Summer 2008

The following is a list of “to do” activities that I hope to accomplish with my girls this summer:

-camp out as a family for a night in Aunt Jacinta’s backyard (we’ve already approved this with Jamal’s sister who graciously offered her ample suburban lawn for “camp out” as sleeping outside in our neighborhood would simply not be smart!)

-make fruit smoothies, and maybe even a coffee one for mommy (!)

-jump through the garden sprinkler in bathing suits

-go swimming in a community pool (a many-time event, if last summer was any indication)

-spend a week in Ft. Lauderdale

-begin to potty train Kariah

-spend time with mommy (this is a direct Kimora quote)

-attend Tyrel and Nia’s wedding and celebrate with them

-paint our toenails

-pack a picnic and spend the afternoon at the park

-visit Imagine It! children’s museum

-Daddy and Mommy dates with each individual child

-teach Kajanae to talk (another Kimora quote)

-read (Kariah’s suggestion, except her version sounded more like “weed”)

-celebrate Kariah’s 2^nd birthday in August!

-allow girls to pick out pretend dress-up outfits from a vintage thrift shop

-host an English tea party with church mother/daughter friends

-travel to Philly (as time permits)

- ?

What’s fantastic about this list is that the joy will not be in crossing the item of the list, but rather in experiencing each one with my babies! Happy summer!

A Note of Reassurance to the Correveidiles of the World

Apparently I have people "up in arms" in regards to my last post. I honestly don't mean to be mysterious; many of my faithful blog readers already know our family's plans from conversations that we've had personally. For the rest of you, rest assured that I won't leave you all in the dark forever...we're still in the "pre-game" stages...so you'll have to be patient, too! Allow me to let you in on a little secret: we're going to be in for a tremendous about of WAITING ourselves!! So...take a deep breath, say a prayer for us if you have the chance, and feel free to write me a comment, shoot me an email, or give me a call if you want to talk more. ;-)

Frustrating...Baffling...A Blessing

Sometimes I wish that I could know and comprehend the mind of God. Being able to "just do" has never been my forte; I'm a planner, an analyzer, a scrutinizer, a questioner...these traits of mine make simply TRUSTING a daily challenge. Each morning I take up my cross and follow my LORD, determined to lose my life for Him, which, ultimately, saves my life. Did I mention that this is a daily challenge? How can I possibly think that Lia can do things better than and understand things more fully than the Master of the Universe? How self-absorbed is that!? Why do I always feel the need to take matters into my own hands? I KNOW that God knows best...but my inquiring mind wants to understand his will and comprehend the fullness of His glory. (Just as a side note, I use the masculine pronoun when referring to God so as to minimize confusion. However, God is not male, nor is God female. God is beyond gender...just so we're clear!)

Why all of this talk about trusting God all of a sudden? Well, I've already described the "frustrating" part mentioned in the title. Now for the baffling part....We're feeling called as a family to do something that many onlookers would consider outrageous, loco, and perhaps even irresponsible. My human tendencies (they're darned things, they are!) have compelled me to resist this calling. However, my long discussions with family members, particularly with my hsuband, have led me to believe that we are indeed hearing the calling of God. Even some comments that Kimora has said recently have inspired me beyond what I ever believed a three-year-old could. Her insights spoke to my heart and the timings were uncanny. I fully believe in involving people not directly related to the situation to help us perceive and decipher what we're "hearing"....and it's pretty clear, as I said, that God has a very special plan for our family. While we're confident that God is leading us, the means through which we will fulfill this calling, and obviously the outcome, are competely unknown and still provoke me to be...well, baffled.

"Here I am, LORD. Is it I, LORD? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, LORD, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart."

Finally, while the means and outcome are unclear, I have no doubt that they will bring incomprehensible blessings. Many times throughout my life I've felt that I've been "blessed with a burden."

"I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing." ~Ezekiel 34:26

A Whirlwind of a Spring

Thank you so much to all of you who wished me a happy Mother's Day on here! You guys were very thoughtful!

This spring has been far from lacking in events and busy-ness. Nia's bridal shower went off without a hitch (nearly :-) ) and Seanice has now moved back home and graduated yesterday afternoon. Of course, we have the wedding to look forward to coming up next month, but that, thank heavens, is not my responsibility to plan! They've been busy for almost a year now with preparations for that upcoming event.

The girls are fantastic. We're looking into a part-time preschool for Kimora to begin attending in the fall, probably just two days a week. Then the next year, when she's four, she could attend the three day-a-week class. This way she has the opportunity to prep for kindergarten; I don't want her to be in for a rude awakening when she has to suddenly be away from me all day long.

Kariah is morphing into quite the little professor, if you will! She wants to "read" all day long. I'm just puzzled by a twenty-one month old who runs her little finger along each individual line of a chapter book. I'm taking advantage of this interest of hers and reading a lot of books to her, as well. One thing that Kariah has picked up that I'm not too happy about is...well...when she's excited or shocked, she'll proclaim, "Oh my GAWD!" ....and with that inflection, too! We highly discourage swearing at our house. I know that before I met Jamal that he had a bit more of a loose tongue that he would have liked. I really don't know, though, where Kariah heard this...except maybe from my younger sisters who slip every now and again, but are really doing much better than when they first came to us. Anyways, I'm nipping it in the bud. I let Kariah know that we don't say the Lord's name in vain because God tells us in the Bible not to...this usually works...but if she says it again that particular day, then she has to sit on the naughty chair (yes, we watch Supernanny!). She's learning, and I've given her some ideas of what else she could say in exciting or shocking instances.

Kajanae is growing like a weed. She will be four months old in a few days. I looked back in Kimora and Kariah's baby books, and Kajanae is bigger than what both of the girls were at this stage. I find this quite interesting; I knew that Kariah was quite a bit smaller, but I always thought that Kimora was my biggest baby. Not anymore, I guess! :) I'm really happy that Kajanae is so healthy and thriving considering I was having weight issues while I was nursing her during the first few months of her life.

I think I mentioned before that I'm feeling much better now that I count my calories and monitor my intake of key nutrients. Not only do I look curvier and more womanly (!), but I FEEL much healthier, which is far more important. I'm almost up to my pre-pregnancy weight, so we're really pleased with the progress. My nursing boobies are as big as ever, though! Hah! I wonder if they'll be a permanent fixture? If so, I'll have to gain much more weight to balance those babies out! Wow...tmi...sorry. :-)

Just Checking In

Hello guys! I'm sorry I've been so delinquent in keeping up with postings. I'm hoping that I'll get back into the swing of blogging around the middle of this month. Our family has been very busy in recent weeks. My current endeavors include planning a bridal shower for my future sister-in-law (Nia, who is marrying my brother Tyrel) and helping my sister Seanice move out of her college apartment and attending all of her graduation festivities. Kimora, Kariah, and Kajanae continue to thrive, becoming more and more beautiful and learning more and more each day.

On another note, I quite enjoy viewing the map that shows the location of all of my blog's visitors. The more visits, the bigger the dots; the more visitors, the more dots. Welcome readers from all over the globe. Feel free to leave a comment to let me know you've stopped by, or simply browse at your own choosing! Welcome!

Well....

I got up to nurse Kajanae and couldn't fall back to sleep, so I decided to do some technical work on my poor little neglected blog. :) First, I couldn't STAND the atrocious distortion of my new picture, so I removed my profile pic and added a new page element that allows me to add a picture at its real size.

Secondly, I re-enabled my comments. I have it set so that anyone can comment; this way, even those of you who don't have a blog (or if you have a blog with wordpress instead of blogspot) can still comment. I came to this decision after discovering that I can moderate the comments!! So...yeah...I'm really excited about re-enabling this to hear everyone's comments and input...but I can determine the appropriate comments from the malicious ones, which is really the key!

I also want to give an update on my recent health issue. I'm doing much better...the counting has really brought the severe deficit of calories in my diet to my attention. When I'm taking care of everyone else, it's sooo easy to just let no breakfast slide into no lunch...and no lunch slide into a quick, dinky dinner while catering to everyone else's needs. So...I'm quickly approaching my first weight goal, which is really exciting. From my perspective, from just looking at myself, I still don't see the problem...that is, until I hop on the scale. The scale doesn't lie...and was really my saving grace because I could see the problem in a concrete form. So I can continue nursing both of my younger daughters...and I feel SOO much better now that I'm more conscientious about my food intake...more energy, and just an overall feeling of better health.

Yikes!!

Well, I just changed by profile picture...and on the homepage I look like I have squinty eyes, and then on the profile page I look like my eyes are bulging all the way out of my head!! I hate pixel distortions. Oh, well..if you guys really want to see what it looks like, you'll have to click all the way through, meaning keep clicking on the pic until it's the only object on the page...then you can view it in its correct dimensions. This was taken at one of the many restaurants we visited in lovely Cancun.