The boy's got skills

I find it amazing that he colored each of the cars the right color...except for that hippie VW van, but we don't even remember his name.

This is what's been happening to cars a lot lately.  They get put on time out by being strapped onto the blind-pull.  Or else Luke narrates the car learning how to fly:  "I'm way up high in the sky, but I'm not afraid!  You're not? asks Doc.  No, I'm flying!  It's so fun up here.  Maybe I'm on a trapeze".

Things Luke said:

"The tail's too waggy!"

"I can supply you with a vehicle, Dad."

"If we hold frogs in our hands too long they will pee in our hands and that's yucky, but if we mow over them the lawnmower won't work, right?"

"I need to write Papa a check so he can buy a new motorcyle."

"Don't wipe the toothpaste off my face, I want it there for later." 

The view from here

A peaceful moment at the park this morning.  Maple tree.

This is basically what I see whenever I'm sitting in "my spot" on the couch = grandma Ada's blanket.

this is his:  I'm-so-happy-I-can't-contain-myself face, and is usually accompanied by a loud squeal

Do you remember a period in your life when you just took your day-to-day for granted?  I do.  I often look back on my time in college and think I didn't take full advantage of it.  Or I look back on my elementary years and wish that I'd done things a little differently...spent more time talking to my grandparents, more time playing with friends, and surprisingly, I wish I'd spent less time reading!

This is the first time in my life when I have been fully aware, every moment, of the beauty of this life of mine.  I feel very sensitive to the fact that one day I will look back on this period of my life and call it "the good 'ol days", and so I try, TRY, TRY to love it and take advantage of it while I'm here.  I'm trying to spend time with family, have a loving attitude towards my children even when they frustrate me, not waste time or energy on things that just fill up space (like doing dishes when I could be playing  race cars with my son!).  I'm trying not to over-schedule our lives; live each day simply going for walks, looking at clouds, playing in the dirt.  I am learning to prioritize the really important things, hopefully learning from my mistakes, and making these "good 'ol days" full of memories that won't be tainted with regrets.

oh the doo-da-day

This is what I got up to this morning.  Apparently he'd been up long enough to eat about half of each of the four donuts leftover from our outing yesterday (the car got an oil change and we wandered around the East side of town for over an hour...just wandering).

What color will his eyes be?  Brown in the center, blue on the outside.

pretty baby.

These Days

We are:
going: outside
harvesting: the garden
reading: Madeleine L'Engle and Tolstoy and Tolkien...among other things
making: raspberry jam
eating: raspberry jam
loving: raspberry jam
finding: caterpillars
shouting at:  caterpillars (Luke asks, "why doesn't he do what I tell him?")
introducing Seamus to:  caterpillars
listening:  to birds in the yard, and Simon & Garfunkel
watching: the dog chase the birds out of the yard
swimming: in the pool in the yard
enjoying: having neighbors over to play in the yard
dreaming:  about pulling weeds.  I love pulling weeds.
smelling:  BBQ
drying: chamomile and mint
planning: for Christmas presents from my garden!
appreciating: having finished some good photography work,
and now: resting

my dear friend.

On the way home.

Before getting in the car everyone was happy...an hour down the road the crying began :) 

It was so humid that the OUTSIDE of our windows were fogged up with the air conditioning on inside.  I've never seen humidity like that before!  The drive to Steinbach was filled with the most amazing lightning show I've ever seen during daylight hours.

Cat nap on the way home.

Turned into a lovely day.

Wednesday we had a very good visit with friends who are close enough to have lunch with, after being in Bolivia for three years!  Oh my dear friend, Kathy.  Knowing you are just a short drive away is a balm to my soul. 

In my life I've met a few people that I wanted to TRY to be friends with.  I've met even fewer people with whom friendship develops naturally.  I've met even fewer people who seem to me to have been cut from the same mold as I, and like magnets we are pulled together.  I'm the most blessed person in the world to have met THREE women who were my kindred spirits. 

Kathy you are my kindred spirit.  I never have to try to be your friend, because our friendship seems as natural as the nose on my face.  When we go long periods of time without seeing one another it is like no time has passed.  There is often silence between us that is filled with meaning, but mostly when we are together it is hard to shut us up.  How I admire you and love you!

When you were in Bolivia my heart ached after each phone conversation because it was like when you catch a whiff of BBQ smoke on the breeze but know that at your house all that's for dinner is cold leftovers.  I wanted BBQ dammit (how ungraceful of me, I know)!  But I was glad you were in Bolivia, following God's direction for your life and the life of your family.  I prayed for you to learn and grow, and be spared sickness and loneliness and exhaustion.  I prayed for the baby in your belly and rejoiced because I know no parents more worthy of the blessing, more prepared for the challenge, more graceful in the craziness of raising children than you and Carl.  I prayed for you and your family to be healthy, happy and blessed.  And I prayed, selfishly? that you would be happy to come home to Manitoba.  And here you are.  I'm  happy.  So so very happy to have you here. 

The highway between here and Steinbach is going to get tired of seeing me, because I won't ever be tired of seeing you.

Heart on his sleeve

Luke cries at good-byes.  He jumps up and down at hellos.  He gives big hugs to his friends when he's having a good time playing with them. Luke asks to call Derek on the phone several times a day, asks to call Grammy and Grandpa every day, and very often asks to call aunties or cousins, and if you ask him why he wants to call them he'll say, "Because I just love them!"  Someone recently commented that he wears his heart on his sleeve, and I think they hit the nail on the head.  Very little, or perhaps none, of what he feels is a secret.  Remember when he was 18 months old and he told that man on the airplane to stop picking his nose?  Yeah.  Like that.

When Luke is very grumpy we sometimes ask him to go to his room until he's ready to have a good attitude.  Recently he has started returning the suggestion that he go to his room with a big false smile, saying, "Look, I'm happy." And when I insist he goes to his room his false smile turns into a weird upside down grimace and he shouts, "Ugh!  No! I'm not grumpy!"

The message we're trying to send him is not that we want him to hide how he's feeling, but that as a contributing member of the family it is unacceptable to take your anger out on other people.  I love that he says what he's feeling, and my hope is that someday he'll learn to filter it appropriately for different situations.

Dear Luke, words have the power to hurt and to heal, to create and to destroy.  You have great strength in words and I hope you use your skill for good; for healing, for creating, for dreaming, for loving, for playing, for reconciling, for justice, for hope.          

11 weeks old

Great-grandma Helena Thiessen's 84th birthday party.  Seamus = 11 weeks old

So far, Seamus and Luke are the only babies of the next generation to carry on the Thiessen name.

Seamus at Luke's swim lessons.  He's figured out that there's toys on the stroller, but has yet to figure out if they're friends or foes.  That cow is especially suspicious.

At 11 weeks old Seamus weighs 14lb, 13oz.  Already I tire of carrying his awkward car seat and instead haul his stroller everywhere in the van so that I can clip him right into it and roll him around.  He's seen his hands, and is amazed by them, but hasn't spent hours observing them yet.  Seamus has been sleeping through the night for two and a half weeks now:  from 10:30ish to 6am!  He likes to be wrapped tight and always moving.  The bouncy seat is a huge hit with him.  His daytimes are flexible, which is good because our daytime schedule changes frequently.  But so far he's been taking a long nap every afternoon when Luke does (usually around 3 hours).  Mostly he sleeps in the swing, but today he has had all his naps in the playpen!

In some ways Seamus is way easier to handle than Luke was simply because he's not at all colicky.  Other times I feel like two hands is nowhere near enough for two boys.  Although Seamus is not very demanding, I like to hold him as much as possible and that can sometimes make for very stressful situations when Luke needs tackling and my hands are already full.  Seamus is smiling and laughing and having gurgly conversations with everyone who holds him.  Most of the time he sounds just like R2D2.

He got his first vaccinations yesterday and howled as if he mourned not only his own pain, but all the injustice in the world.  The nurse made a comment like, "Some babies are really pampered and don't know what pain is until they get their first shots." Frankly, I don't think it's a bad thing, as she implied, to know little or nothing of pain when you are two and a half months old, and I am only sorry that I was the one to first introduce him to the notion.

This sweet boy has only one auntie left to meet, in his immediate family.  He is very excited to meet the extended family out in California, but we have yet to set a date for a trip.  Maybe next February?  Wow, he will already be almost 10 months old!  Well, we will just have to wait and see.  For now, Seamus is learning all about prairie summers, gasping in the wind, roasting in the air as thick as risen dough, and cooling off in summer evening thunderstorms.  This baby will have the best of both worlds, and hopefully will love them each as much as Derek and I do.  Along with the people who live there.

Day 5 swim lessons: Fun Friday

Derek came for the last few minutes of Luke's final lesson and got to be with him to accept this final note from Luke's teacher:  "Fantastic job Luke!  You've gotten really comfortable with your floats.  Have a great summer!"

Luke crowded the line of older children to jump off the diving board - first in his class!  He was so brave and proud of himself...the first two times.  The last two jumps he needed some encouragement, after he saw several of his classmates show fear of the diving board.

Day 4 swim lessons, and Seamus' first giggle.

This totally made my day.  Seamus giggled for the first time today!  A real belly laugh.  I was laughing at him and then he joined in.  I love people who can laugh at themselves!  Good job, son.  You are so wonderful.

A little yard work yesterday evening.  The first time we've had to water this summer.

Just after I took this picture Luke did a nosedive and ended up with water up his nose...again.  As you can see doing nosedives was pretty much par for the course during this exercise.  However, Luke seems to have a penchant for nearly drowning himself.  We'll have to keep both eyes open with this guy.

Day 3 swim lessons

Today Luke was overconfident and a little wild.  He jumped into the water when the teacher wasn't ready to catch him, scared himself (and me!!) by getting waterlogged two separate times (just not able to get his feet under himself while his face was in the water - who knew you could drown with a life jacket on?) and getting water up his nose three times which resulted in bursting into tears and being removed from the pool by the teacher.

I'm afraid to find out what Friday will be like as this learning opportunity seems to spiral into an out of control, overconfidence.  He's still having lots of fun, though.  And his teacher wrote him this mid-week evaluation:  "Good job bud.  You are getting more confident in the water.  Keep practicing those floats!"

Day 2 swim lessons

Luke was energetic, excited and cooperative - go figure!  He kept volunteering to go first when the teacher asked them to float and kick, and told her over and over again, "I can do that!"  Really fun to watch.

Swim lessons

This morning was Luke's first swim lesson.  Seamus, Auntie Lissa and I all went along for the "fun".  It was wild.  That poor teacher.  She never stopped smiling, but it was that kind of, pull-my-hair-out-check-me-into-a-facility-and-medicate-me kind of smile by the end of the forty-five minute lesson.  It really was, as they say, like herding cats.  Six 3-year-olds.  And my 3 year-old was perhaps the most disagreeable.  "I don't want to go on the boat.  I don't want to float.  I don't want to kick.  I don't want to jump into your arms.  I don't want to. I don't want to.  I don't want to."

One mother standing next to me said, very kindly I thought, "The smart ones don't have fun the first few lessons because they are fully aware of the danger, they understand they can drown and don't just jump in the deep end".

Maybe it is intelligence.  Maybe it's just a 3 year-old phase.  Maybe it's a little bit of fear of the unknown.  Maybe it's stubbornness.  But as my Mom reminded me on the phone this morning, this kid gets it from somewhere...but it can't be from my side.  We're never stubborn.  Never.  And as for being disagreeable -  Well, everyone knows that all Bergens and Howletts are just a bowl full of peaches all day long, every day of the year.   And don't even think of contradicting me.  I know cribbage and I'm not afraid to use it to settle this disagreement.

Exasperation Creativity

After telling Luke the story of Jonah and the whale and answering a million questions about "why did Jonah disobey?" "Why did Jonah get on the boat?" "Why did the whale swallow him?" "Why did God tell Jonah to do that?" "Why this why that?" I was exasperated with all the why's - especially the ones I didn't have answers for or I'd answered several times already.  Can't you just listen to a story, child?  No, he's like his Dad and has to understand the story inside and out, backwards and forwards, before he can set it aside.

Luke asked for the fiftieth time "Why did Jonah run away from God?" and after answering the same way fifty times, I tired of the same old same old and sarcastically answered, "Because he wanted to throw himself off a cliff!" and Luke asked, "Onto a boat?"

outwitted by a three-year-old.

Derek's Team

Here is your chocolate pie.  I didn't know how much you liked chocolate pie until you missed dinner at Carl and Karen's one evening because you were sick and I told her not to send pie home, that you weren't a lover of sweets, and when you found out you shouted, "WHAT?!" and then very pitifully, "You didn't bring me chocolate pie?" Oh sweet Derek, here's a pie all your very own.  (except I put the meringue on for me...because I love meringue.  Not sure if you love it as much as me.)

Birthday boy stats:
33 years old, 6' 2", hazel eyes, 170 lb (on a good day), married 7 years, 2 sons, owned two houses, a business degree, a BA in Theology, and a Masters in New Testament, driving a minivan (oh, you are so old!), member of Grace Mennonite Church, living in Winkler, Manitoba, working at WBS Construction with your dad.

Remember when you told Luke you were going to the office to help Papa out and Luke asked, "Why is Papa stuck?"

I took this photo of you and the boys on the front step of our yellow house on your lunch break on your 33rd birthday - today!  Seamus smiles when he hears your voice, and Luke bounces off the walls, the couches, the gate, and would run right out the door when he sees you pull up on the driveway if I didn't restrain him.  I know sometimes my back is turned while I wash dishes, stir something on the stove, chase down the 3-year old or nurse the baby, but I hope you notice that when you walk in the door I can't help but smile.  I've loved you for years, and now you've got a whole team cheering when you walk in the door.  We're your biggest fans.  Happy  Birthday, Derek!  

Yes, we have matching head bands.

He wears them out in public, too, not just when we're making muffins.  No, I don't stop him.  You gotta have something to blackmail your kids with later, right? 
PS- Dear mom and dad,
I promise to stop using photos from the last two weeks - new ones tomorrow!

Did you ever smile so much it hurt?