It's a Wonderful Life

April has been treating us right, here in the mountains of WNC. This week we've had 70-80 degree days with warm sun, cool breezes, and deliciously chilly evenings. The weather has been perfect. We have some sugar snap peas growing tall in our garden, our new raspberry bushes are happy, and our blueberry bushes are flowering. Our new dogwood bloomed in our front yard and is now leafing out. Every day it seems like a new flower is in season from daffodils to tulips to lilies. And this morning we are headed out the door to the first farmers' market of the season.

Mylestones: As I am learning I do too often in parenting, I spoke too soon when I whipped off last month's list of Mylestones. We are still working on potty training. I think we've got the pee thing down to a science, but poop's another matter altogether. We seem to take two steps forward, one step back, and Seth and I are frustrated by the painfully slow progress. On the other hand, Myles is showing a newfound interest in numbers which has been exciting to see. He's dusting off his numbers books and learning to count items on a page slowly and purposefully without getting ahead of himself. He gets some basic concepts, such as when he needs to take 5 bites and he's only taken four he will say "just one more, Mama!" The other day we were reading a numbers book when he proclaimed "5 plus 2 is 7!" Seth and I looked at each other. "He's a genius," we were thinking. So Seth quickly followed that up with "Myles, what's the square root of 68.4?" Nope. Just a fluke. He may not be a math genius, but his language skills are improving a lot, from pronunciation to vocabulary. He has an incredible vocabulary and often we will hear him using words phrases like "Stop, he cried!" rather than "Stop, he said!" It's quite amusing to listen in on one of his dramatic scenes in the bathtub or playing with his train table. Myles is also, I think I've mentioned, cut from the same cloth as his father in terms of being a strong extrovert. With warmer weather this means that whenever we drive by someone walking on the sidewalk, Myles shouts through his half open window, "Hi!" quickly followed by "What are you doing?" if we're at a stop sign/light. He also loves to stand on his chair in the kitchen and shout out of our window to passersby. People seem to be alternately delighted, amused, or confused by his initiation of conversation.

Myles Says: Yesterday in the car I was driving behind a very slow truck and made mention of it to Myles. Mama: "This truck is too slow, I better pass him." Myles: "Yes, or he might get into a c-, I mean truck accident." Truck accident...makes sense, right? As I was cutting a coupon out of a cereal box, Myles: "What are you doing Mama?" Me: "I'm cutting this out to take to the store, because if I give it to the cashier, I will get $1 off of our milk." Myles: "That's wonderful, Mama! What's it called again?" Yesterday at a friend's house...Cora: "Myles, would you like to slide with me?" Myles: "I'd love to!" Very sweet.

We had a fabulous Easter. Myles had two Easter egg hunts at school, one at his friend Hazel's house (pictured above), and another at church. For the good of the family, Seth and I forced oursevles to consume the bulk of his candy (unbeknownst to Myles) so that he wouldn't have to overdose on sugar. Our church had a joint worship service with the congregation that hosts us in their building, and we had nearly 100 folks there, about 70 of whom were connected to Land of the Sky. The spring has resulted in some concrete growth, which we desperately needed, and we're hoping that things will continue to move and grow and develop from here. After all the stresses and struggles of putting together the events of holy week (the week before Easter) and planning a joint service with another congregation, it truly was an Easter miracle when we came together for worship and communion and God's Spirit was certainly in our midst.

Well, off to the farmer's market!