Looking back on 2012, it was definitely a big year, if for no other reason than the fact that our family grew again. In July, we had another sweet, beautiful, precious baby girl. This is child number three and we couldn’t be happier. Both she and I sailed through pregnancy with good health and normal progress. Looking back, I have to admit that the birth went smoothly, although at the time it didn’t seem so smooth (nor did the other two at those times either!), but all things considered, it did and I’m so very grateful for that. We named her Chloe – a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. Like the other two, she was born with a full head of shaggy hair. Time will tell if it lightens up like it has for Callie and Jacob.

Coming home with her was so nice and went pretty smoothly with our other two children. We had done all we knew to prepare them. Also, we had lots of help and visits from caring family and friends and that was a nice time for everyone – especially the kids. Everyone was good to dote on them, too. Also, we had another nice family gathering for Chloe’s baby dedication. Our church has now gone to a separate service several times a year just for this. I think that makes it much more focused and meaningful and certainly less rushed. Although it certainly can be rather noisy! But of course everyone there understands. This is how it was for Jacob, too. Don’t know if I mentioned that at the time.

As I write this, Chloe is five months old and already some of her personality traits are very evident. She’s very aware of the people around her and responds quickly to any attention or verbalization directed toward her – especially from her big brother and big sister. That is so cute to watch. She is quick to smile and laugh; even more so than the other two were doing at that age. Yes, each of our children is unique. I always knew that would be so, but it didn’t really hit home until Jacob came along and quickly made it very clear to us that he was not Callie. And now Chloe is doing the same, being uniquely herself. I guess being an only child myself caused me to not actually get that until I had multiple children of my own. Amazing and beautiful.

So now we are a family of five. The girls now outnumber the boys and Callie and I are always ready to pull majority rule anytime it is to our advantage. Callie is quick to be Chloe’s representative when it comes to voting. No, we’re not serious, but it IS fun to threaten.

This was a big year for Callie. She started kindergarten this fall. She has been more than ready for this for a long time – according to her. Me? Not so much. It was hard to let her go that first day. But it has gone well. Even though she’s one of the youngest, she has jumped right in there and engaged academically and socially – even more so than I thought she would. Brian and I are always watching and listening closely to make sure she gets off to a good start and is on the right track and so far, so good. She loves her teacher – we like her, too, and she (the teacher) is always accessible for discussions and answering questions. She’s very forthcoming with her planning and what her goals and objectives are for her class.

From the social aspect, Callie quickly formed friendships and continues to maintain those very well, I think, for that age. She has an inner circle of friends, but is still friends with anyone else who is open to friendship. We’ve even hosted a few play dates for a few friends (one at a time) as have some of those children’s’ parents. All in all, it’s working out well. Of course, we’ll continue to keep an eye on all aspects. Parents need to be aware and involved on multiple levels. And as we had hoped, Brian and I have made friends with a few of the other parents of kids in Callie’s class. Many of us have a lot in common since we have children the same age, so we’re hopeful for more of these friendships and that they can grow between our families.

Although starting school was the big first for Callie this year, she continued to be involved in church activities, both with kids her age and with us and other families as a whole. She’s also in a program for kids her age that combines dance and gymnastics and that has been a very good experience for her. She does well at both so we’re not sure which way she may go when it comes time to focus on one or the other. It’ll be hard to choose. She also tried a couple park and rec sponsored team sports this year – soccer and swimming. She enjoyed both of those, too. There’s not much this girl doesn’t enjoy when it comes to doing things with others. She really throws herself into it in a healthy way. By that I mean she does her best but doesn’t beat herself up when things don’t go well; she’s not hyper competitive. She’s better about that than her mommy was.

Ok, don’t think Jacob is being left out. He’s not. He is a very active little boy in good ways (mostly). He, too, is involved in church activities with others his age and with us in family things. He gets dragged along to Callie’s events a lot, but often while she is engaged with her activity, he and I have some good one on one time. If we’re at something outdoors, he and I will play ball of some kind - any kind - he loves it all. He gets a little wild, so we work on control and pacing. You might think he’s too young for that, but he’s actually very teachable as long as we’re actually doing something. None of this just talking thing for him. If you wanna talk, you’ve gotta move along with him. So that’s what I do. I’m learning a lot about boys as we raise our son. My girlfriends and I laugh about it when we say we’re starting to understand our husbands a lot better now that we have a little boy in the house. I’ll mention something to Brian that I observed about boys in Jacob and he’ll say, “You mean you didn’t know that?!” LOL I think I missed out on a lot being an only child. Did I say that already? [When Brian read this he said that raising daughters is just making him more and more confused about women. LOL! Get used to it, Babe. We’re going to be around awhile.]

But one thing that has become even more clear to us as we’ve observed the uniqueness of each of our children is the importance of having good lengths of quality one on one time with each of them multiple times per day. Doing group things as a family is very good, too, but it’s not the same and it doesn’t take the place of the kind of bonding and dialogue that takes place between the individual child and an individual parent. Again, I’ve always known that, but it just really hit home after Chloe was born. And it’s not as hard to do as you might think, but it does take intentional effort to make sure it happens. For example, I try to time things so that when Callie comes home from school, I can give her a snack and sit down with her and talk about her day at school. She is very forthcoming when we do that, so I just make sure it happens. And with Jacob, I time it with him so that right after I’ve cared for Chloe and know that she maybe napping for a while, then he and I will do things together. We both enjoy this. And when Brian is home in the evenings and on weekends, he and I work together so that we EACH spend time with EACH child. So important. Of course with Chloe at the age she is, we have time together as I nurse her and care for her. I just make sure that we not rush through any of that so that it is a calm, peaceful time that I can hold her and talk and sing to her.

When spring came, we were eager to get out and do some camping, because we knew that as we got closer to my due date, we wouldn’t be able to go anymore, nor were we likely to be able to go after the baby was born. So once it got warm enough, we had some good weekends there at the campground. It was a dry summer, so we weren’t held back by rain anytime we chose to go. The biggest thing holding us back was me (literally AND figuratively, LOL). I was pretty far along and the heat really took its toll on me. But we tried to be smart about it and all went fairly well. And we had good help, too. Either Julie, Jeff, and their son, Chris were there when we were or Beth went along to help - or both. We couldn’t have managed without them and I’m so grateful to them. Plus we all had some great times together when we were there. It wasn’t too hard to keep up with me. I was either at our campsite in the shade lying around doing nothing or down in the pool floating around doing nothing. Not the way I like to be, but what can you do when you’re eight months along? I wouldn’t change it though.

We continued being actively involved in our church both individually and as a family. Through the community group we started attending this year, we’ve met and gotten to know so many other married couples with kids around the same ages as ours. The group has frequent get togethers outside of the usual Sunday morning gathering time and that has allowed us to really mingle and gel with others. I love that. Our commonalities make it comfortable and our unique individualities keep things interesting. And there are special kids activities that we enjoy having our kids be part of. That’s mostly about Callie so far, but Jacob will be doing more as he gets older, too. This will only increase as our kids get older and will include our involvement as parents.

We continued to host the young engaged and early-married couples home group that meets at our place. We meet weekly except for during the summer. We’ve made some meaningful and ongoing friendships as a result of this group. Our primary responsibility with this group is as hosts; to provide a place where people can come and feel accepted and comfortable with the others that are there. Part of the time (and this is becoming more frequent), we also lead and teach the group for the evening. Brian and I team up on that although he does the biggest share.

But another thing that we found ourselves involved in that we hadn’t counted on was informal marriage mentoring for several of these couples. Our church has a more formalized program for this kind of thing with training for the mentors, but neither Brian nor I have been through that. The leader for our home group knew that two of our couples were having problems (we sensed it, too) and asked us to talk to them to see if we could help. I was totally panicked about this; afraid we might do more harm than good since we hadn’t been trained nor had we had any experience with this. But he said just talk with them; they know you and trust you. But I was thinking: what do we know - we’re not qualified. And we’re not old enough – we’re too close to their age. But Brian pointed out that we’re close to ten years older than most of these couples and we’ve been married a lot longer than they have. So we prayed about it and then stepped out on faith.

We invited each couple over and just talked with them – mostly together as couples, but also individually. The results of those visits were mixed, I’d say. Brian informally acted as facilitator. He’s so good with people. We just started talking. They touched on their differences and we just sort of talked through those things, offering what advice we could but mostly we listened, and when we talked we just shared our experiences. We kept our side of it brief in order to give them the opportunity to say as much as they wanted. It was like they were listening to each other for the first time, hard as that is to believe. They listened and began to understand each other and with very little prompting began to throw out ideas on next steps; on compromise. It was beautiful to see. We met with them twice like this and they seem to be getting along much better. We’ve left it open that they can talk with us anytime they like.

It was a more difficult situation with the other couple. They were reluctant to accept our invitation and then when they did come over, they didn’t want to talk together. So we visited separately and I didn’t sense any results coming out of our first visit. Brian didn’t either but he and the other guy agreed to meet again. When they did (it was at our house), the discussion got rather heated. They were off by themselves, but it was loud enough that I could hear some of it. Whew. But they continued to talk for a long time. Brian told me later that he thought they made some progress. I asked him about the loud discussion (not quite shouting, but it was loud) and he said that guys just need an in-your-face confrontation sometimes to see the obvious. He didn’t give me any of the specifics and I can understand that. But anyway, they both accepted our invitation the next time and we had some good discussion although it was like pulling teeth sometimes to keep it going. It’s sad to see how couples get so off-track sometimes. It reminds us that we need to be very intentional about not letting anything like that happen to us. Their situation seems better now, but we continue to be available to them without being pushy about it.

I’ve also continued being active in the women’s ministry that I’ve been in for the last several years. I’ve made some great friends there both among the women we serve and the ones I serve with. Some of these women we serve are so desperate for friendship. What comes relatively easily for me seems to be so difficult and elusive for so many of them. I just want to reach out to all of them, but I can’t. As the leadership team of our group says, just be as open and available as you can and as you sense you are being led. But these relationships, too, have their difficulties sometimes. One of the women I befriended this past year was really needy for friendship and attention. I did my best to meet at least some of her needs, but I know I fell short a few times – especially in some of those frustrating times. She was a single mom, a little older than I, raising two children. She worked full time, but she took a lot of time off and on some of those days she would just stop by our place to visit, always unannounced and always without her children, leaving them in daycare. I thought she ought to be spending time with them if she wasn’t working. She said she just liked hanging out with me because I seemed so calm and our household seemed so organized. She would always say she envied me for that. So we would talk and she would share her problems with me (and they were many) and I would offer consolation or advice or whatever she seemed like she needed that I could provide. I really cared about her but sometimes I would feel really exasperated with her when it didn’t seem like she was doing anything to help herself. I’m just talking about simple things like general attitude and outlook.

Anyway, one day last summer my friend – her name is Charlene - dropped by one morning unannounced as usual for a self-invited extended visit. I know this is going to make me sound like a terrible person, but this was like the worst possible day for this. Chloe was only about a month old and I had a lot of things I was trying to get done just to keep my head above water. In fact, I had invited my friend Ann’s youngest daughter, Ruthie to come down and help look after the kids while I tried to get some things done (I was behind on everything). Ruthie was 11 (almost 12) at the time and was aspiring to be a babysitter as many young girls are at that age. She’s really good with children and mine love her to pieces just as she does them. We hadn’t been home long from picking her up when Charlene showed up unexpectedly. I had mixed emotions as you can imagine, but I did my best to put all that aside and be the caring encouraging friend that she needed. But I asked her if it was OK that I do some things while we talked and she was good with that. So that’s how we started out. My thoughts were that if she liked hanging out here because I seemed so organized (which I felt totally the opposite of right then), then she could just observe my household in the midst of us doing what we do. So that’s how we started out – me taking care of some chores as we talked.

Then the kids came bounding into the room asking if they could go out and play in their wading pool. We had discussed this on the way home, so the kids were really looking forward to it. Right then I made a snap-decision that this was one more plan that I was not going to change just because my friend dropped in unexpectedly. The kids would be so disappointed, so I gave my permission and reminded Ruthie again of our pool rules. Yes, even wading pools need pool rules where young children are concerned. I told Ruthie where the kids’ towels were and where she could get one for herself. She had a questioning look on her face that my friend didn’t pick up on, but I knew what it was and said, “naked is ok.” And they were off.

Charlene who is originally from the south and still has some of that accent in her speech looked at me and said, “Really?” although it was more of a judgmental comment than a question. But in those few moments leading up to that I had decided that my family’s traditions and values were going to take precedence over an outsider’s opinion – especially in our own home. I was not going to disappoint my children over it - especially when it’s a tradition that supports values Brian and I are trying to instill in them.

So that was my reasoning as I responded in a manner that was kind yet conveyed that this is how it is here. I said, “Yeah, it’s fine. Nobody can see back there. That’s how we normally do. It’s just way easier.”

So then Charlene and I went back to our general conversation while I continued to fold clothes. Before much longer, I heard Chloe begin to wake up and start to cry. It was her hungry cry. I went up to get her. In a few minutes I came back down and suggested to my friend that we go out back with the kids while I nurse her. We headed down to the basement and out the walkout onto the patio. The kids were all in the pool playing nicely as my friend and I sat down at our patio table. As I was getting myself situated with Chloe, Jacob tossed the ball he was playing with out of the pool and it went rolling off to the far edge of the patio. Ruthie jumped up and went to get it and brought it back, giving it to Jacob as she stepped back into the pool and sat down again \. Charlene, already somewhat alarmed as soon as we came out and she realized that Ruthie was naked, too, said to me under her breath, “That girl is developing. She’s way too old to be running around naked out here like that.”

I had already been doing some quick thinking as I realized that when I said earlier that the kids could go naked, Charlene had assumed that was just for Callie and Jacob. So I knew I needed to do some explaining. I’m realizing more and more as time goes by that we cannot and should not hide away our family’s traditions and values that we know to be goodness as though they don’t exist or as though we believe something else instead. And I don’t want our children having to be constantly disappointed that they can’t live accordingly in our own home. That would send a mixed signal to them about that goodness and detract from the very values we want to instill in them. Besides that, my friend said she likes to visit me BECAUSE of our family life, so she might as well know about this part of it as well. We happen to think this way of ours is an important part of the attitudes and well-being of our family.

So with those thoughts in mind, I calmly said, “Charlene, it’s OK. It’s OK for Ruthie to be out here with the kids that way. Fact is, if she wasn’t here, I’d be in there with them just like that. And it’s OK. It’s just our way. It’s practical. It’s natural. It’s perfectly safe back here. It’s OK.”

She just gave me that same opinionated look she gave me earlier except without the “Really”.

I continued. “Ruthie and her family, they have a pool. A real pool, I mean. And they use it without swimsuits. All of them – parents and children – all the time. That’s completely normal for them. It always has been. Their kids are growing up with healthy attitudes about their bodies. Ruthie knows that the changes her body is going through is totally normal; totally to be expected. She’s seen her older sister growing up. Normal. Healthy. No self-loathing. No comparing herself to magazine covers and wishing for something that in realty doesn’t even exist. She knows better than to believe the misguided bad ideas she hears from her peers. She simply knows better – from actual observation and experience.

“And I want that for our children. They are going to grow up knowing what’s normal, what’s real. They’ll know the facts. They will have always seen it all around them. Healthy attitudes; healthy outlooks; healthy understanding. The fact is, we often join Ruthie’s family in their pool, like this. We’ve known them for a long time. They’re a wonderful family and great friends. We’ve learned a lot from them. ”

Right then Charlene’s “look” got a little more intense following what I just said, but. I was unfazed. I looked straight at Charlene as I calmly continued, “Don’t read anything into this that’s not there. It’s just like that,” I said, nodding toward the three in the pool. “Natural. Comfortable. Fun. Innocent.”

I paused a moment and then said, “Listen, you know us; you know what we’re about. This doesn’t change any of that. None whatsoever. It’s actually just part of it.”

That’s where I paused for a minute as I lifted Chloe up and lay her against me to burp her. During the next couple minutes, the conversation slowly shifted to babies; then I moved Chloe and cradled her in my arms to nurse on the other side. As she settled down, I said to Charlene, “So…any questions, comments…about what I told you?” She said no and that was that. No change in our friendship; no change in her coming over. On the surface it looked like a complete non-issue, but I know it’ not.

I’m finding that as time goes by I’m realizing that more and more of our identity as a family becomes established and intertwined with our traditions, values, and ways of doing things. We consider these things not only right and normal for us but also worth promoting and defending at all times. Promoting within our family is what I mean. We need to make sure we don’t confuse our children by promoting something most of the time but then suppressing it without explanation or reason at other times. That inconsistency could confuse and contradict what we’re trying to teach them.

At any rate, I just wanted to share that one incident with you as an example of a “sharing” that has occurred and the reason behind it happening. There have been a few others of varying degrees, but most of them are less complete. We share these things on an as-seems-necessary basis. Not sure why, but I find it’s getting easier and I’m more confident in doing it. Maybe because I know it’s not just about me – it’s also about the ones I love, the ones that mean everything to me. That, and the fact that I know I don’t have to tell it all. Brian says don’t evangelize – just throw it out there, answer any questions, and then leave it there. Good advice.

Wishing you blessings and goodness for 2013!