One Thousand Gifts-Week 25

Okay so really, it’s hardly accurate to call this week 25 since there were those two months that I completely missed, but for the sake of chronology, and ease of titling, just pretend with me. Alright?

• The GH has this way of looking up from what he’s doing whenever I walk by, looking me in the eye, and smiling at me in a heart melting, knee weakening sort of way.
• Little is talking up a storm these days. Everything she does is accompanied by a constant stream of chatter. I have some favorite phrases things I will be very sad to have gone when she starts saying them correctly. “Me wuv you mama, ahso, too!” for example. Or, “No, me do it my big giwl sewf.” (That’s “me do it my big girl self” for those of you who don’t speak toddler.) Also, “ME DID IT!”
• Sunday school teachers taking time to pull me aside and marvel at how well my children play together, how kind they are to each other. I marvel as well, and continue to be grateful for such a gift, to them as well as to me.
• The Girl has cleaned out my gift wrap closet. She keeps taking out gift bags and tissue and wrapping up her favorite things to give to her friends. If I allowed it I think she might be without toys and clothes altogether. She gets such joy out of it. I do my best to not chide her over using up all of my gift wrapping supplies.
• The long chunks of time when the Boy sits and reads to himself, still a little bit out loud so I can overhear, The Chronicles of Narnia books, or the Wizard of Oz.
• The kissable curve of a toddler’s cheek.
• Smiling blue eyes in a 3 month old baby boy’s face.
• Kites flying at the beach.
• The Boy on a boogie board, trying, and sometimes succeeding, at catching the gentler waves near the beach.
• The kindness of friends.
• The gift of noticing something lovable in a person that I hadn’t seen before.
• A dip in the pool toward the end of a long sweaty day.
• Kisses and whispered conferences with Little in the early morning as we try to convince each other that we ought to get up. (Some days I don’t want to, some days she doesn’t.)
• The scent of magnolia flowers.
• The bits of paper that litter the table and floor at the end of a day with the Girl spent making paper dolls. A sign of time well spent, of a home well used, of a life being lived.

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