ten thoughts from a wednesday |51|

 
 

here's ten thoughts that i didn't quite get around to writing out and publishing yesterday. and a crazy amount of pictures of magnolia trees around london, because i just can't get enough. a couple of days ago on a walk home, moses shouted, "mommy! there's a magnolia tree! you love magnolia trees!" :)

one.
thanks for the comments back on this post when i asked for thoughts about sharing details about my children online. i really appreciated the different perspectives shared, and i think it's a really interesting discussion. ian and i will continually be carefully considering what is best for our family, all things considered. the internet has changed so much about human life ... it's crazy.

 
moses loves going to the grocery store, riding in the cart, and then playing in the little green recycling truck toy they have there. this week gabriel came inside the truck for the first time, while mo ate a snack of his absolute favourite food - mango.
 

two.
on a related topic, i've been thinking about screen time a lot lately - for myself and for my children. (my interest in this topic led me to collect some information from fellow parents via instagram stories recently.) i feel like both growing up and parenting today is so different than it was a generation ago because of the ubiquitousness of screens, and i really want to be deliberate in how to handle that. we have a pretty firm no screens policy for our kids (with a big fat exception for airplanes), which i feel good about for now, but i am not a very good example in my own screen time. (i feel like i mention my phone addiction so often in my ten thoughts posts...do i sound like a broken record?!) i need to find a way to both accept that it's all a work in progress and be really determined to be better.


i love to spy on the boys on my way home from the gym or a run in the mornings. look at these three happy guys! sooo glad they are mine. 
 
the natural history museum is one of my all-time favourite buildings in the world. i love it for the architecture. obsessed-with-animals moses loves it for the taxidermy :) 

three.
i have been loving the new "come, follow me" program that our church has introduced in 2019. it is set up so well for family and individual study, along with community study at church. we have a little "sunday lesson" every sabbath morning and moses is always sooo pumped for it. (the primary manual has so many great activity ideas that we use!) then ian and i have a little study session after the kids are in bed on sunday evenings.
one thing i've been thinking about lately in our study of the new testament is how paradoxical christ's teachings are.

four.
i cannot believe that gabriel is nearly eleven months old. it all goes by even faster the second time around. he's almost one. what!!! his first birthday falls on easter, which i think is pretty cool. gabey has been pulling up to standing at every opportunity and i think he might be an earlier walker than moses was. we will see!

 
mo is pretty much constantly giving his little brother hugs. and has come to adore his weekly music class - especially the bubbles at the end!
 

five.
have i ever mentioned how much i love joy school? ha! it's just the best, and i'm so so grateful that moses and i have been able to do it over the past six months with dear friends.
last sunday we had a little first-term joy school graduation. a couple of our little friends cannot continue with the second term, and we wanted to celebrate them before they leave our group for nursery school. we gathered all the families together and had a cute little ceremony and then had some time to play all together. it was so wonderful.
one of the moms (who has taken the lead in organizing our joy school group) gave a little talk to kick off the graduation gathering. she explained that over the past six months the kids have learned about lots of "joys": the joy of the earth, the joy of the body, the joy of honesty and communication, the joy of order and goals, and the joy of sharing and service. but, she said, the biggest "joy" we have learned about is the joy of friendship. this is so true. it has been so fun to watch these little boys and girls become such loving friends and discover how friends make life so great.



six.
i have recently switched from using picasa to lightroom for editing photos. it's a whole new system and process and i'm definitely riding a learning curve. there's soooo many options and details with photo editing (i'm still not even sure which version of lightroom i want to use!). while i don't want to spend a whole ton of time on this, i am interested in developing some skills in this area. if you know any great lightroom tutorials, let me know! ;)

 

seven.
i feel lucky to be a part of a great community of moms here in london, thanks in most part to the church. we have a whatsapp group of about fifty moms where we are often exchanging tips and organizing get togethers. there's also a lot of sharing of baby/kid clothes/gear going on, which i love. after having lots of one-off meetups to pass things off (both for borrowing and keeping) with different moms, a few weeks ago i thought it might make sense for us to all get together in one place with our donate piles and have a little swap meet party! it turned out to be a really fun evening that turned into a late night gab-fest after all the clothes and toys and etc were sorted, and everyone went home with some goods. so grateful for community.

eight.
usually, when i drop moses off at joy school, i hustle to a nearby coffee shop (with gabriel sleeping in the buggy) and pretty frantically try to get stuff done on my computer. last week, though, i decided spontaneously to drop that plan for a day and treat myself to a walk through notting hill while the baby snoozed. that was good for my soul. here's a few snapshots from along portobello road:


 
 
 
 

nine.
my sister-in-law told me this past week that her parenting mantra lately is, "he only has half a brain." that's definitely been going through my head as well recently! and my mom sent me an email the other day that said, "remember, just like a baby has to learn to move their arms, a toddler has to learn to control their will."

 
 


ten.
last saturday i ran a half marathon! i have run two halves before, and both times i felt sooo exhilarated all thirteen miles, and genuinely loved every minute. year, not this time. it was really, really windy and the course was just six and a half laps around a not-very-scenic park. i hadn't slept very well the week leading up to the race and probably also hadn't eaten enough to properly fuel my body. by mile nine i was huuuurting. but...i made it to that finish line! i didn't beat my previous half-marathon time, which i thought would be cool to do, but i did finish in under two hours, which i was happy about. now i just need to run at least that far about a half a dozen more times and then twice that far in about eleven weeks in stockholm. eeeeeek!
as i ran last saturday, through the exhaustion, i felt just so grateful for my healthy body and my beautiful life.

 
the only good part about a race route that goes around and around in circles is that it makes it easy for spectactors to see their favourite runners several times throughout the race! :) mo was super excited when he saw me coming this time ^^ (i'm the runner in all black in the distance)
 

happy wednesday thursday!