A Milestone I Hadn't Anticipated

I am truly sad over this.. The shoe you see above, The Ked's T-Strap Daphne shoe was the first shoe I ever bought Emma.  It has been my standard for almost 7 years.  It's the all around multi-purpose little girl shoe.  It can be worn with jeans and little dresses.  It matches everything.  It's leather and washable.  One of those must haves for a little girl.   So Emma came to me the other day with her Keds and showed me that the velcro had torn off one of them.

So since today was a half day, we headed out to buy our little dependable standard.. And we came home shoeless. Because they no longer make them in her size.  And when I looked them up to make sure, I realized it is called a "toddler" shoe.  When did she stop being a toddler?  And how much damage have I done to her by dressing her in a toddlers shoe until she's almost 7?  Really I'm lucky that she has a tiny foot.  Most people met this milestone long before this age.  I seriously don't know where to go from here.  I need a shoe that isn't a tennis shoe but can be worn to play in...  Forget Hannah Montana!  I blame Keds for making my little girl grow up too fast!   I will be pulling the baby book out now to look at over a huge tub of icecream.. Oh how my heart hurts!

Shoe suggestions would be much appreciated

Blessings,

Dana

Thoughts from the One Changing the Diapers

In no particular order...

-- I spent some time this week with my friend Christine. She's from Canada. She fascinates me. I know, be careful right? If I spend time with people from other places, I might learn to think outside the box..

--Busy weekend ahead-- *Science day at Emma's school tomorrow. *Kenny Payne, long friend and missionary from Ukraine will be coming tomorrow and spending the weekend with us and speaking about the work that he's doing at the orphanage in Ukraine at church on Sunday. *Meal and service at the local mission on Sat. evening. * Service activity with the kids at church on Sunday morning..

-- I do not pride myself in being busy. It just happens often, that a lot of good, busy things fall at the same time and there is nothing that can be moved.

-- Boundries-- I do often find myself busy with things I shouldn't be. I don't understand why I feel like I'm responsible for making other's dreams come true. I think deep down my need to do that is a fear that God won't do what I think He should. I'm pretty sure that God responds to that by saying, "you were made in my image. I was not made in yours".


-- I fear that my children will inherit the above trait from me. I want much better for them.

-- My sister-in-law, Jan, recently recommended the book, Boundries: by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. I ordered it.. She's right. I need it.

-- I Love God, so passionately much.. Love and trust are not synonyms. I long to fully trust Him.

--there is a difference in bi-partisanship and compromise..
Bi-partisanship, sets opinions aside to do what's best for the whole.. Compromise tries, but fails, to meet everyone's desires and succeeds at meeting nothing.

--I think I'm a member of a bi-partisanship church.. for these purposes, see my definition above, not any other you may have heard.. I think our government could learn a lot from them.

-- My church is the closest thing I've ever seen to what I think God wants the church to be.. In one way, I hope they see that about themselves. In another way, I hope they never do.

--I'm glad we don't call ourselves a "bi-partisan church" the word is becoming tainted.. I'm sure it won't be long before it makes me nauseated to hear it.

--Our neighbor lost her mother unexpectedly this week. My heart aches for her and I can't get her off of my mind. I don't even know her that well but from the little interaction we've had, her family has come up a lot.. I can tell she loves them deeply. Please pray for her.

-- I haven't talked to my mother very much this week. Maybe I'm trying to lure her to visit.. When I did talk to her I rambled on about how I was born in a generational gap and that's why I have such a hard time figuring myself out..

-- Figuring myself out--- self-reflection is good... Too much self-reflection is actually self-centeredness. I feel like I've been teetoring on that edge lately.

--I want everyone to like me. I also want to not want everyone to like me.

--God couldn't have picked a better mate for me.. We compliment each other well.. It did not start out that way. Time and endurance has made that possible.

--My children are no where near perfect.. I thank God for that.. But I do think they are a perfect mix of Adam and me.. I would not change them if I could.

--I had a serious conversation this week with a kid that was in our youth group at one time. Kid isn't a good description because she's actually a beautiful adult. But still, I feel an indescribable closeless to those kids. I think it's because I witnessed a very raw part of their lives. It blesses me when they share it with me still today. I hope that continues to happen for the rest of my life.

--I think potty training Chloe will be hard.. I'm not really sure because I haven't really given it an honest try.. She'll soon be old enough to change her own diapers. I think it's part of my anti-mommy pressure stance. That and I don't want to have to think of a new name for my blog.

Blessings,

Dana

Sad, sad, sad... How did I get here?

I had to take a break from the Disney World posts to share a sad, sad realization that I have come to.

Here recently I have found it has become increasing difficult to deny the fact that I'm an adult. For so long, I found myself in situations when I was buying or selling a house, making a decision about a preschool, purchasing life insurance, spending the night in the hospital with my child, wearing the vomit that put my child in the hospital, and etc, there has been this overwhelming feeling: "I really don't feel like I'm old enough to be handling this, shouldn't my mom and dad be at least watching over my shoulder to make sure I'm doing it right"? More recently, those thoughts have shifted to, "how did I get to this place". Very recently, a conversation that I had with Emma drove the point home and I declared it official. I AM OLD. There is no someone that is 70 being older than me. No Freshman or Senior status. We all have to feed our kids, pay the bills and be concerned with what's going on with our government. WE-ALL-ARE-JUST-OLD. Deal with it and move on. In a way it's a liberating realization as I no longer have to fear getting old. But, this conversation deemed it official and that there is no turning back.

I'm pretty certain that I should be in therapy over the fact that I find it liberating to be self-deprecating the way I do but there is something so freeing, to me, to know that I've set low expectations of myself. Like I said, "in need of therapy". But, none the less, I shall share one of those stories that I really should keep to myself. But hey, life is nothing if you can't laugh at yourself right?

Emma was supposed to dress up for career day at school the other day. Now, even though I would never choose another path for myself, I put up a strong resistence to Emma simply wanting to go as a mother. Now don't get me wrong, I think the job I'm doing is the most important job I'll ever do. But I found myself tossed around in the throws of wanting so much more for my child than what I am. This really isn't the sad part. It actually was very sweet. So after offering up every career that I could think of, every costume in our dress up box: doctor, dancer, teacher, pirate... She was set on being a mommy. So we decided that this would be the one exception that she would be able to take a baby doll to school. And then came the decision of what to wear. And this is how that conversation went.

Me: Now, we must figure out what you will wear. We could grease your hair up, put on a pair of yoga pants that you really shouldn't be wearing and send you barefooted.
Emma: [Looks at me in her typical, come on mom look] Hey, can I wear one of your fancy dresses that I use to dress up in?
Me: NO
Emma: Why not?
Me: because they are not dresses, they're night gowns (IE lingerie)
Emma: Oh, well then why don't you ever wear them?

GRREAT... I'm that mom.

And, to add insult to injury, she wouldn't even wear an apron saying, "why would a mom wear an apron? That's what a cook wears".

She settled on a simple shirt with a feux camisole underneath, a pair of blue jeans and tennis shoes and a non-greasy ponytail. Which I must agree was so uninterestingly me. I guess I've managed to pull it off well enough to make her want that life. I have a sneaky suspicion that she has no plans of wearing an apron either but, is quite certain that she'll wear tons of fancy night gowns. I was too, when I was six.

Blessings,

Dana

October Family Photos

My computer cord had one too many pulls from my kids and now it won't come on. I will be limited for a few days to computer use in the mornings and evenings which really isn't that bad of an idea anyway.

We had a great Halloween. Chloe refused to wear her costume but you'll see from the photos that we came up with a pretty creative idea of how to deal with that and we now have a great picture to put in her senior ad when she graduates high school.

Emma had a different idea of a character that she wanted to be every day for about a month but she finally landed on Pippi Longstocking.

Since Adam needs to get off to work, I thought I'd quickly throw up a link to our October photos in my smugmug account. I think I need to start watermarking my photos anyway, considering there is a painting of my children being sold on ebay. You can see that here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=300362744554&Category=60437 weird...

Edit: The auction has been ended on ebay. You can still see the painting if you click on the link and scroll to the bottom. For those of you that wanted to know how I knew about it, Adam's mom had posted the picture on her facebook page. The lady messaged Lynn with the link to the auction and told her not to feel obligated to buy it but of course, Lynn did so she made bid on it. When I told Lynn that I thought it was unethical if not illegal, she messaged the girl and asked her to remove it and she was very kind and removed it, no questions asked. I don't think I would have minded so much if she had done a private auction but I didn't like it so much that Lynn was trying to buy a painting of my girls to keep someone else from buying it. But the lady is an artist and she's saw an opportunity and acted before she thought about it. People are hurting right now and sometimes, desperate times push people to desperate measures. All is well, no one was hurt.

Until we meet again, enjoy the pictures. Perhaps I'll get some extra things done around the house.





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