I apologize for my short leave of absence on the blog! If you haven’t completely forgotten about me, and are still here I want to say thank you. I had to take a temporary break from the blog because I got so busy with photo sessions. Great news for the stay-at-home mom who is trying to help contribute financially to the family! God has been proving once again that He is providing everything we need. It recently became time to pay our hospital bills, which we had been dreading because we didn’t want to have to use up a chunk of our savings. Being on one income makes it much harder to replenish money back into savings. The day our bills were due I had just gone to the bank and deposited the money from my most recent photo shoots. The amount we had to pay was almost the exact amount I had just deposited! Amazing!
We also had family visit us for a week and I got to be the photographer for a three-day conference. Busy Busy Busy! Any spare time has been spent snuggling my little one, feeding her, and of course giving her lots of kisses. Even though I haven’t physically written a blog in a few weeks, my inner monologue has still been dialoging away throughout the day! It already feels therapeutic to let some of my thoughts start floating around on the Internet. It’s nice to have busy seasons sometimes but I am definitely glad to be settling back into a life that allows me to share my thoughts with you every week.
Even though it has only been a few weeks since my last post, it feels like it has been months. Grace is changing so fast! Since my last post she has outgrown an outfit for the first time. (I’m trying really hard to not be sad about this. I stated in a previous post that I would not be sad and embrace the changes that come in babyhood. Much easier said than done!) Before we had her everyone told us about how babies fit into their newborn clothes for two seconds and then they already outgrow them. Grace must be an exception to that rule. She was just under seven pounds when we took her home from the hospital and she has been wearing teeny tiny newborn clothes ever since! However, she must have hit a growth spurt over the last few weeks because now most of her pants are capris and her feet have finally reached the bottom of some of her pajama onesies. And now she smiles just about every time I look at her. Ever since she started smiling I feel like I spend the majority of my day leaning over her trying to get her to smile. Every time she does feels like a victory. It never gets old. It’s the best feeling because she won’t smile until she locks eyes with me and sees that I’m smiling at her. I love watching her take it in, receive it, and then willingly smile back at me. The highlight of all her recent milestones happened just this past weekend. Seth was making dinner in the kitchen and I was sitting on the floor next to Gracie working on some editing. She was in her alert active mood and kept making little noises while she flailed her arms and legs. Then without any warning she made a noise and her voice went up an octave, cracked, and then slid back down. Seth and I immediately burst out laughing and spent the next five minutes hovering over her trying to get her to do it again.
At the end of October she also got to see Seth’s mom for the second time and meet her great-grandma and great-grandpa on that side of the family for the first time. It’s so neat as a parent to watch members of your family love on your child. And it’s humbling to see how immediate their love is. Grace hasn’t had to do anything to earn their love, and still they are captivated by her. Soon after Seth’s family arrived him and I were standing in the kitchen watching his grandma hold Grace in the living room and sing to her. I whispered to him, “It’s so neat to see how much they love her”. He smiled as he watched Grace gaze up at her great-grandma and whispered back, “Grace is so rich and she doesn’t even know it.”
Right away when Seth said the comment about Grace being rich I was a little confused because my first instinctual thought was of course relating being rich to having an overflow of money. I feel extremely blessed to be in the financial situation we are in right now but his comment didn't really make sense to me. We may have everything we need but we aren't living life like Donald Trump. We have to be careful with our money but we are definitely blessed. Then I felt a little foolish when I realized he meant Gracie is rich in the things in life that really matter. She has two parents who love her unconditionally, four grandparents who would literally leap in front of a bullet for her, six great-grandparents who melt every time they see her, two uncles who have sworn to protect her at all costs, and an outpouring of extended family, church family, and friends. Gracie may wear clothes from Goodwill and have parents who clip coupons but she is so rich. She has an overflow of people who love her, and in life that is what really matters.
Blessings,
Shantastic
No comments:
Post a Comment