Day Six- The Blessing of Being a Parent

   I was pregnant with Abu and tired. It was winter and bitterly cold outside. This meant I had spent an entire day stuck in the house trying to entertain Bean, who was just a toddler.

    And if there is one thing I realized quickly, is that as soon as my kid could walk; parenting in nice weather is a heck of a lot easier than in bad weather. We love being outside. My girls practically live outside in the summer, cutting down on our chances of being bored.

    But back to my parenting tale. Hero hottie and I decided we were going to watch movies for the evening since he was exhausted from working all day and I was pregnant. Sitting down and doing nothing sounded great. Wonderful. Blissful.

    We bundled Bean in her thick winter coat that makes buckling her car seat nearly impossible and we were off to Blockbuster.
     Slowly we made our way down long row of  New Releases with Bean toddling slightly ahead of us and looking at all the video cases at her eye level.
     Towards the end of the row she pauses and frowns heavily.
    All day I had ran around chasing her, or telling her 'no' or feeding her. Her list of things to accomplish for the day hadn't included a nap, she had been so active. But suddenly she was looking quite pale and just a bit green. What had seemed like just normal tiredness was suspiciously looking like something a bit more sinister.
     Then, without any sort of warning, she projectile vomits over the video cases, the shelf and the floor. Hero hottie and I gasped. Puke is all the place. And we're shocked that someone so little could produce such a foul smelling mess...and so quickly.
     It takes us a moment to collect our wits. How can one small toddler contain so much puke potential in her tiny belly? I can't believe how many video cases she has managed to cover in one powerful shot.
     Hero hottie finally snaps into action and goes looking for some cleaning supplies while I use some baby wipes to clean up Bean's face. She looks like she's going to throw up again and I have a feeling we better head home quickly.
     The clerk at the desk is young, under the age of eighteen and you would think that he has never dealt with vomit before because it appears from the revealing shade of green he has turned that he's experiencing some shared queasiness.
      Hero hottie cleans up a bit and the -ready to puke- clerk heads over to the spot to finish up.
      Luckily, Bean manages to make it home before vomiting anymore. By this time she's sick and fussy and demanding.
      I sigh. At least I have hero hottie to help me care for her.
      Or so I thought. As we get home and settled in, changing Bean's clothes and cleaning her up, he rushes for the bathroom.
      At least he didn't puke in Blockbuster.
      The rest of the evening was spent between two sick rooms and cleaning a lot of buckets. Oh, life.

 
      I thought about starting this blog article with just telling you that being a parent is a blessing even though some things stink. But I decided on using humor to show  you that some times being a parent really does stink.    
      Literally.  :)

      It's a hard job, being a parent. The hardest. In what other job are you responsible for the happiness, care, growth, general well being and forming of a decent human being? Not just part, like what a school teacher does, or like a nurse or doctor, but for practically every thing?
      It makes you stronger being a parent. You have to be or no one would get fed, or dressed, or have school papers signed. Thinking back to my pre-parent days I know without a doubt that young Christy couldn't juggle every thing I have to do as a parent. And yes, not all of it is fun. Dishes and laundry could do themselves and I would be so over joyed. I'm so happy that Bean and Abu are getting old enough to fold laundry and dry dishes. It makes life easier. (They disagree with that statement.:)
       But I LOVE being a parent. Even on the worse days, like when my kid is using puke as a weapon to stink up the entire Blockbuster, I enjoy and cherish every smile, every I Love You, every hug and every drawing. The things I have learned from being a parent are incredible.
      Being reminded of childhood and all the innocent joys of it, while being allowed the special privilege of traveling the beginning part of Bean's and Abu's journey, is priceless. There is not a single thing in the world I would ever trade in exchange for being their Mom.
     
      So being a parent is a blessing. I've learn so much about:
      love, (a baby curled under your chin while rocking them to sleep is one the best things in the world)
      curiosity, (because your head will get stuck again in the rails if you try it a second time)
      strong wills (thanks Bean, who when told to stay sitting on the chair in time out simply moved her chair to reach her toys),
      humor (Because there's something uniquely funny about a child's humor in the fact that burps, gas, and sneezes are always something to laugh about)
      patience (because for as many times as you can say 'no' they still manage to ask one more time)
      laughter (they know the secret to managing stress and it has to do with belly laughs)
      priorities (children remember what is important in life- taking time to play, laugh, and snuggle)


     Children are blessings. No doubt about it.

     - I just hope Blockbuster cleans their video cases from time to time. :)

Day Five- For the Love of Honeybees

Busy Buzzing Bee

  
       I know it seems a bit odd that I would be writing about honeybees as something I consider a blessing. And perhaps some readers will skip over Day Five because it's about a bug. An insect.
       But before you go, let me share a little bit about honeybees and why I'm grateful for them. (As long as they don't sting my bare feet. :)

      Fact One: Honeybees pollinate orchards, flowers, and crops. They seek out pollen, spreading it flower to flower, almost like they're made to assist in the whole pollination process. :)
      This is an important job because plants need help. If a little bumble bee wasn't buzzing around, happily doing her job, collecting pollen, then plants would have a difficult time fertilizing. As she works, some of the pollen she's carrying around falls off her hairy body and onto other flowers. Then pollination occurs.
      Other insects assist in pollination, but bees...they're something special because they're responsible for such a huge percentage of plants being fertilized.

     Fact Two: In the United States, more than 100 agricultural crops are pollinated by bees, such as watermelons and apples. If a bee didn't pollinate an apple blossom, it would simply wither up and die. Just the thought of no more apple pie makes me grateful for these tiny creatures.

    Fact Three: They make honey. I love honey. It taste great and local honey is so good for you. Humans have collected honey for centuries, using it to sweeten foods and drinks. The flavor of honey is affected by the type of nectar collected, which means you have familiar types such as orange blossom, wildflower, or clover but can also have more exotic sounding flavors like thyme and dandelion.

  Fact Four: Some scientists have estimated that bees are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat. Wow. It's incredible and means we owe them more than just a pat on the back.   

  So I have to say on this journey of faith that we are taken care of. Because as much as we like to think ourselves the smartest creatures on this planet, we still depend on the smallest of creatures to survive. I think next time I take a bite of food, I'll give thanks for the buzzing bee that worked so hard to bring it to me.



   

Day Four- Children's Faith

Welcoming Baby Jesus

"So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger." Luke 2:16 TNIV


    Last year after we finished putting up the Christmas tree and decorating the house, Bean and Abu insisted that we needed to do more. The small Nativity sets we had weren't enough, we needed another one. So for the next hour they busied themselves putting together something quite special.
    Abu brought out her horse barn for the manger. Bean found Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
    Barbie in her hot pink pencil skirt became Mary by wrapping a paper towel around her head like a robe. Ken became Joseph after he also received a paper towel treatment. And a Barbie baby was Jesus, lying in a little pink crib.
    They both worked together to find the stable animals. Cows, lambs, goats, piglets, and pigs surrounded the trio and a horse became a camel with two cotton ball humps taped to its back.
    Bean and Abu set up the Nativity under the tree and there it stayed for more than a week before slowly the toys were reclaimed as toys again and played with. But for just a little while they were so much more than toys.
    They represented Bean's and Abu's faith. Innocent, simple and eager. There wasn't questions and anger. There wasn't doubt. It was a simple moment of believing.
    I miss that. When I was child it was so easy to just have faith. Now I struggle with it.

   I feel blessed to have witnessed such a sincere act of faith. Thank you Bean and Abu for reminding me how simple it can be.
 
   The next part of our journey then is to pay attention to the children. For they remember how to have faith.
   Simply and sincerely.