A New Adventure: Sharing Childcare

Today has been a fun and busy day. As many of you know, Dennis and I don't have any family around here, which makes life difficult sometimes. It would be nice to have grandparents around who could keep Micah whenever I have a deadline approaching or work overwhelms me, but I suppose it's just not to be. I chose to be a stay-at-home mom, and I want Micah at home with me, but sometimes, I just need to get some work done. Enter the new adventure.

I made a proposal to one of my sweet friends about swapping childcare two days a week. One day, I'll have her little girl along with Micah, and another day, she'll have both girls. Today is the first day of the new adventure, and it's been fun to see Micah playing with Chloe. They get along really well, and so far, this adventure is going well.

We'll see what Nikki has to say after keeping Micah tomorrow :)

If you need a day off during the week to get a few things accomplished, why not trade out babysitting with a friend? If you don't need or want full-time or even part-time daycare, then it's a solution that you should consider. Watching two is easier than watching one, because they can entertain and learn from each other. Best of all? I completely trust Nikki and know that I don't have anything to worry about with Micah under her care. AND, it's free, which, of course, is always nice.

The girls are really enjoying playing with each other, and I'm enjoying them. An added perk? Their nap times coincide, so we all get a break for a little while.

Until next time, grace and peace.

Signs of Life: Spring's Comin' Y'all!

You'll never believe what I've been seeing lately. This winter has seemed SO long, and every time I turned around, it seemed like we were getting more snow. That's saying something in Mississippi. Just so you know. Anyway, over the past few days, I started seeing signs of life that made me run and grab the camera to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Sure enough, the forsythia and Bradford Pear trees are blooming yet again.

Sigh.

I love those two heralds of spring. I've never been so excited to see blooming plants in my life.

Micah and I celebrated by spending the morning in the park. She played on the bouncy motorcycle thing, and I tried to coax her up the stairs to go down the slide, but in the end, she was satisfied to play with the multitude of acorns scattered across the ground. They fascinated her.

Oh, the life of an almost-18-month-old. Sometimes I wonder how the world looks through her eyes. She's so easily captivated by the simplest things, and there are moments when I wish that I could recapture some of that wide-eyed wonder.

We're so glad that spring is unpacking its bags and setting up to stay for a little while. How are you enjoying the warmer weather??

Until next time, grace and peace.

In Retrospect: He's Always Been Faithful

(photo via Lumberg the Loquacious Llama)

I've been feeling pretty retrospective lately. It started when I began preparing for a talk I gave at DNow a few weeks ago. The theme of DNow? Love. So, of course, I started thinking back over all the relationships in my life and the boys that I loved in the past. And then, while visiting my parents last weekend, I stumbled across a box in the top of my closet that held mementos of most of my old relationships. There were crumpled notes in that box from the fourth grade! That's a long time ago, y'all!

Anyway, I stayed up entirely too late reading all those notes, and my mom and I got quite a few giggles over some of them, because, let's admit it, seventh grade love is just plain awkward. But then there were other letters and notes and poems that weren't funny at all. They were serious, and by the time I finished reading all of them, I was more than a little sad.

I was sad because I had forgotten how much they loved me and I loved them. My last memories of my relationships with those boys are generally not pretty. That's how breakups go. When it comes down to it, it's a lot easier to remember the pain of parting than it is to remember the goodness of what once was. I think it has to be that way. If we spent all our time remembering how good things used to be then we would never be able to move on.

Reading through all that old stuff made me even more thankful for the man I'm married to today. I love him more deeply and more fully than anyone in my past, and I am so grateful that none of those other relationships worked out. We are a well-matched pair, and God has truly blessed us with one another.

I don't wonder what might've been, and I don't wish that things had turned out differently. God used every single bit of my past to shape me into the person I am today. There's a line from He's Always Been Faithful by Sara Groves that's been running through my head as all of this has been on my mind: "I can't remember a trial or a pain he did not recycle to bring me gain." And that's the truth. God has taken both the good and the bad in my past and transformed it into peace in my present. Even when I have made mistakes and messed up, God has always been faithful.

And I am most grateful for that.

When I returned home Sunday afternoon, I pulled down another box from the top of the closet I share with Dennis, and I reread all the bits and pieces of our love story. There were post-it notes that he had hidden all over my house in Waco and a stack of handwritten letters that I received the old-fashioned way. There were birthday cards, e-mails, Valentines, and notes. And the best thing about that box? I'm still adding to it.

Until next time, grace and peace.