Updates

A few updates to our life. Just in case you wanted them...

H is finally getting the whole word formation/ decoding thing. She is reading all the signs and exhausting my patience in a wonderful way by constantly reporting on new words she found and asking what certain spellings mean. I enjoy watching this learning process. Her school finally put the kids in three reading groups and she feels so much more comfortable with kids at her own level. Those super readers were making her feel intimidated and inadequate. The English language is maddening.

K is testing the limits. She breaks rules when she thinks she won't get caught. She says things like, "I didn't know" or "I didn't do it on purpose" if she thinks it will help her get out of discipline. If her sister comes to tattle on her she will stand and scream at the top of her lungs hoping I won't be able to hear H. K appears so quiet and sweet to people, but right now, she is definitely the more manipulative and sneaky of my two kids. Each morning I pray and try to prepare to be consistent and calm in these disciplining moments. Because of her deceptions she can no longer be alone while I shower or clean. I offered to let her play in her room while I showered the other day but she opted to stay in the bathroom because because she didn't think she could follow the rules about staying out of her sister's bed. (The girls share a room and they can only climb into each other's bed with permission.)

One of my computer savvy friends read this old post about a computer failure causing the loss of my writings about the girls. He was able to save all my documents, including the journals, for free! Thanks Beau. I have successfully saved the documents on my current computer. And another friend helped me discover Google docs, where I can store my documents online for free. If I keep up with saving my important documents there, I won't ever lose them due to computer failure again. Now I just need to get them in printed format too.

Love

Our old computer just quit one day. No warning. It just wouldn't turn on. It wasn't a big deal because my grandma had given us her laptop and most of the time that's what we were using anyway. There is one document on there though that I want, am desperate about. I swear I saved it to a disk when we moved from Montana, but I can't find it. I thought I had emailed it to myself for safety, but I can't find it. I need a data retrieval expert.

This weekend, I moved the computer desk into the mud room in the back of the house. Our mud room is a large room, much too big for a mud room. But it's location, and the giant closet, make it a mud room no matter how we furnish it. It's a good room for a computer. A good room to write in. Big and sunny. Even though I liked working on the couch and even though it amused my friends that we stored the laptop under the couch, I like having the desk here. Flanked on either side of the computer are pictures of the girls- so even as they sleep and I blog in the quiet evening hours, I am reminded of my love for them.

And tonight I am overwhelmed. Maybe it is because I've spent three days at home with both girls, going no where, snuggling, wiping feverish brows, spooning up broths, and watching the normally wiggly little bodies, curled up on the couch, sleeping. When they wake up, rosy- cheeked, matted hair, tendrils of new curls around their face, they are the most beautiful children in the world. I am overwhelmed by the intensity of this love that exists for my children. They are so special and my heart aches when I realize that to most other people, they are just children. And forever I will desire for the world to see how special they are, to see what I see. I desire for them to see what I see, how every detail of who they are was known and created by God for a reason. I have never been so sure of God's hand in creation as I am in my children. How blessed I am to be their mother.

Sometimes, in these moments of overwhelming love, I wish I could capture them because I know my memory will fail, and not just of old age. Already the images, smells, developments of their infanthood exist mostly in what I have recorded in word or image. Those moments of life slip away from my memory like a freshly caught fish. I suppose if I could hang on to all of those memories, it might be too burdensome to move on, to follow Paul in " forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead." Either I would wallow in the past difficulties or yearn for the past pleasantries. But God has given me some skill with words and for month after month for almost five years I captured the intricacies of their developing personalities in words-- Like my posts a few weeks ago about each girl. And currently those writings are lost in that old computer. Maybe I am not meant to have such treasures, but maybe their is a skilled computer dude who can rescue them. Do you know any?