Dear Reader:

What you gotta love about children the most is their unabashed demonstrations of sheer joy! It is one of the greatest joys of a grandparent to simply watch them grow.

Rutledge insisted on pushing Lachlan in the swing. Instead of pushing up and down, however, he pushed ’round and ’round…to the point that Lachlan was starting to turn a light shade of green.

Kaitlyn and I told him to slow it down….At that very moment, the plans were to put the boys in the wagon and head down the street a-ways with the dogs and children…hoping to wear them out. Rutledge promptly lost interest in the swing and took off….leaving poor little Lachlan in a visual blur of unwinding circles.

Both boys survived the episode without giving it a second thought. A brother’s code of loyalty.

Thanks Tommy and Kaitlyn for helping out this weekend with Shift 1….to enable Walsh and Mollie to get away for a weekend. Shift 2 (me) is eternally grateful for the help, the same with Mandy, who came in as the extra resource shift Saturday afternoon/evening. The family all came through to make the weekend as enjoyable as possible for the little ones.

I “hung” with Rudy for a little while before Shift 1 left….we are born ‘hanger-on’ers’….aren’t we Rudy?

Tommy and Kaitlyn had just been gone a couple of hours when Mandy arrived with supper for all and an extra pair of hands for getting the boys in pj’s and settled in for the night.

Eva Cate and Rutledge play wonderfully together…the children sense how special a cousin relationship is. There is definitely a family resemblance running through the gene pool but in other ways they are like night and day. Rutledge can eat 24/7 while Eva Cate exists off “air” as Mandy laments…the child who is rarely hungry… who would rather play than eat. She is the eldest and the only girl….so the Queen reigns over her boys (brother and cousins) with a firm hand as to her status.

Lachlan went down for the count around 7:00 and did pretty good…just one 2:00 a.m. bottle and then back to sleep. Rutledge slept with me and we  got up at 6:30. I was so hoping we would see some snow flurries for the boys’ sake but we were stuck with a cold, rainy day.

Everything went well and Walsh and Mollie were home by 2:30…having had a great time…with sunshine and temps in the fifties. Who would have “thunk” it?

Little Rutledge, who was so excited about them coming home,  fell asleep about an hour before they arrived…the reason for him not being in the photo. I know he woke up happy!

Kate Wolfe-Jenson wrote a beautiful tribute to joy using lilies…a wonderful metaphor about learning to live with joy and dispelling our worries

Consider the lilies

Really I mean—consider them.

I chose to draw lilies this month because of the shape of the flower. I made joyful marks as a creative experiment and many of them reminded me of lily petals. Drawing connects me to a subject. I spend time with it, looking carefully, considering…The lilies became our teachers.

Look at those tight, smooth buds. They are just as tight as we are when we are holding ourselves and our troubles together, making sure we look composed and complete on the outside. Then the plant stops putting up a front, makes room for joy and magically, those petals swoop out and celebrate life—freckles showing, stigma and stamens waving right out where everyone can see them.They are unabashedly themselves. Consider the lilies.

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So until tomorrow…Thank you Father for providing the “lilies of the field” (and family) who help dispel the worry and give us the courage to make room for joy.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*I think I might have invented a new expression due to a “Freudian” slip. We have been talking lately a lot about “random acts of kindness.” When my brother stopped over the other night we started talking about a recent incident that happened to him that was an example of a “random act of kindness.”

But…instead of saying “Kindness” I said “Congress.” I was about to apologize for the verbal mistake…but then stopped, repeated the phrase again, and decided that the newly devised expression ” A Random Act of Congress” might indeed be the new benchmark summation for the state of the union problems!