Perspective

Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in our own lives. All of our daily troubles and headaches and annoyances.

It is easy to get frustrated with a coworker that has a different viewpoint than you do.
It is easy to get annoyed with your significant other for putting everything on the top shelf of the fridge (because it's soooo difficult to put things back in the door).
It's easy to feel tired when the alarm goes off at 6am and wish for a few more hours or even a snow day so you didn't have to get up and go off to work.
It's easy to be irritated by the driver going 45 in a 55mph zone when you've got somewhere to be or the elderly checker at Wal-Mart that is way too slow to be working the speedy checkout line.
It's easy to wish that just once your 8 month old would sleep all the way through the night and not even need a pacifier.
It's easy to curse the Gods when you get that killer cold and your baby gets it and your husband gets it and all of you lose an entire night's sleep listening to each other cough.
It's easy to justify being crabby and grumpy because you're "stressed" and "tired" and "overworked" and "overextended."

It is so easy to do these things. And then you have a loved one with cancer and it puts it all into perspective for you.

Even moreso when that loved one is a two year old with no idea what is going on.

Thank you for the perspective Keagen, I will try to remember it next week when I keep getting calls from telemarketers and it's raining and Heidi wants her pacifier in the middle of the night not once, but twice. I will try to keep it all in perspective.

Park=Fun

My niece and nephews came to spend the day with us today and the weather was fantastic, which meant, of course, a trip to the park.

Heidi again loved the swings, which I think means we'll be spending a lot of time swinging this summer. She also enjoyed having some other kids to watch and play with. Seth was so funny--anytime Heidi did something he'd say "Triston, did you see your cousin?" I think they all had a good time, but they were ready to go home tonight, too.

Kaileigh swinging, she's saying "cheese"

Triston with his "pyramid" I was surprised he knew that it was a pyramid, but he did

The girls swinging

And Triston swinging too, he's an excellent "pumper"

Seth and Kaileigh swinging

It was a fun day, but man am I worn out. I'm definitely not having four kids!

Two thirds of the way there...

...to a year, of course! My beautiful baby girl has graced this Earth for 8 months today and I can't imagine life without her. She has changed so much since the day she was born. As much as I am sad that she is growing so quickly, I'm just so excited to see all the changes she is going through. She's becoming such a fabulous little person and she makes our lives so exciting and entertaining and full :)

Happy 8 months to my crazy-haired, still high maintenance sometimes, belly-laughing, peek-a-booing, "so big" Heidi Jean.

...no I can't live without her, and I wouldn't want to, not even for one minute....

Nice ride...

She'll be tooling around in this thing before we know it...

For now, she just tolerates it...

I told you it would warm up!

For months now I've been reassuring Heidi that eventually it would get warm out and we could play outside without a hat and coat. This weekend it finally got above 50 degrees so we took advantage of it and played outside. We walked down to the park and had our first swing. Heidi loved it and I have a feeling we'll be playing at the park a lot this summer.

Non-action shots

A still shot is really quite deceptive at times.

Take the following shots for example:

If you just looked at those pictures you might think that Heidi was crawling. Not the case. In fact, this is a type of mama torture devised to make Heidi super-cranky in mere seconds. What look like smiles are actually looks of disbelief. Shortly, Heidi's arms will start to feel weak and her panic will set in.

Shortly after, the head starts to go down. Tears soon to follow.

No crawling in our future...

Walking perhaps?

Daddy's girl

I never get tired of pictures of Heidi and her daddy. She loves her mommy, but Heidi and daddy have a special relationship. Here they are chatting and hanging out when mommy was leaving to go to a basketball game.

Somebody was a little tired...

Everybody says that Josh needs to have a little boy to do all his boy things with, you know, fishing and hunting. But I think daddy and Heidi will have lots of fun doing boy things and girl things too. Stay tuned in a year or so for Daddy playing with doll pictures ;)