Sarah Anne I Am

My daughter, my Clara, my sweet girl,   You can wear Batman outfits. You can also wear sparkly shoes. You can play with trucks and dinosaurs. You can also play with tea sets and princess dresses.   Yes, we will happily let you follow your brother on adventures, discovering trees, rocks, and mud, to return with dirty feet and scraped knees. We won't think much of it if you like bugs, or baseball, or the color blue. And likewise, we will be unconcerned if you prefer dolls, ballet, and all things pink and glittery.   God made you a girl. A beautiful, strong, gentle, capable, precious little girl. Being a girl is a good thing. It is no better and no worse than being a boy. But it is different. And that is a good thing, too. A God-designed thing.   All girls are not the same, and all boys are not the same. Yet your father and I are different; you and your brother are different.   One thing we all have in common is this: God made us, just the way we are, intentionally and for the pu

  In my first post about the adventurous life of raising a toddler, we learned about Judah's devotion to his baby sister Clara. We will now take a look at Judah's many food-related antics. Or rather, his food-related antics during the past week- to relate all of the hilarious things he's done while eating/trying to eat/wanting to eat/thinking about eating would fill the equivalent of a Russian novel.   Act Two: Judah, misadventures involving hunger, food, and eating things.    Sometimes Judah gets hungry. By "sometimes" I mean "90% of his waking hours". Consequently he has learned to open the fridge, and often helps himself to it's contents.   For example, if he's thirsty, he might accidentally dump the entire pitcher of water on the floor. He will then realize his mistake and try to clean it up by applying pressure to blot it up. Or, in toddler terms, stomping on it. But as he is not even two years old yet, he may forget to lay a

  Some people talk about having kids as though it sucks all of the excitement out of life. To those people I say, go ahead, take my two kids under the age of two to Costco by yourself. You'll see. My life is anything but dull.   Sure, I may not be hiking to breathtaking views, exploring foriegn countries, or cliff diving. But I wasn't really doing those things before kids, anyways. I'm more of a paint-breathtaking-views/explore-nearby-parks/scared-of-the-diving-board sort of girl.   Anyways. Back to the adventure of raising children.   Have you heard of toddlers? It's not an exact age, but more of a developmental range during which a child is no longer a baby, but not exactly old enough to paint breathtaking views with you. The toddler life is a crazy life. There should be a reality TV show about it. Not about beauty pageants at that age, that show already exists, but just a camera crew following a toddler around in it's natural habitat.   Seriously. I