Thankful for my Sweetie

When I was little, I wanted to marry someone who was strong enough to pick me up.  :)  My sister wisely pointed out that she wanted to marry a Christian, and she could just make her husband lift weights.  To this, I replied that I could just make my husband become a Christian!  

Thank you, Lord, for delivering me from the folly of my youth . . .

"Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen."
Ephesians 3:20-21

God gave me to John and John to me, and I can do nothing but praise Him for this.  John's personality is exactly complementary to mine. 

I'm thankful that he's smarter than me.  I'm thankful that he is so faithful.  I'm thankful that he's so very wise.  I'm thankful that he can pick me up.  

I'm thankful that he is an excellent daddy. 

 I don't want to know what my life would be like without John in it.  He is the greatest earthly gift I could ever receive without a doubt.  Thank you, Father.  And would it not please You to bless my friends and family as You have so abundantly blessed me?

Thankful for our Little One

Giving thanks is about saying even the things that go without saying, I think.  Our lives were turned upside-down in a good way almost a year ago now by the birth of our little one, and we are beyond grateful for her.

Personally, I'm full of thanksgiving for how beautifully her birth went (story here and here). Anticipating labor was a real anxiety for me, but God showed us how needless my fears were. 

Now, she is over eleven months old, and they have been eleven months filled with joy.  As she gets older and her budding intellect begins to reveal itself, my heart is also filled with a deep sense of stewardship.  We know that this precious child is ours for a time only, that her life comes from, belongs to, and will be directed by God our Father.  And yet, humanly speaking, the decisions we make and the actions we take will tremendously shape her character in the coming years. 

Since it's been quite a while since the last update, perhaps you'd like to hear what she's been doing lately!

• There have been some big changes!  Gemma no longer uses a pacifier (not planned by us) and now sleeps through the night (not without some tears, but thankfully it only lasted one night).  And, yes, those two things are related . . . 
• Army crawling is still her preferred method of motion, though she's also started climbing!
• She's still not pulling herself up to a stand, but she does love it when we stand her up holding onto a piece of furniture.  She'll play with whatever is nearby and practice standing for several minutes!
• What Gemma lacks in gross motor skills, she makes up for in talking!  She's been our little babbler for months, but now she also consistently says, "Buh buh!" for "Bye bye!"  She also knows who "Da da" and "Ma ma" are, and often tries to mimic my words when I'm talking to her.
• She loves to play in the laundry and, in general, take things out of whatever they are in!
• She also loves "reading."  A board book with lots of pictures will keep her busy for a while (it kept her busy for an hour in the car once!).  She flips and flips and "reads" aloud ("oooooh").
• And of course, there are lots of adorable things she does like clapping her hands, wrinkling her nose, and shaking her head!  Sometimes it seems to mean "no," and sometimes we're not sure!  
• When she hit ten months, she suddenly became more interested in food, but she's still very attached to nursing, which makes me profoundly glad.  Some of her favorite finger-foods are Cheerios and beans (black, kidney, it matters not!).

We took Gemma to a bonfire recently, and she looooved it!  She wanted to get in!

There were several more pictures I wanted to share, but for some reason blogger won't let me keep vertically-aligned pictures vertical today.  Perhaps John can help.  What a great guy . . . I'm so thankful for him . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself.  ;-)

Fall-ish Ramblings

It's autumn, and I'm so glad. We don't celebrate Halloween here; my reasoning can be reduced to 2 Corinthians 6:14 "What fellowship has light with darkness?"  I acknowledge that many Christians do not feel the need to offer up Halloween for the sake of Christ.  That's one of those things we all have to decide for ourselves, I suppose.  But we're content to buy discounted candy on the first of November and give Gemma other opportunities to play dress-up in the future.

We recently had the joy of visiting the Biltmore Estate with friends, and all the pictures in this post are from that day.  John took all except the one he is in, and got some neat shots if I do say so myself!  

The colors.  Ahhh.  We were privileged to get our first dose in New York where the colors peak earlier in the season, and now the trees on Cottage Lane are taking their turns at the melody in the beautiful symphony of autumn.  I love how, shortly after a rain when the sky is still grey, the yellows, greens and golds are especially vibrant against the dark, mossy trunks.  I have in my mind that very view layered upon a plum-colored house with evergreens in the background . . . Oh, I could almost inhale and respirate upon the beauty instead of on oxygen.

Then came my sister's birthday on the 7th, and now it is the 15th . . . where is the month going?  It was thrilling to be at Trader Joe's recently and to see all the autumn foods in stock.  There was even a man wandering the store and handing out chocolates!  I bought a bottle of cranberry spiced cider and remembered the joys of hosting our own Thanksgiving dinner last year.  The only reason we did not travel to be with family was that I was 39 weeks pregnant, but I loved hosting our own special meal . . . even though our friends brought half of it and the turkey wasn't done until 4 p.m. . . . how the memories rush back . . . We finished the evening by watching Harvey. 

This is the first November of our married life that I have not been pregnant.

Do you know that I once worked at a pumpkin farm?  It was the first autumn after I'd graduated from college, when I was taking evening grad school classes and waiting for the subbing calls to start coming.  They were days of layering on the rain clothes and carrying big clippers, and prying heavy, mud-laden boots off wool-socked feet in the farmers' house at lunch time.  Our boss's wife would make us hot dogs or grilled cheese and we would sit for that half-hour in their farmhouse dining room before returning to the fields or the pumpkin washing machine.  My coworkers called each other Hispanic names for fun, because we felt like migrant workers.  It was a brief season, but it was good.

Our pumpkin for the year is on my kitchen table.  It's another Cinderella pumpkin, and Mom and I bought it from a farm stand in New York.  I'm enjoying it a bit longer before cooking it, but I have bought canned pumpkin to make pumpkin muffins, crumble cake, and a pecan-eggnog-pumpkin pie in recent weeks.  I just couldn't wait.  :)

Now, with Thanksgiving upon us again, I want to actually write some "thankful" posts.  But we will start tomorrow, I think . . .

Because He First Loved Us

November is adoption month.

We Love Because from Christian Alliance for Orphans on Vimeo.

Pastor Andy preached on adoption last Sunday evening, and we saw two videos at church last night.  This was one of them.  (The other I couldn't find.)

Three couples we're friends with have also recently become licensed to be foster parents.  Three.

It got me thinking.

What keeps us from considering adoption?

To be honest, I braced myself for the sermon on Sunday night.  I didn't want numbing statistics and the hollow eyes of starving African children to leave me with a pit of guilt I could do nothing about. 

Adoption is for the infertile couples.  The wealthy.  The independent.  The super-spiritual.  Right?

But the excuses started becoming rather thin.  We have energy and time.  We have been financially blessed.  We have been utterly loved.

I wish I could have found that second video to share, because the faces that gripped me the most personally were the faces like these.  I didn't even know there were organizations that specialized in adoption for children with Down's Syndrome. 


So, we're thinking, talking, praying.  We don't feel ready to take on teenagers when our only parenting experience is with an 11 month old, but we have time.  Only let not the "time" lessen our heart's love for the orphan, Father, when You have so abundantly loved us . . .