ten thoughts on a wednesday |49|

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one.
i am so glad to be consistently reading books again, thanks to book club! for january, i picked the book and hosted. i chose a place for us and was so moved by it. my friends and i had a great discussion about the book, talking about how every child in every family is different and needs different things, about the ways that faith and community can shape us, about the importance of belonging. my main takeaway from the book and our evening chatting about it was this:
love has the power to transform only when it is not intending to transform. we help to fix others when we are not trying to fix them ... when we are purely loving them unfixed. 
a friend mentioned that it's kind of like those chinese finger traps - you can only get your fingers out when you relax and stop trying to get your fingers out. i like that analogy.
truly unconditional love is the most powerful force in the universe!

two.
our second book club meeting of the year is tonight and we are discussing the book educated. woah! that memoir is wild!! it's amazing how different and crazy people's lives can be. i believe so strongly in the value of learning about people dissimilar from ourselves.

three.
moses has also enjoyed an increase in reading time lately. his desire for books is insatiable these days! we've started going to the library every tuesday and i read story book after story book after story book to him - he never gets sick of it. (meanwhile, gabriel crawls all over and pulls himself up to standing using the bookshelves with a lot of delight!) moses is really impacted by stories, so i love it when we discover a book that teaches an important life lesson in a fun way. i have been a little alarmed though by how often i feel a need to change the story around a little while i am reading - because it seems to be glorifying disobeying parents or fighting or something! it's a interesting line to walk in balancing exposing your children to not super positive things and keeping them from negative things.

four.
a couple of weeks ago, the unthinkable happened to me. i lost my phone!!!
obviously i'm being overdramatic here ... but losing my phone has definitely showed me how crazy dependent i am on it, how tethered i am to it. this experience mostly made me feel super duper grateful for this little computer in my pocket, but also a little wary of it.
we are relatively certain the phone was stolen - swiped from my pocket while i rushed down a crowded street - which is such a bummer. luckily we have a really old phone that we let moses use on flights that i could use until i got a new one, and we also have renters insurance that covered most of the cost of replacement. but the feeling of being violated like that is pretty icky.

five.
we had family movie night (in two parts, thanks to short attention spans!) this past week. we watched the prince of egypt to help teach moses more about his namesake. i had been telling our little boy stories about the prophet moses in the weeks prior and i am seriously so moved by them. moses was one super cool dude - and i'm so glad i have a little boy named after him! we have also spent some time recently talking about the angel gabriel. like his brother, our baby boy has a powerful namesake attached to events that profoundly changed the world. i hope my sons can be inspired by the prophet moses and the angel gabriel throughout their lives.

six.
spring starts appearing deliciously early here in london. there are already crocuses and daffodils peaking up in the parks and blossoms popping out on trees around our neighborhood. there's nothing like the promise of spring is there? it's so effervescently exciting! i love living somewhere with such distinct and vibrant seasons.

seven.
my valentine's day gift to my true love was ... 36 packs of baby wipes. hahaha! ian and i are (and ian especially is) of the opinion that, with our boys, there should always be wipes within pretty much an arm's reach. so we have about a dozen packs at a time scattered around the flat and in the buggy/diaper bag. something else ian feels strongly about is getting a good deal/saving money, and the wipes on our grocery-delivery website were on a raging sale right before valentine's day - perfect! super romantic ;)

eight.
i love my kids like crazy and genuinely adore hanging out with moses and gabriel all day every day. but i gotta say, this:
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felt like heaven after a chaotic morning the other day. the holy grail: both kids sleeping at the same time (in the same room!) during the day for an extended period of time!
nothing makes my heart swell quite like watching my children sleep.

nine.
i've been using google keep to manage my different to-do lists. i love it! in the new year i decided to migrate back to a digital calendar rather than a pen-to-paper planner and i'm liking my system of google calendar + google keep. i'm always looking for ways to be more organized and productive. and just when i think i have everything totally in order, the boys change and need different things and i have to readjust in my life as a stay-at-home-parent. it's an adventure.

ten.
every once in a while, i'm just walking around london on my way somewhere with the boys and i experience a little moment of elation thinking about how much i love my life. i am so, so grateful for this amazing city, my good health, wonderful relationships, the peace that comes from my faith, and probably most of all for my little family - these three crazy boys that i love very, very much.
here's a few photos from life lately:
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^^ a big group of girlfriends went to see mamma mia together as a little galentine's outing. it was such a blast - we definitely had a full on dance party on the back couple rows of the theatre during the curtain call. can you tell by our smiles in this picture that we had fun?? ^^
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^^ joy school continues to be such a joy for moses - and for me! last week we hosted/i taught, and mo was ready (with his empty backpack on, haha), waiting at the window for his pals, a full forty-five minutes before joy school started ;) ^^
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^^ a few days ago, my dear, dear friend/basically sister eva and her family came by for a visit during their trip to london. eva lived with my family for several years when she came to the states from bulgaria to study at the university of utah (i was in elementary school). she is an absolute wonder of a human. she spills out sunshine everywhere she goes and she just glows with faith and hope. i adore her and it was soooo fun to see her and spend time with her and her husband and three amazing children (all of whom she has homeschooled). i was so happy to introduce eva to my sons ... we haven't seen each other for many years. ^^
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^^ it's been getting light earlier and earlier and i have loved seeing sunrises (and moonrises!) on my morning marathon-training runs. ^^
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^^ gabriel playing in the sand at the playground with his buddy jackson. ^^

happy wednesday! life is beautiful!

Comments

  1. My kids have been out of diapers for 5 years but we ALWAYS have a package of wipes available. For all kinds of things, but mostly for chores and cleaning. Can't live without them either!

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  2. I love it when a toddler/preschooler's interest in books explodes. So exciting!

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