Let it Go

There was a video on facebook recently that I could really identify with. A mom is doing various tasks around the house--laundry, unloading the dishwasher, etc, and her baby is following her and "helping" (by taking all the clothes out of the drawers and crawling into the dishwasher). Today as I prepared to host people for dinner, I laughed at the reality of this video in my life. I picked up the girls room and vacuumed and moments later Jacqueline started throwing all the clothes out of a drawer. Then she and Abby moved on to the dining room where they started moving chairs all around. The living room had toys strewn everywhere, but we were expecting more children, so I wasn't too worried about those. I've learned to "let it go." While working around the house today, I noticed that my girls started getting fussy and clingy. They needed me to stop for a moment and sit with them. I picked up a book to read and I'm so glad I did. I loved what happened next. We were looking at a Sesame Street Numbers book and "counting" objects on the page. Abby sat on my lap and Jacqueline stood next to me. On our second time through the book, I pointed out the hats that Bert and Ernie were wearing and used Abby's finger to count, "one, two. Two hats." Abby smiled and patted her head. When I tried to turn the page, she insisted that we stay on the page with the hats. By this time Jacqueline was sitting on my lap too. We counted the hats again and talked about their colors. I decided to reinforce the two hat lesson by grabbing a couple of Micah's hats so they could wear them. Through these special moments today, I saw the girls making connections from the book into their ever-expanding world. It's so exciting! I hope that as I let go of certain expectations for my house looking a certain way, I will make room for more times like these. 

I also want to mention that we had such a fun night having dinner, going on a walk, and playing with Jason, Alicha and their kids!! I'm so blessed by their friendship through the years!