Journey of a Thousand Miles

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Silly Face

We're not sure if she does this to be silly or because her eyes are dry or what. But it makes us smile...

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

So Lydia has started this new spitting thing when she eats. It's really funny and I tend to have a big reaction. It's also gross and she can spray far. Kendall has reminded me that my big reaction is only encouraging her. I agree, though so far the cuteness has been worth ignoring the voice of reason. Eli thinks it's fun to go to the other end of the table, out of range, and spit at Lydia, encouraging her more. I think next time he does that, he will have to finish feeding her.

Here's a demonstration of the newfound activity:
(Excuse the video quality. The young videographer needs lessons.)

By the way, what do you think happens when I put my 2 messiest kids together with a bowl of scrambled eggs, charging the bigger one with feeding the smaller one?

Answer: Sneezing, spitting, spraying, flying eggs and raucuos laughter.

Happy Girl

One Way to Soothe a Fussy Baby

This was Little Missy just a few weeks ago:

She was so happy with herself for being able to pull up onto her knees from a sitting position. Well, not too long after this photo was taken, we discovered that she could pull herself to a standing position when we turned around to see her standing in her high chair.

She's not crawling yet, but she's at that stage where I know she could all of the sudden start crawling and be a pro within a matter of days. Uh-oh. Then life will change. It's so easy when I can sit her on the floor and know that she'll be fine as long as there are no little pieces within a 4-foot or so area. And the railing across our drop-off is still not up. It's still being worked on, hopefully we'll get that soon.

Lydia always wants to stand. No sitting still for that girl. I had her on my own in church on Sunday and she was exhausting! Of course it didn't help that the boys were dissolving into giggles over an "opera" voice they heard during singing. It made me smile, though, because I remember many delicious giggles shared during inopportune moments. (Including one time at a funeral. I was an adult. Who should have known better. But I was nervous and sad and uncomfortable. And I was with one of you. Ahem. Lanae.)

Anyway, back to Lydia. She is a Wiggle Worm. Life will soon be very interesting with a crawler. This Mama has some baby-proofing to do.

Friday, February 15, 2013

An Evening in the Hochstedler Household

Happy Valentine's Day!

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao-tzu

July 1, 2008
This journey so far has taken me one thousand and four miles from my hometown, but I’m having trouble putting my finger on the single step that began it all. Was it Monday afternoon at the border when they gave me my official document allowing me to pass? Was it Saturday morning when we started the car and drove out of Goshen in our funny little caravan? Was it in February when we came up to Red Lake for a job interview at the hospital? Was it two Christmases ago being up here with Kendall’s family and all of us rating our desire to live up here? (I can’t say my number on a scale of 1 – 100 was high, but it was the highest of all the in-laws, so I guess I’m the chosen one.) Was it three years ago almost to the day that Kendall first said, “What if we’d move up here?” (I tried to ignore that one for several months, thinking surely it would go away.) Or was it June 10, 2000 when I married Kendall and made some solemn promises before God and all these witnesses? Was it a night before Kendall and I were married when we talked about moving to Red Lake? (It was a far off and romantic possibility at that time.) Or was it living in and visiting different cultures at different times in my life? Could the first step have been when my parents brought me as a baby to this same area for a year of voluntary service? (Kendall wasn’t born yet, but I surely saw his parents as they chatted with mine from time to time.) What about when my dad lived on a nearby reserve for two years before he was married? Or when my mom visited this town with her family as a teenager? Or maybe it had something to do with choices my grandparents made? Or other ancestors farther back?

At any rate, moving into this house where I slept for a few weeks as a baby and where my dad stayed as a teenager, has made me very aware of roots. And how they affect our lives and choices and passions.

I suspect there is no single step that began our move a thousand miles away from Indiana. It seems, rather, to be a coming together of so many different factors. (Not the least of which is marrying a man who has taken this land as a very part of his being. And for all the ways I can tease him and get annoyed at some of his woodsman ways, I really do mean that in a reverent and respectful way.)

So here we are, a thousand miles from nowhere. (Oops…I meant a thousand miles from Goshen.) I know that we safely made the journey here, but mostly our journey is just beginning. And mostly I’m excited.