Santa Has No Boundaries

For a week now, I've watched my girls get on the bus and be greeted by a little girl each morning. This little girl, a classmate of one of my girls, happily waves her new iPhone for my girls to swoon over. She's in first grade.

Yup. First grade. And she's got an iPhone. That Santa brought her.

Really?

As a parent, I question her parent's judgement. As a mother, I worry what kind of trouble this will cause with my girls, let alone with her. Our school system has a "bring your own device to school" policy, but I question its necessity at this elementary level.

Never mind the stories we read and see in the news.

She's not the only school aged child on the bus with an iPhone, either. Bus mates have been texting each other on the ride to and from school.

Our girls were presented with their first iPods from Santa this year. iPod Shuffles. That we monitor the songs on, adjust the volume when deemed necessary, and place in time-out when behavior warrants.

I watch her each morning smile at my girls and wave her shiny new phone and wonder, "What has happened to Santa's boundaries?"

Powerful

I came across this quote recently. I find it incredibly powerful, speaking to so many parts of me I can't even being to describe. I've looked for the author so I can properly credit them, but I keep coming up empty.

"Sometimes God takes away something you never expected losing, but He will replace it with something you never imagined you could have."
-Unknown

Hindsight is 20/20

"The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them."

- Maya Angelou

Thanksgiving

"For gratitude, as we all know, is not a given but rather a way of being to be cultivated."

- Katrina Kenison

Beautiful is...

Beautiful is a 10-year-old catching snowflakes on her tongue on the way to school.

Beautiful is a 16-month-old really seeing snow for the first time, watching it fall through the air while trying to catch it in his tiny little boy hands.







* Note: The first glimpse of beauty was on November 12, as my husband and daughter left home to go to chorus practice and work. I neglected to hit the publish button that day.

Blind Faith

A few hours ago, while in the drugstore down the street with my big girls, we ran into my oldest daughter's friend. We left the store with our gallons of milk and a newly minted invitation for an impromptu sleepover. A little more than an hour after that, I dropped my baby girl at her friend's doorstep.

It's quiet in our little yellow house tonight, believe it or not. There's always something missing when one of our girls is off somewhere the rest of us aren't. Her sister and roommate sleeps alone tonight, and admitted that the pain in her stomach means she is missing her big sister. Seems she enjoys her more than she knows.

This is the first time our daughter has slept over at a house where we are not also friends with the parents. We don't know if we have similar parenting styles, morals, values or rules. We haven't spent time together watching fireworks, school plays, chorus concerts or fiddling contests, or commiserating over schoolwork and teaching styles with the parent of this girl. We haven't walked for coffee (or sipped clandestine thermoses of wine) during ballet class, or visited the park after library class. We're leaving it all up to faith, a giant leap in a time when very few people have given us faith to believe in others.

The clocks move back an hour tonight. While I'm grateful for an extra hour of sleep (we already changed the clocks in the kids' rooms so they won't wake too early), I'm not sure how deeply I will slumber. Missing my girl.

Sign of the Times?

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not...

I pulled out my phone during a PTO Meeting this morning to text my husband about something. My little man crawled over and reached out his chubby hand.

"iPod," he says.

My 15-month-old says "iPod."