I have this favorite blogger who keeps me laughing with every post about her crazy family and inspires me with her sense of style. Grace & Simon Patton have had four children in four years – Julia, Sebastian, Theo & Phoebe – while her husband has been in med school and working extensive shift hours. Somehow, this little family just chooses to roll with the punches of everyday life and the unpredictability of four little children. I hope that they actually laugh as much as their sarcasm suggests they might …
see Camp Patton’s post “from the cutting room floor” by clicking the picture
Grace’s most recent post had to do with one of those childish gestures that every kid makes to ruin his mother’s last semblance of sanity. She sure did capture the horror & hilarity of it all with words and pictures …
“obstacle course”
Children are just a quirky thing of life, in my opinion. One can’t come into this world without having first been a child. Without having first thought and acted like a child. Children do silly stupid scary things all the live-long day for years in the beginning of their existence. One minute they’re sweetly innocent and then the next minute they’re devilish rebels.
“un triumphant return”
But, this is how the course of life goes. We must be small & tender & moldable before we can become something bigger & better (hopefully). It is the process of growth that’s long, hard, and difficult that yields good fruit. It must be done in every life that God has created. The process of going from little to larger.
“julia styles”
Having studied human behavior & development as my focus in college, I learned about the phases the brain goes through in the process of maturity. It’s fascinating to understand that a helpless newborn begins to develop the ability to focus with the eyes, to grab & reach, to crawl and then toddle, to form sounds and later words … It’s fascinating to understand that the boundless imaginative 10 year old begins to develop a sense of personal identity and independence, curiosity about his own bodily changes, privacy about his own issues, ingenuity as he continues to create and build but on a deeper level … It’s fascinating to watch a teenager become an adult, in all their struggles and anger and emotion and desire, their brains are going through the process that needs to take place in order to make a well-reasoning, capable, discerning person who will contribute to society …
“because nothing says independence like photos of kids in red, white, and blue”
By then reproducing his own quirky offspring.
And so the cycle of life goes on …
These are the things I roll around in my mind while my baby girl punches my stomach from the inside and out and while my husband embraces this new phase in life as a 30 year old at the precipice of his career while unexpectedly starting a family …
Here’s to all our quirky kids and those stages of development and blogger moms who know how to just fly with it.
‘When kids outgrow falling for the old, “pretend to pour a little in their bottle” trick … I laugh and cry. Theo didn’t buy my faux pouring sounds for a second. Stop maturing, dear boy.’
