Cute Little Things

Avery is doing this funny thing lately where she talks with an accent. It’s not identifiable…not British, or French, or any ethnic stereotypes like you’d imagine, but something consistent and silly in her opinion. I have to admit it’s pretty entertaining when the mood is right. She purposefully mispronounces her s’s and replaces them with “sh” and then kind of puts a southern twang into the word and does this all in a deeper tone than usual. Her favorite word to do this with is “yes”….so it comes out like “yay-ash”. And imagine her sticking out her bottom jaw in a major underbite when she does it. It’s pretty cute.

We were driving to return library books last night and it was warm and cozy in the van. Mark was flipping channels on the radio and I heard some Christmas songs coming from 100.3. He kept going and I immediately told him to turn it back. It only took a fraction of a second for Maryn to shout “WHAT!?!” from the backseat. She not only recognized what she was hearing, but then continued to inform us all that “IT’S TOO EARLY--IT’S ONLY NOVEMBER THE 8th!!” This amused the heck out of me for several reasons. First of all, the fact that she could place a song that quickly…she definitely has gotten my freaky genes for identifying songs, phrases, and faces like a savant. Second of all, that she knew that it was too early…that Christmas is still over a month and a half away, and that if you ingest too much “Christmas” before the actual holiday, you will surely get burnt-out. And lastly, that my little first-grade-know-it-all now knows the precise day and month (from writing it on her papers all day at school). She is a crack-up sometimes!!

And lastly, I called Mark from I-96 around 5:20 to tell him to go ahead and get dinner started. He agreed and when I got home the chicken was defrosted, the oven was preheated, the potatoes were cut (exactly like I asked), he was in process of cutting the “slimy parts” of off the cubed squash, and was getting ready to “drizzle” the olive oil over the vegetables in the roasting pan. It was just so dang cute in it’s own way. I know he knows how important seemingly unimportant things are and he really tries to please me and make sure it’s done the way I like it.

I know it’s probably the same for you all in your own lives. It’s these little things that our loved ones do that make our hearts sing and make us want to shout into the heavens. I’m so grateful to have these people in my life and feel so blessed in so many ways. Every day and every “little thing” is such a treasure.