Pride and Potential

Honour your children, they suggested. Share how they make you proud.

Easy peasy, as Connor likes to say. (He stole my expression.)

He’s always up for anything involving construction paper and crayons.

“What are you good at?” I asked.

He didn’t hesitate in his answer.

child with sign

I’m good at building LEGO.

He’s so good at LEGO it actually freaks me out a little bit. He’s going to be smarter than I am. He might be already. He’s good at a lot of things, but the confidence he gets from LEGO is a joy to see. He can do it well and he knows it. And I’m glad he knows it.

“What else are you good at?”

I thought his answer might be painting. (“I have paint all over my hands because I’m an artist like my dad,” he told me the other day.) Or baking. There are lots of things he could have chosen.

child with sign

I’m good at cleaning up my toys.

But he chose this. It’s his job and he does it (though he occasionally complains about it, and fair enough). But he does a darn good job of cleaning up his toys.

“What’s something about you that makes you really nice?” Last question.

child with sign

I help you change the baby.

He thought for a split second. Helping change the baby is not just something he likes to do, it’s something he does because he wants to be helpful. And I so admire that about him. He’s a really good big brother.

And then there’s the baby. What to say about the one I’ve only known for a couple of weeks but who has changed my worldview? If life is made up of a series of steps along a path leading us to who we are meant to be, he is a significant one in mine. In him lies so much potential.

newborn with sign

I’m brand new and full of potential.

Both for him and for me.

Self-portraits

When I think about self-portraits I always picture holding my phone at arm’s length trying to get anything other than a totally horrific shot. But of course that’s not really a self-portrait, at least not if you’re doing it right.

There are some really cool self-portraits and self-portrait projects and I’m always in awe of (a) people who are comfortable taking pictures of themselves and (b) the incredible shots and unique perspectives they manage to get.

I’m not quite ready to start shattering my self-esteem by taking a self-portrait a week, but we did think it would be cool to do something with it on Just.Be.Enough. for our first anniversary. (A whole year! I can hardly believe it.)

So today the JBE contributors are sharing self-portraits – whatever way each of us has chosen to represent ourselves. For me the actual shot was easy enough, but deciding what I wanted to express about myself in that format was much tougher.

So c’mon over and see if you can tell which one is mine. (Hint: I opted not to use a shot of my face.) And if you’re a blogger, please join in and link up with us! I’d love to see how you’d choose to portray who you are.

 

cropped photo of chipped nail polish

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Four going on 16

Earlier this week while we were getting Connor ready to go to day camp I grabbed his hat and plopped it on his head. He immediately whipped it off and turned it around so that it was on his head backwards. He actually looked pretty cute, especially with the bit of hair sticking out the front, so I told him I wanted to take a picture of him.

This is what I got: 

toddler with backwards ball cap

He just turned four. At least I think he did. Either that or we’ve had some sort of time warp and this is my teenager.

It does sort of feel like a glimpse of the future. (Oh, this kid is definitely going to define his own style as he gets older.) I mean, what’s with the face? He’s gone from doing that cheesy grin – scrunched eyes and big, all-teeth smile – to this. Backwards hat, menacing look, tongue out. And a Lego police car retrofitted with extra-wide wheels and a spear. All attitude, baby.

Is it because we buy him Lego with bad guys? Is he influenced by subtle messages in kids’ TV shows?

Nah. I think it’s just because he’s four going on 16.

My only consolation is that the day after this when I tried to drop him off at day camp he wouldn’t go. He rubbed my wrist as we went in the door and then wanted me to pick him up. While we waited to go in he buried his face in my skirt and then sat on my lap and hid his face in my neck. I got him as far as the sign-in door but that was it. He would NOT go in. He cried and cried and asked to go home, and this went on until I finally decided not to force it and we left. That was the first time we’ve ever had a problem getting him to go somewhere without us. Oh sure, he’s been nervous and a bit shy at times, but he’s never outright refused to go. (And then the next day he trotted right in there like the meltdown of the century had never happened.)

Forget 16. He’s four going on…four. And I kind of like him that way.

Grace in Small Things: #6

yellow wildflowers in tall grass

  1. Iron pills that beat back exhaustion and conquer nausea. 
  2. The gigantic hearts of small boys. 
  3. Family members who support each other. 
  4. Fans in the summer. 
  5. Feeling better and more optimistic than I have in ages. 
Waging a battle against embitterment and taking part in Grace in Small Things.

Goodbye Wedding Ring

This is a public service announcement for all pregnant women: Remove your wedding ring lest it be removed for you.

Yes, I learned this the hard way.

If you were on my Facebook page over the weekend you would have seen this drama unfolding, and here, just for kicks, is photographic evidence.

The ring as it is now:

wedding ring after being cut off

Unfortunately the cut is right in the middle of the engraving on the inside. We had Qui Sono Felice (Here I am happy) engraved in our rings and poor Felice is now on her own, relegated to happiness without her neighbouring words. It was a clean cut, though, and should be able to be fixed when the time is right.

My finger was pretty angry afterwards:

swollen finger after wedding ring cut off

Which is probably because holy mother of God does it ever hurt to have a ring stuck on a swollen finger. And it hurts worse to have it cut off. But I had tried everything else — my kitchen was a veritable arsenal of ring-removal tools, including olive oil, lotion, soap, Windex, aloe, saran wrap, dental floss, ice, a bowl of cold water – the list goes on and on — and nothing had worked. I think it just got more sore in the process.

I didn’t really see this coming, because I didn’t have to take off my rings last time and my fingers aren’t actually noticeably swollen. I only noticed because my finger was feeling irritated, and I suspect it had been too tight and stuck for a while.

I’m less sentimental about getting it cut off than I would have thought. Probably because the damn thing just needed to come off. Unfortunate, but there you go.

My husband, bless him, just wants to know if we’re still married.