A German Adventure

DH and I abandoned our baby girl and escape to Germany for a week. Okay, we left her safely with her grandmother and they both had a great time, and so did we. It was hard to leave her for so long, but we did Skype a few times and stay in touch. And I really think the trip was a good thing for me, my husband, and for our marriage. Being a couple doing something we love to do is a good thing. It was a special trip for our 5th anniversary, coming up on July 8.

I know that I've raised a few eyebrows leaving for a week, but I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm not supposed to want to leave her. Maybe it was just the length and distance of the trip. But I have always been a wanderer and traveler. We've traveled all over with Sprout and we'll continue to do so, even this summer. We also want her to be secure and independent and know she can survive without us. If she were a different child, we may feel differently. But we were confident in her care and in her ability to handle us being away. And we were right.

Anyway, it was an amazing trip. Perhaps I'll tell you more about it in the coming weeks as I get myself back into the right time zone :)

I'm in Awe

Lately, I'm having more and more of those moments where I just look at my little girl and just think, "wow, she's really her own little person. She wasn't and now she is. And she's my little girl."

I love that she wants to learn and, even though it drives me crazy, I love that she asks me to read the same book over and over until she really knows it. Then I catch her "reading" it to herself. I laugh at her when she gets crazy excited about her number puzzle or begs to go for a walk even when it's 97 degrees outside. I smile at her silly faces and the goofy inflections in her voice when she says certain things.

I was putting together a photo book for DH for Father's Day and looking at the pictures from the last year, marveling at how much she has grown and changed. I see her all grown up walking to the car carrying her lunch box on her way to Mother's Day Out and I get a little teary, but in a good way. What joy she has added to our lives!

Sippy Cups

So, last night, Sprout and I were wandering through Target. She needed new sippy cups. So, we found the right section and then my dilemma began. There were "boy" colors and "girl" colors. I needed some take and toss cups (we reuse them until they fall apart or are eaten by the dog, by the way). I picked the green and blue ones over the pink and purple. No biggie.

Then it got harder. For the fancier cups, one set had pink flowers and the other had cars and trucks. The flowers were way cuter, but I felt like I "should" buy trucks. I was seriously frozen. What do I do? Eventually, I found the easiest solution to the problem - let Sprout choose! She chose the flowers and that's what I bought.

I have these moments all the time. I want her to know that it's okay and wonderful to be a girl, but know that she doesn't have to be limited to "girl" things and "girl" colors. I want her to be confident and empowered and I realize that what sippy cup she has when she's less than 2 years old will not make or break the values she has as she gets older. But I also know that the little things are sometimes the most important. That's where we send the most powerful messages about what we really believe. So, I probably fret too much about the colors of sippy cups and place mats. I just want to keep a check on myself so that she always knows that the whole world is open to her.

It's a Girl!

I have a beautiful, amazing little girl. I want desperately for her to grow up to be confident, intelligent, happy, and generous. I'd want the same things for a boy, I'm certain, but I'm not sure I would have given nearly as much thought to the influence of his surroundings, his toys, his wardrobe. If I have a boy in the future, I will think of these things, for sure. Would I have taken them so seriously if I had a boy first? I'd like to think so, but I'm just not sure.

From the time we learned that our Sprout was female, I felt like I had to take a stand against the proliferation of princesses and pink. I felt the need to buy gender neutral clothes to counteract all the dresses and hearts and bows. I got annoyed that puppies were supposed to be only for boys and that (purposely) gender neutral clothes were non-existant after about 6 months.

So now that she's 19 months old, how is it going? I'm sitting in our living room now, which is Sprout's main play area. There are books, a rocking horse, puzzles, animals, cars, a doll. While it would only take someone a split second to see that a toddler lived here, they'd have to look closer to guess that it's a girl. The biggest clues are a pink blanket with letters of the alphabet and the doll buried in her toy bin. Oh, and her sandals sitting on the end table. That makes me happy.

Maybe I try too hard. Maybe I'm denying her "girl-ness." I figure that she will have a whole life of being bombarded by what society expects of girls and women. When she begs for the princess doll, we'll go there, but why push it on her now? For now, she loves building with blocks. I love seeing her develop her own interests and opinions (though I'm not sure I was quite prepared for her to have opinions!). And I love that her favorite thing to do is to read.

But I also realize that this is only the beginning. The real tests are ahead of us. She doesn't watch TV or go to school. I can protect her now, but I know that she will eventually face all of the stereotypes and mixed messages that our culture has to offer. I hope that I'm able to guide her through them and help her gain the confidence to be herself and be proud of whoever that may be.

A Trip to Target

So, I thought I'd sum up what Sprout is up to these days by talking about our shopping trip yesterday.

As we walked into Target, she was already pointing at things. "Ball" (The big red concrete balls outside), "Circle" (the logo on the front of the store). We got her in the shopping cart and began looking around. She was narrating by pointing out numbers. There are a LOT of numbers that are very visible in Target.

Around the office supply section she began to get bored with that so our conversation went like this:

Sprout: Baby FROG! Baby Frog! Bay-beee Fa-ROG!

Me: What is a baby frog?"

Sprout: Tad-pole!! Bay-beeeee Dog!

Me: What is a baby dog?

Sprout: puppy! Bay-beeee Duck!

And so it continued though duck, cat, goose, and cow, before she went back to pointing out things in the store and numbers.

Around the food section she decided she wanted to sing so she went through quite a bit of her repertoire: Baa Baa Black Sheep, The Alphabet Song, You are my Sunshine, and several others. Then she started counting. She actually will count (with minimal help) to around 50 (which she still insists is 40-10).

By the time we got to the check out she was identifying numbers again and people at the check out kept laughing and asking how old she was. My little girl loves to talk. Everywhere I take her, people tell me how smart she is and I know that it's just because she is so verbal for her age, but I can't help to be proud of my little girl.

My New Life

My how things have changed! I think about this time last year. Sprout was just sitting up. I spent most of my day breastfeeding and trying to convince her to take naps. It seems like I never had time to do anything, but looking back on it I keep trying to figure out what I was doing.

And now, I have a little girl. She was walking around carrying her lunchbox this morning as we were getting ready for Mother's Day Out and I just couldn't believe how big she had gotten and how much of a little person she is. And I've changed a lot, too. I've learned so much about parenting and about myself. I've begun a new adventure in ministry, stepped out and become more involved in all kinds of things.

I'm a different person than I was a year ago. And even more different than I was two years ago, almost halfway through my pregnancy. I've had some rough patches, some therapy, and made some important changes. And now I can honestly say, that I'm really, really happy. Not every day, or every moment, of course. There are plenty of times that I still feel frustrated or overwhelmed or wonder how to juggle all the new projects on my plate, but I'm feeling strangely fulfilled and have a strong feeling that I'm right where I'm supposed to be, doing just what I should be doing. And that is a fabulous feeling - mtendere, peace.

I hope it lasts awhile. God has a funny way of shaking things up, just when you get comfortable, ya know?

Kids and Weddings

So every so often, people I know seem to get into fierce debates about whether children should be at weddings. I have a kind of "do what works for you" attitude about it and don't have strong feelings one way or the other, really, so it surprises me that people feel so strongly about it.

It just comes down to what is most important to you as you plan your wedding. Everyone has different ideas about what will make their day "perfect" or what might ruin it all. Would a child screaming during the ring exchange ruin your whole day? Then don't invite kids! It would have just generated some laughter at my wedding. In fact, the priest closed one of the flower girl's hands into the church door as my wedding was beginning. Poor little 3 year old tried sooooo hard to shake it off, but ultimately went running down the aisle to her mama. To me, it was adorable. To someone else it would have been a disaster (Of course one should not have 3 year old flower girls if this constitutes a disaster).

Is having a big, crazy, dancing, drinking party important to you? Or a super formal sit down affair? Then no, kids aren't a good idea. But if, like us, it was more about having family together and you find kids running around the dance floor and trying to steal toys off the groom's cake just all part of the fun, then invite them all!

I realize that my readers (are there any still out there?) have already had their weddings and made their decisions for themselves, but now that we are parents we have a new perspective. Traveling and finding babysitters creates a whole new set of issues. We've bowed out of several weddings that we may have attended if Sprout had been invited, but to be honest, we were kind of glad to have the excuse. The people we most care about have all wanted her there. If they hadn't we'd have figured something out. I do think it's a nice touch if the couple helps arrange childcare, especially if there are out of town guests, and they need to accept that there are people who won't come if their kids aren't invited.

I'm not sure why I felt like I needed a whole blog post about this, but I was just so surprised about how strongly people seemed to feel about the topic. I don't think it's fair to say, "If you invite me you have to invite my kid," but it's also not fair to say, "kids don't belong at weddings, they are for adults." Every wedding is as different as the couple getting married. That is what makes them fun and special.