I’m not really one to write a huge, long birthday post every year for each of my kiddos.  I hope that they know they are special and loved without that.  In fact as they get older I imagine they won’t always appreciate having the details of their lives and birthday bashes splashed across my blog, accessible to the world.  However, there are moments that I feel the celebration of their birth is really more about my unpacking where they’ve come from and where they are going.

Lanae is my third child.  In so many ways she fits the mold of “birth order”.  She’s a middle child!  I can see that she sometimes feels forgotten, ignored, unimportant.  She yearns to shine bright but I see the crushing of her little heart overshadowed by two big brothers and a baby sister.  I know she’ll be fine.  She’s resilient, beautiful, amazing, smart and host of other wonderful attributes.  But she’s also my sweet, sweet little girl.  I long to hold her close, protect her, tell her she will succeed, she is loved, she is worthwhile and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she hears me and believes me from now until her last breath.  But I see in her a niggling of doubt.  A constant pain of uncertainty, insecurity, if you will.  And I pray that she will overcome that.

You see she is the child I prayed I would get but never fully believed I would.  I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way to those who have faced issues of infertility or who have lost a child.  What I mean is that her arrival bestowed upon me the immense privilege of experiencing life with a daughter (and in fact, granted me the opportunity to experience it twice).  After the arrival of our two boys I pondered what life might look like in a houseful of boys.  My outlook shifted a bit as I tried to wrap my mind around that.  When I first found out I was expecting our third, I had in my mind that this little one may be the completion of our family.  James told me we would be finding out the gender because he knew he could survive three boys, but the possibility of four boys was more than he could fathom.  More importantly, he needed me to wrap my head around what my life would look like long before the child arrived.  He had no interest in a wife delivering a healthy, wonderful little boy only to be overcome with disappointment because he wasn’t a girl.

But, of course, God always knows the plan.  I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t look at us with a minor smirk and say, “if only they’d just trust me, they’d know I already have it all figured out”.  In this case, I’m sure He did.  When we found out Lanae was on her way, it opened the door to possibility.

131214_MHP_Davenport_029When I look at her now I see this stunning, little lady.  I can’t imagine how different my life would have been without her.  Sometimes I struggle to “get” her.  She’s intense!  She’s affectionate but standoffish.  She knows what she wants but sometimes struggles to go after it.  She’s so, SO precious.

My privilege in raising her is recognizing the ways she is herself.  I can pinpoint exactly who she looks like, oddly a total “mini-me” of her Uncle Cam, James’ youngest brother.  But I can’t pinpoint those obvious character traits that place her more in relation to my side or James’ side.  However, I am reminded through that, that she is her own person.  She’s exactly who God created her to be and while she may find along the way that she favours certain relations in her life, I think she’ll be a much happier, content individual when she settles into the fact that she is herself.  Perfectly made for a purpose at this time in history, in this family, as Lanae Daelyn Davenport!

HAPPY 8TH BIRTHDAY SWEET CHILD.  You are LOVED!!

I had this great moment of realization and reassurance awhile back.

My oldest was asked to babysit for a friend.  Her boys are at just the right age for his first experiences babysitting for someone other than his siblings all on his own.  I was impressed to see how enthusiastic he was in this adventure and her boys were happy to have a “boy babysitter”!  The thing is that I recognize how rare of an opportunity this is.  No matter how much of a natural instinct boys have for caring for children it is always going to be the girls that will get a call to babysit first.  I get it…when Sam and Jake were still young enough that they needed a sitter and the girls were just little I didn’t feel quite comfortable having another young man in the house to make sure they got into their jammies, tucked them in and give them a snuggle if they needed it.  Somehow that worked okay for a young woman to take care of those things with my boys but not the other way around.  Having said that I have met a few guys over the last few years that I may have reconsidered for and my experience as a momma of older boys has given me some perspective on that as well.

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I’m pretty sure no one ever told me raising boys would be easy!  In fact I’ve never heard anyone say raising any child(ren) would be easy.  I do feel privileged, in a way, to have the experience of raising two boys and two girls.  You see, there is an interesting dynamic that occurs between brothers and one that occurs between sisters.  I could probably write a series of books for both, but for the sake of today’s post I’ll focus on all things “snips and snails and puppy dog tails”!!!

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FOR FUN…

I’ve said it before but I’ll gladly say it again…my husband is SO CREATIVE!!!  Whether it’s being creative at work, creative at parenting or just plain creative with life, his mind thinks in ways I cannot fathom.  The latest creative endeavor in our home has been sandwich bags made uniquely for each child.

Now let’s just clear the air from the start.  There is no possible way for me to claim that this is environmentally friendly, in fact it’s probably quite the opposite.  However the anticipation it creates for my children to open their lunches makes it easier for me to justify my contribution to global warming.

James came across a designer’s blog some time ago that had fun ideas for using your creative skills in your child’s lunchbox.  He showed me some of the unique creations and then expressed the desire to do something similar with his kiddos.  So he started one Sunday evening with one black and one red sharpie.  The result was stunning…four drawings on a ziploc baggie for each of his kids.  The picture was something special to them and a way for him to let his kids know that he thought of them throughout the day.

Three weeks later and said creative idea going strong, I decided to fill his “toolbox” with a whole set of colorful sharpies.  The result was wonderful…

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I was in the car this morning with three, sweet four year olds.  As I drove and listened to their banter I smiled, it was innocent and beautiful, silly and ridiculous but their laughter and joy filled the van.  They were giggly and chatty, as they always are when they first get together.  I love hearing their little voices calling each other by name and catching up on the details of the days they’ve missed.  It never ceases to amaze me how children can spend hours with their friends and the next time they see each other, whether it be hours or days later they have countless details to relay. Continue reading

While we have not yet reached the point of jetting off to some luxurious, tropical vacation during the kids spring break we do try to find a few fun things to entertain ourselves with.  This break so far has been VERY low-key…we’ve basically hung around close to home as both James and I still have regular work schedules to maintain.  Thankfully we’ve been blessed with some sunshine, albeit rather cold sunshine, but sunshine nonetheless, which means the kids have been able to get outside for a few hours a day playing hockey in the driveway, riding bikes and rollerblades or jumping on the trampoline.  I think James and I half expected to have a Saturday full of rain and neither of us brought up plans for the day.

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Okay so in keeping with the idea that my kids can have the opportunity to share a little about their lives on my blog here is a story Sam wrote for his Language Arts class.  The assignment was to re-write a classic Fairytale in a “broken” fashion…hence the assignment being titled “Fractured Fairytale”.  I’m not 100% sure if Sam captured the point (he hasn’t gotten his grade back yet), but it’s definitely an interesting read.  I asked him if I could share it here and he was happy to oblige.  While I find the story a bit odd and somewhat disturbing, I can appreciate that this is not an area he’s particularly strong in and he gave it his best effort.  So without further ado…enjoy!

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TED

Hmmm, I am not 100% sure all the time how to begin posts!  I don’t always have a pithy comment or witty statement to really feel like I’ve engaged a reader.  That being said, most of what I write is for my own reflection anyway, so perhaps I shouldn’t try too hard.

In any case I really did enjoy many thought-provoking statements I heard from Bruce Feiler on a recent TED talk he conducted on Parenting.  Let me first clarify that I’m not an avid TED talk “watcher”…James is the one constantly scouring through recent presentations, looking for valuable thoughts and ideas that he can apply to work and life, in general.  I’ll admit that sometimes when he gets super passionate about a specific presentation I roll my eyes.  He knows that and as a result, has become savvy in what he chooses to share with me. Continue reading

I will never say…like my mother did

How many times have I said, “I will never say…like my mother did” or “I will never do…the same way my parents did”?  I’m sure there are countless things about the generations before us that we swore we’d never do.  And yet as we mature, experience life and wisdom begins to invade the deeper recesses of our minds we find ourselves unable to say anything other than that which we’ve heard ringing in our own ears.

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