His Mother's Eyes

When I am feeling a bit angry or perturbed at someone, I tend to glare at them. My glare is, apparently, striking enough that some friends simply call it "the look." As in, "Oooh, you just got the look from Ellen. She must be mad." I used to be somewhat proud of "the look."

Josiah has my eyes. I am not referring the shape, color or other physical features of his eyes. It appears that "the look" is hereditary and I have become a frequent recipient of it. Even small annoyances or frustrations will prompt our five-year old to turn around and skewer me with "the look."

It's a little scary being on the other end "the look" and this has made me realize that it's not my best feature. In fact, I really don't like "the look" at all and am somewhat appalled that I used to be proud of it. I've been reading Philippians and Ephesians recently and let's just say that my "gentleness" is not evident at all when I use the look. And I am certainly not being humble, gentle, patient, or bearing with the unfortunate recipient of "the look" in love (Eph. 4:2).

So Josiah and I came up with a new look last night. When we are tempted to give each other "the look," we decided to make a silly face instead. I'm not sure if we will use the new look or not. But I hope I will start using "the look" less often and that my eyes will begin to communicate more gentleness and patience.

Father's Day

Al wrote a really nice Father's Day article for BeNotAfraid.net, an online resource for parents who get prenatal diagnoses of various scary medical conditions.

A Child After My Own Heart

Elijah fusses less when we let him look at a book during nap time. The other day he fell asleep reading, something I do on a regular basis. Ahhh, it's good to see that he has inherited our love for reading!

While We Were Gone

While we were in Hawaii my parents watched the kids. My mom kept a brief journal of the week for us. Here are some of the funnier things that happened while were gone.

• My parents came downstairs to find Josiah jumping on the furniture and asked, "Does Mom let you jump on the furniture?" Josiah responded, "Only when she is upstairs."
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• They visited a local children's museum one day. At one point my mom decided it was time to use the restroom. Josiah disagreed. He became very belligerent and insisted, rather loudly, that he did not have to go to the bathroom. Mom eventually convinced him to go to the bathroom. A few minutes later he told my dad, "Grandma was right! I did need to go potty!"
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• My parents learned a bit of sign language during the week. My dad was flabbergasted when Elijah used signs to tell him that the kitchen fan was making him cold. My mom was flabbergasted that my dad understood the signing!

All in all, my parents and the kids seemed to have had a good time together. I'm glad we had a chance to get away for awhile, but I'm equally glad my parents were able to spend some time with our kids.

I'm Back

We're back from our trip to Hawaii. The transition from vacation back to "real" life is going well so far. I don't have a lot of time to write today, but here are a few quick things I learned on our cruise:

1. Don't bring a "gentle exfoliating" facewash on a trip where you a likely to get sunburn.
2. Shaving your legs in a tiny shower is even harder when you are at sea and the shower is swaying.
3. Al is not able to view beautiful scenery without taking a photo. He took 826 photos during our 7 day cruise. By the end of the trip I was teasing him, "Look! Water! Quick, take a picture!" I woke up from a bad dream one night to a beautiful view of the full moon reflecting off the ocean. When Al stirred a bit I nudged him and told him to look out the window. He spent the next 15 minutes trying to capture the scene on camera.
4. I love chocolate souffle. mmmm. I only had it once, but it was delicious!

Here are a few photos from our trip: