Selah's 2nd Birthday.

Dear Selah,

Well, today you turned two years old. Sometimes I forget that you are only two because you talk SO MUCH and you insist on doing anything and everything that the older children are doing. You even notice if they get pizza as a slice and yours is cut up. You won't be left behind. ha. But your determination is something that I adore about you. You are adventurous and funny. You are rough and tumble- loving to wrestle and be crazy. You are also very maternal and loving. You enjoy giving kisses and hugs. You could play with your baby dolls forever - chaning their diapers, getting them food, and singing them songs. You are all around wonderful and I am so incredibly blessed to be your mommy.

We began your morning with sweet rolls. As i gave you your plate you said, "For my birthday?" You are aware that today is a special day for you. I hope you know how special you are and how much I love you.

Over the past year you have grown so much - you learned how to walk... you learned how to talk. You have even started going potty on the toilet! You enjoy just about anything: except watching TV. You won't watch a show at all. You would much rather read... you read book after book. Your favorite books are Spot the dog books.... which is why you are having a spot the dog birthday! :)

My prayer for you is for good health (for some reason your health is continually on my heart). I pray that you grow up - always being healthy and strong. I pray that physically, spiritually, and emotionally you are protected by the Lord. I pray that you will be wise, beyond your years, and that you will always strive to make God-honoring choices in Your life. I pray you realize how special you are to your mommy and daddy and that you know that God made you to be the wonderful creation you are. Jesus Christ loves you so much that he willingly died for you so that you can spend eternity with Him. There is nothing more I desire for Your life than for You to come to know Him in such a deep way... I know that is still several years up the road, but I pray what you are hearing now at age two, will plant seeds that will take root and grow into a mature faith. We live in such a morally sad time... yet I know that God can still be at work and that you can still make choices in your life that will keep you in step with His Holy Word. I pray that you never conform to this world!

Over this past year you visited the beach for the first time - which you loved (all except the car ride). You enjoyed Trick-or-Treating as a care bear. Christmas time was fun and you moved into a new room with Havana. You also became a big sister for the first time-- and you are an excellent one. You are so aware of Asa and love to look out for him. I will never forget the time you told me. "Mama, Asa, spill." Which was your way of telling me that Asa had spit up on me.... I didn't even know it, but you were watching and you were aware.

You do a wonderful job singing, dancing, and laughing. You are always a party waiting to happen. You also are becoming a "stinker" in terms of that you know how to look at me when I am correcting you -- you give me this funny little look that makes me laugh. Stinker. ;)


Some of your new funny phrases are:

• Mama, look at me! 
• I am talking to daddy (when I respond to you, but you wanted daddy to) 
• Bye bye milk- I love you (what you say when you put your milk cup in the fridge).
• You can answer "why" questions with "because..."
• You also respond to my commands with "why" -- Selah, go sit down. "Why?" (never thought I would have to tell my one year old "because mama said so...") 
• You love saying "No way." and "Yes way."
• The other day I told your daddy, "it looks like it is going to rain." and you jumped in and said, "Yeah, I know." 
• You can sing all the words to "Jesus Loves Me" 
• I'm pretty sure your favorite number is 8 and your favorite color is blue! Those are always your choices and answers! :)
• In the car you will always ask me where everyone is and what they are doing. You are also good about calling for my attention and when I give it to you you whisper, "I wanna talk to daddy..." 
• Throughout all of today you kept saying, "because its my birthday "

What a "special special" you are sweet Selah. We love you soooo much. 

Mommy

A New Game

Tonight while we were outside:

Havana, "Do you want to play a new game?"
Me: "Sure, what game?"
Havana: "Jesus Died On the Cross."
Me: "Oh, how do you play that?"
Havana: "Well, I am Jesus and You, Asa, Selah, Jonah, Daddy, and Tucker will be my disciples."
Me: "okay"
(while she is telling me this, she climbs up onto our rock wall, puts her hands up, and "dies" on the cross")

Jason and I walk around asking if anyone has seen Jesus. We finally find "him" hanging on the cross. It was really all I could do to keep a straight face. We talked about how sad we were, but that we knew he had to die so that we could be with Him in heaven. The we burried Jesus.

"Three days later" we walked around and found the tomb empty. Havana, I mean Jesus... Had risen from the dead!

We played that game three times.

Then Jonah pretended to be Zacchaeus up in a tree.

My heart wanted to explode as I thought about how much my children are drawn to the Bible. I pray that these activities plant seeds in their heart that will grow into a deep, vibrant love relationship with their Creator. Our God is such a great God!

Sickly Spring.

Aside from Havana's stomach flu in January, we had a remarkably healthy winter. I'm thankful for that and am sure that the Lord was protecting us (it also helped, I'm sure, that we rarely left the house). However, we had a sickly spring.

It began the Thursday before Easter. I had come inside from taking trash out and I noticed Jonah was crying. I asked him if he was okay and thought that perhaps the show he was watching upset him. He said, "yes. I'm not crying." I smiled at him and said, "okay, buddy. But's it okay to cry." He kept insisting that he wasn't crying.

That night I told Jason about it and how I thought Jonah was trying to be all big and tough and not admit to crying. That night, he woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to snuggle. I remember laying there on the bedroom floor thinking how sweet Jonah was and how these middle of the night snuggles are priceless.

The next morning, when I went to wake him up his eye was sealed shut and he was in pain. Poor guy had pink eye. He truly hadn't been crying the day before.

I had never experienced eye as a mommy... let's just say it is horrible. You can't take the children anywhere because of the big, pink eye. Yet, they feel fine during the day so cabin fever sets in. They are up all night because their eyes hurt. It was a lot harder than I realized.

Of course it spread. Next to Selah, then to Havana, and then to Asa. We had two weeks where we were unable to go anywhere or do anything. It felt like two months.

 

Then, in early May, Strep throat hit. Selah woke up in the middle of the night with a fever. The entire next day she continued with it and we began to notice that she was drooling and putting her fingers down her throat. We started her on antibiotics the next day. The day after that was Mother's Day. Jason left for work around 4:30am and at 5:30am Jonah woke up with a high fever. So began his journey with it. We ended up just giving Havana antibiotics as well... just in case. Ha.

Jonah at 5:30AM on Mother's Day.

In early June I came down with a terrible cold. We thought it was related to allergies, but it wasn't. A day or two later I was feeling great and the children came down with it.

three sick kiddos hanging out in mama's bed.

Germs never stop. Ha. I did try hard to "redeem" these sick days... lots of snuggling. Special shows. Lots of grace. No one had the stomach flu and so I did okay.... praying these small doses of illness will help me have confidence to get through the next vomit episode in my house... which is my constant fear. ha.

Amazing Day...

As always, I am behind on this blog. I have a running list of posts to write for this blog... hopefully I will get to that soon. Today was such a special day, though, that I wanted to recap before I forgot:

A few weeks ago, I purchased tickets to hear Ann Voskamp speak at the north american christian convention. I have always wanted to go to the NACC and Jason was off of work so he could watch the children.
On my way to the convention, I prayed... I prayed for Jason and the children, I prayed for my experience, and I prayed that I would not "seek" to meet Ann. Back when i was involved in politics, I remember how I made my way to the front of the room to meet politicians. I didn't want to do that. I wanted this to be different. I felt a peace all morning.

I arrived and found a fairly close meter spot, but only had an hour and half worth of quarters. I knew my meter would expire while I was in there, but I figured it was worth it. I didn't have anyone to sit with, but once in the room I ran into our pastor's wife (and an old mentor of mine) and so I sat at her table. Ann's talk was great. She talked about the importance of choosing Joy. My favorite take aways were:

• If we aren't choosing to seek Joy every minute of every day - it our our family (our marriages and our children) that lose.
• She mentioned the fact that we are going to lose every single person we love - we will either bury them or they will bury us. (her telling the story of watching her two year old sister get run over by a truck was incredibly painful as I thought about Havana and Selah...) 
• She said she has wasted so much of her life longing for the future that she forgot the gift of the present. I can relate to that and needed to repent. 

As the lunch ended, someone mentioned that she was going to be hosting a teaching session on blogging! I was already there and so figured why not stay and try to hear her speak. My marriage blog (darbydugger.com) is something that scares me, but it is something that I feel the Lord is asking me to do. I don't write so I don't know why this is where He has me, but oh well. I make my way to her classroom and they are turning people away saying it is filled, but low and behold as I get ready to turn around a lady says, "there is a seat at the front." Somehow... I ended up on the front row. At that point I knew God had me there. 

My view from the front row.

Ann spoke directly to my heart. She talked about blogging for an audience of One. This blog is my personal blog- pretty much like an online journal of our family... the ministry blog is also a lesson journal of sorts - where I write out marriage lessons. I do struggle sometimes with comparing that blog to other ministry blogs. I usually end up discouraged because my numbers aren't big, not many people are active, etc. The Lord is faithful in reminding me that He called them to those blogs and me to this one... different audiences, different purposes.... but still, I end up feeling insecure. However, Ann encouraged people to blog "messy" - to be real - to not worry about the numbers because if we view our blog as an alter... that is all that matters. She said that she doesn't have ads on her blog (I don't either) and that she doesn't allow comments or a site meter. I ended up coming home and taking my site meter off because I would focus on how many people were visiting. It simply isn't necessary. All I need of focus on is writing authenic words and asking the Lord to use them. It was incredibly encouraging. 

After her talk (about 3pm), they said that Ann was not going to be meeting anyone until 5:15. Well, I knew I wasn't going to stay that long, but as I said hi to a few friends (who were hosting/volunteering) they introduced me to Ann. I don't know why, but I feel that the meeting was of the Lord. We met, we talked about kids (she said I didn't look old enough to have four kids, bless her heart, ha). We talked about husbands. We talked about writing. I gave her a copy of my book and she opened it up and said, "Wait. Did you sign it?" "no." "You have to sign it." She had me sign my book. We hugged and she whispered, "You just keep doing what you are doing." I fought back tears. How did she know I needed to hear those words? 

Thank you, Lord, for allowing that experience and for whatever might come of it. To You be the glory. 

As I made my way back to the car- still in disbelief over the events of the day - I found that there was NO ticket on my car (my meter spot had been expired well over an hour). I make my way home and wondered if Jason would have been a little stressed. All four children and I was a few hours late in coming home... I walk in, silence. He had gotten all the  children down for their rest times. He seemed peaceful. The Lord truly blessed that part of my day because He knew if Jason had been stressed it would have made me feel guilty for having been gone, but He gifted me with the perfect day.

We ended the night by taking all the kids to the 4-H fair. What an enjoyable evening.

911

I'm organizing old photos and I came across this one... If you notice the call log you will see that someone dialed 911... That would be Havana. She called them from Jason's phone while waiting for Jonah to get his hair cut. Jason hung up the phone and they called right back- Jason said that everything was fine-- just. A 4 year old learning what an emergency is! Haha!