Amanda and Me Time

Most of the afternoon and evening, Amanda and I had the house to ourselves. Since it was just the two of us eating dinner, I asked her what she wanted. She chose chicken noodle soup, but I only had cream of chicken soup, so she went with that. It’s wintertime in the southern hemisphere, so soup was perfect for a cold rainy night.

The two of us built puzzles, watched Disney Junior, played with wooden blocks called Planx and then made cinnamon sugar popcorn. The popcorn was delicious and I had four small helpings. Amanda kept track of how many servings I took, because she wasn’t sure if it was fair that I had four helpings while she only had three. I told her that I was bigger. That answer usually works.

After getting her ready for bed, I let her snuggle under a blanket with me on the couch while I watched the Style channel and Home channel. We only recently started paying for a few more channels; mainly so that Robbie could watch his sports, but we knew that there would be a bigger selection for all of us. Up until about a month ago, we had four South African stations plus a few on religion and news.

One of our new favorite programs that Robbie and I like to watch is Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. The food always looks so amazing. I’ve been really out of touch with what goes on in my home country of America. I watched a bit of Extreme Couponing and I was impressed. Coupons are hard to come by in this country and the savings that they offer are very low. If we ever move to the States, I’ll definitely take advantage of coupons.

I’m leaving you with an original piece of art by Amanda. She drew and painted it all by herself. I think for a future Wordless Wednesday I should post more of her work.

By Amanda Morley age 4 (July 1, 2012)

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A Perfect Evening Gone Wrong

The night Amanda gave us a scare.

Last night I put Amanda to bed with one of the new books that she got for her birthday. It’s called Nursery Rhymes & Fairy Tales by Disney. She’s at that age where she loves to recite and sing nursery rhymes and so this book has come at a good time. A neat bonus to the book is that two pages of tiny Disney stickers are included.

Amanda’s evening seemed to have come to a perfect end. I took a photo last night so that I could share with you how happy and peaceful this moment was. It was only a few minutes later and the perfect moment changed into something like a scary movie. I had just gone to my room when Samantha called out to say that Amanda had left her bed (the two girls share a room). I looked down the dark passage and saw her heading the opposite direction. When she heard my voice, she turned around and came towards me. Immediately, I could see something was wrong, because there was a huge dark patch between her nose and mouth.

I quickly got her to my bathroom and in the light I could see that she was covered in blood. Besides what I had already observed on her face, I could now see that it was also on her hands, arms and nightgown. I called out to her dad with alarm, which upset her, but then I switched my tone and she calmed down. Her dad went to check out her bed while I cleaned her up. Her bedding was covered in blood too and some went on her new book, but it wiped off easily and the bedding went straight to the wash. Of course, I didn’t take a photo of that. It had been too unexpected.

None of my kids have ever had a nosebleed like that before, but just as quickly as it had started, it also stopped. Today she was fine without another incident. As they say, “Life happens” and there’s not always much we can do about it. An unexpected nosebleed reminds me that nothing in this life is perfect.

As a teenager, I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and something he explained in there about perfection made a lot of sense to me. I had always had this strong need for things to be perfect. Lewis’ book points out that our understanding and desire for perfection comes from our inner knowing that perfection exists, but not on earth, which can frustrate those who are seeking it. Perfection is found in God and in His heavenly kingdom. One day He will make all things new – even our world – and that day I am waiting for with great expectation.

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