Meeting Anna and Baking Cookies

I met my good friend, Christa, in 1996 while working at Friendship Force International, a cultural exchange program for adults. Christa was a volunteer Club President for The Friendship Force of Norderstedt, Germany at the time and eventually became a Board Member. Over the years, we built a unique friendship that I cherish very much. She made the trip to Atlanta for our wedding in 2004 and I was so honored and proud that she was there. Part of the uniqueness of our friendship is the difference in our ages. I won't divulge her age or mine, but there are 40 years between us. I appreciate the wisdom and perspective she brings to our friendship...and she is quite fun to be around!

For our wedding she gave us the most beautfiul silver salt shaker and promised the matching pepper shaker when we had our first child. Yesterday I met her neice, who happened to be in Atlanta visiting her boyfriend who is a guest of CNN for 3 weeks. Anna served as "courier" for my gift and it was a pure delight to meet her. Over the years I have heard so much about Anna from Christa and I've even been to Anna's parents' house in Kiel, Germany. It was really nice to put a face with a name. We met at the mall for lunch and she took right to John David and he to her. They were big buds for our entire visit and he protested leaving the mall until he found out that Anna was going in our car with us. I gave her a lift to the Martin Luther King Memorial Center so that she could continue her touristic visit of Atlanta and John David fell asleep in the car before she could tell him good-bye. He woke up when we pulled into our drive way at home and immediately checked the front seat for Anna. When he realized she wasn't there or anywhere to be found, his little heart was broken. He cried big tears for her. It was so sweet but really sad too!

The outpour of emotion lasted for a little while until I got him interested in baking cookies with me. "Co-kers" as John David called them, a mixture of the words crackers and cookies. So here are some pictures from our first ever baking adventure.



I think he enjoyed eating the decorations the most. I went to take the other pan of cookies out of the oven and came back to catch him doing this:

Fun for Today

I got an e-mail from a friend of mine that was cute and wanted to share it with you via this blog rather than forwarded e-mail. It will only take a minute to do this and it is cute:

1. go to www.google.com
2. click on "Maps"
3. click "Get Directions"
4. type in "New York" in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type "London" in the second box (the "to" box)
6. press on "get directions" button
7. scroll down to step #23

Enjoy!

In His Grip

Dada was one of John David's first words and he has used it abundantly for a really long time. He only said Mommy about 2 months ago but went straight from not calling me anything (other than with grunts and gestures) to calling me Mommy, never really using "Mama" as a stepping stone. But for some reason, he has stuck to "Dada" when referring to John...until this past weekend. At first it came out something like "Da-ee", skipping the "d" in the middle. But very shortly thereafter, he abondoned the term "Dada" and came out with the word "Dad-key" when referring to John. It's the cutest and funniest thing!

When I was pregnant with John David and first found out that he was a boy I was so surprised. I just knew it was going to be a girl! There wasn't a sense of disappointment or anything negative, just shock that it was a boy and not a girl. From the time I found out that girls could be mommies I've wanted to be one. And I think it was about that time that I started imagining me with my little girl, someday, in the far off future. (I had no idea back then just how far off mommyhood would be for me! But God is faithful and works everything out on his time and not on ours.) So after I got over the shock that we were having a boy, I started to realize the awesome responsibility given to John and me - we would be raising a man. That concept brings me daily to the feet of Jesus, asking for guidance, wisdom and discernment for John and me as we learn the ropes of parenthood.

The first few weeks of John David's life are sometimes a blur to me. The lack of sleep and exhaustion of nursing a very hungry but lazy newborn often got the best of me. However, there is one memory I have that is clear as a bell. I was nursing John David and praying for him as I stroked his tiny hands and feet. I was overcome with emotion as I realized that one day, his feet would take him places, perhaps far away places, and his hands would do work, hopefully noble work. The Lord was beginning to reveal to me one of my first realizations about parenthood. This child is not my child, but the Lord's. He has given him to John and me to enjoy and to love and to teach and even to learn from, but he is a gift from God and here for the Lord's purpose, whatever that purpose may be. I pray that John David's identity will be grounded in a relationship with Jesus and that John and I will learn to hold on to John David tightly, but not too tightly. And I pray that we will practice what we plan to teach him, to rest in the fact that we are living in the grip of God's amazing grace.