Thanks to His "peace that passes understanding," I'm feeling much more excited about next Saturday. His peace "passes understanding" because I really can't explain why I don't feel freaked out anymore. Only that He reminded me that He will be with me and the thing that matters most to Him is love...my goal is to abide in His love as I walk through this week and then pass along His love to the people in my life as I go about preparing and hosting. If by His grace I can do that, then I've succeeded, regardless of whether people have to eat KFC or not. So for this week, when I am tempted to worry, I am going to pull an Ann Voskamp and give thanks. "Thank You that You have given us so many friends whom we can have over. Thank you for giving us a home in which we can host people. Thank You for giving us the means with which we can buy food. Thank You that You have already taken care of my problem that is much greater than whether or not we'll have enough turkey, namely my sin against You. Thank You for being so abundant in Your goodness to undeserving people like us that we can have a whole holiday to celebrate Your generosity!"
This is a small example of a much larger theme that's been playing in my life for several months that's basically summarized by this--I'm coming to see that God is much more concerned about the how of our lives than the what. What I mean is this--I think we (Christian moms/wives especially) can get completely overwhelmed thinking about what we're supposed to do with our days....there just seems to be too much what that needs to happen and not enough time to put it in. What if, instead of stressing over what is the most God-glorifying way to spend my time, I simply aimed to have fellowship with Him in the midst of whatever I'm doing? Hopefully more to come on this later, that's just a preview. The rest is still ruminating.
So there's a little insight into what's been going on in my heart since the last post. The fact that I found two boxes of Stove Top stuffing at the third import store I visited helped a lot too (there were only 3 boxes left too, we arrived just in the nick of time!) I've never made homemade stuffing before and I have no idea whether it's easy or complicated, but I surely did not want to have to learn this time around! I'm still not entirely sure whether we're going to have 10 people or 20....but it doesn't really change what I have to cook only the amount, right?
On the potty-training, Caroline has done amazingly well. She only had one accident the first day, and ever since then has made it to the potty every time she needs to go (unless you count the fact that she probably went peepee in the pool the other night when we went swimming, despite the fact that I took her to the bathroom three times in 10 minutes because she said she needed to go). And I'll also not mention the la duzi incident that happened while we were waiting to pick up Katie from kindergarten (la duzi may or may not literally mean pull stomach so I'll let you venture a guess as to what that means). You can't really blame the girl...it was only Day 2 of potty-training and I was in too much of a rush to put a pull-up on her. Plus, even grown-ups have accidents in cases of la duzi sometimes! All that to say, I have been very pleasantly surprised by the ease of potty-training this time around. So glad I waited as long as I did. And any mothers out there who feel inept because their 28 months old is still in diapers while your 18 month old neighbor's been in undies for months...don't give in! Every kid is different and the longer you wait, the way easier it is (thank you, Jennifer K!).
 |
| Notice the pillows on the ground in case she falls out... That floor is pretty unforgiving! |
In honor of her achieving yet another benchmark of big-girl-ness, I decided to take things to yet another level. Byebye, crib; hello, toddler bed! I've hesitated to do this for such a long time because there's such a sense of peace and security in having your two year old contained (although our escape artist did get out one time). We had a really easy time transitioning Katie to a big bed (at 25 months, I think), which was a total surprise to us, because up until that point no transition had been easy with Katie, plus I've heard such nightmares stories from friends whose toddlers would not stay in bed. With Katie, we simply warned her with grave sobriety about the absolute necessity of staying in bed until mommy or daddy came to get her. I did the same thing with Caroline tonight...so far, so good! Thankfully, Katie is our watchdog in the same room, so I'm sure she'll keep Caroline in line if she tries any funny business!
No comments:
Post a Comment