Pages

Friday, January 29, 2010

Confident on the Inside

From Kristen Armstrong's Blog :

"Confident on the Inside means - You are wise enough to accept God’s definition of who you are, and you are strong enough not to accept counterfeit messages. You know your own beauty and are grateful for it, never needing to promote or pollute it. You possess awareness of your talents, as well as the humility and generosity to share them. You can say 'Yes' and 'No' with equal certainty. You live and love big – never needing to play small or belittle others. You can say 'thank you' to a compliment as easily as you can say 'Forgive me' or 'I forgive you' to a mistake. Confident on the Inside means that you feel so comfortable in your own skin that your very presence is an invitation to freedom for others. Confident on the inside knows no age."

"I want my girls to see me out on a race course, both sucking wind and struggling as well as flying across the finish line. I want them to see me shake off my shy and get up in front of a room full of people and talk about the things that matter so much to me that I am willing to offer a piece of myself in the hopes that they might matter to someone else. I want them to see me eat and enjoy food – with the appetite of a woman who prefers to push rather than deprive. I want them to see me try new things – fail at some and fall in love with others. I want them to go on adventures with me. I want to be a team. I want them to know what it means to put your heart out there, all of it, and be happy with that, regardless of how it is received."

"We have to live it out, ladies." " ...we have to be willing to be seen if we want to earn the relationship to be understood. If our lips are moving, but our actions don’t match – we become a badly dubbed foreign film, without the benefit of subtitles."

"We show young women how to be confident on the inside by first being confident on the inside ourselves."

- Kristen Armstrong

Monday, January 4, 2010

Holiday Hoopla

There isn't much documentation, since I am failing on #28 again (take pictures every week), but we had a pretty good holiday. Even with the sick kids, we still had a good break. A few random notes about the last 3 weeks:



Once Jack got over his nasty ear infection, he is communicating a lot. He is clearly nodding his head "Yes", asking for "Mo" (as in more food), trying to ask for help with sign language, and pointing at everything that catches his interest. He learned to climb onto the kitchen chairs (and table) and climb over the back of the couch upstairs. As he got better the Christmas week, he took all of the "twin life force" and Madeline got really sick. I guess we can only have 2 happy kids at one time.



I was pretty close to taking Madeline to the ER on 2 different days, Christmas Eve and the 27th. I had taken her to the doc at the begining of the week, but they said she just had a bad cold. Bad cold turned into Bronchialitis/RSV with probable pnemonia. So she was on a nebulizer all week and taking antibiotics. It took her a few days, but she eventually took back some of the "twin life force" and Jack started to slow down and might have conjunctivitis (eye infection) now.



Madeline learned to say "No" and "Mine" this week. The first time she said "No" I had offered her some food, and she pushed it away with a firm "NO". I laughed outloud it was so funny. Later I asked for a kiss, she again said "Noooo" and ran away. My laughter has fanned the flames and she says "No" to most requests for hugs and kisses now. It took us a couple days to figure out she was saying "Mine". I really didn't expect that out of a 16 month old, but here it is. She is learning all the animal sounds and is clearly trying to talk to us, but we have no idea what she is saying. Most of it sounds like Ewok talk.



Gwendolyn had a great holiday. She played hookey from school one afternoon, Jenna and I took her to lunch and to see The Frog Princess. She really enjoyed it. Christmas Eve, John caught on camera her complete lack of awareness that it was Christmas Eve. I don't know if that is good or bad, I think bad. She loved all her gifts, including a new kitchen and lovely play cupcakes. When the kids were all trying to play with the cupcakes, a brief tussle ensued - Gwen yelled "Cupcake Fight!" She also sang "No swiping on Christmas" from the Dora Christmas special about 200 times, sometimes changing the words to "No eating on Christmas", "No yelling on Christmas", "No recycling on Christmas". We also watched The Little Mermaid for the first time, she asked 175 questions, half of which were "Why?". For good reason, as the plot gets a little confusing at the end.



Thanks to Jenna for visiting and doing all the cooking. It was a much better Christmas with Aunt Jenna visiting! Thanks to John for my sweet Cricut and other awesome gifts - he did very well as usual.