A Child's Perspective

We stood high atop a breezy hill this evening. Rhya rested on the hip of her daddy and Brielle lounged on her mama's hip. We watched the deer rustle around far across the freshly tilled field. Daddy asked Rhya if she could see certain objects almost out of eyesight.
The sky was dimming as Rhya perked up and pointed excitedly do the distance. "Look! Do you see that?" She asked. "See what?" Nate replied. "That red thing. That dot. It's blinking!!"
"Oh wow! That's a tower a long ways away." We smirked at each other thinking it was cute that she was so excited about something so 'non scenic', but yet impressed at her detailed vision.
"Let's go see it, Daddy!" Daddy chuckled and explained that it was far, far away. "You can do it. I know you can!" she urged.
Rhya shimmied on down her Daddy's leg to the rain soaked grass and grabbed his hand. She pulled at it as she said, "Here. I help you. I go with."
We explained that it was getting dark and that we might get lost if we tried to find it. She was sure we could find our way. Then we told her it would take hours to walk to the tower. "Why?" she asked. We finally distracted her into deciding we should get back home to check on the baby bunny.

A reminder of a simple lesson to me: Have the faith of a child. Eyes on the goal. The hills and valleys and dark experiences don't matter a bit if we have our god as our guide.

April

Happy May Day, which means Happy Anniversary Ma and Pop! 31 delightful years!

Who knew April could be such a fast month? Back up to March 31- I made a li'l cake on Brielle's actual birthday since she had to wait until April 20 for her 'real' party.

The girls were beyond THRILLED to go on their very first bike trailer ride together on the first nice day of the season. Rhya was a seasoned rider and Brielle had no qualms about speeding around town with her big sis'.

She did, however, have some qualms about this:

How does one get it into a 3 year old's head that a baby is not a bouncy ball? I suppose it does go both ways and Brielle does make up for it with hair pulling and 'my way or the highway' moments.  They really do enjoy each other and it's great to see more and more interaction between the two.

Backtrack to April 11. Rhya turned 3! She bounced the evening away:

We thought that a 1/2 hour of jumping would be sufficient but she was still boinging away at the end! Maybe I should've known- she would jump on everything if we let her. She thinks she's pretty clever when she goes to lay down in bed. She 'has' to stand up first and then flop down so her body bounces a bit. Sometimes she even sneaks a few jump start bounces in before flopping down.
Where do I start with the latest and greatest with this clever, sweet, sassy, energized ball of life? She's my shadow. She doesn't miss a thing. There's hardly such thing as 'code talking' anymore.
She gets embarrassed if we remind her about something that should be changed about her actions or behavior, and usually says, "But I was just doing this. See?" Then she'll alter whatever she was doing in hopes that we approve. (like just lightly bouncing with her knees instead of full fledged leaps, cleaning up a mess instead of smearing it all over, pretending like she's stuck on her way to the car seat instead of avoiding it when she decides to finally obey...)
She's started pretending she 'doesn't get' or 'doesn't see' something if she doesn't want to comply or doesn't want attention. For instance, the other day she was standing right next to her little kid rake and asked if I saw it. She looked all over the place (mainly in the sky- hilarious) until she said, "OH! Right HERE?"
She has no clue how transparent she is. The other day she told me to go into the bathroom so she could get a piece of gum. I had just told her that we didn't need gum.
I really need to write more of this down because she is constantly cracking me up.
If someone gives her a kiss she informs them if she left it on or took it off ("I taked it off") If I grab her a bit rough when she's being a stinker she'll 'wipe' off the part of her arm that I grabbed. I have no clue where she came up with it.

Enough with the sassy stuff. On to the sweet stuff. Rhya has lots of caring, loving moments.

She loves to take Brielle by the hand and go exploring.

She adores reading books and has NEVER turned down an offer to be read to. She snuggles right in.

 Lots of times when I am carrying her I whisper, "You can put your head on my shoulder." Instant head burrow. :-)

At random moments she'll come running up, plant a smooch on my face, then run off.

Music is a must with this child. She is hardly ever silent. She sings the day away. It takes her FOREVER to finish a meal because she hums with food in her mouth and gets lost in lala land.

Rhya and the farm get along swimmingly. She is a little chore girl, collecting eggs, riding on the tractor w' Gpa and the dirt bike with Travis (she says, "I hanged on bary tight!!), taming wild kittens, throwing loose hay into the horse paddock, riding trike all over.

 

On to the next piece. Did I say farm? We're living with my parents right now, since we decided to sell the house and buy something in the country. We spent a good part of April cleaning up the house and moving most of our stuff out. We moved in with Mom and Dad April 20th, listed it April 25th and it sold on the 26th. It's not official yet, but if the inspection goes well on Fri we can set a closing! The buyer want to close by the first part of May. It sold before it even hit the MLS.

 

Mom and Dad are getting quite used to us, as they even hosted the girl's party. Everything went perfect and the girls enjoyed the day immensely. We're so lucky to have so many relatives close by, including 4 grandparents, 7 great-grandparents (6 attended). The girls adore all of their cousins and aunts/uncles too. The day was busy, but at times I loved to just step back and observe everyone enjoying each other so much. We definitely are spoiled with rich fellowship.

Our menu was Grilled Chicken bacon salad, French bread, and strawberry milk. 

Rhya got a 'pig wallowing in mud' cake:

Brielle got a 'ducks swimming on the water' cake:

Present time!

 

With that, I will hop my way to bed. My little bunnies will be up in the morning regardless that I stayed up way too late to write a blog entry that should be in 3 separate posts! Congrats if you made it to the end.

 

 

Still our Baby

Happy Birthday Brielle Bethany! 

Sunday (March 31) was the actual day. Oh the memories that came flooding back from 1 year ago!

The night before her birthday Nate said, "I vividly remember that day she was born. It was a very good day"
I wholeheartedly agreed with the exception that it felt like my stomach was going to flop to the floor. :-)

Wow. One year. Now she's a walking, jabbering, climbing, full of life mini person!

 - She started out 8 lbs 11 oz and is about 21 lbs at 1 year

- She started experimenting with walking at 11 months but it took her the entire month to get up the courage to walk full time. Now she walks around with a huge triumphant grin.

- She likes to carry stuff around and try to put clothes on her head. It's a common site to see her walking with a pair of tights strung over her head and one of Rhya's shoes in her hands.

- She thinks it's so fun to arrange things. On our recent trip, she spent hours putting sea shells in the bucket and then dumping them out...over and over. Last night we spent 30 minutes putting wooden pieces in and out of a puzzle.

- She has very important things to tell us and gets really involved with jabbering. She'll use her hands, lean into the person she's humoring, and look them straight in the eyes, 2 inches away. If we yell something to a person in the next room she'll yell over there too. Full volume is easily achieved. She loves to talk on the phone. If you want to hear her jabber just call us and you will have a willing participant.

- She knows what she wants and will let us know! Rhya and Jordan's sippies are hot commodities and she'll go to any extent to get them. She wiggles ferociously and says, "EH, EH, EH" whenever she is trying to tell us something that she wants.

- She knows how to do 'SO BIG!!'. She'll also put both hands on her head if she's asked where her head is. She's very adamant about shaking her head back and forth if she doesn't want something.

- Brielle and Rhya are starting to really enjoy each other's company. Rhya was zooming Brielle all over the yard in the umbrella stroller today and they had a BLAST.

These years of having small children are SO fleeting and SO precious. Where is the pause button? In the meantime, we are looking forward to a busy, fun filled summer of toddler-hood.

**The above pics were taken on our recent FL trip. I will blog about that soon! Meanwhile, pics are up on Shutterfly.

A Faceplant Into Florida!

Sunday Night Hymns

If You're Bored Come to the Lester House

At any given moment, there may be:

                                          potty sessions going on:

Parties happening (Happy Birthday Melanie!! Glad we could finally celebrate with you!)

Walking lessons taking place (Brielle took her first steps last week)

Endless snuggle opportunities

Not just spunky

I tend to write and talk quite a bit about the semi-borderline stuff that Rhya does. It's entertaining and slightly funny and amazing what she can come up with. However,

this post is to talk about how much this mama loves her kiddos.

For some disturbing reason I had a dream last night that Brielle died. It kept replaying over and over...my heart goes out to every single parent who's lost a child. I cannot imagine. I know one thing- it sure helps me to not fret over the petty matters and soak up all of the precious moments.

All day today I kept thinking of that awful dream and then looking at my girls, realizing the power between our relationship. I kept noticing the little sweet things that they do without me hardly realizing:

- When Brielle was fussing I looked over to see Rhya trying to cheer her up by smiling as huge as she could!

- Brielle still thinks hair is an awesome pull toy and Rhya does SO WELL to put up with it. She'll just sit in pain and wait for me to untangle the mess.

- Rhya loves to give and receive goodbye hugs and kisses and will usually plant a huge kiss on the receiving one's cheek without being asked:

- Both girls are huge snugglebugs, much to our pleasure! Rhya usually offers up her bedside body pillow at tuck in time and says in a hopeful voice, "You can lay on my big pillow if you want!" (hoping for all she's worth that we'll lay next to her and sing soft songs). She loves to fall asleep next to Daddy in the 'big bed' and then have me move her when I crawl in.
Brielle usually starts out in her pack 'n play (umm who needs the crib in the next room? ha) and then joins us whenever she happens to wake up in the night. Sometimes it's midnight, other times it's later. She burrows in right between us and feels for us every now and then. It's so heartwarming and I do not care one bit that she sleeps with us. I just think of everything we'd be missing out on if we didn't have that snuggle time!

- The girls were playing on my lap tonight. Rhya was trying to make Brielle laugh so she kept lifting up her shirt so Brielle could poke her tummy. One time their heads bonked and Rhya's tooth smacked into Brielle's head. Brielle screamed for a minute and Rhya looked horrified as well as slightly guilty like she might get in trouble for being too rough. However, a minute later, after Brielle had calmed down, I looked over to see Rhya's lip bleeding. I asked if her lip hurt and she got this watery look in her eyes, like she was trying to hold back her own pain because she felt bad that she hurt Brielle, when, in fact Rhya was probably hurt worse. It was SO sweet. I wanted to cry for her.

SO. Moments come. Moments go. My goal this week is to APPRECIATE the sweet, small, passing moments. Stop and smell the flowers of childhood. It's a beautiful thing.