today...

today...

...my heart melted. I was mindlessly picking up books in emma's room, and she sauntered in. She looked me straight in the eyes, and said, "mommy, I love you." Big hug. Sweet kiss. I almost died.

...I drank in the sweet, bubbly laughter samantha rewarded me with after tickling her belly. I realized today that I hadn't heard her laugh in a while, so I thought a game of tickle-peek-a-boo would remedy that. I was right.

...emma played the guitar with josh for our family worship time...her first time actually using the pick. It was much improved from her previous attempts. She loved the attention, loved the way she had to manipulate her fingers to make the pick work, loved feeling like a big girl.

...at dinner samantha said, "Da-da! (more!)" The "more" part was in sign language, which she's been using fairly consistently the last weeek or so, but today was the first time she tried to get our attention by calling our names. (Yes, I'm sorry to say that I'm "dada" too right now...)

...I felt thankful that samantha's skin has continued to stay relatively clear. She still has some redness, but compared to how things have been, well...I've already talked about that enough. I'll move on...

...I felt convicted about how easily I live my life without making an intentional effort to love people. I make intentional efforts to be kind and polite, but to go that extra mile and show love? Not so much. And further, the ultimate show of love is to share deeper Love with them, and sometimes I feel too rushed, too busy, too preoccupied to take those extra moments. But those extra moments are when True Love is shown.

...I went to my landlord's house. she's getting ready to move apartments, from her semi-dinky apartment to a new ultra-fab place. Truly, it will be a fab place. She will live on the 12th and top floor of her building and will have a huge deck (which she foolishly plans to enclose). She has a spiral staircase and a two-story living room. A master bedroom the size of my entire house. Large and spacious bathrooms. And yet, in typical asian fashion, her kitchen is like the size of a doghouse. Ok, maybe not a doghouse, but like the size of an entryway closet. I kid you not. It's so small. I don't have a super-fab deck or a spiral staircase, but good heavens, at least I can move around in my kitchen!

...and now, at this moment, emma is laying in her bed rattling off all the asianese phrases she knows. I can hear her, saying "See you soon! Be careful! Sooooo careful! Thank You! Thank YOU! One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight..." She's cracking me up.