A Journey to Love

Sometimes being a mother of a two year old is hard. This morning Benjamin and I both cried over his oatmeal. Yep, both of us. I must be a little hormonal, because I've been tearing up over the smallest things lately. A heartfelt song on the radio (although who doesn't cry at a country song every now and then, right?), a recipe gone wrong, a husband arriving home later than planned, and the most recent one, a two year old boy who refuses to eat the oatmeal he requested just a minute earlier. I foolishly took  a stand on this one. I insisted that because he asked for it, he must eat some of it. In other words, I tried to reason with a two year old. When he didn't follow my logic, I repeated it, only this time slightly louder. When he countered back with his own slightly louder voice, I turned up my volume even more. Finally, he ended up in his bed, crying, with me stomping out of his room, exclaiming that he will not get out of his bed until he eats his oatmeal. I...

One of Benjamin's gifts he received for his birthday this year was a bike. Together with my dad, we bought him a Strider bike, which is a two-wheel bicycle without pedals. The point is for Benjamin to learn how to balance on two wheels so when he is physically capable of pedaling he can switch to a normal bicycle rather than a cumbersome trike. In the six weeks he's had his new set of wheels, he's gone from barely sitting on the bike, to walking next to the bike, to standing over the bike and walking, to sitting and slowly scooting, to gliding on flat surfaces with one leg up, and finally riding down hills with both feet up in the air and loving it. I captured a short video of him doing just that. Should I be alarmed that he gets so much pleasure in crashing...especially into people ??

Five years ago today I married my best friend. Nathan and I celebrated our anniversary by experiencing a night away at the same resort we spent our wedding night at, the Sycamore Mineral Springs in Avila. It brought back so many memories of our special day, when we exchanged vows that spoke of love, honor, and commitment to each other all the rest of our days. So in honor of our five year anniversary, I'd like to list five major things I've learned about marriage: 1. Marriage takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but the payoff is incredible. Nathan and I knew that the days after our wedding wouldn't just melt into happily-ever-after, but I don't think we expected real life to hit us so quickly. The first year of our marriage was hard . Melding two lives into one can be incredibly trying when it comes to things like money, families, roles, and even seemingly trivial things like tastes in furniture styles and cuisine. However, we have spent an inordinate amount of t...