April 29, 2019

Selah June discovered that I don’t like Radio Head. Now she insists on calling me Radio Head at every opportunity. Last night, she cracked herself up over and over again by telling me goodnight: “Goodnight, Radio Head!”

Even right now, she’s yelling “Mommy loves Radio Head….”

And tonight the UPS truck stopped at our house. She was outside riding her bike. The man greeted her with our package, and she had a nice little conversation with him before bringing it to me inside. She’s getting so big!!

We spent the better portion of last night and this evening coloring the front porch with sidewalk chalk. We made a hedgehog and a whale. It’s so freeing to be a little kid with no boundaries or preconceived notions. A little imagination makes awesome creatures!!!

I love this seeet little face.

We also have been spending time on the swing set out back. She’s made herself a hammock as well as one for her baby sister.

Nothing like a little light reading on Minecraft for a lazy Sunday afternoon…

April 28, 2019

Is it possible that three months have gone by without a single reflection? No. Every single day presents reflection on how much SJ has grown, how different my life is because of her, and hope I have for her future. It’s also been a time of grounding for me. I’m trying to become not only who I’m meant to be but also who I want to be. I want to give myself to others, but I also don’t want to lose myself in them. I want to share our lives with friends and family and preserve this time for my future self, but I don’t want to miss it in real time because I am too busy taking pictures. I want to enjoy her being her in the moment, even if it means I don’t have it recorded to play back later.

She is four. Her beauty is bigger than her little body. Her imagination is my heart. Her humor is our joy.

There are so many things that happened this spring.

• We went on a cruise with her, and she LOVED it!
• She lost her blue blanket, and she survived.
• She started sleeping in her own bed again.
• She’s playing on her own.

Somebody has been getting a hold of my phone and taking pictures with it. This is what I find when I check out my photo library. For whatever reason Selah Jun picked out books on trucks this trip. Who knew there were mini excavators?

It didn’t seem right that school started so quickly after New Year’s Day this year. I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that it is already 2019. Selah June and I went to the library and got a whole bunch of library books and colored some free pages with the community crayons. She made a little friend, and they compared their coloring of birds.

We had a great time at the condo after Christmas with Grandma and Aunt Madison from Oklahoma. Grammy and Grandpa also joined us. Daddy had to work during the day a couple of times, but we still enjoyed being together as a family for an extended holiday vacation. Unfortunately, some of the folks in our bunch got some kind of stomach bug and didn’t feel 100%. But we found time for the outlets and spent time at the pool. Mom and Linda found time to look at ancestery and share genealogy knowledge. And I had time to decompress before rebuilding for the spring semester. The weather was quite overcast, but I still managed to get a few really great pics.

Grammy invited all of us over to her house before Christmas to make Christmas cookies. She bought though and icing and decorations for each of the grandkids. They sat next to each other all around the table and each gave their special touch to trays of sugar cookie dough. Selah June’s favorite decorating item had to be the red sprinkles

When asked for her description of the event, Selah June’s message to Grammy is this, “I love you, Grammy! I hope we can do it soon!”

Selah June and I spent a wonderful day before Christmas at Miss Sarah’s house making Christmas cookies with Harrison and Thomas. The adults wanted to find some good compliant options to have around the house, so we made for batches up pretty quick. Unfortunately, they were not nearly sweetener for the children… We had some very unhappy campers by the end of the day!

Fortunately this was not our only cookie bake before the holidays…

Ab’s boys were both in school the week before Christmas, but SJ and I were home. Ab and I decided to spend the day together, taking Selah June and Jules around with us for some last-minute Christmas shopping.

Leading into the holidays, we started facing a constant stream of toy requests from Little Miss. You don’t realize how much stores stage their displays to push crap on you until you walk into them with young children. If you have never experienced this, let me know. I’ll loan you a kid, and you can enjoy some of this particular kind of fun.

Jeremy and I discovered that Selah June would accept the idea that Santa would review photos of the toys she found that she wanted for Christmas. Though we couldn’t buy them because we were too close to Christmas, we could take pictures of them.

Grammy and Grandpa facilitated Christmas cookies the week before Christmas. All the cousins were together, and it was CRAZY!!!

We decided to do easy and went with premade cookie dough. It was too soft for the kids to really work with, so I soon took over the process of cutting them out.

Mom had stations for each of them. It was funny to see what each kid wanted to use the most. Selah June wanted red sprinkles — all the red sprinkles…

Linda and Madison came to Florida for Christmas this year, and it was a great holiday break. I got to spend a lot of quality time with them and with Selah June, and Christmas Day was wonderful with all the kids at Mom and Dad’s.