When you are 1...

Life is messy. It just is. The couch cushions are always strewn across the kitchen, there is a puddle of tinkle on the department store floor where Cadence was standing a few seconds ago, and don't even get me started on play time or how many baths we take in a given day.

Apparently part of being 1 is not knowing what to do in any daily social situation...did she really just hand me a bucket of her own poo?

I know she didn't run from me when I told her it was time to put her clothes on! Even calling her name in an escalating tone has no effect. Maybe her name isn't Cadence?

In fact, I am pretty sure that a glimpse of our daily life would be enough to make the Proverbs 31 woman roll over in her grave...but she didn't have a child like Cadence.

Her children probably always obeyed her the first time and didn't throw photos into the toilet, or climb the furniture, giggling in mockery, when she commanded them to come down before they got hurt.

After skipping her afternoon nap, I needed a Mommy time out, so Cadence went to bed early tonight. Sometimes I have to do that for my own sanity. She looks so serene when she is asleep...the calm before tomorrow's storm.

When you meet Cadence, you will laugh with us. She is life personified.

Easter Eggs!

We celebrated Easter Sunday with local believers in our city.

Our beloved friend, "Mrs. Day" was baptized in a well! Not one to miss an opportunity to get wet, Cadence kept trying to jump to her.

What's Easter without chocolate? They don't sell chocolate eggs or bunnies here since Easter is a foreign concept to hindus, but we celebrated the morning with chocolate croissants from a local bakery.

Perhaps not the best breakfast choice on the way to church...

A cross carved by a local believer

Lemon cupcakes baked in egg shells were a big hit with the children at our little church.

Cadence loved taking apart my festive decorations. There are permanent teeth marks in the little plastic eggs, but thanks for sending them Mae-Mae.

She never really got into the whole easter egg hunt the way I had hoped she would. I hid her snack of cheerios and raisins in eggs several days but she was too busy to go and pick them all up.

Maybe picking up easter eggs reminded her too much of picking up her toys.

Maybe she was boycotting for a better snack!

Passover

For as long as they could remember, they had celebrated on this day. They would gather together with their extended families and eat the traditional meal, while Dad told the story to the children of their ancestors and how God had provided for them in a far away land.

They were anxious to get to the city and begin the holiday preparations. His heart was heavy with the burden before him…this year would be different for all of them. Still, He honored their desire to keep this year as festive as it had always been. He instructed them to enter the city, where they would find a man carrying water who had a large upstairs room. Just as he said, the man was there and the room was perfect for what would be their last supper together.

They prepared the meal, unaware that their beloved teacher would be the Passover lamb.

The meal was the same as it had always been: the shank bone of a lamb to represent the sacrifice of an animal’s life in exchange for their own, bitter herbs to represent the bitterness of slavery in Egypt, pureed apples and walnuts to represent the bricks and mortar made by their ancestors in slavery, an egg as the symbol of new life, the bread without yeast to represent the cleansing of sin, and 4 cups of wine (one to be left untouched as a symbol of waiting for the coming Messiah to dine with them).

They couldn’t have understood how He fulfilled the symbols, but still He explained to them what was happening as they ate.

We want Cadence to understand who God is…the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…the God of Mae-Mae, Grampuh, Honey, Bee, Mama and Dada. We want her to know what He has done in the past…in providing for His children, in sending His son, Jesus, to earth to literally save us from death. We want her to know that Jesus is coming back and there will come a day when we will eat this meal with Him…when His cup at the table will not be empty because he will sit and dine with us. So this year we shared the Passover meal with Cadence.

Easter Eggs!

Thanks Honey and Bee for the Easter Eggs! We play with them every day. We tried making jello (from Granny) in the eggs and eating it with a spoon.

Daddy even let us eat jello in his tent.

We also tried playing with the eggs in our rice bin.

This abruptly ended when Cadence figured out that she could throw rice by the fist full into the yard. I expect it to sprout up among our grass any day with all the rain that we have received lately.

So we decided to wash the easter eggs.

This was a big hit.

Despite the creative energy it took me to come up with these 3 activities, Cadence was finished playing with easter eggs for the day after only about 30 minutes and ready to move on to something else.

Hosanna!

Trying to capture the magnificence of Easter in a way a one year old can understand, we had a Palm Sunday Parade in our yard.

As Jesus entered Jerusalem (where he would soon be crucified) to celebrate Passover, he was riding a donkey. Nearly all of the people in the crowd that gathered around him threw their garments down on the road before him, giving him a royal welcome. Others cut branches from palm trees and threw them down in the road as a welcome mat.

Crowds went ahead and crowds followed him into the city, all of them calling out, "Hosanna to the son of David!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Hosanna in the highest heaven!"

As he made his entrance into Jerusalem, the whole city was shaken. Unnerved, people were asking, "What's going on here? Who is this?" The parade crowd answered, "This is the prophet Jesus, the one from Nazareth in Galilee."

"Hosanna" is a Hebrew expression meaning, "Save!" which became an exclamation of praise.

The complete story can be found in Matthew 21.

Left Behind

A week ago, Jordan's sister, Katherine, left us to return to America with her 8 month old daughter, Harper, and husband, Michael. Cadence continues to grieve cousin "Parper's" return to America.

She wakes every morning, asking for "Parper". This morning she was standing in her crib with an empty bottle, offering to give the bottle to "Parper" if only Harper would return.

We are continually having the following conversation:

CADENCE: "Parper. Where go?" ( with her shoulders shrugged and her palms upturned)
ME: "Harper went home, Baby."
CADENCE: "KK?"
ME: "KK went home too."
CADENCE: "Tato?"
ME: "Michael went home with Harper and Kk, on a plane."
CADENCE: "Parper. Plane."
ME: "Yes, Harper went home on a plane to America."
CADENCE: "Da Da Parper." (as she waves to the sky)

45 seconds after the 16 replay of this conversation one day, Cadence grabbed my hand and led me to her dark room where we both stared through the slats of her empty baby bed where Harper slept while she was here. So sad.

Cadence threw a full blown temper tantrum in the sand on Harper's last night here when it was time to leave the beach. We love you Harper. Thanks for coming to visit us.