Smitten.

What can I say? 

 I'm a sucker for a guy in a giraffe suit.

Words.

I've always said that one of the things that I love about working with kids in my counseling work is that they can be very unedited.  This verbal transparency does, of course, have its risks.  Like when I was about five months pregnant with Buster and I told a little client that I was going to have a baby just like her mom was having a baby.  This little girl's unedited response was, "Geez, I was wondering why you were getting so fat!".  Lovely.

The often unedited nature of kids' responses also, oftentimes, has its heartache.

Recently, a kindergarten age friend was perched at the corner of my desk in my office drawing a self-portrait.  It was probably a good thing that she was narrating the picture as she was drawing, "This is my head, these are my hands, these are my legs...", because it was one of those pictures that might of have lent itself to other interpretations.  Let's just say that it was a bit "free-form".  We've all seen them, and my guess is that we've all created them at some point during our artistic development.

Once the picture was complete, I asked some of my standard questions including "What's good about this person?".  This little person who had been fairly chatty up until this point paused, became very quiet, and then looked quizzically up at my face and said "Well, I try really hard to be good....".  I gently rephrased my question and asked again, "What is something special about this person?". My question was met with silence, and while my heart was breaking I heard a very quiet voice say, "I don't know".

At the very core of all that I understand humans to be, I believe that each of us has infinite worth and value.  This belief stems from a basic theological understanding that informs my marriage, my parenting, my relationships with others, and my counseling work:   We, as humans, are Image Bearers.  We bear God's image.  Part of what makes us uniquely human is that, somehow, we bear or reflect or exhibit the very image of God.  Amazing.

And so, when I hear from one of the littlest among us that she genuinely has no idea what is good or special about her, my heart breaks.  She's never been told.  And, chances are, she's heard plenty of other things that would lead her to believe that there really isn't anything good or special about who she is.  And, chances are, the big people in her life were never told what was good or special about them.  Or they were told, but those messages got drowned out by the messages of broken lives.  And the cycle continues.

So, now, please excuse me for just a moment while I hop up on my soapbox.  There is a proverb that says, basically, words have the power of life and death.

Words matter.

What we say to one another matters.  What we say to the littlest people among us matters.  It really does matter when we tell a child what is genuinely good and special about her.  Let's not miss opportunities today or this week to speak life into the little people who cross our paths.

I'm hopping off my soapbox now.  And, I think I might just go whisper a few things into a sleeping Buster's ear.

(*All identifying information, of course, has been changed regarding children in this post.)

Waving.

Buster's new deal is waving.  He's pretty much mastered a wave that begins at his elbow and involves lots of movement through the very ends of his fingers.  He waves at people, Lu, the clock, the hummingbirds on our deck, dogs at the park, and angels.

Yes, that's right, I just said that Buster waves at angels.

There are times when Buster will look at what seems like nothing and he will wave vigorously.  He's usually smiling when he does this.  Half jokingly, we decided that maybe, just maybe, he's greeting angels.

Without unpacking my theological understanding of angels, suffice it to say that I do believe that they are real.  And I do believe that there is a spiritual dimension to our world of which we are often quite unaware.  There is a part of me that just likes to playfully ponder things and finds gentle wonderment in the idea that Buster might be waving at angels.

Perhaps.

Busy.

I haven't been blogging much this summer.  Often times, the things that I blog about roll around in my head for a while before they ever find their way into typed words.  Lately, there has been a lot rolling around in my head that just hasn't been able to find suitable words with the right semantics to find its way into a cogent blog post.

So, I'm defaulting to this almost cliche phrase as I ease myself back into blogging:  It's been a busy summer.

Or, perhaps, more accurately, Buster has been busy this summer.  In the past two months he's sprouted his first two teeth, mastered shouting at the cat (actually, its a very friendly shout and it is directed any any creature that has four legs), and, most recently, he's started walking.  He walks everywhere.  Constantly.  No crawling, no sitting, no standing still.  Walking.  Out of my own curiosity, I'm considering putting a pedometer on the little man.

Based on observation, I would rank Buster's top ten hobbies in this order:

1. Walking.
2. Swinging.
3. Eating applesauce.
4. Shouting at the cat.
5. Unrolling toilet paper.
6. Picking up woodchips at the playground.
7. Touching Jack the Puppet's hair at our Library's storytime.
8. Standing up in the bathtub (totally against the rules, but he finds it VERY hard to resist).
9. Blowing rasberries immediately after taking drinks of water.
10. Playing with magnets on the lower part of the refrigerator.

I'll have to remember to show him this list when he's older.  And, secretly, I hope that "when he's older" lingers in the future just a little bit longer.  

Peace

Buster is almost nine months old, and I still sneak into his room several times throughout the night to check on him and to get glimpses of him like this.  Seeing him soundly asleep with a firm grip on Roy the Beloved makes me feel like time stands still for just the smallest of moments.  Blissful slumber. Peace.

Airport Angels

As we were trying to prepare for traveling to Estonia with Buster, I came across a comment in some book about traveling with babies.  Basically, the person suggested that if we had thought that international flights were a drag sans baby, we were in a for a rude surprise.  Previously, on international flights I would just get bored and tired of sitting in one place for so long.  This was not the case with traveling with Buster.  Having an active, eighteen pound, seven month old doing gymnastics sitting on my lap for a total of thirteen hours did not lend itself to boredom or immobility on my part.

All things considered, Buster did really well with the traveling part of our travels.  I did learn, however, that the minor irritations of airport delays can quickly become magnified when a tired baby is involved.  In the midst of two of these rapidly magnifying irritations, a delayed flight and an exceptionally long and slow customs process, we encountered two airport angels.  I know (at least I think I know) that they were not angels in the true theological sense, but, nonetheless, their sudden appearances in our lives felt small gifts from Heaven.

The first encounter was with a fellow passenger waiting on a delayed flight.  He was from Nigeria.  He noticed Buster, reached out his arms, and with a smile said "give him to me".  So we did.  Buster was suddenly face to face with this man.  And the two of them were smiling and laughing. He played with Buster for awhile commenting that Buster must be wondering "who is this black man holding me".  Then he handed him back and Buster looked over at him, smiled and made his friendliest spitting noise.

The second airport angel walked directly up to us while we were waiting in an eternal customs line.  She was seven years old.  She was from Toronto but was just returning from visiting her grandpa in Hong Kong.  She was traveling with her mom.  She loved babies.  Her name was Grace.  (This was all disclosed to us within about a minute's time).  All the while that she was telling us these things, Grace was also playing peek-a-boo with Buster.  She made silly faces at him and engaged him with enthusiasm and energy. Buster was thrilled.

We asked her if she liked flying on airplanes.  She said "no" because its boring after the first hour.  And, she explained, she didn't really like it when her ears hurt although she had learned how to blow air to relieve pressure.  It was at this point that this airport angel allowed her seven year old human nature to be revealed.  As she was trying to describe the process of ear pressure relief, her face looked a little perplexed and then she came up with this analogy:

"It's like your ears fart."

Oh, Grace.  Thank you.  That's just what we needed.  Really.  I think we survived the customs line riding on waves of laughter because of you.

Black Bread

Buster has discovered that he likes dark Estonian rye bread.  I don't know that I have ever seen an equivalent to this type of bread in the States.  When I say "dark", I mean practically black.  Not a typical item found on the "first foods" diet in the States, but for our little guy it has found its way into the lineup of peas, carrots, bananas, pears, apples, squash, and sweet potatoes.

Buster has also discovered that he does not enjoy sitting in his stroller all day long, but he does enjoy sleeping in his stroller all night long.  It would, in fact, be better to say that if he is awake, Buster much prefers to be carried in my arms where he can really see all the action.  But, if he is asleep, or trying to be asleep, at this point in our travels, he will not sleep anywhere but sitting up in his stroller like a little old man who has fallen asleep in his favorite chair.

It is possible that he has learned that yelling in the backseat of the car while mom and dad are in the thick of driving through trams, buses, and traffic while desperately trying to read the names of road signs that seem no bigger than a loaf of bread will result in any assortment of things (sippy cups, pacifiers, beloved "Roy", dark Estonian rye bread) being shoved at offered to him.

I'm hoping that he is learning that, even in the midst of new smells, sounds, sights, routines, betimes, mom and dad are trustworthy.  We will always do our best to meet his needs, protect him, and let him know that he is absolutely loved.

Eventually, I long for my son to have many memories of not just the adventure of traveling to new places, but the deep sense connection to people that transcends culture.  I long for him to experience the broad sense of the idea of "home" that I began to understand during the course of my 20's.

"Home" is where you know that you are wanted and waited for.

It has been such a joy and comfort to my soul to be in this place for which I have often felt homesick.  We have a couple days left in Estonia.  Just enough time to brainstorm how to bring lots of dark rye bread back on the airplane.