At a special restaurant overlooking a river & waterfalls, enjoying a fantastic four course meal with my sweetest boys.
This is how Gabriel feels about going to a fancy restaurant with Daddy & Mommy! (or at least how he feels about his own special dish of ice cream…)
As Gabriel is growing up, so is his room.
This last week we said goodbye to the nursery (possibly forever, although I pray we’ll get an excuse for a nursery again one day). It was really hard for me, but our little boy loves his new room. He has always loved his room, and I am thankful that he continues to love it as it ages with him.
Here’s a little photo timeline of how his room has aged and changed.
It started with paint and a little furniture (Jan 2008).
Then after a while it needed more furniture, made by Grandpapa (May 2008).
In recent months, it has included changing the way some of the furniture is used (2010).
And now it includes a new coat of paint, the loss of an area rug, replacing furniture, and all kinds of new textiles (Feb 2011).
I am working on two more decorative pillows, and one more piece of artwork for the wall. But his “new room” is pretty much complete. It’s so bittersweet. I love his excitement over it, and I know that eventually I will get past the pain of it.
My boys, each serving in their kitchen.
True, masculine sacrifices for the woman they love ~ me. 🙂
Without having weather where we can play outside (Gabriel likes the snow well enough, but he is not fond of temperatures below about 10 degrees), we get creative inside. 🙂 Gabriel can’t decide whether it’s a fort, a tent, or an igloo… but he loves this thing, and makes us crawl through his tower to get inside (what a trick!), and we sit on beanbags in the fort to read, use laptops, play with toys, etc. Pretty clever.
My little boy helped me bake Christmas cookies this year. I’m thankful my Gabriel loves to shadow me & do absolutely everything I do. I made the mistake of not giving him an apron or overshirt while rolling & cutting the sugar cookies… haha. But we remedied the situation when it was time for icing & sprinkles. 🙂 Live & learn!
In the bleakness, this miracle-boy reminds me why I keep breathing.
Some of the smiles you could get when asking my Gabriel to smile for the camera.
Gabriel loves when I bring out The Art Bucket to do “art time” together. Fingerpainting and coloring are our current favorites.
Our Gabriel David loves liturgy. He is most definitely our boy!
Last evening he suddenly burst into song (as he is often wont to do), singing what sounded like, HO-ee HO-ee HO-ee oh ah ah oh
And then of course he concluded with his very predictable, Meh, which means Amen.
Steven and I looked at each other across the room, both thinking the same thing. “That just sounded like holy holy holy!”
I couldn’t imagine why he would know the song Holy, Holy, Holy since I don’t sing it to him that often.
But Steven said, “I think that was the Sanctus!”
So we asked Gabriel to sing it again. And he did the same exact thing again.
Then he pointed to Steven and said, “Daddy,” indicating that it was Daddy’s turn to sing it.
So Steven did.
He sang the Sanctus from the Dorian Service by Tallis.
And Gabriel was intensely delighted!
He couldn’t have been more thrilled that we knew what he was singing!
It was totally the Sanctus that Gabriel was singing.
Makes sense, really, considering we sing it after confession and absolution every week at worship, in addition to most nights throughout the week.
I think we ended up singing the Sanctus about a dozen times last evening (in family worship as well as just randomly) because we were all just so thrilled!
After we put Gabriel to bed, we could still hear him through the monitor singing HO-ee Ho-ee Ho-ee to his animals in his crib. It was so precious, I almost cried.
If I could figure out how to post videos, I would let you take a listen yourself. He only sings the first line recognizably (unless you’re his parent), but he conducts the entire thing while we sing it (have I mentioned his fanatic love of conducting?), breathes in all the right places, copies our mouth shape & vowel sounds, and tries his best to belt out the ending Hosannas.
We already knew he was a fantastic little boy, with his big faith in God and love of liturgy.
But last night just lit us up.
God is mighty at work.
God is, indeed, Gabriel’s strength.
And I am excited to see what God continues to do with this child of His: my son, my brother ~ Gabriel.
