On Counting My Blessings

This was written a couple of years ago, when my family and I were havign a hard time financially. Having so little monetarily that Christmas really helped me to reflect upon what we DID have. Iwrote thisone evening after my kids were in bed.

Yesterday we went to my son's parent teacher conference. We stayed at the school for a while afterwards so the kids could play on the playground. My 3 year old, Jenna, promptly climbed up the tallest slide-of course, I was right behind her (this slide was a good 15 feet high and she's tiny.) After getting to the top and looking down, she had rethought the situation. She turned around, looked at me terrified, and squealed in her squeaky little chipmunk voice 'Mommy! I'm gonna fall! You have to hold me!' I put my arm around her waist and set her on my lap-she immediately turned back to look at me again, smiled, and beamed with confidence-even though we were over 5 times her height up in the air, everything was ok because mommy was holding her. We proceeded to slide down and she loved it! It made me feel so nice inside that my baby had that much confidence in me. Such a wonderful feeling.

Baby Autumn, 16 months old, walks up to me this morning while i'm doing the breakfast dishes. She hands me her bottle with an unintelligible mumbo jumbo of words...even though nobody understands her primitive asian sounding language, it's pretty obvious by the way she hands me the bottle that she wants a refill. I start washing it out so that I can pour some juice into it for her. She says 'Yay!!' and claps her hands happily. There is no doubt in her mind that mommy will give her what she wants, whether she can verbally express it or not.

Gwendolyn Rose, 4 years old, comes up to me every morning wrapped in her blanket and settles herself on my lap for a good 15 minutes of cuddling-she is one of those slow to wake up, loves to cuddle her mama in the morning children. She doesn't ask to sit on my lap, doesn't hesitate to just make herself comfortable. She knows she won't be rejected.