metaphorically speaking, again.

I think that if I try really hard, I can write a succinct blog. This is me trying hard:

     I shoved Paul’s arm today when he predicted that Sonora Grace will marry a man that is afraid of her. He said this because we are afraid of her and that temper she’s acquired. It is unlike anything I have ever seen, and yet, we still do not want to speak this rage over her. Sometimes you can’t do anything but call it like you see it. I am tired of nursing her. She is getting to be a clever little one! Today she went to the baby gate that blocks the staircase that leads to our room. She shook the gate violently saying “night night.” It was close to nap time and so I obliged, especially since we had quite the long day prior, and I was a walking zombie. So I took her upstairs and nursed her and then lay her in the crib. She stood straight up and indicated that she wanted to go downstairs. She tricked me into nursing her. But I’m no fool, even if I am the victim of one-year-old manipulation. I made her take a nap…a measly, one hour nap.

     Then there is Jake. I was sleeping on the couch today trying to rest away this cold trying to set in and Jake walked up to me and began to open my eyelids with his sticky fingers. “You can wake up, Mommy.” Toddlers, they just can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would want to sleep. Poke Mommy’s eyeballs out, that will set her straight! It did set me straight up and I glared at him. “But Mommy, don’t you want to play trucks with me?” Sweet innocence or ignorance, I just can’t decide. If you know me, you know better than to wake me up with pokes (especially in my eyes!). In fact, if you ask my husband, he’d say that you’d know better than to wake me up at all. But someone has to do it! Actually, I disagree with that statement.

     I wonder how anyone puts a house together. I am not even 50% finished with my vision of where I am going with this new place. In fact, I’ve made some classy moves and feel like I’m seconds away from ripping it down, painting it over, and giving myself a blue kitchen. It was Paul’s idea, and it is growing on me. I love light blue, and yellow, and red. I know those things don’t go together.

     God’s upside down economy is just amazing. All I can say is on paper we look like a chicken trying to gather her eggs into one basket, scrounging for seed in a barren chicken coop, and knee high in you-know-what. But if you were to actually see us, in chicken terms, we are totally strutting about in that you-know-what. God has provided everything we need, particularly through the blessings poured out by our church family. Oh Chapel in the Pines, we love you!