My life is a mess. Literally.

For the past few weeks, our little family has been taking turns being sick, and when my family is sick, I sort of shut down to the outside world and just focus in on them. As a result, I am horribly amiss on blogging this month.

To reinitiate myself into blogging, I'd like the make a list for posterity's sake of everything I've cleaned up in the past 24 hours:

1. An entire bowl of oatmeal dumped on the floor.
2. An entire bowl of cheerios and milk dumped on the floor.
3. A handful of peas thrown throughout my kitchen. 
4. Half of a Starbucks drink spilled under my dining room table.
5. About 4 poopy diapers.
6. A mixture of snot and ash spread across my son's face after he got into our chiminia.
7. A full sippy cup of milk whose lid I forgot to screw on before Lydia found it.
8. An entire bottle of Benadryl that I dropped at midnight last night during a drousy effort at medicating my sinusitis-addled self.

 And last but not least, here are some pictures of the laundry "beach" Shepherd constructed using a basket full of dirty clothes along with Shepherd (aka "the lizard") crawling around in them. This is the next thing I get to clean up.

Oh, and here is a picture of the beautiful, sweet, wonderful little person who spilled the oatmeal, cheerios, peas, milk, and filled all of those diapers.

 

And the gender is...

Since the moment I told BJ I was pregnant, he has been hoping for a boy. Because I love giving him things he wants, I also was sort of hoping for a boy.

It's a girl.

It's a girl, and I feel so deeply grateful and excited about her. When I asked BJ after the ultrasound if he was okay, he excitedly said, "Yeah. I got over that in about 2 seconds."

I've heard a lot of stories about people being disappointed by the gender. This is my first time going into the ultrasound room hoping for one thing and getting another, but I can honestly say that 'disappointed' doesn't come close to describing how I feel. As the ultrasound tech measured each body part (the brain, the heart, the legs, the spine) and declared each one just right, all the images I'd built in my head melted away and were replaced by the real, actual person currently taking residence in me. We've set a place at our table. This is the amazing little person God is sending to fill it.

I can't wait to one day tell are youngest daughter that she was the oops who was supposed to be a boy, and that we couldn't be happier with how it all turned out. I hope that she sees in this the folly of human plans and the infinite wisdom of God's.

I have a face.

After a wonderful weekend with my parents in town, many moments stand out as special. But one conversation in particular between my mom and Shepherd will go down into history:

Mamm: Oh Shepherd, you're so cute I could just eat you up.
Shepherd: Mamm, you can't eat me. I'm not a cookie or bacon. I have a face.

The lesson to be gleaned from this: when talking to a toddler, keep in mind that everything you say can and will be taken literally.

A New Take on a Classic

This afternoon while playing in the yard, Shepherd was pretending to be Jack from the nursery rhyme, "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick; Jack jump over the candlestick." He would say the rhyme, and then jump off of his little orange slide.

During the middle of this play time, he told me he had to go to the bathroom, so we came in. He headed to the bathroom while I sat on the couch and read my book. After about five minutes, I overheard his little toddler voice doing its characteristic mumbling narration of everything he does. Here is what I heard: "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick; Jack wipe his butt and be ready to jump the candlestick."

As soon as he was done, we headed out and resumed the candlestick jumping.