Categories
Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

Catching up with Rebecca/Suwwy (and her robots) + 20 gratefuls

And my first twenty things to be grateful for:
Yesterday:

  1. Rain—don’t have to water the garden! (Borrowed from my friend Elisa, who’s also participating!)
  2. My garden (okay, my sugar snap peas) is growing.
  3. Ryan just cut both yards and they look very neat.
  4. Hayden’s drawings—today he drew me an awesome cow 😀 .
  5. Getting things done with the rest of the Executive Committee of my writers’ group.
  6. Chopped!
  7. Chatting with my sister, which I missed today.
  8. Contact lenses and glasses.
  9. Already having my pineapple CUPside-down CAKES, done and posted on Wayward Girls’ Crafts for this week!
  10. Sleeping in! (relatively)

And today’s:

  1. Naps, even if in theory only.
  2. Rachel kicking with delight!
  3. Checking things off my to do list (like this post!).
  4. Putting the kids to bed early-ish.
  5. That Rebecca’s hair will grow. (See last picture.)
  6. Potty training! (And being done!)
  7. Finishing off the cookies we made last night—no more temptation.
  8. Left overs and Ryan reheating them.
  9. Tuna salad sandwiches with celery, making me think of my mom.
  10. Hayden including his sisters in playing with his blocks. And his blogs. But more about that next week.

One day—it was a Friday, but that doesn’t matter—there was a little girl—and that does matter—learning to use the potty. And as she sat on the potty, she perched her fingers on her knees, with her pointer fingers out.

“Dees are my wobots,” she informed us. So these are Rebecca’s Robots:

(Her hands. Also note the plate of shredded cheese, which is pretty much all the child will eat for dinner.)

Her robots talk and help her do all kinds of things (being her hands). They love their mommy robots (my hands) especially.

Some cute things Rebecca has said lately:

  • Teese neveh wive in cups! Teese wive in bowws! (Cheese never lives in cups! Cheese lives in bowls!)
  • Wohwa’kates: roller skates
  • Yeh weww: yeah, well (at the beginning of a sentence)
  • Beebee: I’m not even sure what the exact translation of this would be (baby?), but it’s something she says a lot when she’s playing with Pinky, her stuffed animal. It’s either what she called Pinky, or what Pinky calls her. Or maybe both.

And some more:

Another favorite game is MontahINK! (Monsters, Inc.) Rebecca is Suwwy (Sully) and Pinky is either Boo or Mike ‘Akow’ki. I’m usually whatever Pinky isn’t, though sometimes Rachel gets that honor. Hayden has played Mike and Wannaw (Randall). Once I was even Wannanoos (Mr. Waternoose).

Her hair, obviously, spends a lot of time in her face, so today I did this (she cried, but she’s come to accept it):

I’m not really thrilled with how I did, but cutting my kids’ hair too short is something I’m good at.

What do you think? What are you grateful for? Isn’t Rebecca pretty much the best little girl in the world?

Categories
Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

Motherhood: opportunities to love

One of my dear friends enjoyed a transcendent-ordinary moment of motherhood the other day. It was an average day, but when her daughter found a new game, she took that opportunity to enjoy her daughter instead of focusing on what she needed to get done right! that! minute! (Ten guesses what I tend to do!)

You can read all about the completely adorable game her daughter invented, and how my friend embraced it. Elisa concludes:

It struck me that this sort of thing is exactly what makes motherhood worthwhile in the day to day ordinariness of routine: taking those fleeting opportunities to love.

And I couldn’t say it better.

How can you celebrate the ordinary by taking the opportunity to love today?

Photo by Tiffanie