Grains of Gratitude

Sundays always seem to sneak up on me...I find myself realizing "oh, I need to do my gratitude post today!"

1. I'm grateful we made it on time to MOPS on Tuesday. I have to be there earlier since I'm the finance person and I check everyone in. I was relieved we got out of the house without it being too crazy. Then I got to MOPS and realized I forgot the checkbook to pay the MOPPETS workers! Oops. Good thing 2 of the other ladies have checkbooks from our account.

2. I'm grateful we also made it out of the house on Friday morning to meet with some of the MOPS ladies at the zoo. I almost threw in the towel and didn't go though. It's hard to get yourself ready, plus a preschooler, when your baby is screaming their head off! Ok maybe he wasn't screaming, but he sure was crying. Loudly. Protesting even. I knew Kayla would enjoy the zoo, and they finished building the new playground, so we made it out. Of course Kayla didn't want to leave, but we had to get back home so she could go to school. I'm glad we did get out, even if the morning was a bit stressful. I'm just going to have to get used to that!

3. On Saturday the housing office had their quarterly "birthday bowling party" for residents - 2 free games, hot dog, chips, drink, and cake. We met Jennifer and Katelyn at the bowling alley for a fun afternoon of bowling. I'm grateful everything was free!

4. I already mentioned I was grateful that Lee sent me a sling, but now that Lucas is here and I've had a chance to use it I'm really grateful for it! He's Mr. High Maintenance and really fights sleep during the day. So when he gets really fussy I end up "slinging" him and sometimes it takes him a few minutes to settle down, but when he does, he sure does settle! He gets all snuggled in the sling and finally falls asleep. He'll sleep for a couple hours like that too. It helps having the sling when I walk down to the end of the street to the bus stop as well.

5. I'm grateful for the couple of you who mentioned the Miracle Blanket in comments in a previous post. My mom went ahead and bought that (thanks mom!) and it really does seem to help. In the evening when Lucas is really fighting his sleep and nothing will make him happy (and I don't want to be a human pacifier!) we wrap him in that and he'll calm down and go to sleep. He'll sleep for a good 4-6 hours in that too which is really nice when he falls asleep around 9 and sleeps for several hours.

6. First smiles! I thought this was too early to see any real smiles from Lucas, but the last couple of days he has given us a few. If we catch him when he's content and alert, and making eye contact, we've been able to coax a few smiles out of him. How exciting! Trying to capture it on film isn't the easiest though when you're waiting...and waiting...and waiting for that smile to appear!

Staring intently at Joe


The beginning of a smile


and the end of a smile :)


Lucas is now bored with Joe's attempts to get him to smile, but Kayla still thinks her daddy is funny!


Have a great week ahead!