Wonderful ordinary

I have had so much joy in "embracing the ordinary" lately.  Our days haven't been filled with anything that would look particularly exciting from the outside, or any big changes (well, other than my belly, which is thankfully getting bigger all the time) or crazy adventures.  Just enjoying everyday life with our little family and all the blessings we have been given.  With our summer officially here life has been settling down on the school being done end and picking up on the doctor's appointments end.  We have sure enjoyed having Daddy home more!!
Can I also just say that I love that my "ordinary" means getting to be a stay at home mom.  Yes, money is tight.  And yes, there are days that I want to pull out my hair and never look at or talk about a bus or a dump truck or that book that we read 8 times in a row ever again.  But every morning I can honestly say that I am ready to do it all again.  There is nothing that can replace or come close to listening to that little voice and his take on life all day long, to knowing exactly what is going into those little ears and eyes and heart and having the huge privilege and responsibility of so often deciding what that is.  There are so many moments when and sit back and think that these are some of the most precious and valuable times I will ever have.

Anyway, here is some of the "ordinary" (with pictures, of course :) we have been embracing lately:

The sweetest two year old ever:

Playing with blocks.  Noah is suddenly obsessed with his blocks.  He has always showed no interest in them, and in fact that is the only thing that always didn't "pass" on development checklists and early intervention and such--he would absolutely refuse to stack blocks.  Well, I think we can check that off our list now:

He loves building cities, which include some or all of the following: mall, restaurant, church, garage, house, dog house, Grandma's office, and temple (which must come from the story of Nehemiah rebuilding the temple in his Bible storybooks, which he loves because they include pictures of tools).

It is so fun to see his imagination growing everyday!  And his vocabulary!  The other night I was putting him to bed and he said, "Mama, talk to you!" and proceeded to talk my ear off for half an hour, including a very detailed description of something we did one time months ago, and making a plan for the next day (which included making a train station, which is where the blocks came into play!)

Nature. We have also been spending a lot of time outside in the awesome not-too-hot, not-too-many-bugs weather.  He discovered the joys of playing in black dirt with worms.  He also found a big moth the other day and told me, "Noah show Mama moth.  Be very careful, Mama."



Gardening. We have even started a little garden, which Noah is so excited and quite serious about.  I don't really know anything about gardening, but the experience for him is totally worth it and hopefully we actually end up growing something.  I took him to a greenhouse and let him pick out anything he wanted, and he picked watermelon.  We also picked lots of colors of flowers, and he would have taken one of every kind if he could.

Remember how wonderful ordinary can be!