Four Years, Seven Days

Last Wednesday we celebrated Giggles' 4th Birthday. What a happy day! She is so exuberant and full of life that she brings joy to any occasion, but when it's her birthday it's extra exciting.

She had faithfully done the birthday countdown for the week leading up to her day...and she didn't miss a beat; with fingers displaying the number of days left, she was 100% accurate. House FULL birthdays always start with a run to our small island grocery to pick up donuts for breakfast. Later in the evening, we had a small family party at home with her grandparents, our adopted great-grands and her siblings. "Small family party" is a relative term...

On Birthday Saturday, Daddy wakes up the birthday child while the other kids are still sleeping. They make a repeat run to the island grocery for a donut and strawberry milk and drive to the beach for a 'walk and talk'. It's a highlight for all, and Giggles was no exception as she returned home and bounced through the door...giggling.

Sunday night was the most anticipated event, however. Our church has recently reinstated the "Birthday Bank." Giggles marched into evening service with her four pennies carefully pocketed. When her turn came, she was almost beside herself with an ear to ear smile...her enthusiasm was so great, she could hardly stand still long enough to get her pennies into the bank!! Someone later asked me if she'd needed to use the bathroom while she was onstage. Nope, she was just that excited!! I really wish I'd had the video camera...

One of the greatest accomplishments of her third year was that she stopped sucking her thumb. Her success story is a depiction of her personality. At her semi-annual dental check up last summer, the dentist explained that pretty soon she'd need to stop sucking her thumb for the sake of her teeth. No big hurry, he said, just something to start thinking about. He then shared that when she stopped sucking her thumb for seven whole days, Mommy could make a call to his office and he'd send a present in the mail. Before we left, I whispered to the hygienist that she'd never do it; I still couldn't get this going-on-three-and-half-year-old potty trained!!

Three days after the appointment, Giggles came to me and stated matter-of-factly, "Mommy, I'm not sucking my thumb anymore." Hmmm...I hadn't noticed. But I started to pay attention. Sure enough, no daytime comfort sucking. I doubted she could be successful so quickly. That night I went up to check on her several times as she slept. While her hand was tucked up under her chin in a sucking position, her thumb was not in her mouth!! And she never sucked that silly thumb again. At the end of the week, we called the dentist to report the exciting news and, true to his word, he sent her a My Little Pony and a $10 Target gift card!!

And that's just how Giggles does life. She gets something set in her mind and does it (and she did finally get the potty thing down!!). Her determination and will, when directed properly, are something to be admired!!

She brings so much life to our days and truly is a ray of sunshine in our home. We can't imagine life without her and are so thankful for the gift the Lord chose to give us and let us keep.

We love you, Princess Bella Giggles!!

A Week In Pictures

Sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words (although I'm pretty good at coming up with 1000 words...just ask my husband!!)

A New Model

We have a sad, sick baby at our house...
Unfortunately, our sad, sick baby doesn't like baths, in fact she loathes them. I'm pretty sure the whole neighborhood knows when Spider-Girl is taking a bath because the rafters of our house rattle with her screams of terror and anguish. Needless to say, baths are not at all soothing and mostly counterproductive, even in illness.

Yesterday, I was attempting to feed our sad, sick baby some watermelon chunks. I mortgaged the house and bought it out of season for my sweet girl (sweet being relative amidst the sad and sick), thinking it would brighten her day and keep her hydrated. Instead of loving it, however, she threw her head back in agony, clamped her teeth shut and wriggled as far to the corner of her high chair as possible. She wanted nothing to do with it. Seriously, what child doesn't like watermelon?!

Tongue-in-cheek, I implored her, "You don't like baths, you don't like watermelon. That is so un-Somma. Did we bring the wrong baby home from the hospital?!"

Her four-year-old brother and three-year-old sister were observing the scene:

Davy Crockett piped up: "Hooray!! Maybe we can get a new baby!!"

To which Giggles replied: "Yeah, one that doesn't CRY!!"

Their summations came a little too quickly and sounded a little too rehearsed.

Poor sad, sick baby.

Until We Meet Again...

We're just home from a glorious 10 days in Florida with Mr. Right's family. It was long overdue and went by entirely too fast. In fact, there are several in this house who would hop back on the plane tomorrow if it were really an option...

Here is my hands-down favorite picture...
Living in Florida, New Jersey and Washington State, they hadn't all been together since November of 2006 (the bottom three hadn't even made their appearance at that point!!). Heart-warmingly, it seemed like yesterday as they picked up right where they'd left off. Fifteen years to 7 months, the cousin-love was AMAZING!!

I think this pic is pretty swell too; it's worth a thousand words...A full day at Disney and all this girl wanted was a balloon. Her uncle indulged her as we left the park and you'd have thought he'd lassoed the moon...

I wish the U.S. didn't have four corners. I wish there was no such thing as opposites like northwest and southeast and northeast. And I wish there was some way to shrink the distance...

Seasons Change...

The weekend found Mr. Right and Mighty Man outside working on the last fall clean up, taking care of fallen leaves, mowing and shutting down the garden.
Turns out they were just in time because this is what Mighty Man was doing Monday afternoon. Yep, a pre-Thanksgiving snowfall hit the Pacific Northwest with temperatures dipping into the teens. That's quite a rarity here, especially in November, but these characters were absolutely thrilled!!

Sister Sense

Sweet Spider-Girl is teething. This morning I was holding her and she was inconsolable. Giggles popped up next to us and looked at me with her big brown eyes. "Mommy, she doesn't want you to hold her."

"She doesn't want me to hold her?" I questioned.

"No."

Sensing where this was headed, I posed the next question: "Does she want you to hold her?"

"Yes." Matter of factly, in her husky little lisp, just like that. "Yes, she does."
I guess that settles it...

A 'Wet' Weekend

Two summers ago the insurance man sent us to a hotel for a week while the wood flooring man came in to repair some water damage in our kitchen. We had such a great time swimming and relaxing and being away from home that we decided to make it an annual event (the hotel, not the floor damage!).

The kids have been reminding us for a couple of months that it was time to 'go to the hotel', so this past weekend we spontaneously packed up and headed out. We only drove an hour north, but it felt like we were really getting away, and the kids spent as many hours as possible in the pool. I think they're still prune-y!Giggles, in her seemingly unending quest for thrills and danger, loved floating upside and downside and jumping in when no one was looking. Fortunately her daddy is very attentive and she was kept out of harms' way. Does she look worried?
And, I know we're biased, but we think we've been blessed with the cutest baby (and daddy)ever!!!....

Fear-less

We have a very special little girl at our house. Her daddy calls her 'Giggles.' Partly because it rhymes with a shortened version of her given name and partly because that's just what she does. Constantly. No matter what life throws at her, Giggles is, well, giggling! And in this she brings immense joy to our home because her spirit is infectious and has all of us laughing.

God has used Giggles to teach me some very valuable lessons. Her seizure disorder brings with it several unique challenges, one of which is an incredibly high pain tolerance, the other a seeming inability to fear. This combination often helps her to get into situations most of us would have the common sense to avoid. The fact that she is two only compounds her keen ability to find trouble!

Yesterday morning she was up in the playroom terrorizing her brothers and her sister. They were building Lego towers and she was taking it upon herself to be the one-man wrecking crew. After several pleas from her siblings for a rescue, I decided I'd have her come to the kitchen to help fix a snack.

As I was walking up the stairs I saw her at the top of the landing. I held out my arms and said "C'mon, Mama needs your help cutting the watermelon." To my surprise, she backed up about four feet and with reckless abandon made a running leap for my catch.

Only I hadn't really intended to catch her. I was still five steps down and it was too far for her to jump. She didn't seem to notice and was in the air before I could stop her.

And suddenly, there she was. In the security of my embrace, having no idea of the calamity that could have befallen her, giggling and happy, thinking she'd just had the thrill of her Tuesday.

Once my heart started beating again, I felt the Lord speak to me: 'I want you to live life like she does.'

How's that, tempting disaster on a continual basis?

'No, trusting Me.'

Wow.

I've been thinking about it ever since.

Giggles has an all-or-nothing spirit. And when she leaps, she leaps. Yesterday she seemingly had no idea of the peril that awaited her when she plunged off the landing. She wasn't worried about it because she had me in her sights. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that I would catch her. She is confident enough in my love for her that she knew I wouldn't, couldn't, let her fall.

And that's how God wants me to be with Him.

The trouble is, unlike Giggles, I have known pain. And because far too often I don't first check to see if He is there, I've fallen down enough times that I also have fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of missing the mark. Fear of failure. Fear of not being caught. Fear of being hurt. And the most unfounded: fear that maybe, just maybe, He's stopped loving me.

So I hesitate. Before I choose to trust Him, I stop and weigh the options: What will trusting Him cost me?

But my loving Heavenly Father is not like me. There is no chance of Him dropping me when I leap into His loving arms. He is waiting for me. And like Giggles did yesterday, He wants me to back up, put a smile in my heart, let my hair flap in the breeze and RUN to Him. With reckless abandon. Into His safety. Into His embrace. Into His love.

Without doubting. Without stopping to think about how He might fail me. Because He won't. He can't.

He wants me to know that as much as I love my little girl, He loves me infinitely more. And as much as I want to protect Giggles, He wants to protect me more. As I watch out and care for her and help her to recognize danger, He does this for me more.

And even when it seems impossible not to crash and burn, He is still waiting for me with open arms. Never caught off guard. Always ready.

Unconditionally.