Our baby girl is at the stage where she puts everything into her mouth. Even weird bad stuff. The worse is when I turn around and see her chewing on something, and I know I haven't given her any food. It's usually some small piece of something that fell on the floor. Gross! Yesterday, as I checked our baby's mouth again for the upteenth time with her wailing unhappily at me because I was removing the special treasure she had found, I said, "You'll thank me one day." But then I realized that she probably won't. I mean, can you imagine. "Mama Mary Ann, thank you for keeping me from eating gross stuff off the floor." That never dawns on any kid, really. Well, except today.

Today, on my birthday, I wanted to thank my mom:

Thanks, Mom, for all the times you kept me from putting bad stuff in my mouth. Thanks for all those times you saved me from touching things I shouldn't have -- because it might've hurt me. Thanks for keeping me from falling down and hitting my head on hard surfaces. Thanks for picking me up and carrying me around, even when you had your hands full of something else. Thanks for hunching down to hold my hand so that you could help me learn to walk - even though it probably hurt your back and, many times, would've been a lot faster for you to just carry me from place to place. Thanks for feeding me, spoon-feeding me, as tiresome as it might've been. Thanks for picking up the food off the ground that I threw and for wiping my mouth and my runny nose. Thanks for giving me baths every day and changing my poopy diapers (even though it stunk so bad you wanted to throw up). Thank you, Mom, for the sleep you had to lose as you watched over me in my sleep and woke up in the middle of the night to feed me. Thank you for sacrificing your own sleep time when I was napping so that you could take care of things around the house or get ready for me when I woke up again. Thank you, Mom, especially for letting me invade your body for 9 months and making you feel sick all the time and uncomfortable - and especially for the pain of child birth. Without you, there would be no 'me' here today as I am. Happy Day to you, not me, for a miracle and thirty years of selfless dedication. I love you, Mom!



A picture of Mom and me, making a snowman a few months ago.

"The only ones who know how to parent are the ones who do not have children."

I saw this quote a few weeks before I became a parent.  Even then, I laughed because it is so true!  When you're not a parent and have never had children of your own, you hear one expert or one parent's way of doing things and you think that's the one-and-only way, so you try to tell other parents who are having similar problems to use that method as the solution.  But the reality is that every child is different (and even that one child changes every day or so), so there isn't just one band-aid method that will solve it all.  I think most parents realize pretty quickly into things that they really know nothing at all.  (We are a good case in point.)  I'm so thankful that God stands in the midst of all that we do and all that we are, and He parents us!