2017 transitioning to 2018

I’m not usually a big holiday blogger. Anything everyone else blogs about makes me not want to blog about it....I think I dont like the competition! Lol I feel like its all been said already. What could I possibly add? 


Yet, here I go.....

2017 was filled with some really good stuff, like the birth of my sweet little grand-baby boy Landon, (other wise known as Jesus Christ Superstar....there is a story to that lol) who came to us and brought with him such all encompassing joy and then the engagement of his sweet and loving parents who are together, committed to “peaceful parenting.”



The usual challenges continue on in my daily life and the dad and I are committed to navigating them together, with as much love, patience, and grace as we can. We trust God to provide whatever parts we aren’t able to muster up on our own which means, most of it.

My girl continues to live her life in fits and starts...3 steps forward, 2 steps back. I feel like we have a good team of medical professionals helping us through right now....I just pray no one retires in the next few years. Please let us stay on this trajectory with this support and let her (and us) find more peace and stability during this next year of 2018. Here’s to more progress....greedy soul that I am!

My big boy and his beauty are hoping for a new baby this year. I told them that after Beauty’s mom goes home, I will fly out and spend as much time as they want me to be there, cooking and helping them get adjusted and settled. I pray this can happen for them. Both have dreamed of being parents for a very long time. When I had Little One, Big Brother was 15 and he took care of her and did many of her firsts with her, just because he wanted to.....her first trick or treating, her first movie in the big theatre, drove off in my mini-van and took her to her first “mommy and me” swim lessons...which his high school art teacher happened to be in with her first baby too. He was the absolute best big brother.

Little one will finish her second semester of her junior year in high school....gently forging her own path into this enormous world. She has been volunteering 2 mornings a week with a dear friend of mine who is a special education teacher, she will take Econ, continue with her Japanese, English, Geometry, Sociology, and Photography. This child of mine has taught me, in further and far more gentle methods, that what I want, the way I think things should go for her, aren’t always what she is the most comfortable with. Once again, I work at mastering the fine art of when to push and when to let go.

She and My Girl are both INFJ’s which is the rarest personality type, if you put much stock in the Meyer’s Briggs personality tests. Both are blue eyed red heads, the rarest color combination on earth, and My Girl is left handed. There has to be something to this that explains their uniqueness and their struggles in this world finding their spot, their comfort zone. Little One would say, “I am perfectly comfortable. Its the world that needs to calm down.” She could be on to something....



We will have a wedding this year, in June. All the people who love Molly and Ryan and Landon are working together, a co-operative effort to create a comfortable, lovely day to celebrate this little family. Special but simple...with a little bit of the grandma’s hippie vibes thrown in.

 

I am looking forward to 2018 being filled with more joy, more solitude to breathe and think, more learning how to embrace each day as it comes to me, more personal growth as I rely more on God and less on my own understanding...my own understanding has proven to be so limited, and more loving as God loves. Without limits, without conditions, its just there, always present. I can love without condoning, I can love without enabling, I can love and still have boundaries...the loving isn’t the problem. It’s what we do in the name of love that can sometimes trip us up and postpone growth. For us, for them.

Happy New Year my friends!

Much much love and God’s greatest blessings of peace and understanding to you....

Annette

PS!!!!! I almost forgot! I wanted to link you to Molly’s new blog. Like momma, like daughter. She is much funnier than I am though, as she shares the real nitty gritty of her journey into motherhood.....please give it a look and lets let her see that some of the greatest joy’s of blogging are the connections we make!

https://theeverydaymamasite.wordpress.com/