Three months already?

 
 
 

Two years

Two years ago our Charlotte girl entered the world and changed our lives forever. I remember hearing that cry and seeing her for the first time; I felt so relieved that she was here. And safe. And healthy. I was so happy to finally meet her and to let her meet her family.

From her very first days, I could tell that God wrapped up a lot of personality and determination in a little bundle when He made Charlotte.

Charlotte has a smile that can light up a room. The way she scrunches up her little face and shows all of those tiny white teeth gets me every single day. Her laugh brings out so much joy in everyone around her; when I hear that sweet sound from another room I can't help but laugh a little myself.

Charlotte loves life. She knows what she wants, and when and how she wants it. She is determined and focused. She is sassy and spunky. She loves to give hugs and kisses. When she hugs my neck and her chubby little hands pat my back, I want to hold on forever. She has the softest squishiest cheeks I've ever kissed. She adores her big sister and wants to do everything (EVERYTHING!) that Caroline does. Despite the inevitable jealousy, Charlotte is sweet and gentle with her baby sister and makes sure I know when Camille is crying.

Charlotte has grown up so much over the past three months since Camille arrived, but in so many ways, she's still my baby. When she wakes up from a nap, she loves to be held and buries her head in my shoulder while she takes her time waking up. She loves her giraffe lovey (all 4 of them), "fraffe" and has been a thumb-sucker since she was three months old. She loves to snuggle up to read books at night before bed and savors those quiet moments before she goes to sleep while one of us rubs her back and sings to her for a few minutes.

Charlotte is joyful. She has brought us more laughter and smiles, and yes, more tears too. She brings light to my life every single day.

I am so thankful for the gift that Charlotte is and that God chose to give her to us. We love you Charlotte girl!

Here's a little peek into an afternoon with Charlotte:

Thanksgiving

We have much to be thankful for today and every day. These glimpses of the beauty of our world are just some of the things I'm thankful for:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/national_geographics_photograp.html

Speaking of being thankful

At two o'clock today it will be exactly ten years ago that I walked down the aisle in the Dunham Chapel at First Presbyterian Church as Ashley Walton and back down as Mrs. Jeffrey Beck. I look back on it as one of the happiest days of my life. We were surrounded by family and friends, it was a beautiful day, and we truly loved every minute of the wedding and reception. We were certainly in love and looking forward to our life together as one. I know now what we couldn't have know then; we were definitely young and had no idea what we were saying "yes" to. But thankfully by God's grace we stand here ten years, so many memories, laughs, smiles, tears, moves, three kids, and one loss later.

I love you Jeffrey James and I'm so happy I've been walking down this road with you since November 25, 2000. You love me and our girls well.

I am thankful!

Family

As the oldest of three kids (and the wife of the second to youngest of seven kids), I've read with some interest different theories of child birth order. Staring in college, we talked about it my developmental psychology class at LSU and I've read popular news stories about it since. Now, as the mom of three girls, I'm intrigued by it in an new way. And when I heard this story online, it especially piqued my interest, as so many people will be heading "home" to be with family for Thanksgiving.

For what it's worth, I think all of the theories they talk about in this story are right. Each kid essentially grows up in a different family, parents treat their children differently, and a certain brand of survival of the fittest figures somewhere into that as kids need to excel in different areas.

As the oldest and the only girl in my family, I know my experience growing up was vastly different from my brother Drew's, as the middle child and first boy, and Neal's, as the youngest born almost seven years after me. And as a parent, I know no matter how hard I try to be consistent, I parent my children differently. Partly, it is because they require different things, different ways of connecting, different levels of attention and different ways of receiving love and affirmation and discipline. And then it is partly because I'm different. I wasn't the same person I was when Caroline was born, nor when Charlotte was born.

As I listened to the NPR story about the polar opposite brothers, something reminded me of a piece of advice I heard a few years ago about relationships: Assume good intentions. Though that can be hard to do much of the time, it does work. It helps to remember that all people are functions of who God created them to be and all that they've encountered since that creation. My brothers, my children, the rest of my family, my friends are all shaped by their world in so many different ways and loving them often means stepping out of my own shoes and into theirs.

Dancing Queen

We had the chance to watch Caroline's dance class last week. They've definitely stepped it up a little bit this year in terms of what they expect of them. I was really impressed with how all of them followed directions and how quickly the teachers move the girls from one skill to the next really seamlessly.

Caroline has aspirations of being Clara in the Nutcracker one day and if she keeps that dream alive, we'll have many more years of watching our little ballerina hard at work.

mirror, mirror on the wall

I saw a commercial the other day for an episode of the Dr. Phil show featuring a mother who was apparently a little out of control in the disciplining her children department. I couldn't watch the whole commercial because honestly it appeared borderline abusive to me. But the thing that struck me was the look on the mother's face when they showed her watching herself interact with her kids. She looked taken aback.

As I changed the channel, the thought occurred to me that though I hope I never slip into the same pattern of behavior as that mother, I don't often step away from myself to look at how others see me. Especially my girls. I have a picture of the mother I want to be, and man, she looks good! Always composed, patient, kind, never raises her voice, unflappable. She wouldn't serve cereal for dinner and has the laundry and ironing done the night before at the very latest. She doesn't lose her cool with her children on the way to church. When I'm "on" I can be some of those things, but most of the time I fall woefully short. And that bothers me.

But I've noticed lately that God is nudging me to be look at why that might bother me so much. And every once in a while, a lesson that I need to learn become clear when I hear the same words from many different places. It's kind of hard to ignore a truth God is trying to impart when he keeps putting it your path, right?

In past few days, there have been a combination of things revealing this to me: perhaps I need to be less concerned with the image I'd like to see in the proverbial mirror and more concerned with the kind of mother I'm being moment to moment with my kids. In addition to the thoughts in my own head spurned by the Dr. Phil show, a sentence out of an article I read online (while looking for something completely different, I might add) rose up off of the page:

"Becoming someone's mother meant that my role in the world had changed -- I wasn't just the same old me trying to be a new, improved version. I was a mother, really and truly and forever, and the question was, what kind of person, what kind of mother, would be reflected in my child's eyes?" from this article

And then on Friday, the always serenely insightful Ann Voskamp shared this message. The part that hit this already reverberating chord in me was a quotation from Anna Quindlen:

"I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."

So, that enticing lie that beckons me to abandon the most important for the least is hopefully working its way out of me. In the meantime, I'm so grateful for these and other places that quietly implant little seeds of truth in my journey.