...because he is my little child

“We find a delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.” 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some of the beauty from the lives of BigMan and LittleLady this past week or so:

BigMan:

• Has been sick. Yet he still delights in all those things that little boys delight in. I had to go in and wake him up from his nap on Wednesday and the first words out of his mouth were: “Roaaaaar! Monster! BIG SNAPPY DINOSAUR! Roaaaaar Mummy! Roaaaar!” (No, we don’t watch scary, inappropriate movies with our children. We just went to the Museum with some friends last week, and the ‘big snappy dinosaurs’ made quite an impression!) 

 

•   We had a single mattress on the floor in our room for BigMan if/when he needed it. Between that and his mini trampoline, he has done more than his fair share of, “Jumping! Jumping so high Mummy! Jumping like a kangaroo! Jumping like a kangaroo! Good jumping!”
•  BigMan is very polite (when he wants to be). He was praised for his ‘good manners’ while Aunty E was here. Soon after, he was asked if he wanted more food for dinner. Cue: “No, thank you. That’s good manners!” We smiled. And laughed!
•   BigMan is also quite adept at ‘polite disobedience’ as our minister’s wife referred to it at Bible Study this week. “Please stop [insert direction here].” “No, thank you Mummy.” “Time to go now, BigMan.” “No, thank you Mummy.” “No, thank you Mummy” is the phrase I hear most of these days…
•     When we sit BigMan down for a meal or snacks, he now reminds us, “Say Grace, Daddy? Say Amen, Mummy?”

 

• Yesterday BigMan found my Bible (again… no more highlighter this time!) and started ‘reading’ it to me. He sat there saying, “God created Micah. God created Woof. God created diggers. God created planes. God created you.” 
• BigMan continues to love his singing! I will never tire of hearing him sing ‘Do you want a pilot? Signal unto Jesus!’ or ‘Wide, wide as the ocean; high as the heavens above; deep, deep as the deepest sea, is my Saviour’s love!’
• BigMan LOVES his baby sister. If he wakes up in the mornings and she’s in our room for a feed, he gets upset. Today I was hanging up washing and she started to get a bit upset. He moved over to sit next to her and started patting her back and stroking her hair ever so gently. He also gives her lots of not-so-gentle hugs and cuddles!
• BigMan's ringlets now measure up to 14cm long when I measured them last night. Daddy is trying to convince me to give him his first haircut. I want to hold out for as long as possible, but Daddy is insisting that after his 2nd Birthday BigMan's curls are getting the chop :( The only positive is that I want his hair to be lookin' good for Uncle T and Aunty Em's Wedding in December, so at least it gives us time for it to grow back if I stuff it up big time! :) 

·      

LittleLady:

• Continues to delight everyone who sees her with her most beautiful smiles! They truly are a tonic to a tired mother and father!  
• Continues to amaze us with her quiet (and not so quiet) determination to m-o-v-e! It can no longer be denied that she’s a ‘mover and shaker’. No matter where she is placed, no matter what toys/books/delights may be near her, the ones 180* and 2 metres away are always much more enticing! And she gets to them!
• Is too big for her Bumbo already! When she's lifted out of it, it follows her, so you have to pry her legs out of it! Such a gorgeous, cubby, cuddle-worthy, kissable little princess! 

 

•    LittleLady loves the baby on the Curash Baby Wipes packets. If we leave them on the floor, she WILL move to the packet and start conversing with and ‘kiss’ the baby (I think she also likes the sound it makes). Kinda gross really. Good incentive to make sure we pack up everything! 
•   LittleLady is also enjoying her solids a little more, now that we’ve added some fruit and veggies to the Farex. I can’t say I blame her – Farex is gross.
•  LittleLady used to be a miracle baby who would get herself to sleep regardless of the situation. Now, sleep is a little bit more elusive. This has opened up new opportunities for me to observe my beautiful children! Just today I have noticed the most beautiful thing: she is a tummy sleeper and thumb sucker, and lies there pre-sleep, bottom up high in the air, sucking her left thumb while her right hand plays with the little curls on the back of her head. So beautiful to see.
• I love how BigMan and LittleLady share a room. It does make for some tense moments when one wakes up and I’m trying to keep the other asleep, but it’s been a wonderful arrangement for everyone. And most of all, I love opening the door in the late evening, sitting in my feeding chair and just watching them both sleep. It really is one of those ‘heart too big for the body' moments.

·      

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, this week has been a long, hard slog. I have to say though that it’s taught me a lot about parenting. When Scott arrived home from work, I announced, “I’ve decided to boycott motherhood and domesticity.” He started to laugh and told me, “I can see that.” I started to get upset and was about to tell him that there was a freezer filled with meals I’d cooked and that the washing was still being done and put away and that the children were still being fed and played with and… and… and…

And then I looked at myself through his eyes. I was sitting there cuddling LittleLady in one arm. BigMan sitting next to me on the other side with a book, and I realised that it was a pretty funny statement to make given my situation.

So I’ve realised, again, that it’s impossible to ‘take leave’ from being a mummy. Their happiness, joy, pain, sickness, sorrow will forever be my happiness, joy, pain, sickness, sorrow. And I’m glad about that. Some days we may end up having to get take away for dinner and we may have piles of unfolded nappies instead of pretty Laura Ashley cushions attractively positioned on our lounges, but in the end that’s ok. Because, in the end, "I do not love him because he is good, but because he is my little child.” Rabindranath Tagore

The week that never ends

“As the abiding illness of the children are the parents continual affliction, it is a cross they are to take up daily; so the abiding compassions of Christ toward them ought to be their continual consolation, and a cordial they may have recourse to daily.” Matthew Henry, Christ’s Favour to Little Children

This week has been hard; very, very hard. I’m trying to pinpoint what has made this week any worse than all the other times our child/ren have been unwell, and I can’t say, except that Scott and I are both so tired. BigMan hasn’t been well since the last week of January. That’s a very, very long time for a toddler to be not 100%! 

At times like this we feel every single one of those 1400km between us and our extended families. At times like this I also wonder how on earth my parents managed! Four kids, on their own in towns and subsequently an overseas country, so far removed from their families. And I know that I was very sick as a young girl… good thing my mummy’s a doctor! Saved all that time dragging us kidlets to the GP! But that aside, I know that as a little person in ‘foreign lands’, it was our Church family that really supported my parents, and Scott and I are finding the same to be true for us. We have been blessed by people bringing us meals, looking after LittleLady so that I can have an unencumbered visit with BigMan to the GP, support, encouragement and (not to be underestimated in its ‘healing’ capacity) people who we can sigh to and say, ‘He’s just not himself’ and they agree!

So that one day I can look back on this and laugh… In the past month and a bit we’ve had:

• BigMan and LittleLady both with respiratory infections.
• Cyclone Yasi. Although we were only left with a small clean up (branches etc), it left us physically and emotionally drained.
• BigMan with possible pneumonia. 3 Dr visits and a chest x-ray in one day.
• 2 rounds of BigMan on Prednisone, Little Lady once.
•  BigMan with 2 severe middle ear infections. Yesterday was an 18 hour day. I woke at 4:30 to feed LittleLady and neither child slept longer than 10 minutes until after 2pm when BigMan’s medications started to work. I then could not wake him up until 4:30pm. LittleLady was awake that whole time. BigMan then did not go to sleep until 10:30pm, and Daddy was at Bible Study so I had the two of them for a very looooong time!
• A teething 4 month old (who still gives beautiful smiles!)
• We now have majorly disrupted sleeping patterns
• Tantrums that are really proving we’ve hit the ‘Terrible Twos’. Today it was a lie-down-and-scream-in-the-middle-of-Target-because-Mummy-won’t-open-a-$130-Chuggington-Playset-Tantrum. Could everyone hear? Yep. Were they gawking? Of course! 

So… I’m tired. We are tired. But we keep going. And I keep turning back to Matthew Henry’s words of encouragement and pray for the strength every day to keep picking up my cross…

“This may comfort and encourage the tender careful mothers in nursing them [infants], that they are carrying those in their arms whom Christ has taken up in his… You are careful for them with all this care; they require a constant attendance, and many a time, it may be, break your sleep; but if you do it as unto the Lord, if you have an eye to Christ in it: this I do for a child that is adopted into his family, as well as born into mine; you may depend upon him to pay your wages though it be your own child. Your care about your little ones keeps you from church, it may be, many a time; and keeps you, that you cannot spend so much time in your closets [in devotion] as you used to do; but if thus it be sanctified by an eye to the Lord Jesus, and by your prayers to God for them as his, more than as your own, you are therein truly serving the Lord Christ yourselves, and not only so, but are breeding up servants for him, that you hope will be vessels of grace and glory.” Matthew Henry, Christ’s Favour to Little Children

sobering

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For you created my inmost being
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth

your eyes saw my unformed body
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be. 

Psalm 139: 14-16

International Women's Day...?

Today is International Women’s Day. I had written a bit of a critique of the day from my perspective but I'm not brave enough to post it it needs a bit of tweaking, so I’m giving an abridged version instead.

I find it a little nauseating how easily we can throw accolades around to each other while turning a blind eye to the 130 000 murdered every single day worldwide and to the subjugation and exploitation of women and children worldwide. I also find it somewhat ironic that we laud women’s liberation and crave equality in pay/promotions when what is touted as ‘female empowerment’ by the media is no more than women being unashamedly objectified as little more than sex objects for the gratification of our voyeuristic society. Doesn’t seem particularly empowering to me.

I have no answers. All I know is that I am fearful of what the future holds for my daughter. Yet, as we were reminded on Sunday, the antidote to fear is love. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” 1 John 4:18. Therefore, today I won’t be celebrating, I’ll be praying... for my daughter and daughters worldwide.