed of depression, enjoying Julian, able to be a stay at home mom. Those are just a few. This was a good psalm to read and just let the words penetrate.

Sunday (Valentines Day) was really just another day for us! We get each other cards but other than that we don't do anything special. We're a little boring I think! I didn't think of it this year in time, but next year I'll do something special for Julian, my little valentine. On this morning Julian wanted me to read his Richard Scarry word book when he woke up.

I was reading 1Samuel 17 today. This is the famous story of David and Goliath. I wasn't sure if I'd get anything new out of it but I did. I saw David having more confidence in God's word than in the opinion's of others. This one stands out to me since I often fall into the pattern of putting too much value in other's opinions or what other people think. David knew God had brought him victory in the past defeating a lion and a bear while he was caring for the sheep so he trusted that God would bring him victory over Goliath. Saul even offered David heavy armor but since he wasn't used to it he refused it. It also struck me that David had an intense anger that this Philistine had been allowed to defy God for the past 40 days and no one had done anything about it. David's heart burned and he used simple things (sling shot & smooth rock) and faith in God and Goliath was defeated in an instant. I admire his passion here.

It was really nice outside so Julian and I went for a walk around the neighborhood in his little car. It was so nice and refreshing to get out in the fresh air and the warm sun was shining so bright. I can't wait until it gets a little warmer and we can take more walks like this.

Later in church we met up with a couple who are from France and they lead our small group which meets Tuesday nights. We're studying Luke and this week the focus was on Jesus reaching out to the poor, the marginal or outcasts of society. The challenge to us was to see if we're doing that in our own life and if not to see how we can. After church we ate at McDonald's. Their 10 & 12 year old girls were very taken with Julian and he didn't mind the attention a bit. They enjoyed entertaining and watching him which allowed the grown ups to have some catch up and planning time for our small group.

Monday was a lazy day. We watched Elmo and the firehouse in the morning. In my time alone reading Samuel, the study spent time looking at the love of Jonathan (Saul's son) for David. He was selfless in this love, not a love that expects something in return. I saw into my heart here how with Lanty I'll often have the good intention of doing something loving, but then if it's not acknowledged I will sometimes get upset. So there I'm expecting something in return. I see that I do this with other people in my life too, not just Lanty. It's a challenge to just love like that, without expectation.

I had a fun time of coloring with Julian in the afternoon. We also watched Veggie Tales "God Made You Special" and something about it touched my heart. I think sometimes I just need to be reminded of that!

Later we went to the YMCA where they know us well and when we picked him up one of the ladies said Julian was really talkative today. Someone said "Wow, he's just a baby, he's not supposed to talk that much!" We're hearing that more often lately, that Julian talks a lot. We did some more practice with Julian walking/following us but today he was all about checking things out and going slow so we had to pick him up a couple times to keep him going.

Something cute was while getting ready for bed he kept pulling off his socks so he could try to put them on. I would encourage him and then he would get the sock over his big toe and look up at me with this wide grin like "there". He'd keep doing that and just practiced and practiced. Then he also tried to do a little bit of helping get his pajama pants on too. This is new.

Finally to Tuesday. At Toddler Time at the library the big thing today was when the librarian brought out a parachute. We had a great time lifting it up and down, bouncing balls on it, then holding it up so the kids could stand underneath it. Julian had fun.

I didn't have fun checking out at the counter. The woman was pretty cold and I won't get into it but we went back and forth about a fine on a damaged book that I was already aware of. Well I wasn't able to just let it go and I was stewing over it and on the way to the car a curse word squeaked out and of course who says what I just said but Julian. Yikes! My bad. My heart was so hard in my anger and it wasn't until later when I got home that I was able to turn it over to the Lord and ask forgiveness for that.

We went to "our" library in the afternoon (we've been library hopping!) and hung out for a little bit. This library is the one closest to us, right in our neighborhood but it has the least amount of "kid stuff". I found some fun movies for Julian and had a few things on hold to get.

Later in the day I was touched by something my friend told me. She'd been struggling the week before and asked for prayer so Lanty and I were praying for her. She said it was amazing how she was having these negative thoughts and kept repeating them over and over and felt stuck and was really down, then after those two days Lanty and I were praying she felt it lift, it just went away. She said for her it was really a testimony of the power of prayer, and of reaching out to others when we need help. That was good counsel.